Hawaii Elections 2022

5/21/23 - Josh Green and Hawaii's challenges

11/8/22 - Josh Green elected governor

11/8/22 - Schatz and Case joined by Tokuda in Congress

11/8/22 - Hawaii General Election Results: Takenouchi over Lim for State Representative Dist 27, Dos Santos-Tam edges Toguchi for City Council Dist VI

10/6/22 - Green and Aiona debate

6/22/22 - Vicky Cayetano

Uvalde shooting

[5/8/23] Texas House approves measure to raise age for purchasing certain rifles

[8/4/22] Alex Jones ordered to pay $4 million to Sandy Hook parents / and 45.2 million more

[7/29/22] House passes assault weapons ban, but is unlikely to pass Senate

[6/27/22] The AR-15: the weapon (60 Minutes)

[6/24/22] House approves gun control reform bill

[6/23/22] Supreme Court overturns New York's 1913 law limiting concealed handguns

[6/18/22] Firearms now leading cause of death of American children

[6/17/22] Cornyn booed at GOP convention for negotiating gun legislation

[6/6/22] New York governor signs gun reform laws

[6/2/22] Biden says "enough, enough!"

[5/29/22] Oprah interviews David Frum on gun violence

[5/26/22] Don McLean is pulling out of his upcoming performance at the National Rifle Association convention, citing Tuesday's shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

The "American Pie" singer-songwriter released a statement saying it would be "hurtful and "disrespectful" for him to perform at the NRA conference in Houston, which will be a meeting of gun rights advocates from across the country.

"In light of the recent events in Texas, I have decided it would be disrespectful and hurtful for me to perform for the NRA at their convention in Houston this week," McLean said in a statement to USA TODAY Thursday. "I’m sure all the folks planning to attend this event are shocked and sickened by these events as well. After all, we are all Americans." 

NRA convention 2022: Trump, Abbott, Cruz scheduled to speak at NRA convention in Houston this weekend

Those still planning to attend include Texas politicians and former President Donald Trump. The organization released a statement Wednesday confirming that the scheduled convention would still take place and the event would "reflect on these events."

McLean's statement continued: "I share the sorrow for this terrible, cruel loss with the rest of the nation."

Larry Gatlin can't perform at NRA convention 'in good conscience' 

Country and gospel singer Larry Gatlin was also scheduled to perform at the upcoming convention but released a statement Thursday saying he can't perform "in good conscience"

"While I agree with most of the positions held by the NRA," Gatlin said in a statement sent to USA TODAY. "I have come to believe that, while background checks would not stop every madman with a gun, it is at the very least a step in the right direction toward trying to prevent the kind of tragedy we saw this week in Uvalde."

The Texas native continued: "My prayers and thoughts go to all who are suffering, and I pray that the NRA will rethink some of its outdated and ill-thought-out positions regarding firearms in AMERICA. I'm a 2nd Amendment guy, but the 2nd Amendment should not apply to everyone. It's that simple."

Larry Stewart of Restless Heart also withdraws from convention

Larry Stewart, lead singer of country band Restless Heart said he also wouldn't be performing in a statement to USA TODAY Thursday.

"Due to the tragedy in Uvalde with the horrific school shooting and children who died, I want to honor the victims, families, the town and our friends in the great state of Texas the best I know how. So I have made the decision to pull out as a performer for the NRA convention this weekend," Stewart said. 

Stewart reinforced his belief in the Second Amendment, adding "the NRA is a great organization who teaches strict gun safety with a membership of law-abiding citizens."

"I just believe this is best for me at this time," he wrote.

More: Texas officials investigating if police acted fast enough to stop shooter at Uvalde school

***

5/25/22 - The evolution of the NRA

5/24/22 - Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas

2022 mid-term elections

12/9/22 - Kyrsten Sinema switches from Democrat to independent 

12/7/22 - Warnock defeats Herschel Walker for Senate in Georgia runoff

12/3/22 - Georgia Lt. Governor thinks Herschel Walker will probably go down as one of the worst candidates in our party's history

11/30/22 - House Democrats elect Hakeem Jeffries as first Black party leader

11/22/22 - Black voters prefer Warnock to Walker 89% to 8%.

11/17/22 - Pelosi to step down as House leader

[11/15/22] The 2022 midterms elections proved to be disappointing for Republicans as Democrats were able to hold onto their Senate majority even amid President Biden's record-low approval ratings.

Typically, the party for a first-term president does not do well in midterm elections. Moreover, polling and other data indicated that Democrats were behind in key Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Nevada. However, the party was able to win all of those races. Battleground state Georgia will go to a runoff election next month between Incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker.

The losses in the Senate for the GOP have promoted in-fighting as some Republicans look to blame Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump. In the House, Republicans may barely gain a majority, and GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy recently won the party nomination for speaker of the House after defeating Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs.

As power struggles consume the GOP, Democrats are celebrating their historic win and are looking to pass key legislation before the 117th Congress ends in January. Current Senate Majority Chuck Schumer will likely hold his leadership position going into the new Congress.

This week, Schumer announced he plans to support a vote on the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify same-sex marriage into federal law. The bill currently only needs ten Republican votes in the Senate.

"I want to be clear that passing this bill is not at all a theoretical exercise, but rather it is as real as it gets," Schumer said on the Senate floor Monday. A procedural vote is set to occur on Wednesday, and Democrats believe they have enough votes from across the aisle to reach the 60 vote threshold to avoid a filibuster. 

The group of bipartisan senators looking to codify same-sex marriage include Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and Republican Senators Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rob Portman of Ohio.

We’ve crafted commonsense language that respects religious liberty and Americans’ diverse beliefs while upholding our view that marriage embodies the highest ideals of love, devotion, and family," said the bipartisan Senate group in a joint statement on Monday. 

Even if the vote fails, which would be unlikely, Democrats would likely still have enough votes to move past the filibuster. The rush to codify same-sex marriage by Democrats before the new Congress convenes comes on the heels of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

The Senate win for Democrats also has other benefits for the Biden administration for the next two years. The party will be able to confirm the president's judicial nominees as well as vote against bills passed by a likely Republican House and uphold Biden's legislative agenda.

what's up with Tulsi?

[11/15/22] Tulsi Gabbard to join Fox News as a contributor

[2/21/22] Tulsi Gabbard to speak at CPAC

[3/13/20] Cataluna on Gabbard

[3/8/20] Why Tulsi is continuing her campaign

[1/22/20] Tulsi sues Hillary for $50 million (at least)

[11/11/19] Tulsi demands Hillary publicly retract her comments

[10/25/19] Tulsi won't seek re-election to Congress in 2020

[10/21/19] Trump claims Gabbard NOT a Russian agent

[10/20/19] Gabbard runaway debate winner

[10/20/19] Hillary suggests Russians are grooming Tulsi as a third-party candidate

[10/19/19]  WEST BRANCH, Iowa (AP) — Hillary Clinton’s suggestion this past week that Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is being “groomed” by Russians to act as a spoiler in the 2020 race may have had the opposite effect of what the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee intended: It’s elevated Gabbard’s candidacy and may have inspired even more ardent interest in her campaign among Clinton critics.

On Saturday, Gabbard found fans among the many Clinton skeptics across Iowa, where Clinton barely won the 2016 Democratic caucuses against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“What is this horrible thing that Hillary said about you?” one person asked Gabbard at a house party in West Branch.

Gabbard responded that “it revealed the truth that I have been experiencing for a long time now — which is that, because I have been trying to bring about an end to our country’s long-held foreign policy of waging one regime-change war after the next . I am labeled as a traitor.”

“This is a message that is being sent to every single American . who speaks out for peace,” she said.

[10/14/19] WASHINGTON — Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, is impressed with her political talent. Richard B. Spencer, the white nationalist leader, says he could vote for her. Former Representative Ron Paul praises her “libertarian instincts,” while Franklin Graham, the influential evangelist, finds her “refreshing.”

And far-right conspiracy theorists like Mike Cernovich see a certain MAGA sais quoi.

“She’s got a good energy, a good vibe. You feel like this is just a serious person,” Mr. Cernovich said. “She seems very Trumpian.”

Among her fellow Democrats, Representative Tulsi Gabbard has struggled to make headway as a presidential candidate, barely cracking the 2 percent mark in the polls needed to qualify for Tuesday night’s debate. She is now injecting a bit of chaos into her own party’s primary race, threatening to boycott that debate to protest what she sees as a “rigging” of the 2020 election. That’s left some Democrats wondering what, exactly, she is up to in the race, while others worry about supportive signs from online bot activity and the Russian news media.

Perhaps strangest of all is the unusual array of Americans who cannot seem to get enough of her.

On podcasts and online videos, in interviews and Twitter feeds, alt-right internet stars, white nationalists, libertarian activists and some of the biggest boosters of Mr. Trump heap praise on Ms. Gabbard. They like the Hawaiian congresswoman’s isolationist foreign policy views. They like her support for drug decriminalization. They like what she sees as censorship by big technology platforms.

Then there is 4chan, the notoriously toxic online message board, where some right-wing trolls and anti-Semites fawn over Ms. Gabbard, calling her “Mommy” and praising her willingness to criticize Israel. In April, the Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website, took credit for Ms. Gabbard’s qualification for the first two Democratic primary debates.

Brian Levin, the head of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, said Ms. Gabbard had “the seal of approval” within white nationalist circles. “If people have that isolationist worldview, there is one candidate that could best express them on each side: Gabbard on the Democratic side and Trump on the Republican side,” Mr. Levin said.

Ms. Gabbard has disavowed some of her most hateful supporters, castigating the news media for giving “any oxygen at all” to the endorsement she won from the white nationalist leader David Duke. But her frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show have buoyed her support in right-wing circles.

Both Ms. Gabbard and her campaign refused requests for comment about her support in right-wing circles or threat to boycott the debate. Even some political strategists who have worked with her are at a loss to explain her approach to politics.

“She’s a very talented person but I’m not sure, I just don’t know what to say about the campaign exactly,” said Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist who worked with Ms. Gabbard when she was campaigning for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in 2016.

There is potential upside for Ms. Gabbard: Drawing more attention could energize her donors and perhaps attract more supporters, extending her candidacy’s life span.

Yet there is only confusion for several Democratic officials, activists and party officials, who privately say they have been a little spooked by Ms. Gabbard. Rival campaigns worry about her unpredictable attacks if she participates in the debate, pointing to her sharp jabs against Senator Kamala Harris of California in an earlier matchup.

“She’s taken a series of policy steps which signal to the right that she has deep areas of alignment,” said Neera Tanden, a longtime policy adviser to Hillary Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

The questions deepened on Thursday after Ms. Gabbard threatened to boycott Tuesday’s debate, arguing that the corporate news media and the Democratic National Committee are working together to rig the event. (The New York Times is a co-sponsor of the debate with CNN.)

That message resonates with many of Ms. Gabbard’s supporters. In a moment marked by fractured politics, Ms. Gabbard’s nontraditional positions are a major part of her appeal for voters seeking to break out of polarized partisan divisions. Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host, said he planned to vote for her. Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, donated to her campaign.

But it’s also an argument that reminds some Democrats of the narrative pushed by Russian actors during the 2016 presidential contest, when an operation by internet trolls worked to manipulate American public opinion: that the electoral system is broken and cannot be trusted.

Some of those who have worked with Ms. Gabbard say that, as an Iraq war veteran whose chief message is that America should stop trying to police the world, she is representing viewpoints that draw support from an array of people in the United States as well as abroad.

“In reality, Tulsi is really running on an antiwar message that’s consistent with where a lot of veterans are,” said Jon Soltz, chairman of the liberal veterans organization VoteVets.org, which worked closely with Ms. Gabbard during her first congressional campaign. “I know everyone thinks there’s a conspiracy theory here but that’s really what she’s doing.”

Still, Democrats are on high alert about foreign interference in the next election and the D.N.C. is well aware of the frequent mentions of Ms. Gabbard in the Russian state news media.

An independent analysis of the Russian news media found that RT, the Kremlin-backed news agency, mentioned Ms. Gabbard frequently for a candidate polling in single digits, according to data collected by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a group that seeks to track and expose efforts by authoritarian regimes to undermine democratic elections.

Disinformation experts have also pointed to instances of suspicious activity surrounding Ms. Gabbard’s campaign — in particular, a Twitter hashtag, #KamalaHarrisDestroyed, that trended among Ms. Gabbard’s supporters after the first Democratic debate, and appeared to be amplified by a coordinated network of bot-like accounts — but there is no evidence of coordination between these networks and the campaign itself.

Laura Rosenberger, a former policy aide to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and director of the Alliance, sees Ms. Gabbard as a potentially useful vector for Russian efforts to sow division within the Democratic Party.

“The Russian activity could be part of a longer-term effort to drive a wedge among Democrats,” she said. “This messaging has echoes of 2016.”

That kind of speculation inflames Ms. Gabbard’s supporters online, who are known for swarming Ms. Gabbard’s critics on Twitter, for attacking the news media and the Democratic establishment for perceived bias against her and for compiling YouTube clips of her “destroying” and “shutting down” her Democratic rivals.

Ms. Gabbard’s fans are especially sensitive to claims that she is supported by Russian bots and amplified by the Russian state-funded news media outlets — a conspiracy theory, they say, that is designed to delegitimize her campaign and her foreign policy views.

“This whole thing the Democratic Party has done by putting forward this false idea that there was collusion between Russia and Trump has hurt our relations in a huge way with the Russians,” Mr. Graham said. “I can’t speak for Tulsi, but I think she feels kind of the same way on some of these things.”

While Democrats in Washington fret about Ms. Gabbard, her primary rivals have largely stayed silent, seeing little advantage in attacking a low-polling candidate.

She is likely to get harsher treatment back in Hawaii, where a cottage industry of researchers, former opponents and Democratic strategists has sprung up to track her connections and background and ties to the teachings of the guru Chris Butler, who founded The Science of Identity Foundation, and whose work she said still guides her. Ms. Gabbard has said the focus on her relationship with Mr. Butler and her faith was fueled by anti-Hindu bigotry.

She already faces a serious primary challenge for her House seat from State Senator Kai Kahele, a Democrat. Though his campaign is focused on economic issues, he sees Ms. Gabbard’s support from extremists as a potential liability.

“Clearly there’s something about her and her policies that attracts and appeals to these type of people who are white nationalists, anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers,” Mr. Kahele said. “To her credit she has denounced David Duke, rejected these endorsements. But it does beg the question why.”

Ms. Gabbard, once a Democratic darling as a telegenic newcomer and the first Hindu member of Congress, began falling out of party favor during the Obama administration, when she picked a series of fights over foreign policy, joining Republicans in demanding that President Barack Obama use the term “radical Islam.”

In 2016, she resigned her position as vice chair of the D.N.C. to endorse Mr. Sanders over Mrs. Clinton.

While Ms. Gabbard has opposed recent military interventions in the Middle East, she has developed relationships with leaders known for their authoritarian tendencies. She touts her support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, who has empowered Hindu fundamentalists at great cost to India’s minorities. Ms. Gabbard also met with Egypt’s strongman leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, during a 2015 trip to Paris with Dana Rohrabacher, a former Republican congressman known for his ties to Russians.

Most controversially, she has repeatedly defended the brutal Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, whom she met in January 2017.

Those positions confound even some of her former Republican supporters.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a pro-Israel activist who founded the World Values Network, said he first met Ms. Gabbard through Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, who brought the congresswoman to dinner at a kosher restaurant in Washington.

His group, which is funded by the Republican megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, awarded Ms. Gabbard their “Champion of Freedom Award” at their annual gala in 2016. A picture from the event shows a grinning Ms. Gabbard posing with Rabbi Boteach and Ms. Adelson.

In the three years since, Ms. Gabbard has criticized Israel for its reaction to protests, met with Mr. Assad and made several statements defending his regime.

“To have a moral woman like Tulsi who is a military hero suddenly sit with a man who did that was inexplicable,” Rabbi Boteach said. “I don’t understand it until today. I can’t figure her out.”

Bolsonaro defeated by Lula in runoff

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftist Workers’ Party leader, narrowly edged out far-right populist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro to win a fiercely fought runoff election for the Brazilian presidency on Sunday.

Da Silva, the 77-year-old known as Lula, swung 50.8 percent of the vote with Bolsonaro breathing down his neck at 49.2 percent, according to the country’s electoral authority, which announced 98.8 percent of votes had been counted.

Bolsonaro led the race for much of the day, but as Lula overtook him with around 70 percent of the vote tallied, car horns began to sound on the streets of downtown São Paulo, according to the Associated Press.

“Our dream is coming true. We need to be free,” an elated 62-year-old man celebrating on São Paulo’s Paulista Avenue told a reporter for The Guardian. “Brazil was in a very dangerous place and now we are getting back our freedom. The last four years have been horrible.”

The Queer Brazilian Filmmaker Taking on Jair Bolsonaro

Lula has stoked his legend as a working-class hero, having risen from shining shoes as a boy to become a union leader, and eventually Brazil’s president in 2003. He served two terms, leaving office in 2010. A corruption scandal yanked him abruptly out of political life, landing him in prison on a nine-and-a-half-year sentence in 2018. He spent 580 days in jail, much of it in isolation, before being freed the next November.

His conviction was nullified last year by Brazil’s Supreme Court, though he was never declared innocent of his money laundering and corruption charges.

Lula’s incarceration kept him from running in the 2018 presidential election, clearing the way for Bolsonaro’s ascendance. The populist firebrand, now 67, touted conservative Christian values during his term. A professed fanboy of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro was widely criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with some calling his response one of the worst in the world.

Last October, a Brazilian congressional panel recommended Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity” for his alleged deliberate stoking of the pandemic, intentionally inflaming infection numbers in a desperate bid to achieve herd immunity and revive a flailing economy.

In this year’s knock-down, drag-out campaign, Lula cast himself as the savior of Brazil’s democracy, promising to return its population of 214 million to a more prosperous time.

Inside the Bromance Between the ‘Trump of the Tropics’ and the Original

“I’m expecting our victory, for the good of Brazil,” Bolsonaro told reporters on Sunday morning as he cast his vote at a Rio de Janeiro military complex.

His defeat makes him the first Brazilian president since the end of the nation’s military dictatorship in 1985 to be voted out of office. Every president who tried for a second term before him—Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula himself, and Dilma Rousseff—won a second term.

“Today we are choosing the kind of Brazil we want, how we want our society to organize. People will decide what kind of life they want,” Lula told reporters from Sao Bernardo do Campo on Sunday morning. “That’s why this is the most important day of my life. I am convinced that Brazilians will vote for a plan under which democracy wins.”

Lula will be sworn in in January.

Shinzo Abe assissinated

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe died after being shot on the street in the city of Nara on Friday — a shocking act of violence in a country with one of the world's lowest rates of gun crime. A 41-year-old man was arrested by police, who said he admitted to shooting Abe.

The widow of the assassinated former leader was seen in the car leaving the Nara Medical University Hospital in Nara prefecture on Saturday morning. Akie Abe is traveling with her husband’s body back to Tokyo, where the family resides, according to public broadcaster, NHK.

Here's what you need to know:

The shooting: Abe was shot at about 11:30 a.m. local time Friday in Nara, east of Osaka, as he gave an election campaign speech on the street. Video aired by public broadcaster NHK captured the moments before the shooting, showing Abe speaking to a small crowd in front of Yamatosaidaiji railway station. In subsequent videos, two shots can be heard and smoke can be seen in the air.

Rushed to the hospital: Abe was rushed to hospital via helicopter at 12:20 p.m. local time. He went into cardiopulmonary arrest — a term used to describe the sudden loss of heart function and breathing — at the site of the shooting and arrived at hospital in a state of cardiac arrest, according to doctors at Nara Medical University. During surgery, doctors discovered a gunshot wound to his neck and a large wound on his heart.

Confirmed dead: Abe died from excessive bleeding and was pronounced dead at 5:03 p.m. local time, doctors at the Nara Medical University hospital said. The doctors said the bullet that killed the former Japanese leader was "deep enough to reach his heart" and a team of 20 medical professionals were unable to stop the bleeding.

The suspect: Police arrested unemployed man Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, who admitted to shooting Abe. According to police, Yamagami said he holds hatred toward a certain group, which he thought Abe was linked to. He used a homemade gun in the shooting, and authorities confiscated several handmade pistol-like items from his apartment, police said. Yamagami is being investigated as a suspect in a murder case, to which 90 investigators have been assigned, the police added.

World leaders horrified: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida paid his "deepest condolences" to former leader Abe, saying he "was a personal friend, with whom (he) spent a lot of time." Kishida said he had a "great respect for the legacy (Abe) left behind" and would continue election campaigning on Saturday, adding a free and fair election must be defended at all costs. News of the shooting and Abe's subsequent death horrified leaders around the world, many of whom had worked with Abe during his long tenure. US President Joe Biden said he was "stunned, outraged, and deeply saddened," adding he had worked closely with Abe and his killing was "a tragedy for Japan and all who knew him."

Shootings are extremely rare in Japan because of strict gun ownership laws: In 2018, Japan, a country of 125 million people, only reported nine deaths from firearms — compared with 39,740 that year in the United States. Under Japan's firearms laws, the only guns permitted for sale are shotguns and air rifles — handguns are outlawed. But getting them is a long and complicated process that requires strenuous effort — and lots of patience. The laws and the thorough process of background checks have kept the number of private gun owners in Japan extremely low.

Boris Johnson steps down

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stepped down Thursday (July 7) amid multiple scandals and public pressure to do so, as well as other members of his cabinet having already resigned earlier this week.

“In the past few weeks, I have been trying to convince my colleagues it would be eccentric to change governments when we have achieved so much,” Johnson said during a speech outside No. 10 Downing St. via NBC News. “I regret not to be successful in those arguments and, of course, it’s painful not to be able to see through those projects myself.”

Johnson said he will remain prime minister until his successor is selected, which is expected to be a decision that is opposed by other members of Parliament.

Johnson is now the third consecutive British prime minister to resign prior to the completion of their term, following his predecessors Theresa May (2016-19) and David Cameron (2010-16).

The pattern of politics

For congressional Republicans, the election can’t come soon enough. In the modern era, it’s hard to think of a time when the party out of power had more things going its way. Harry Enten, CNN’s political data analyst, recently noted that going by the generic ballot, things haven’t looked this good for Republicans to pick up House seats in the midterms since 1938. Since 1980, the party of the president in power has lost an average of 22 seats in the midterms. Republicans only need nine to win the majority.

Of course, Republicans think this means they’re doing something right. But if recent history is any guide, you can be sure that once elected, Republicans will blow it.

For decades now, our national politics have been caught in a bizarre pattern. The party in power governs as if it were about to lose power, so it shoots the moon on big ambitious, base-pleasing gambits that annoy the center and make its own electoral defeat all the more likely. The other party then wins and comes in believing it has a broad mandate for similarly sweeping changes from the other ideological direction. This, in turn, leads it to being thrown out of power. The cycle repeats itself in a pas de deux of self-fulfilling prophecy.

One key to this dynamic is the delusion that the party-in-power’s unpopularity is synonymous with the opposing party’s popularity. But that’s an illusion, created in part by the two-party system. If you have a menu that only offers snails or tofu entrees, it doesn’t mean that diners love tofu every time they get tired of snails.

There’s a reason more Americans identify as independents (42%) than as Republicans (28%) or Democrats (28%), and why 60% of voters now want a new major party to provide an alternative.

Again, in a binary system, one side’s unpopularity creates a mirage of popularity for the other party when in reality voters are merely expressing a preference for the lesser of two evils. In 2020, a majority of Americans voted against Donald Trump, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they loved Joe Biden.

The Democrats are unpopular right now for reasons that have little to do with GOP popularity. Inflation in general and high energy prices, in particular, are a toxic drag on whichever party is in power. The Democrats’ misreading of Biden’s “mandate” — swinging for a new New Deal, for instance — wasn’t some GOP masterstroke. It was an unforced error of their own making, perfectly consistent with this trend in American politics.

As a result, Biden’s low approval ratings make it easy for Republicans to criticize and to run as symbols of discontent. This has given Republicans the misplaced confidence to indulge their worst base-pandering instincts on the assumption that their antics are why things look so good for them right now. They’re like Ferris Bueller running to the front of the parade, thinking everyone is turning out for them, not the parade. Of course, Bueller’s performance was harmless fun.

Meanwhile, the Texas GOP just voted to declare the 2020 election “illegitimate,” to rebuke Sen. John Cornyn for negotiating a sensible and popular gun policy reform, and other political asininities. In the wake of two horrific mass shootings and amidst justifiably heightened fears of political violence, Eric Greitens, Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, released a video in which he carries a gun and literally advocates for “hunting” GOP moderates. And, of course, the GOP’s collective reaction to the Jan. 6 House committee doesn’t exactly suggest they’re listening to anyone outside their echo chamber.

My favorite recent data point for the coming congressional clown show is an interview last week with Trump. Radio host Wayne Allyn Root suggested that Trump had endorsed Rep. Kevin McCarthy for House speaker if/when the Republicans take back the House. “No, I haven’t,” Trump replied. “No, I endorsed him in his race. But I haven’t endorsed anybody for speaker.” And then, at Root’s prompting, Trump left open the idea he should be speaker (the Constitution, some argue, allows a non-House member to hold the job).

Ignoring the preposterous proposition that Trump is the master of parliamentary procedure America needs, the larger point is that for all the Democrats’ well-deserved problems there’s no reason to believe that the country is poised for a new era of Republican control. That would require a GOP interested in governing for the long haul. And our parties don’t do that anymore.

-- Jonah Goldberg, Star Advertiser, 6/25/22 (among others)

Roe v. Wade

6/25/22 - Manchin and Collins played by Gorsuch and Kavanaugh

6/24/22 - Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

6/3/22 - Susan Collins was conned to dooming Roe v. Wade says Rolling Stone

The Great Chinatown Fire

On New Year's Eve one hundred years ago, the first of a number of controlled fires were set in Chinatown as a way of defending Honolulu from bubonic plague, known in history as Black Death. Next to the Pearl Harbor attack, the outbreak of plague was the greatest public-safety disaster in Hawaiian history. The government was determined to do anything to save the city -- even burn it to the ground. Today we begin the first of a four-part series describing the events leading up to what became known as the Great Chinatown Fire.

- Star Advertiser, 1/24/00, 1/25/00, 1/31/00, 2/1/00

The one country that could stop Russia

With every passing day, the war in Ukraine becomes a bigger tragedy for the Ukrainian people but also a bigger threat to the future of Europe and the world at large. There is only one country that might have the power to stop it now, and it’s not the United States. It’s China.

If China announced that, rather than staying neutral, it was joining the economic boycott of Russia — or even just strongly condemning its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and demanding that it withdraw — it might shake Vladimir Putin enough to stop this vicious war. At a minimum, it would give him pause, because he has no other significant ally aside from India in the world now.

Why would President Xi Jinping of China take such a stand, which would seemingly undermine his dream of seizing Taiwan the same way Putin is attempting to seize Ukraine? The short answer is that the past eight decades of relative peace among the great powers led to a rapidly globalizing world that has been the key to China’s rapid economic rise and the elevation out of poverty for some 800 million Chinese people since 1980. Peace has been very good for China. Its continued growth depends on China’s ability to export to and learn from that world of steadily integrating and modernizing free markets.

The whole Faustian bargain between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese citizenry — the C.C.P. gets to rule while the people get to be steadily better off economically — depends to a significant degree on the stability of the global economy and trading system.

To Chinese strategists caught up in old-think — that any war that weakens modern China’s two primary rivals, America and Russia, has to be a good thing — I would say the following: Every war brings with it innovations (new ways to fight, win and survive), and the war in Ukraine is no exception.

We have already seen three “weapons” deployed in ways we’ve never seen before or not seen in a long time, and China would be wise to study them all. Because if China doesn’t help stop Russia now, these weapons will either ultimately hammer Putin into submission — which means they might be used against China one day, should it seize Taiwan — or damage Russia so badly that the economic effects will radiate everywhere. These weapons might even prompt Putin to do the unthinkable with his nuclear arms, which could destabilize and even destroy the global foundations on which China’s future rests.

The most important innovation in this war is the use of the economic equivalent of a nuclear bomb, simultaneously deployed by a superpower and by superempowered people. The United States, along with the European Union and Britain, has imposed sanctions on Russia that are crippling its economy, critically threatening companies and shattering the savings of millions of Russians at an unprecedented speed and scope that bring to mind a nuclear blast.

Putin has now figured that out — and said so explicitly on Saturday: The U.S.- and E.U.-led sanctions are “akin to a declaration of war.” (Vladimir, you haven’t felt the half of it yet.)

Second, because the world is now so wired, superempowered individuals, companies and social activist groups can pile on their own sanctions and boycotts, without any government orders, amplifying the isolation and economic strangulation of Russia beyond what nation-states are likely to do. These new actors — a kind of global ad hoc pro-Ukraine-resistance-solidarity-movement — are collectively canceling Putin and Russia. Rarely, if ever, has a country this big and powerful been politically canceled and economically crippled so fast.

The third weapon is both new and old, and it’s a spiritual and emotional one: The West has rediscovered its voice. Faced with the raw, primitive onslaught by Russia against a flawed but aspiring democracy like Ukraine, the free world has been aroused. America and liberal societies in general can often look and act dumb and divided — until they aren’t. Ask Adolf Hitler.

These three weapons should be enough to get China’s attention. So let’s look closer at how they work in practice.

The Biden administration, in an effort to deter Putin, assembled a powerful package of deep and broad economic sanctions and warned the Russian leader that if he invaded Ukraine, he’d be betting his whole farm — the economic viability of his country and regime. Tragically, Putin bet the farm, and the results have been swift and merciless.

The Russian ruble-based stock market has been closed ever since Russia’s major financial institutions were either placed under sanctions or thrown off the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system, Barron’s reported, but “the dollar-denominated secondary listings of Russian companies in London are still trading. The destruction of market value is astonishing.” It added that shares in Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, “have collapsed more than 99 percent since mid-February, when its stock traded at around $14.” Last Wednesday in London trading, Barron’s noted, “the shares bottomed out at 1 cent.”

On Thursday the rating agencies Fitch and Moody’s “downgraded Russia by six notches to ‘junk’ status, saying Western sanctions threw into doubt its ability to service debt and would weaken the economy,” Reuters reported.

Ever since Putin faced sanctions in 2014 for annexing Crimea and fomenting rebellion in eastern Ukraine, he has been amassing reserves of foreign currency and gold — some $630 billion worth — to try to insulate Russia from more global sanctions by giving his central bank all the ammo it needed to protect the value of the ruble. Or so he thought.

“It turns out that Russia’s foreign reserves strategy had a major flaw: About half of the money was held overseas in foreign banks — and now Russia can’t get to it” because of the sanctions, noted Fortune. So the ruble savings of many Russians are being ravaged.

Bloomberg quoted Marina Gretskaya, a 32-year-old Russian living in London who moved last year to work in communications. She kept a ruble savings account in an online Russian bank, Tinkoff. Two weeks ago, her assets there were worth $7,400. On Monday, the ruble plummeted more than 30 percent against the dollar. That evaporated more than $2,000 from her savings. “It’s a month’s salary,” she said. The same is almost certainly true for tens of millions of Russians — and it’s just starting.

Oh, and by the way, in this wired world, guess who owns a significant portion of Russia’s commercial airline fleet.

Not Russia.

Roughly two-thirds of Russia’s commercial airliners were made by Boeing (334 jets) or Airbus (304), Reuters reported. A significant portion of those are owned by Irish leasing companies. The Dublin-based AerCap, the world’s biggest airplane-leasing company, owns “152 aircraft across Russia and Ukraine valued at almost $2.4 billion,” The Irish Times reported. In addition, the Dublin-based companies SMBC Aviation Capital and Avolon own 48 aircraft between them that are leased to Russian airlines.

E.U. sanctions require those companies to repossess all those planes on lease to Russian airlines by the end of March. And Boeing and Airbus announced that they will no longer service or provide spare parts for any of these planes. On Saturday, Russia’s state airline, Aeroflot, said that it would suspend all international flights because of “additional circumstances that prevent the performance of flights.” Domestic flights are sure to follow.

Russia spans 11 time zones. If this persists, the grip of the Russian central government over the Russian landmass could begin to loosen. In the Russian Far East there are a lot of cities closer to Beijing than Moscow. Just saying …

Now add the sanctions, boycotts and pressure points coming from the superempowered nonstate actors. My favorite is Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old University of Central Florida student who created a Twitter account — @RUOligarchJets, or Russian Oligarch Jets — that tracks the private jets of Russian billionaires close to Putin. “While the 19-year-old is hardly the only person to offer such services,” noted Bloomberg, what makes his account different is its “easy accessibility and the enticing window” it offers on the lives of Putin’s cronies.

The account garnered 53,000 followers in just a few days, and it now has almost 400,000; a single individual, Sweeney is making it more difficult for Putin’s pals to hide their often ill-gotten wealth.

This is the globalization of moral outrage: It goes from watching a short video online showing Russian soldiers firing on a Ukrainian nuclear energy facility to an employee posting that video on his or her Facebook page to a group of employees emailing their bosses or going on Slack — not to ask their C.E.O.s to do something but to tell them they have to do something or they will lose workers and customers.

It is happening in companies all over the world. Shortly after Putin invaded Ukraine, BP, on its own, said it was quitting its operations in Russia after working with an oil firm there for roughly 30 years. For Russia to lose the petroleum engineering talent of BP is a huge blow.

Russia and Russians are now being canceled from every direction — from ballerinas to soccer teams to companies to orchestras — and it is being driven increasingly by superempowered individuals and small groups. And when the cancel juggernaut gets going globally, it acts without mercy. As The Times reported last week, “A day after organizers of the Paralympic Winter Games announced that they would allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to take part in the competition, the board made a stunning reversal and barred athletes from both countries on the eve of the opening ceremony.”

There are two big dangers, though, with these innovations. If the economic nuclear bomb that the United States and its allies just detonated in Russia crushes its economy as quickly and deeply as I suspect it will, there is a danger, however remote, that Putin will go to greater, even unthinkable extremes, like launching a real nuclear weapon.

The second danger — and China, in particular, should keep this in mind — is that while nation-states may choose to lift their sanctions at some point for hard-core realpolitik reasons, the nonstate actors may not. These are highly decentralized organizations.

When Anonymous, the global hacker consortium, announced that it was attempting to take down Russian websites, that was not by government order; it just acted on its own. Who does Russia call to get Anonymous to accept a cease-fire?

Putin was a total ignoramus about the world he was living in, and so he bet the farm in the 21st-century casino of globalization, where, in the end, the house always wins — or there is no house left.

There are signs that China recognizes some of these new realities — that no country is too big to be canceled in the wired world. But its initial instinct seems to be to try to insulate itself from that reality, rather than step up to help reverse Putin’s aggression. To which I say: Good luck with that. China cannot be connected and disconnected at the same time.

So I hope not only that China’s leaders don’t bet their farm on a quick grab of Taiwan. I hope Beijing joins instead with the West and so much of the rest of the world in opposing Putin. China would emerge as a true global leader if it did that. If it chooses instead to ride with the outlaws, the world will be less stable and less prosperous for as far as the eye can see — especially China.

What will it be, Xi?

-- Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 3/6/22

Ukraine-Russia scenarios (Thomas Friedman)

The battle for Ukraine unfolding before our eyes has the potential to be the most transformational event in Europe since World War II and the most dangerous confrontation for the world since the Cuban missile crisis. I see three possible scenarios for how this story ends. I call them “the full-blown disaster,” “the dirty compromise” and “salvation.”

The disaster scenario is now underway: Unless Vladimir Putin has a change of heart or can be deterred by the West, he appears willing to kill as many people as necessary and destroy as much of Ukraine’s infrastructure as necessary to erase Ukraine as a free independent state and culture and wipe out its leadership. This scenario could lead to war crimes the scale of which has not been seen in Europe since the Nazis.

The wired, globalized world has never had to deal with a leader accused of this level of war crimes whose country has a landmass spanning 11 time zones, is one of the world’s largest oil and gas providers and possesses the biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads of any nation.

Every day that Putin refuses to stop we get closer to the gates of hell. With each TikTok video and cellphone shot showing Putin’s brutality, it will be harder and harder for the world to look away. But to intervene risks igniting the first war in the heart of Europe involving nuclear weapons. And to let Putin reduce Kyiv to rubble, with thousands of dead — the way he conquered Aleppo and Grozny — would allow him to create a European Afghanistan, spilling out refugees and chaos.

Putin doesn’t have the ability to install a puppet leader in Ukraine and just leave him there: A puppet would face a permanent insurrection. So, Russia needs to permanently station tens of thousands of troops in Ukraine to control it — and Ukrainians will be shooting at them every day.

I wish Putin was just motivated by a desire to keep Ukraine out of NATO; his appetite has grown far beyond that. Putin is in the grip of magical thinking: As Fiona Hill, one of America’s premier Russia experts, said in an interview published Monday by Politico, he believes that there is something called “Russky Mir,” or a “Russian World”; that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people”; and that it is his mission to engineer “regathering all the Russian-speakers in different places that belonged at some point to the Russian tsardom.”

To realize that vision, Putin believes that it is his right and duty to challenge what Hill calls “a rules-based system in which the things that countries want are not taken by force.” And if the U.S. and its allies attempt to get in Putin’s way — or try to humiliate him the way they did Russia at the end of the Cold War — he is signaling that he is ready to out-crazy us. Or, as Putin warned the other day before putting his nuclear force on high alert, anyone who gets in his way should be ready to face “consequences they have never seen” before. Add to this the mounting reports questioning Putin’s state of mind and you have a terrifying cocktail.

The second scenario is that somehow the Ukrainian military and people are able to hold out long enough against the Russian blitzkrieg, and that the economic sanctions start deeply wounding Putin’s economy, so that both sides feel compelled to accept a dirty compromise. Its rough contours would be that in return for a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops, Ukraine’s eastern enclaves now under de facto Russian control would be formally ceded to Russia, while Ukraine would explicitly vow never to join NATO. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its allies would agree to lift all recently imposed economic sanctions on Russia.

This scenario remains unlikely because it would require Putin to basically admit that he was unable to achieve his vision of reabsorbing Ukraine into the Russian motherland, after paying a huge price in terms of his economy and the deaths of Russian soldiers. Moreover, Ukraine would have to formally cede part of its territory and accept that it was going to be a permanent no man’s land between Russia and the rest of Europe. It would also require everyone to ignore the lesson already learned: Putin can’t be trusted to leave Ukraine alone.

Finally, the least likely scenario but the one that could have the best outcome is that the Russian people demonstrate as much bravery and commitment to their own freedom as the Ukrainian people have shown to theirs, and deliver salvation by ousting Putin from office. Many Russians must be starting to worry that as long as Putin is their present and future leader, they have no future. Thousands are taking to the streets to protest Putin’s insane war. They’re doing this at the risk of their own safety. And though too soon to tell, their pushback does make you wonder if the so-called fear barrier is being broken, and if a mass movement could eventually end Putin’s reign.

Even for Russians staying quiet, life is suddenly being disrupted in ways small and large. And then there is the new “Putin tax” that every Russian will have to pay indefinitely for the pleasure of having him as their president. I am talking about the effects of the mounting sanctions being imposed on Russia by the civilized world.

On Monday, the Russian central bank had to keep the Russian stock market closed to prevent a panicked meltdown and was forced to raise its benchmark interest rate in one day to 20% from 9.5% to encourage people to hold rubles. Even then the ruble nose-dived by about 30% against the dollar — it’s now worth less than 1 U.S. cent.

For all of these reasons I have to hope that at this very moment there are some very senior Russian intelligence and military officials, close to Putin, who are meeting in some closet in the Kremlin and saying out loud what they all must be thinking: Either Putin has lost a step as a strategist during his isolation in the pandemic or he is in deep denial over how badly he has miscalculated the strength of Ukrainians, America, its allies and global civil society at large. 

If Putin goes ahead and levels Ukraine’s biggest cities and its capital, Kyiv, he and all of his cronies will never again see the London and New York apartments they bought with all their stolen riches. Instead, they will all be locked in a big prison called Russia — with the freedom to travel only to Syria, Crimea, Belarus, North Korea and China, maybe.

Either they collaborate to oust Putin or they will all share his isolation cell. The same for the larger Russian public. I realize that this last scenario is the most unlikely of them all, but it is the one that holds the most promise of achieving the dream that we dreamed when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 — a Europe whole and free, from the British Isles to Vladivostok.

— Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, March 1, 2022

a history of corruption in Hawaii

Unethical and criminal behavior from people in positions of trust in most cases begins simply enough.

An elected official accepts a free lunch. A bookkeeper short on cash takes $100 with the intent of paying it back. Employees at the city’s Department of Permitting and Planning welcome malasadas from people trying to get their projects approved.

The justifications for violating the faith placed in them by constituents, local families, churches, community groups and businesses can vary.

They typically boil down to: Entitlement. Hubris. Feeling unappreciated and underpaid. Or, even more cynically: Everyone else does it.

Their betrayal and the price tag of their crimes escalates until they’re caught, criminal charges are filed, reputations are ruined and offenders end up in state jails or federal prisons.

Hawaii political polls 2022

2/6/22 - Josh Green has high approval ratings

2/6/22 - Only 16% have unfavorable opinion of Blangiardi

Betty White

Dec 31 (Reuters) - Comedic actress Betty White, who capped a career of more than 80 years by becoming America's geriatric sweetheart after Emmy-winning roles on television sitcoms "The Golden Girls" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," died on Friday, less than three weeks shy of her 100th birthday.

The agent, Jeff Witjas, told People magazine: "Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever." No cause was cited.

In a youth-driven entertainment industry where an actress over 40 faces career twilight, White was an anomaly who was a star in her 60s and a pop culture phenomenon in her 80s and 90s.

Playing on her eminent likability, White was still starring in a TV sitcom, "Hot in Cleveland," at age 92 until it was canceled in late 2014.

White said her longevity was a result of good health, good fortune and loving her work.

"It's incredible that I'm still in this business and that you are still putting up with me," White said in an appearance at the 2018 Emmy Awards ceremony, where she was honored for her long career. "It's incredible that you can stay in a career this long and still have people put up with you. I wish they did that at home."

White was not afraid to mock herself and throw out a joke about her sex life or a snarky crack that one would not expect from a sweet-smiling, white-haired elderly woman. She was frequently asked if, after such a long career, there was anything she still wanted to do and the standard response was "Robert Redford."

"She was great at defying expectation. She managed to grow very old and somehow, not old enough. We’ll miss you, Betty," former costar and friend Ryan Reynolds wrote in a Twitter post.

"Old age hasn’t diminished her," the New York Times wrote in 2013. "It has given her a second wind."

Minutes after news emerged of her death, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters: "That's a shame. She was a lovely lady." His wife Jill Biden said: "Who didn't love Betty White? We're so sad about her death."

Betty Marion White was born on Jan. 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Illinois, and her family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression, where she attended Beverly Hills High School.

A DEBUT IN THE 1930s

White started her entertainment career in radio in the late 1930s and by 1939 had made her TV debut singing on an experimental channel in Los Angeles. After serving in the American Women's Voluntary Service, which helped the U.S. effort during World War Two, she was a regular on "Hollywood on Television," a daily five-hour live variety show, in 1949.

A few years later she became a pioneering woman in television by co-founding a production company and serving as a co-creator, producer and star of the 1950s sitcom "Life with Elizabeth."

Through the 1960s and early '70s White was seen regularly on television, hosting coverage of the annual Tournament of Rose Parade and appearing on game shows such as "Match Game" and "Password." She married "Password" host Allen Ludden, her third and final husband, in 1963.

White reached a new level of success on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," playing the host of a home-making television show, the snide, lusty Sue Ann Nivens, whose credo was "a woman who does a good job in the kitchen is sure to reap her rewards in other parts of the house." White won best-supporting actress Emmys for the role in 1975 and 1976.

She won another Emmy in 1986 for "The Golden Girls," a sitcom about four older women living together in Miami that featured an age demographic rarely highlighted on American television. White also was nominated for an Emmy six other times for her portrayal of the widowed Rose Nylund, a sweet, naive and ditzy Midwesterner, on the show, which ran from 1985 to 1992 and was one of the top-rated series of its time.

After a less successful sequel to "The Golden Girls" came a series of small movie parts, talk-show appearances and one-off television roles, including one that won her an Emmy for a guest appearance on "The John Larroquette Show."

By 2009 she was becoming ubiquitous with more frequent television appearances and a role in the Sandra Bullock film "The Proposal." She starred in a popular Snickers candy commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, taking a brutal hit in a mud puddle in a football game.

A young fan started a Facebook campaign to have White host "Saturday Night Live" and she ended up appearing in every sketch on the show and winning still another Emmy for it.

The Associated Press voted her entertainer of the year in 2010 and a 2011 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that White, then 89, was the most popular and trusted celebrity in America with an 86% favorability rating.

White's witty and brassy demeanor came in handy as host of "Betty White's Off Their Rockers," a hidden-camera show in which elderly actors pulled pranks on younger people.

"Who would ever dream that I would not only be this healthy, but still be invited to work?" White said in a 2015 interview with Oprah Winfrey.

White, who had no children, worked for animal causes. She once turned down a role in the movie "As Good as It Gets" because of a scene in which a dog was thrown in a garbage chute.

She looked forward to her milestone birthday, writing on Twitter just three days before her death, "My 100th birthday ... I cannot believe it is coming up."

Bob Jones

Bob Jones, a hard-charging newspaper and television journalist who was a familiar face in TV news for over two decades in Hawaii, died at his Diamond Head home Monday.

The cause of death was heart failure, according to his wife, Denby Fawcett. He was 85.

“He will be missed. He was definitely one of a kind,” said Jim Manke, former assignment editor and news director at KGMB, where Jones was a top reporter and news anchor.

In recent years Jones was probably best known for his highly opinionated weekly columns at MidWeek and later his internet blog, which he steadfastly worked on until the day he died.

“His body was giving out, but his mind was very strong,” Fawcett said Wednesday.

Jones, originally from Ohio, began his journalism career as a police reporter for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. Then, after serving a three-year European tour in the Air Force, he worked at newspapers in Europe before landing back in the states at the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal.

Jones moved to Hawaii in 1963 to work for The Honolulu Advertiser, first as a general assignment reporter and then as its military editor.

He would make his mark reporting on the Vietnam War. He accompanied the Kaneohe 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines when they went into Phu Bai, Vietnam, in 1964. A year later he was embedded with the 25th Infantry Division, which had units in Cu Chi and Pleiku.

On his return to Hawaii, Jones was hired by KGMB and was later nabbed as a correspondent in Vietnam and Laos by NBC News.

When he came back to Honolulu, Jones anchored the news at KGMB until 1994. Along the way, he helped create some significant news shows and documentaries and won several Emmy awards and a Peabody Award.

“He was the consummate journalist,” former KGMB colleague Chuck Parker said. “He was always looking for a story. It didn’t matter what it was or where it was. And he was a skilled writer. He could take mundane copy and make it sing.”

Former KGMB reporter Leslie Wilcox described Jones as Hawaii’s top journalist in the golden age of television.

“Those were the days before cable and internet, and Channel 9 had a huge audience,” she said. “It was a pleasure seeing him in action.”

There was a time in the 1970s when Jones might have been best known for his end-of-show antics with co-anchor Tim Tindall and sports anchor Joe Moore.

“They could get pretty outrageous,” Manke recalled. “One night they jumped a motorcycle over the news desk.”

Manke said Jones, as a reporter, had an incredible knack for seeing the meat of a subject and being able to quickly turn it around into a understandable short-form story perfect for television.

“He could turn a story on a dime,” added Parker. “He could come in at 10 (minutes) to 5 (p.m.) and turn the lead story. He knew what it was in his head. He never missed a time slot.”

Former KGMB reporter Bambi Weil said Jones helped her and other green reporters at KGMB improve their craft.

“The guy was wonderful, and always encouraging” said Weil, who went on to become a Circuit Court judge. “He was a truth-teller and a shining light. It is his legacy at a time when the network television news is often criticized for lack of integrity.”

Dan Boylan, a professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii West-Oahu, helped anchor election nights with Jones for more than a dec­ade on KGMB, developing a friendship along the way.

Boylan said Jones’ knowledge about the Vietnam War was important to Hawaii.

“Vietnam was with us constantly. So having a guy like Bob talking about the war … added significantly to his work as a journalist,” Boylan said.

“Hawaii was very much influenced by the people and the soldiers and sailors who were going to war, and Bob had that kind of credibility. Bob grew up with the military. The war in Vietnam was our generation’s war. He covered it. Bob had been there. He commented on things that happened that day, and that is a part of Hawaii we tend to overlook. Vietnam affected Hawaii greatly,” he said.

Jones helped KGMB land Boylan for election-night political analysis.

“On election nights we had a heck of a good time and I think we were better than the other channels. He was truly a pro. A good writer, he knew the territory. He was of the best of the lot as a news anchor. Bob was strong enough and capable enough he could handle news all by himself,” he said.

“We worked together very, very well. After the polls closed on election nights Bob and I would always have a beer or two or three or four, and he was a fun guy. We would be at the Columbia Inn and people would always come up to Bob. He was good to people.”

In addition to his wife, Jones is survived by daughter Brett Jones, son-in-law Michael Goldman, grandson Miles Alexander Goldman- Jones, and brothers Ken and Tom Jones.

climate change

11/11/21 - CHINA and the US vowed to work together to slow global warming, issuing a surprise joint statement Wednesday that injects new momentum into the last days of global climate negotiations. The deal also marks a rare moment of cooperation between superpowers locked in geopolitical rivalry and who seemed at odds for most of the two-week talks in Glasgow, Scotland.

The two sides agreed to boost their efforts to cut emissions, including by tackling methane and illegal deforestation, China’s special climate envoy Xie Zhenhua told reporters. They will establish a working group to increase ac-tion in the 2020s — a key decade — which will meet in the first half of next year. His US counterpart John Kerry said that the group will focus on “concrete” measures.

11/9/21 - Tuvalu Prime Minister gives speech standing in water

11/5/21 - More than 40 countries pledged to phase out coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, in a deal announced Thursday at the United Nations climate summit that prompted Alok Sharma, the head of the conference, to proclaim “the end of coal is in sight.”

But several of the biggest coal consumers were notably absent from the accord, including China and India, which together burn roughly two-thirds of the world’s coal, as well as Australia, the world’s 11th-biggest user of coal and a major exporter.  The United States, which still generates about one-fifth of its electricity from coal, also did not sign the pledge.

The decision by the United States to abstain appeared to be driven by American politics.  President Biden’s domestic agenda is split between two pieces of major legislation that have been pending on Capitol Hill and that hinge on the support of Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia. Mr. Manchin’s state is rich in coal and gas, the senator has financial ties to the coal industry and he is sharply opposed to any policy that would harm fossil fuels.

4/18/21 - U.S. and China to cooperate on climate change

Musk offers $6 billion to solve world hunger

Last week, the director of the United Nation's World Food Programme said if the world's top billionaires just donated a fraction of their worth, millions of people who are at risk of starving to death can be saved. Elon Musk, the second wealthiest person in the world, said he'd give up some of his wealth – only if he knows exactly where the money is going.

David Beasley, director of the World Food Programme, said on CNN last week that a "one-time" donation from the top 400 billionaires, whose net worths are ever growing, in the U.S. could help save the lives of 42 million people this year. 

"The world's in trouble and you're telling me you can't give me .36% of your net worth increase to help the world in trouble, in times like this?" he said. "What if it was your daughter starving to death? What if it was your family starving to death? Wake up, smell the coffee, and help."

Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX who has an estimated net worth of $151 billion, according to Forbes, replied to a tweet questioning the group's figures. "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it," Musk wrote. "But it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent."

Beasley said the organization has systems in place for transparency and open source accounting. "Your team can review and work with us to be totally confident of such," he replied.

Beasley also responded to a question about the group's existing spending, including $8.4 billion in 2020. "The $8.4B you refer to covers what we needed to reach 115 million people in 2020 with food assistance," he said. "We need $6B plus NOW on top of our existing funding requirements due to the perfect storm from the compounding impact of Covid, conflict and climate shocks." 

He also shared CBS News' article, which explains how the current hunger crisis is a "toxic cocktail" of conflict, climate change, disasters, structural poverty and inequality. COVID-19 has only made it worse and on its website, the program says it needs $6 billion to avert worldwide famine this year. 

"6B will not solve world hunger, but it WILL prevent geopolitical instability, mass migration and save 42 million people on the brink of starvation. An unprecedented crisis and a perfect storm due to Covid/conflict/climate crises," Beasley said in another tweet.

surge at the border

[9/19/21] U.S. expelling migrants from Haiti

[3/23/21] WASHINGTON (AP) — Somehow, they didn’t see it coming.

Within weeks of Inauguration Day on Jan. 20, the Biden administration had reversed many of the most maligned Trump-era immigration policies, including deporting children seeking asylum who arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border and forcing migrants to wait in Mexico as they made their case to stay in the United States.

While the administration was working on immigration legislation to address long-term problems, it didn’t have an on-the-ground plan to manage a surge of migrants. Career immigration officials had warned there could be a surge after the presidential election and the news that the Trump policies, widely viewed as cruel, were being reversed.

Now officials are scrambling to build up capacity to care for some 14,000 migrants now in federal custody — and more likely on the way — and the administration finds itself on its heels in the face of criticism that it should have been better prepared to deal with a predictable predicament.

“They should have forecasted for space (for young migrants) more quickly,” said Ronald Vitiello, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and chief of Border Patrol who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations. “And I think in hindsight, maybe they should have waited until they had additional shelter space before they changed the policies.”

The situation at the southern border is complex.

Since Biden’s inauguration, the U.S. has seen a dramatic spike in the number of people encountered by border officials. There were 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children encountered in February — an increase of 168% and 63%, respectively, from the month before, according to the Pew Research Center. That creates an enormous logistical challenge because children, in particular, require higher standards of care and coordination across agencies.

Still, the encounters of both unaccompanied minors and families are lower than they were at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019. That May, authorities encountered more than 55,000 migrant children, including 11,500 unaccompanied minors, and about 84,500 migrants traveling in family units.

Career immigration officials, overwhelmed by the earlier surges, have long warned the flow of migrants to the border could ramp up again.

Biden administration officials have repeatedly laid blame for the current situation on the previous administration, arguing that Biden inherited a mess resulting from President Donald Trump’s undermining and weakening of the immigration system. The White House says it has taken several steps to address the situation.

Migrant children are sent from border holding cells to other government facilities until they are released to a sponsor. That process was slowed considerably by a Trump administration policy of “enhanced vetting,” in which details were sent to immigration officials and some sponsors wound up getting arrested, prompting some to fear picking up children over worries of being deported. Biden has reversed that policy, so immigration officials hope the process will speed up now.

The White House also points to Biden’s decision to deploy the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known for helping communities in the aftermath of a natural disaster, to support efforts to process the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the border. HHS announced Saturday that it was opening an additional facility in West Texas to help with influx of unaccompanied minors. The facility will initially accommodate about 500 children but can be expanded to house 2,000.

Biden and others have pushed back on the notion that what’s happening now is a “crisis.”

“We will have, I believe, by next month enough of those beds to take care of these children who have no place to go,” Biden said in a recent ABC News interview, when asked whether his administration should have anticipated the surge in young unaccompanied migrants as well as families and adults. He added, “Let’s get something straight though. The vast majority of people crossing the border are being sent back ... immediately sent back.”

Adam Isacson, an analyst at the human rights advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America, said Republicans’ insistence that there is a “crisis” at the border is overwrought, but that the surge in migrants was predictable.

He called it a perfect storm of factors: hurricanes that hit Central America last fall; the economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic; typical seasonal migration patterns; the thousands of Central American migrants already stuck at the border for months; and the persistent scourge of gang violence afflicting Northern Triangle countries — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Isacson said the Biden administration may have been “two or three weeks” slow in preparing for the increase in unaccompanied young migrants and the subsequent housing crunch after announcing in early February it would stop deporting unaccompanied youths.

But Isacson added that the bottleneck was also affected by the lack of cooperation by the Trump administration with the Biden transition.

The Biden administration announced on Feb. 2 it would no longer uphold the Trump administration policy of automatically deporting unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. Two weeks later, the White House announced plans to admit 25,000 asylum-seekers to the U.S. who had been forced to remain in Mexico.

In subsequent weeks, the number of young migrants crossing without adults skyrocketed. Both Customs and Border Protection, and Health and Human Services officials have struggled to house the influx of children. Immigration officials say the number of adult migrants and families trying to enter the U.S. illegally also has surged.

Border patrol officials had encountered more than 29,000 unaccompanied minors since Oct. 1, nearly the same number of youths taken into custody for all of the previous budget year, administration officials say.

“Getting capacity up to deal with the unaccompanied minors is critical, but the numbers just don’t bear out to pointing to a crisis,” Isacson said.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans -- including Trump and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California -- from pillorying Biden.

“It’s more than a crisis. This is a human heartbreak,” said McCarthy, who led a delegation of a dozen fellow House Republicans to El Paso, Texas, on Monday.

Biden is also facing criticism from Republicans that his administration has sent mixed messages.

Critics have focused on public comments from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who earlier this month said the administration’s message to migrants was “don’t come now” and a slip by Roberta Jacobson, the White House’s lead adviser on the border, who said in Spanish during a recent briefing the “border is not closed,” before correcting herself.

The president and other administration officials in recent days have stepped up efforts to urge migrants not to come. Embassies in Northern Triangle countries are airing public service announcements underscoring the dangers of making the trek north.

Eric Hershberg, director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University, said Biden’s team faces a powerful counter-narrative as it attempts to persuade desperate Central Americans to stay put: chatter on social media from migrants who successfully made it across the border and smugglers who insist that now is the ideal time.

Hershberg cites a Honduran friend’s reaction to U.S. warnings that migrants could face danger on the journey: “You know, you don’t need to go with such uncertainty. You can just stay here and know that you’ll be raped or killed.”

Afghanistan collapses

9/6/21 - Lindsey Graham predicts U.S. will be going back into Afghanistan

8/26/21 - Suicide bombers and gunmen attack crowds at Kabul's airport

8/25/21 - Two House members issue critical statement on evacuation effort

8/22/21 - Haley slams Biden

8/22/21 - Kinzinger and Cheney criticize Trump administration on Afghanistan

***

In a swift and stunning rout, Taliban fighters seized control of Afghanistan’s capital on Sunday, completing their sweep of the besieged nation as the Afghan government collapsed after two decades of efforts by the U.S. to reshape the region as part of its “war on terror.”

Embattled President Ashraf Ghani fled the country as the Taliban entered the capital city of Kabul, and American troops scrambled to evacuate thousands of U.S. diplomats and Afghans from the U.S. Embassy.

The Taliban is soon expected to declare the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in Kabul, an official told the Associated Press.

In Washington, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met via videoconference with their national security team to hear updates on the drawdown of civilian personnel in Afghanistan and the evacuation of allies who worked alongside the U.S. government during the 20-year war.

The fall of Kabul marked the final chapter of America's longest war, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks masterminded by al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden, then harbored by the Taliban government. A U.S.-led invasion forced the Taliban to retreat.

For some, the U.S. pullout was a reminder of America’s ignominious withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975, which ended with iconic images of U.S. helicopters evacuating Americans from the roof of the embassy in Saigon.

Though Kabul had been expected to fall, the speed of its collapse clearly caught the Biden administration off guard. 

Biden set an Aug. 31 deadline to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan and bring an end to the 20-year conflict. Just last week, an American military assessment estimated it would be a month before the capital would come under insurgent pressure.

Defying expectations, the Taliban seized nearly all of Afghanistan in a short time, despite the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by the U.S. and NATO over nearly two decades to build up Afghan security forces. Afghan security forces were defeated by the Taliban or fled much of the country, even though they had some air support from the U.S. military.