GETTING CATTY

GETTING CATTY: The password today is “historic”..

And the voters are damn near hysteric as apoplectic mobs besiege the polls. It should be ingratiating for those of us that have spent their lives trying to drag voters to the polls.

But our cynicism and curmudgeonly nature- gleaned of years of actually paying attention to the election cycles- is undulled even as the hopeful, youthful folly plays itself out.

“Bet you’re gonna vote this time, hippie” t-shirts notwithstanding, those expecting that their candidate will dismantle the war machine, repeal the Patriot Act, end the drug war, ban corporate personhood, re-regulate environmental and financial institutions, invest in non-fossil fuel technologies and institute social and economic justice for all are in for a rude awakening.

It still amazes us how voters- and this year that apparently includes all the non-voters who will be voting- listen their candidate and when he or she fails to articulate all these types of things, thinks that something along the lines of “oh, they’re just saying that to get elected – once they’re in office they’ll do all that great stuff.”

But the only ones that actually claim that Obama will be a progressive savior is his opponents. If all the claims that John McCain and his surrogates made- Obama's a radical leftist, he’s a socialist, he’ll cut war funding, he’ll stop new coal-power plants, he’ll tax and rich and give to the poor, he’ll spend and spend on new social programs- we might actually vote for him.

Nonetheless, the lines will snake for miles tomorrow as people flock to try to overwhelm the widely reported vote stealing.

The presidential landslide that will actually occur tomorrow- a 60-40 split or more is likely despite the seven or eight percent victory the pundits are predicting- will astonish the pollsters who are busy with their “likely voter” and “no cell phone” (meaning no one under 30) surveys... even as we remain “shocked shocked”.

People who generally don’t even know, much less care what’s going on every other year on the first Tuesday in November are phenomenally well acquainted with it this time and are swept up projecting their own hopes on the blank screen of Obama.

Their yearnings meander across their consciousnesses, propelling them to their voting precinct like their asses were on fire.

And they will also be showing up on left-leaning Kaua`i in even greater percentages than arguably any other county in the country.

Now this would, you would think, bode well for the more progressive candidate in tomorrow’s mayoral election here.

Here are the pertinent numbers from the primary elections

The turnout in the primary- where not one of these new voters showed up- was less than half. Only 17,941 out of 38,874 (46.2%) registered voters showed up on September 20.

Of those 7,144 (39.8%) voted for Bernard Carvalho and 5,374 (30.0%) voted for JoAnn Yukimura

So the question is how does Yukimura make up a 1770 vote difference?

The Honolulu pundits from Dan Boylan to Jerry Burris and Richard Borreca all have said it comes down to the Mel Rapozo vote who got 4,360 (24.3%) votes but that comes from not knowing their ass from their elbows unless it’s conventional wisdom, especially about Kaua`i.

Rapozo voters- those who voted for him based on more than the fact his name is Rapozo--or more rightly that THEIR name is Rapozo- are most likely split down the middle.

They undoubtedly disliked Mayor Bryan Baptiste, the target of Rapozo’s “investigations” and often ridicule, so they would not be voting for his legacy in the person of Carvalho.

But the ire Rapozo directed diagonally across the council table toward Yukimura at weekly meetings over the past four years was palpable. And if it was a bit subdued at times that was made up for by Rapozo’s chief political council ally Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho. Her seething often teeth-baring and spittle-spewing hatred of Yukimura was a revulsion expressed only slightly more subtlety by Rapozo.

We could call Rapozo’s votes a toss up if it weren’t for one or the two thing that will lose this election for Yukimura.- there are a lot more JoAnn haters than just the Rapozo-Iseri crowd.

Over the last six weeks we’ve been at times stunned at how much she is reviled not just by the revolving-door old-boy-network and their supporters but among the progressive crowd, much of it based what many call the two faces of JoAnn.

One face talks about how horrible council secrecy and hidden county attorney opinions are while the other performs the nuts and bolts actions that keeps them that way.

One face claims to want to keep Kaua`i residential neighborhoods in residential use by keeping out vacation rentals and the other “grandfathers” the existing ones into a bill to stop new ones, rather than seeking enforcement of the state law that banned them all along

One face promotes smart growth and rational development, the other face takes a thousands acres and single-handedly allows the developers to decrease the density so that, what would have been mid-market-priced housing is now re-zoned for multi million dollar luxury homes... and she even helped them raise the money to pay for the internal development infrastructure by shepherding through a bill that eventually created a county bond issue to pay for the facilities at Kukui`ula.

Yukimura will do well to just get 50% of the Rapozo voters but even if she got 55% that’s only 436 votes.

She’s still need 1344 more votes than Carvalho gets from the “new” voters.

And assuming even an extraordinary 75% turnout in the general election she would have to get them from an extra 9710 votes.

That means she would need nearly 57% of those voters who didn’t vote in the primaries. And that’s if you assume incorrectly that all of that huge difference in turnout between the primary and the general elections are new voters.

Many will be regular voters who skipped the primary because the only things on the ballot were eliminating one viable mayoral candidate and eight of the 21 council aspirants with both races to be finalized in November.

If only a third of them are regular voters- an average in keeping with past increases over the primaries- that 57% soars, approaching perhaps 60% or more of the “new” voters as the number of regular voters increases.. all assuming an even split of the “regulars”.

But it becomes really difficult to see how she gets those votes because of the other factor- the campaign she has run

Despite urging from many her supporters, her campaign has been devoid of an exposition detailing the actual record of blithering incompetence Bernard Carvalho has left behind in the last six year- a record we barely scraped the surface of last week.

Only in the final days has she brought up one of them, the Kaua`i Lagoons debacle, giving new meaning to the term too little too late.

Perhaps her greatest blunder was letting Carvalho define the race, even agreeing with him that the issue is one of “leadership”..

Quite obviously Yukimura’s internal poll showed this word to be the biggest issue in the election and, consummate politician she has become, she went with it.

But it was the only issue Bernard had... as a matter of fact it’s been virtually the only word he ever speaks on the stump..

Then she chose to cloak the leadership quality that she had and Bernard didn’t as “experience”. She could have been detailing all of the horrors of the Baptiste Administration and linking Carvalho to them thereby becoming the candidate of “change”.

But by stressing her experience she also stressed to voters her position as the “establishment” candidate, in essence taking on the burden of the ire of those who are dissatisfied with the current county governance and generally can’t and don’t distinguish between the council and administration

And she did this in what everyone has known for a long time was a year of “change” elections.

Yukimura knew she needed to get a virtual landslide of votes from those new wild–eye new voters flocking to the polls to vote against “experience” and for “hope”.

But she chose to not only fail to define the race as one she would win, she actually agreed to her opponent’s definition, being quoted repeatedly as saying “leadership is the biggest issue in this election”.

When Yukimura lost the ’94 mayoral election she apparently learned the wrong lesson. She assumed that fighting for what she believed in was what caused her to be a political liability to herself so she went out to recreate herself as the perfect politician

The sad truth is that she is not that kind of person at heart and no matter how hard she tries she cannot really sell out her own ideals as a consummate pol must do.

She wound up being transparent in her hypocrisy, one thing the public won’t stand for no matter which side of the political isle you sit on.

In trying to become all things to all people she has become nothing to anyone except a member of the old guard who, no matter what she says or does, cannot dig herself out of the hole she dug herself into.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of JoAnn’s political life and if she wants to she can reassemble the progressive activist roots from which she came.

We “hope” it’s never too late for another “change”.

PAVLOVIAN PUTZES

PAVLOVIAN PUTZES: Despite all the Obamamania on Kaua`i, PNN is sticking with our favorite presidential ticket- the Green Party’s Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente.

Voting one’s conscience is hard sometimes. It takes many years of practice just to get accustomed to it but most who stay at it eventually find it hard to do otherwise.

He’s gonna win. We knew- and bet good money- last year that if he survives he’ll be president on January 20. It’s not what he says, it’s how he says it.

He’s got “it”- that thing where, like Bill Clinton before him, it doesn’t matter what he says you have to admit “wow, he’s good”... an inside joke here at the headquarters of the vast international tentacles of PNN.

But in he end Obama is just another war-mongering, insurance-industry-run heath care loving, Wall Street wallowing, oil-drilling politician..

And here in Hawai`i he’s a cinch to get double if not triple the votes of his unworthy opponent.

But McKinney actually speaks to the core of all the issue all Democrats idealize and work toward.

Any progressive voter reading her positions on war, health care, civil rights, accountability and transparency in government, free trade, re-regulation, and even impeachment would jump to support a candidate who holds most of those precepts- especially when compared with Obama’s- and especially in a blind test of affinity.

And unlike Obama, McKinney actually fought for all these things in her six years in congress.

Most of the wide-eyed Obama supporters- and especially the ex-Kuncinich supporters- who reads her positions and compares them with Obama’s will most likely agree more with her.

That’s because they are the things that the majority of people want, all else being equal.

But instead, as always in the Americkan corporate sorry excuse for democracy, there’s no choice and people once again will settle for less... or more likely nothing at all.

Voting your conscience is an acquired skill. It takes personal political will to a break from all the media fed the indoctrination.

It takes courage to ignore the constantly recurring “big lies”. We’ve actually heard people tell us that the two-party system is in the Constitution, so that creating the concept of “spoiling elections” is their reaction to the duopolistically spoiled electoral system.

But if you’re going to vote for McKinney-Clemente- or for that matter Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzales or if you’re a wing nut, Bob Barr- just because in Hawai`i the electoral college lets you do so without consequences, why bother..

Conditional conscience and situational scruples in voting won’t cut it.. In order to start to break that addiction to picking the “least worst”, meaningless gestures that don’t take principles in the first place don’t count.

LEAVING NO BEHIND UNSNIFFED

Coming tomorrow: KPD Blue Chapter 4- Kaua`i Style

LEAVING NO BEHIND UNSNIFFED: It’s been a rough week for our governor with the local press ridiculing her speech introducing the book-banning, wacko Alaskan governor BS artist and would-be-in-a-parallel-universe Vice President Sarah Palin at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, MN.

Now in all honesty we might have said a few disparaging words about- and so are not exactly waiting by the phone for an appointment to an advisory board from- Linda “one of the Stepford Wives” Lingle, as our brother “Triumph the Insult Comic Dog” characterized her at the 2004 Republican Convention.

But her suck-up to the right-wing-nut fringe was apparently worthy of a slew of mocking and scornful print pieces even from former supporters.

Honolulu Advertiser columnist, Kauai’s own Lee Cataluna, noted her stilted delivery which was bizarrely deliberate even for the emotionless, humorless, supposedly centrist GOP leader in touting the bible-thumping cross between Tina Fey and the pregnant cop in “Fargo” saying:

Who was that person who introduced Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night? She looked like Linda Lingle, had that same Paulie Walnuts hairdo Lingle has these days. She was introduced as Linda Lingle, but she didn't sound like Linda Lingle at all.

She ... spoke ... soooooo ... slowly. It took her over 17 minutes to get through a speech that was roughly 1,200 words. That's 3 1/2 pages double-spaced. You can clip through that in five minutes if you pause a lot and have a coughing fit. Lingle is a deliberate speaker, but she's also a facile speaker and this performance was way off. Sure, stop and wait for the wild applause, but the applause wasn't THAT wild.

But the real meat of the “what-the-heck-were-you-thinking” commentary was courtesy of oft-times Lingle apologist Dave Shapiro who, in his regular Wednesday Honolulu Advertiser column, opined:

Whenever Gov. Linda Lingle tries to inflate her importance in national leadership, as she’s done this week at the Republican National Convention, it causes me to reflect on what little leadership she’s provided at home during her six years in Hawai’i’s top job...

At the GOP convention this week, Lingle has taken on a major role in selling Palin as qualified to assume the presidency after serving as mayor of a town of about 7,000 and two years as governor of one of our least populous states...

This presidential year, she'll again spend a lot of time on the Mainland campaigning for McCain, but it won't make much difference in Hawai'i legislative races; the local GOP she leads isn't even fielding candidates for 22 of the 51 House seats or six of the 12 Senate seats up this year....

Lingle's national party activity suggests that Washington is exactly where her personal political radar is pointing — presumably toward the U.S. Senate as Hawai'i's octogenarian Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka near retirement.

The only question seems to be whether she'll take the seemingly suicidal step of running against the iconic Inouye if he follows through with plans to seek another term in 2010 or wait until 2012 and duke it out with Ed Case and Mufi Hannemann for Akaka's seat.

Or she can hold out for vice president on the next Republican ticket.

It’s getting pretty obvious that Lingle hasn’t got a prayer of even getting elected Maui dog catcher after her six year royal reign of taking cronyism, misplaced loyalty, political parsing and partisan pugnaciousness to a level unimagined by the past Democratic despots like former Hawai`i governors Waihe`e and Cayetano.

Even her devoted minions have ditched her if a letter in today’s Star Bulletin is indicative of her supporter’s current sentiment.

John Cheever of Honolulu writes

Did Lingle reveal true colors in GOP speech?

I used to feel sorry for Gov. Linda Lingle having to contend with an overwhelming Democratic majority in the Legislature.

However, after hearing her speak at the Republican convention, I'm beginning to be very thankful — despite the frequent dysfunction of the Hawai'i Democrats — for that check on her power.

To hear her celebrating Sarah Palin's socially conservative values and strict adherence to freetrade ideology certainly contrasted with what she says in front of local crowds and seemed very out of step with most Hawai'i residents.

I realize she was speaking to a partisan crowd and had to highlight certain important talking points, but in agreeing to do the bidding of her party did she also reveal her true colors?

I, for one, will think twice about voting for her again when she most likely runs for national office in 2010 or 2012, and I hope other local people listened to what she had to say and will remember that in the future.

In a politically progressive state like Hawai`i where the Republicans meet in a roomy sardine can as it is, you’d think that if a lame duck like Lingle has any further political ambitions the last place she’d want to be seen is sucking up to the worst of the evangelical fascist crowd.

Perhaps Lingle has realized that no one in Hawai`i is going to vote for her for anything anymore and the only prayer she has for future employment rests in a McCain administration where she hopes to fit right in with an ain’t-gonna-happen third term for Bushista regime.

But the press is always timid when it comes to actually pointing out the emperor’s lack of suitable attire so it was left to a Democratic partisan- our own State Senator, Majority Leader Gary Hooser- to lay it on the line by describing how little Lingle apparently cares about the people of the state when it comes to a choice between her own future and ours.

People may criticize the piece with a “what would you expect from the Senate majority leader” but it’s hard to argue with what he says about the grand imperial wizard of Washington Place.

In a piece from his on again off again blog that was rejected by both Honolulu papers as well as the Kaua`i daily fish-wrap Hooser took advantage of Lingle’s fanatical foibles to lambaste her in a gutsy manner and in a tone you don’t hear much from elected leaders in a piece titled “Lingle/Aiona: Out of step and out of touch”.

He wrote:

While local and national conservatives alike praised Governor Lingle's recent speech before the Republican National Convention, for most in Hawaii it is just further evidence of how out of touch she really is.

It is no wonder that Republicans in Hawaii are fleeing their party in droves. Like GenXer's caught at a Polka fest, they can't get to the door fast enough. Unable to field competent candidates in the upcoming election they have left some 32 seats totally uncontested, and filled others with marginal conservatives totally out of touch with mainstream Hawaii.

Whether delivered by John McCain or Linda Lingle, the Republican message is simply the wrong tune - out of step, out of style and out of touch.

The de facto head of the Hawai‘i Republican party, Governor Linda Lingle, along with her chief wing man Lieutenant Governor Duke Aiona, are both in St. Paul this week, praising the failed administration of President Bush and Senator John 'Four More Years' McCain, and working hard to defeat Hawai‘i-born Senator Barack Obama.

Why on earth would they be doing this?

Party politics aside, there is no question whatsoever that the vast majority of Hawaii residents support Barack Obama to be the next President of the United States. Opposing Senator Obama is akin to cheering for Georgia at the Sugar Bowl and hoping for the defeat of the University of Hawaii Warriors.

Without a doubt, the candidate who will offer Hawai‘i the greatest direct benefits would be Barack Obama. Clearly he would continue to visit his place of birth—our island home—to spend time with family and friends. The attention would serve Hawai‘i well, and our Congressional delegation would surely benefit from having a Democratic President with strong Hawai‘i ties.

Governor Lingle once called President Bush 'the best President ever,' so it is not surprising that she believes John McCain 'is a perfect person to elect president of the United States at this time,' as was reported in the Honolulu media.

Senator McCain has been quoted often in support of the Bush administration’s decisions over the past eight years, and he voted with the President over ninety percent of the time. Except perhaps for Rush Limbaugh, Carl Rove and now apparently Governor Lingle and Lieutenant Governor Aiona, few people will deny that the past eight years of the Bush administration have been an unmitigated disaster.

'Bush lied and people died' is more than a catchy slogan on a t-shirt - it is the truth. Lingle, Aiona, and the John McCain's of our country may look the other way in denial but the world community, backed by the overwhelming weight of the evidence knows it is the sad and brutal truth.

The election of Senator John McCain will only perpetuate the policies—and errors—of the past. Our country, our world and our community cannot afford four more years of this downward spiral.

McCain and the Republicans do not support Native Hawaiian recognition, and yet our Native Hawaiian Lieutenant Governor and our supposedly pro-recognition Governor still insist on supporting them. And they oppose Barack Obama who has pledged his support for the full recognition of Hawaii's indigenous people.

In light of the Hawaii connection and the obvious strong support for Obama by their state’s voters, the Governor and Lieutenant Governor could easily have refused an active role in the Republican convention and the McCain campaign. The leaders of their party would have understood. No one in either party would expect the Governor or Lieutenant Governor to campaign actively against their state’s 'favorite son.

'The role they have embraced at the convention is not simply an appropriate response to a party obligation; this is political pandering at its worst. Governor Lingle and Lieutenant Governor Aiona will be stumping this week for candidates who not only oppose Barack Obama, but who oppose Native Hawaiian recognition, oppose a woman's right to choose, oppose sex education in our schools, oppose equal rights being granted to all people, oppose environmental regulation, and oppose universal health care.

And why would our Governor and Lieutenant Governor be doing this?

It has to be about the money because it can't be about the votes. Lingle and Aiona are more likely to lose votes in their next elections as voters recall their opposition of Obama and support of Bush/McCain. Their aggressive support for McCain and opposition to Obama isn’t about votes, and it’s not about principle. It is about money.

While losing votes and working to reduce our state’s political capital, Lingle and Aiona will gain national recognition and make points with national Republican funding groups. Both will likely do quite handsomely in the fund-raising department during the coming run-up to 2010, and both are most likely betting the memory of the electorate will be short while the pockets of their mainland contributors will be deep.

The elephant in the room that no one has quite stated in so many words is that in these days of upcoming economic calamity it seems Lingle is all too ready to push her constituents under the bus for her political ambitions.

If given her druthers she’d apparently deal a vicious blow to our local economy by putting the kibosh on the expected “Obama Birthplace Tourism” that will follow his election, as it has every other president.

Activist songwriter Jackson Browne has sung “I ain’t no Democrat, but I sure ain’t no Republican” and we resemble that remark.

Unlike Gary we’re not quite hungry enough to choke down whole the bland if not distasteful lack of choice servings on the public policy menu that Obama/Biden presents no matter how much smothering salt and spice it has.

Just like McCain, Obama’s lips have never met a corporate butt they’re not willing to kiss and no matter what happens in November the USA Inc. will still be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Fortune 500.

We’ll be savoring a dish truly to our liking by voting for Cynthia McKinney who, along with Ralph Nader, serves up blue-plate-special policies that we can actually support rather than merely stomach some less vomit-inducing slop.

Though Hooser touts Obama’s support of “Native Hawaiian recognition” the Akaka bill is a piece of century-old fish designed to steal the lands of the Kanaka Maoli “one last time fair and square”.

And Obama still supports all those little erosions of women’s control over their own bodies and though he apparently opposes “abstinence only” sex education still favors stressing abstinence in a bow to church-addled zealots.

And Obama is ready willing and able to compromise away many environmental protections, slip-sliding toward off-shore drilling, nuclear power and wherever else he can find “the middle ground”

And “universal health care” under Obama is a joke. Single government payer or “Medicare for all” is something we’ll never see when Obama takes over... just like all the other things like an end to the current wars, a dismantling of the war machine and an end to the cockamamie wars on terror, drugs and people as contained in the new FISA act and other repressive homeland insecurity legislation..

It could be worse- be thankful for term limits.