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HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — Hoe: Paddle PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY — Pul long: Paddle HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “Put forward the paddle and draw it back.” HAOLE SAYING OF THE DAY — “For Haoles, paddle means “spank” not “row.” (Anon)
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HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — Uila: Electricity PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Pawa: Electricity HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “The torch that continues to burn in daylight.” HAOLE SAYING OF THE DAY — “God hates reality but realizes it’s still the only place to get a good steak.”(Woody Allen) WEB SURF SPOTS OF THE WEEK — Medical Marijuana ProCon | Industrial Hemp WEB VIDEO OF THE WEEK — The Magic Weed: History of Marijuana NETCAST OF THE WEEK — Marijuana Policy Project GOOD DEED SITE OF THE WEEK — Good Deed FoundationMECO is still trying to go forward with its Pulehu power plant, a 20-megawatt facility it wants to bring online in 2011. This plant – a disaster of planning and timing – is scheduled to use up 1,000,000 gallons of imported diesel oil per day to run, oil which must be transporteted by trucks from the port to the facility. Five years ago, when the plant was first proposed, oil was $10 a barrel and those running MECO expressed their deep conviction that they would be shocked if oil reached $30 “for the foreseeable future.”
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HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — Kokoleka: Chocolate PIDGIN WORD OF THE DAY— Pono: Goodness, uprightness HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “One meets misfortune, all meet misfortune.” HAOLE SAYING OF THE DAY — “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” - Lewis Carroll
YESTERDAY: Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle delivers a somber State of State Address. Read more >
January 27, 1942: The military governor of the territory of Hawaii issues a strong warning to merchants on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island — stop price gouging. Just seven weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the shipping lanes were struggling to maintain a sense of normalcy while dealing with new rules and regulations surrounding the importation of goods, as well as the commandeering of ships for war purposes. As a result, the flow of goods to Maui and the rest of Hawaii slowed, forcing pressure on prices to rise.
The governor was having none of it, and issued a price list for potatoes, onions, rice, bananas, fish and cheese, thus making Hawaii the first part of the United States to impose a rationing and pricing system during World War II.
By the Maui Curmudgeon (43rd in a 43-part series)
How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 constitutionally elected presidents, in the order of their administrations.Reading books on every president from Washington to Clinton is a bit like going to the dentist. You really don’t want to, you know it’s going to hurt, but you also know you’ll be glad you did when it’s over. And I am glad. The task gave me a good historical understanding of the office and the men who have occupied it. And it gave me a bit of insight into the current candidates and there supposed qualifications.
First, I want to apologize to Sister Bernadette’s fourth grade history class for misleading them in my oral report on Andrew Jackson. Contrary to what I said, Jackson was not a hero or great champion of democracy. He was a racist pig whose men hated him when he was general.
Reading all these biographies gave me a good chance to correct some wrong ideas I have held (and frankly was taught in grammar school) about these fellows. To wit:
George Washington wasn’t just a good president, he was a very great man; his PR doesn’t do him justice. Of all the men involved in the American Revolution, and of the first seven who became president, only Washington was indispensible. Sadly, a majority of Americans think these founders used the constitution to establish a Christian nation. No. What the constitution did and does do is reflect the mind of one man more than any other – Washington. It was he who was president at the Constitutional Congress, and he guided it through to its conclusion. And he bettered himself – though a southerner with slaves, and not well off, he came to understand slavery was wrong and not only released all his slaves, but did so sending them into the world with new clothes, some money and recommendations for work.
Even when young, I was never snowed by Thomas Jefferson, a whiner who road the creation of one good document – the Declaration of Independence – into the White House, where he could be as hypocritical as any man ever was in the office. He was also a rapist (you don’t really think the slave Sally Hemmings had the right to refuse him, do you?) and never set free his slaves. “All men are created equal” indeed.
The great John Adams and his insanely intelligent wife Abigail put the lie to the dirty excuse “well, the founding fathers were products of their time and didn’t really know that slavery was that bad.” Bullshit, Adams might say today. He and Abigail fought against slavery all their lives.
By the Maui Curmudgeon (42nd in a 43-part series)
How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 presidents, in the order of their administrations. Here are briefly the pros and cons of my discoveries, the interesting bits, and how I’d rank him. For comparison, I give you the 1982 Murray-Blessing ranking, a survey of hundreds of leading historians who ranked each president by number. This survey is the gold standard of presidential rankings and is most cited when this kind of thing needs bringing up in media.
An administration whose noble intentions went awry. Bill Clinton was our last constitutionally elected president, and it’s difficult to judge his administration without some historical distance, particularly since his wife, Hillary, recently came close to winning the Democratic nomination, and has kept the Clintons in the current spotlight.
Six-time governor of Arkansas, Clinton was initialy given little chance of winning the democratic nomination in 1992. His first problem was overcoming a lack of recognition by voters – they just didn’t know who he was. Then came the allegations of affairs with several women while he was governor. Purient interests are always good for a few PR moments, and Clinton made the most of them, going on “60 minutes” and lying – saying he never had the affair. It was a pattern which he would repeat many times during the campaign and his presidency.
By the Maui Curmudgeon (41st in a 43-part series)
How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 presidents, in the order of their administrations. Here are briefly the pros and cons of my discoveries, the interesting bits, and how I’d rank him. For comparison, I give you the 1982 Murray-Blessing ranking, a survey of hundreds of leading historians who ranked each president by number. This survey is the gold standard of presidential rankings and is most cited when this kind of thing needs bringing up in media.
One of the deans of American political journalism – Jack Germond – has talked with every president from Truman to Clinton. Though he disagreed with the politics of several of the men, he generally found he could find something to like on a personal level with all of them – except with George H.W. Bush. Germond says Bush was nothing more than “an empty suit”, someone who he was sure had merely wanted the presidency for something exciting to add to his resume.
I remember a debate Bush was having with Clinton wherein Bush, in the background as Clinton stood and talked in the foreground, looked at his wristwatch, as if he were missing a nice winetasting and the brie was going over soft, and he’d rather be there than talking to America. Bush was always that out of touch.
By the Maui Curmudgeon (40th in a 43-part series)
How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 presidents, in the order of their administrations. Here are briefly the pros and cons of my discoveries, the interesting bits, and how I’d rank him. For comparison, I give you the 1982 Murray-Blessing ranking, a survey of hundreds of leading historians who ranked each president by number. This survey is the gold standard of presidential rankings and is most cited when this kind of thing needs bringing up in media.
For nearly 80 years, it was a political tenet that the worst president in American History was the republican (I know, they have so many to chose from) Warren G. Harding. The last 30 years have shown that the Republicans have been breaking the sound barrier to try to find increasingly dangerous, stupid, disastrous men to rule. The granddaddy of them all is Ronald Reagan.
A liar, a cheat, an incoherent mess of a man, Americans fell in love with him, and they deserved each other. it would take volumes to illustrate how many of our current problems – debt, war, mutual hatreds among citizens, White House Crime – begin with or were fed by Reagan. There was nothing good about him, or his administration. The bad is too long to list, but includes in part:
He is not ranked in the Murrary Blessing interviews and there’s some justice in that – he doesn’t belong with anyone. Please don’t waste a breath of your life more in reading about him.
By the Maui Curmudgeon (39th in a 43-part series)
How do the U.S. Presidents stack up? I thought I’d find out by reading biographies of all 42 presidents, in the order of their administrations. Here are briefly the pros and cons of my discoveries, the interesting bits, and how I’d rank him. For comparison, I give you the 1982 Murray-Blessing ranking, a survey of hundreds of leading historians who ranked each president by number. This survey is the gold standard of presidential rankings and is most cited when this kind of thing needs bringing up in media.
A noble failure, Jimmy Carter tried to pick up the pieces of the federal government after the debacle of Richard Nixon’s crimes and Jerry Ford’s pardon of him. He did so in the midst of rising fuel prices, an oil embargo, and the 20th century’s first large scale resurgence of violent muslim terrorism – the taking of hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Teheran. Despite all that, it took a consumate liar and idiot (Ronald Reagan) – someone a majority of American’s could see themselves in – to defeat him.
The Bad
Micromanaged – and therefore mismanaged – so much: from the federal budget to the congressional hearing about it, fiscal policy to citizen attitude (“there is a malaise”), even the aborted rescue attempt in Iran for the hostages.
Paddling Day