Good times…

But would that be necessarily a bad thing?  Related item here.

I’m not ready to say I back Newt.  But I like he’s fighter streak.  That’s for sure…

UPDATE: Related: Mitt Romney’s dad was an Alinsky follower.  Interesting.

Hawaii’s legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.  Its House of Representatives has scheduled a hearing this morning on a new bill requiring the creation of virtual dossiers on state residents. The measure, H.B. 2288, says “Internet destination history information” and “subscriber’s information” such as name and address must be saved for two years.

Note also that Hawaii’s Senate majority whip – Democrat Jill Tokuda – had this to say: “I was asked to introduce the Senate companions on these Internet security related bills by Representative Kymberly Marcos Pine after her own personal experience in this area.”

Might Kymberly Pine’s “experience in this area” have anything to do with speech and political sentiments she’d like to monitor or outright curb?

SOPA, PIPA, and now this. Will other states follow? Never underestimate our elected officials when it comes to curtailing your freedom…

UPDATE: Incidentally, Pine is a Republican.  Her ardent accuser and web tormentor is not exactly popular.  Sounds like someone wants to perform a little surgery with a machete here.

Word…

Let me get this straight:  1) banks will be punished (do I understand this right, by a committee headed by Eric Holder?) if their lending is too risky, 2) and they will be required (by the same committee) to give more home loans (meaning, it must be, to people who would otherwise not qualify for the loans, or else the government would not have to be involved) at lower rates (which means rates that do not compensate them as much as the market says they need to be compensated for the risks they are taking, all of which sounds like a new edition of the policies that brought on the financial collapse), 3) which must mean that they will have to pull back on risky lending someplace other than homes, 4) the only place that most banks would be able to pull back on riskier customers would be loans to small and new businesses, 5) but these are the businesses that have created just about all the jobs over the last 20 years and he said early in the speech he wants to encourage them, 6) so maybe their growth capital will come from selling stock to the kinds of people who invest in new and small businesses, 7) but through the Buffet Rule he’s going to double the tax rate on investment income for those people, meaning that, like the banks, they can’t be fully compensated for the risk of backing small and new businesses, 8) so they will not invest more in small and new companies but in big established firms, 9) so more of those small and new firms will have to turn to the government for capital, 10) which luckily he said would up its investing in early stage businesses with “the best” ideas, 11) “the best” ideas meaning, I guess, as with Solyndra, ideas that advance his agenda through companies whose owners support his candidacy), 11) or maybe it would be companies that agree to invite unionization.

Read the whole thing™.  Sounds like Obama all right.

Good…

Related (marginally): How Hollywood Lost the SOPA war.

I have the feeling the war is not quite over…

Senator Chuck “Baghdad Bob” Schumer…