Republicans and the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton 28 year dynasty.

For at least a year now, Republican pundits have been having hissy fits about the liklihood of 28 years of rule by just two families.

This is, certainly, something to think about, but it takes a lot of chutzpah for the Republicans to make it an issue.

A little history: back in the late 60's and 70's, Republicans were in a perpetual sweat about the possibility of a Kennedy dynasty: John, Bobby, and Ted. John and Bobby, of course, were both assassinated - but not until Ted lost a primary run, and their God Reagan got elected, did the Republicans stop being afraid of a political dynasty.

So, did any of these anti-dynasty Republicans show even the tiniest bit of concern about running the son of a President who had been out of office for only 8 years? Not that I remember hearing. Father-son dynasties are, apparently, better than brother-brother-brother dynasties, at least if the father and son are Republicans.

And while the current Bush was riding high in the polls, there were whisperings about Jeb's running after W. finished his two terms. That talk has stopped, at least for the moment, because most Republican pundits know in their heart-of-hearts, that the current Bush is a disaster of such monumental proportions that Americans are not likely to vote for his brother.

But, you know something? If Hillary runs, wins and gets that 8 years these Republicans are already granting her, I wouldn't be at all surprised if these anti-dynasty pundits roll out Jeb.

So, before you decide to vote against Hillary solely because you don't like the idea of a dynasty, ask yourself who you voted for in 2000 and 2004. If you voted for Bush the son, you have no moral standing for voting against Hillary on an anti-dynasty platform.

Trend Micro - Internet Security 2007

I've been using Trend Micro for a couple of years on a laptop. I hated the long downloads (about an hour/week on dialup for each update), but it worked and I didn't have time to look for another. Bad decision.

I do NOT recommend TM unless you have a broadband connection and don't use third-party spyware products.

Problems:
1. The download was 80MB - but TM didn't think that important enough to point it out when you're given a choice between a CD and a download.

2. The installation program took about 1 hour. First, of course, it had to unpack itself into a temporary directory. Then it discovered an existing copy of TM which had to be uninstalled. To do that completely required a reboot. The install program started up and found an incompatible spyware program. Choice: uninstall that or stop the TM install. Of course the uninstall required a reboot. TM's install program began again, and found another spyware program it wasn't compatible with. Same choices and another reboot. Would it have been so hard to program the installation SW to scan the computer BEFORE uninstalling the old version of TM - which ran just fine with those spyware programs - and listing all of the incompatible programs so one could make a decision before losing one's basic security program? Finally, the installation began but - yep, you guessed it: it took 15 mins. to complete and had to reboot the laptop again.

3. Fine, finally got the software installed and running. But the minute I got connected to the web, I got a flurry of warning messages with no information about what was upsetting it (no program name). If TM doesn't recognize the program - it provided no name at all - how on earth does it expect an ordinary user to recognize the program?

4. Then, to top it all off, this 3-month old program needed an update, currently downloading and scheduled to complete in 3.5 hours, on dialup. I had actually hoped that the long update downloads - taking an average of 1 hr./week - had been fixed in this latest version based on blurbs on the web site. Obviously, TM's definition of improvement is to triple the time required.

So, if you have a fast broadband connection and can live with TM's spyware capabilities, it will probably work fine for you. But next year, I'm switching to AVG and Zone Alarm for the laptop.