Lincoln and Douglasthey weren’t, but Linda Lingle and Mazie Hirono debated their hearts out anyway as we plant tongue in cheek and "flASHback" on the week’s news that amused and confused:
» Senate candidates Hirono and Lingle stung each other with increasingly nasty attacks in a series of televised forums. Most stung were voters, as it sank in that one of these two will be our next U.S. senator.
» Alaska’s Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young switched his endorsement of Hirono in the primary election to Lingle in the general. The vaunted Alaska-Hawaii political alliance is starting to look like a romantic triangle.
» Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski also inserted herself into Hawaii’s Senate race in support of Lingle’s call for bipartisanship, saying neither Republicans nor Democrats "have the monopoly on good ideas." Monopoly? I’d settle for somebody in Washington having a clue.
» University of Hawaii President M.R.C. Greenwood accused the state Senate of inappropriate pressure in its investigation of the Stevie Wonder concert fiasco, but Sen. Donna Mercado Kim denied it was political interference. It was more like a political mugging.
» UH regents paid $15,000 to bring in a management consultant from the mainland to advise them on how to govern the university with less disruption. That’s easy, just let Donna Kim have her way.
» The management expert’s fee was on top of tens of thousands of dollars more UH has paid to outside lawyers, accountants, search firms and PR consultants in the wake of the "Wonder blunder." If this keeps up, we’ll have the first outsourced state university.
» Former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann endorsed his former managing director, Kirk Caldwell, for the mayor’s job, praising Caldwell as a key member of his old team. Poor Hannemann doesn’t have his own race to lose, so all he can do is curse somebody else’s chances.
» Ben Cayetano’s mayoral allies have formed a political action committee to defend him against millions of dollars in attack ads sponsored by unions and contractors. Cayetano’s supporters hope to raise enough to buy him a cast-iron jockstrap.
» The Honolulu transit authority made an early buy of all 20 miles of steel track for the Oahu rail project, with the first 3,000 tons arriving next month. It’ll give copper thieves something new to do.
» A Christian group criticized Michelle Obama’s healthy kids initiative by posting a picture of a Hawaiian plate lunch. To each his own Last Supper.
And the quote of the week … from Hirono on Lingle’s assertion that Big Bird isn’t essential to the defense of America: "Oh, my, aloha to Big Bird and, you know, the entire ‘Sesame Street’ gang." I’m sure the entire Howdy Doody gang will give them a nice welcome in puppet heaven.
———
Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.
