Disappeared News

According to the Star-Bulletin, today's schedule was canceled. Again.

One day the seas will relax enough for the Superferry to sail. At that point it will be interesting to see how passengers enjoy their ride.

While flying may not be comfortable for everyone, most people are used to it and there's no discomfort. Flights to Neighbor Islands are pretty short.

A ferry is another thing entirely. If sea conditions are bad, it could be a while before you get any relief. If conditions are good, of course, there's the possibility of taking in some great views and maybe spotting a whale or two.

How many trips will be marvelous, how many "ok," and how many will be bad enough to ruin the rest of your day?

Passengers deserve to know what they might experience. Perhaps the best way to inform them is through a comprehensive survey of passengers who have gone before. To assist the process, we offer the Superferry company a proposed survey instrument. No charge, it's free to use.

Today's cancellation notice for Friday indicates also that Saturday "will operate on an adjusted schedule:"
Might as well check, thought I, bored after a couple of hours of paperwork. How were they going to avoid high seas on Saturday?

That's how. Ride the Superferry Time Machine!

An obvious typo, but a little feeble comic relief. Let's see if they are reading my blog and fix it quickly.

This is your Democrat-controlled Congress attempting to suppress dissent. Check it out, or google for further information and commentary.

From yesterday's Washington Times:

Congress is perched to enact the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" Act, probably the greatest assault on free speech and association in the United States since the 1938 creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat, the bill passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a 404-6 vote under a rule suspension that curtailed debate. To borrow from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, the First Amendment should not distract Congress from doing important business. The Senate companion bill, sponsored by Susan Collins, Maine Republican, has encountered little opposition. Especially in an election year, senators crave every opportunity to appear tough on terrorism. Few if any care about or understand either freedom of expression or the Thought Police dangers of S. 1959. Former President John Quincy Adams presciently lamented: "Democracy has no forefathers, it looks to no posterity, it is swallowed up in the present and thinks of nothing but itself."

Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the act aims to identify and stigmatize persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example, opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the great writ of habeas corpus.

The act will inexorably culminate in a government listing of homegrown terrorists or terrorist organizations without due process; a complementary listing of books, videos, or ideas that ostensibly further "violent radicalization;" and a blacklisting of persons who have intersected with either list.

Political discourse will be chilled and needed challenges to conventional wisdom will flag. There are no better examples of sinister congressional folly.

The act inflates the danger of homegrown terrorism manifold to justify creating a marquee National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Ideologically Based Violence . . .  Since September 11, 2001, no American has died from homegrown terrorism, while about 120,000 have been murdered. . .

The commission's Big Brother task is to discover ideas and political associations, including connections to non-U.S. persons and networks, that promote "violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States." And "violent radicalization" is defined as "the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change."

Under the Act, William Lloyd Garrison would have been guilty of promoting "violent radicalization" for publishing the anti-slavery Liberator in 1831, which "facilitated" John Brown. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton would have been condemned for assailing laws disenfranchising women and creating an intellectual atmosphere receptive to violence. And Martin Luther King, Jr. would have fallen under the Act's suspicion for denouncing Jim Crow and practicing civil disobedience, which "facilitated" H. Rap Brown. . .

Lengthy lists of persons, organizations and thoughts to be shunned will be compiled. Portions of the Holy Koran are likely to be taboo. The lives of countless innocent citizens will be shattered. That is the lesson of HUAC and every prior government enterprise to identify "dangerous" people or ideas - for example, the 120,000 innocent Japanese-Americans herded into concentration camps during World War II.

Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer with Bruce Fein & Associates and Chairman of the American Freedom Agenda.

(thanks to Undernews)

Call or fax Rep. Neil Abercrombie:

Phone: (808) 541-2570
Fax: (808) 533-0133

Call or fax Rep. Mazie Hirono:

Phone: (808) 541-1986
Fax: (808) 538-0233

And ask them to vote to defeat HR1955.

I believe this is the third day in a row. Clipped from the Superferry website:

If Saturday''s schedule is canceled too, it will probably kill many people's New Year vacation plans. And I wonder how many people/dogs/vehicles are stranded on Maui?

Only those going to/from Maui are affected because the Superferry has not resumed trips to Kauai. They're afraid of the reaction they'd get. Maybe Kauai folks can rest easy for a while. If Maui is a "test run" for full service, the ferry will have to deal with passengers stranded all over the place should they expand beyond the current schedule. Maybe they'll wait a bit longer before testing the Kauai waters.

Newspaper reporters get paid for their time, bloggers don't. A paper would be doing a great service if it would keep track of daily passenger loads, passenger (dis)comfort, and rate of cancellations.

After all, the papers gave the Superferry a big boost and were its biggest cheerleaders. The least they can do is keep track of their team's performance.

Spend an hour with peace activist Ann Wright on Town Square, hosted by Beth-Ann Kozlovich, on Thursday, 12/27/2007 from 5-6 p.m. Listen on 89.3 FM or stream on the computer from hawaiipublicradio.org .

Col. Wright is a co-author of a new book:

Dissent: Voices of Conscience by Ann Wright, Susan Dixon, Daniel Ellsberg Read more about this title...

Ann Wright resigned her post with the U.S. State Department in protest to the run-up of the Iraq war.

Col. Wright, a Hawaii resident, will discuss her book and review where we are now, what has been accomplished in 2007 and what must be done in 2008.

I wrote last year that the press (in that article, the Associated Press wire service) was covering up the fact that US troops were confined to base during the daytime in Iraq. It was just too dangerous for them to go out except at night. The coverup continues, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

One way to minimize US troop losses, of course, is to reduce the number of missions and keep the troops from going out at all. The US typically compensates by escalating aerial bombardment, which leads to increased civilian casualties. But who's counting civilians, of course. With a cooperative press dutifully reporting only what it has been handed by those in charge, it can be made to appear that the "surge" is working.

Stories do get out, though. Information wants to be free. I was just listening to the podcast of last week's Counterspin and heard of a massacre in Afghanistan that didn't make it to the mainstream news.

The program segment also reported on the increased bombing and pointed out that every missed bomb might create ten new Taliban recruits. I did think it odd that we think we can win hearts and minds by bombing civilians and conducting nighttime massacres.

The story about the massacre is here.

at 2 A.M. on Sunday, November 17/18, 2007 in the hamlet of Lakari, 2 kms from the village of Toube (Tebbi?) in the Garmsir district of southern Helmand along the Helmand River. The Taliban have long had a strong presence in Garmsir. Foreign troops (probably U.S. or British Special Forces) with Afghan soldiers arrived by air in the village at 2 A.M. in the night (as is usual with such air borne attacks). What ensued was a gruesome massacre successfully kept out of sight of the world for almost a month by military “news management” and mainstream western media neglect. The story was broken by two Afghan journalists of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) in the Afghan Recovery Report dated December 10, 2007. The reporters interviewed dozens of local villagers who all confirmed what had transpired. Their story was picked by the Zurich-based Center for Security Studies’ ISN and brief mention was made in The Telegraph. No mention by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, etc.

For a story on the Associated Press by the Counterspin interviewee, see The AP speaks Newspeak. The author reveals how the AP labels massacres as mistakes and minimizes reports of civilian casualties.

Of course, our local dailies depend on the AP. There are alternatives. AFP (Agence France-Presse), for example. But don't hold your breath waiting for them to switch. It won't happen.

[Aside: when I lived in New York City in a previous life, radio station WBAI subscribed to the AFP wire service. Their studios were in an old church, and in a bathtub was the wire service teletype. The dispatches were in French at that time. The staff translated them. How else to get around the bias and manipulation of the US wire services?]

Since local dailies do not have reporters in the mid-East, they select stories. Those that our papers bring to Hawaii are chosen from a wide range of available sources. They select the commentaries similarly. The totality reflects the bias of local editors, and quite likely, the directives of their management on what they must print and what they may not.

No wonder the United States is ranked low in press freedom. It depends on who does the ranking, of course, but in an analysis by Reporters without Borders, we came in this year just under Botswana, Croatia and Tonga. You might disagree, but check it out. Our descent is accompanied by a reduction in the quality of news we see or read.

If you read the story on AP referenced above, you'll have a sharper eye for the excuses they make for civilian casualties. The high death rate is not the result of little mistakes in aiming the bombs, or of insurgents hiding in civilian areas, it's a predictable result of the way we wage war. Get used to it. Great armies no longer clash in fields of battle. They kill civilians, that's what they do. The mainstream media don't want to trouble you with that fact.

We must stop these wars. It's within our power as Americans to do the right thing, and we're not doing it. What is our excuse? After we do that, we should replace our corporate media, which bears responsibility for perpetuating wars by printing lies about war.

I found this posted on the Superferry website:

How many cancellation days will there be each year? What will the reliability of the Superferry be as a passenger carrier? Suppose a return trip is canceled and your hotel on Maui doesn't have a room available...  Suppose you need to be at work the next day?

Just asking.

This shopper could have been killed by the Taser-happy cop.

(Thanks to Viviane Lerner for circulating the articles below)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22361567/

Officer uses Taser to tame Best Buy customer
Sides split on what happened; review begins

Fri., Dec. 21, 2007

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - A review is under way in the case of a Florida  police officer who used a stun gun on a woman who had yelled at her.

Last month's incident began as Elizabeth Beeland, 35, tried to buy a  CD player at an electronics store, and stepped outside to talk on her  phone, leaving her credit card behind. A store clerk became  suspicious, and suspected Beeland was using a stolen card. When police officer Claudia Wright approached, she said Beeland became  "verbally profane" and "abusive."

Wright said she warned Beeland to calm down or face arrest. The  officer hit Beeland in the stomach with the Taser darts and arrested  her on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

In a video, the customer is seen backing away, then crumpling to the  ground after being tasered. Police later verified that Beeland was using her own credit card, but she was arrested for disorderly conduct and resisting a police  officer without violence. She has since pleaded not guilty.

Two sides to story, video Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood defended the officer's actions, which he said avoided use of other weapons.

"Even if you look at the video, when the officer stepped toward her after announcing she's under arrest, she's flailing her arms and  retreating from the officer," Chitwood said. "Police work isn't pretty. It doesn't look pretty, but from where we sit, interviewing civilian witnesses and people may or may not agree, but she followed our policy, she followed FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) guidelines."

Cop Watch's George Crosley sees the incident in a different way. His group polices police actions. He said he is stunned by the store surveillance video.

"This is wrong, this shouldn't have happened that way," Crosley said. "When the officer starts toward her, you don't see her threatening the officer, you see her backing off with her hands up," he said. "If she couldn't figure out how to handle it, she should have called for back up. The truth of the matter is, people have died as a result of being tased."

State prosecutors are reviewing whether to pursue the case against Beeland. Beeland's attorney is also reviewing the incident.

• Lingle has not released $4 million authorized by the Legislature two years ago for the Honolulu Symphony Foundation. Result: musicians have not been paid since the end of November. I suspect that many musician's families are thinking of her during this payless Christmas holiday.
• Lingle has not released $3 million for pedestrian safety authorized when the Legislature overrode her veto of a pedestrian safety bill passed this year. I wonder if the families of loved ones killed in crosswalks in 2007 are thinking of her today.
• Lingle withheld more than $500,000 that was to go to Kupuna Care in 2006. As a result, reports circulated of seniors leaving the hospital who had to be re-admitted because they could not get services needed to get better at home. Several organizations had written letters asking that the money be released to no effect. I also wrote, the Friday before election day, and sent out a flock of press releases on the issue. Lo, the money was released just before the election. No, said the Governor, the letters had nothing to do with it. Ok.
• Linda Lingle became the first governor in history to veto a Baby Safe Haven or Baby Moses law. 47 other states, even those with Republican governors, have such laws. The Legislature overrode her veto, but her administration has refused to implement the law. (In those 47 other states, mothers are allowed to drop off their unwanted newborn infants at designated safe havens without fear of prosecution. The laws provide an alterative to abandonment or infanticide.)
• Linda Lingle vetoed HB10 this session. This was the bill that requires pharmaceutical companies participating in the Hawaii Rx Plus program to provide rebates for prescription drugs. It's the one where the Legislature, clearly expressing its intent yet again, changed the wording from "may" to "shall," taking away the last possible wiggle room that the Lingle administration could use to avoid implementing the law. Well, here we go into the 2008 legislative session, and negotiations have yet to take place, costing seniors and those with disabilities dearly. 
• A little different tactic is Lingle's recent refusal to fund the high costs of drug testing teachers, which her negotiators fought for in contract talks, and suggesting that children should bear the burden by giving up funds that should be spent on education in order to pay for the testing.

Or parts of New Jersey, either.

Hawaii has addresses that look like 94-nnn Kamehameha Highway. New Jersey has some also. In fact, there are so many of these addresses here that they might be in the majority.

So what's the problem? The  problem is that one of the best-selling GPS navigation brands, TomTom, does not have a hyphen on their keyboard. That's right, no way to enter most Hawaii addresses.

The TomTom One is a best-seller and a top choice of Consumer Reports. It works fine if you want to go somewhere on King Street, or to an address in Hilo, for example. Heck, I don't need an expensive GPS unit to find those. If I want to visit an office in Kaneohe, though, I can't enter the address.

Believe it or not.

This brand is widely advertised in Sunday ads. It gets good reviews from on-line sites. I scored a TomTom GO920 at a reasonable price the day after Thanksgiving. It was the only one Office Depot had at that store, and I got it! Yay! Now I know why. It worked fine, except of course when it's needed most.

TomTom customer service is as useless as the unit was. After a phone call and an email, they advised us to fax the main office. So I did. Nothing. A second fax. Nothing.

After about a week I had an idea, I'll fax their headquarters in the Netherlands. I'll also tell them that faxing their USA office did not good. They should know about that. This did bring a reply in a couple of days. But no good news.

I'm supposed to subscribe to their newsletter to find out when the fix is in. They won't even drop me an email.

So back it went, reluctantly. I don't know if I'll find as good a bargain any time soon. The other brands (Garvin and Magellan, anyway) have no problem with Hawaii addresses, but their voice quality wasn't as good.

We just liked the TomTom and can't believe that it has this problem.

So be warned. They are still advertised everywhere. Try one before you buy it. If you just need to navigate on center-city streets, you'll be ok. If you want to get out of town, though, see if the TomTom will actually take you there.

Good thing I didn't buy one from CompUSA which has a no-return policy.

Police located my car. Damaged, most all of my personal stuff gone, but all will be well in the end.

Of course, since they found it late today, I couldn't get a tow truck without a long wait. It's the Friday before Christmas and all the tow trucks were stuck in traffic on the highway. So I learned to hot-wire the thing myself. Now I have a new skill.

After it's all fixed I need to learn how to keep a car from being stolen, at least as much as is possible.

So today I feel I'm one lucky blogger.

This surf forecast just in via Brad Parsons:

From Pat Caldwell/NOAA: Outlook through Thursday Dec 27. A moderate northwest swell will arrive Saturday night. A larger northwest swell will roll in Sunday night with surf above the advisory level of 15 feet for north-facing shores and near the advisory level of 12 feet for the west facing shores. A small to moderate trade wind swell will continue through next week with surf along east-facing shores staying below advisory levels. Surf heights are forecast heights of the face or front of waves. The surf forecast is based on the significant wave height in the zone of maximum refraction. Some waves may be more than twice as high as the significant wave height. Expect to encounter rip currents in or near any surf zone.

I'm not familiar with surf forecasts. It would be nice if there were a way to translate the numbers into some kind of index, let's call it the Superferry Barf Index, which could give passengers an idea of just how sick they'll be going to or returning from their holiday. Something like, from 1-5, 1=moderate discomfort to 5=wretchedly ill.

Cartoonist John Pritchett caught the essence of the Superferry experience in his Honolulu Weekly cartoon in the current issue. Check it out here, on his website.

Maybe John would make up some postcards using that image for people who've experienced high seas on the Superferry to send back to their friends and relatives (hint).

Complicated stuff. On this day in 1850, the French warship La Serieuse was in Honolulu Harbor, and the question was whether there was a threat to the Hawaiian Kingdom. Or was the whole thing a plot to get Hawaii to seek the protection of the United States?

While the diplomatic wheels were grinding, Hawaii began its first postal service. The first letter was postmarked December 21, 1850, and dispatched to San Francisco. It would take a month to get there.

(More, much more, in The Hawaiian Kingdom By Ralph Simpson Kuykendall, 1938)

Drug testing teachers was a bad idea to start with. Now guess what: the Lingle administration won't pay for it, so if it is to start in June 2008, the money will have to come out of kids' educations. $500,000 would buy a lot of textbooks, don't you think?

So much for the "education governor".

Gov. Linda Lingle's administration is refusing to fund planned drug tests of public school teachers despite fighting to add the program in contract negotiations early this year, at the time arguing it would "help ensure schools are safe."

The administration denied the Education Department's request for more than $500,000 to cover annual, random and reasonable-suspicion drug tests of as many as 3,250 teachers, or one in four employees, starting June 30.

"In their base budget of $2 billion, the (education) department will have to cover it," state Budget Director Georgina Kawamura said yesterday.

The administration's decision shocked education officials who assumed they would get extra money but now fear they might need to pull funds from school programs to check whether teachers are high when they come to campus. [starbulletin.com | News | /2007/12/21/]

The cost of defending the state against an ACLU suit will come from... where?

Maybe the best thing to do, for the children, the teachers and the taxpayers, would be for the 2008 Legislature to set aside the drug testing provision and save us all a lot of trouble and expense.

Oh, I'll bet the governor's development programs aren't shortchanged a nickel. I just had to add that last comment. Big bucks for business, steal money from children.

Yup, you no longer need ugly sponsors and millions of bucks for transmitters to reach the multitudes.

Pioneer podcaster Todd Cochran (Geek News Central) started his podcast at 6 am today and will continue on until 6 am Saturday. You can watch it and participate yourself. It's a videocast, it's a call-in program. It's also a benefit for One Laptop per Child.

It may not be the end of Fox News, but the possibility is there.

You can tune in several ways. Try the Ustream feed:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/geek-news-central-24hr-podcast-marathon

or participate at:

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=10832&cmd=tc

Todd just finished Hour 3, 21 hours to go.

If you're a geek or interested in alternative media, check this out. Think of what you or your group could do with the technology that's being demonstrated today.

Stay in touch with this promising experiment either at Todd's site or at the website of the Hawaii Association of Podcasters. Learn about podcasting. Do it yourself.

Via Brad Parsons I learned that the Superferry/Hornblower may not be watching for whales and won't watch at all this month. Nor are they inspecting coolers for opihi or other contraband.

This needs to be verified and if true, someone should intervene. Who? I don't expect the Governor to act.

As I wrote yesterday, bees were discovered that may already have spread the deadly Varroa mite to Maui. If the ferry has not already spread the Varroa mites, continued inaction will guarantee that they get there in time.

Every holiday season it's Buy, Buy, Buy.

But what to do if you have too much stuff? Do you really need that brass plaque with bronze oak-leaf palms your uncle Jean gave you, or could the space it occupies be put to better use? Maybe some of the presents you'll be getting should be turned around and go the other way instead of piling up in the living room.

Tune in this evening, Thursday, to Town Square, on Hawaii Public Radio, 5-6 p.m. on KIPO, 89.3 FM, to find out how to get rid of stuff.

Guests include an organization consultant who can help decide what to part with and how to do it, someone who can help sell things on eBay if that process appears too daunting or mysterious, and a guest who can explain how to recycle your stuff through an agency that will make it available to people who can use it.

[Factoid: Did you know that there was actually a car called the "Opala" (the Hawaiian word for garbage)? "The Chevrolet Opala was produced between November 1968 (as the 1969 model) through April 1992.…It was the first passenger car built in Brazil by General Motors."]

All that and more tonight on Town Square.

There was a fire in the White House this morning that damaged Vice President Dick Cheney's office.

The story is here.

A list of documents and records destroyed is here.

I wrote just over two weeks ago that the Hawaii Department of Agriculture, with the cooperation of the Superferry, is endangering Neighbor Island bees and agriculture. I wrote in Varroa mites may already be on the Superferry due to Dept. of Agriculture neglect that feral bee colonies near the Superferry pier on Oahu had not been eradicated as they were supposed to have been:

If Varroa mites make it to Neighbor Islands, Hawaii's organic honey industry could be wiped out. The mite is also thought to be a contributing factor to Colony Collapse Disorder which is wiping out bee hives on the Mainland. Hawaii currently exports queen bees to the Mainland—those exports would be endangered as well if the infection spreads.

If the infection spreads and wipes out bee hives on the Neighbor Islands, any agriculture dependent on bees for pollination would also be adversely affected. In other words, it's not just a bunch of little insects we're talking about here. It's a whole economic ecosystem. Farmers would be hurt too.

Even before I posted that article, Dr. Michael Kliks had spread the same warning to legislators and to others.

The danger is clear, the solutions almost obvious. But was anything at all done?

Joan Conrow wrote today:

And finally, yesterday I was chatting with one of the guys who serves on the Superferry task force. He mentioned that at their first meeting, which coincided with the ferry’s first trip to Maui, Superferry CEO John Garibaldi told them that on the trip to Maui, they’d found some bees on car radiators, which they collected. The bees are a concern because they could spread the varroa mite, which is a serious problem.

The bees are attracted to car radiators because the antifreeze smells sweet to them, so they want to get some.

Were the bees  hanging around the Superferry pier because of DOA neglect? Were they on the Superferry itself? Or did they come in with the cars from wherever? It doesn't matter, the consequences for Neighbor Island agriculture and the bee industry itself don't care where Varroa infested bees come from. It's the responsibility of the state and the Superferry corporation to keep invasive species off the ferry, and it doesn't look like they did that.

So the deadly mite may already be on Maui.

Prevention is better than blame. Someone should get on this right away, even though it may already be too late.

On December 19, 1842:

U.S. President John Tyler recognizes the Kingdom of Hawaii by invoking the Monroe Doctrine to discourage intervention by European powers; agrees to Hawaiian independence. [Maui and Hawaiian Chronology]

December is a significant month in the history of Hawaii. Yet you'll probably read nothing about it in the newspapers.

Certainly, the prior owners of the Honolulu Advertiser would not have been terribly interested in celebrating the complete history of the islands. I wonder if the current editors are willing to make up for the damage caused by their predecessors.

Pics of the protests snapped by Brad Parsons. Check out the signs. Strong feelings!

Today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21400600@N03/sets/72157603469348875/
Yesterday:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21400600@N03/sets/72157603463859123/
Two days ago:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21400600@N03/sets/72157603454736835/

By posting his photos, Brad demonstrates the value of citizen journalism. Newspapers have limited space, of course, and editors have demonstrable biases. Not only is the blogosphere relatively unlimited, but the absence of self-censorship editing means that you, the reader, get to sort through the information yourself.

The blogs differ from recent newspaper accounts on the number of passengers, how many of those were reporters and how many might have been relatives of Superferry employees. Brad has been keeping a count of passengers and vehicles.

If the papers are interested in giving us useful facts, they might do their own occasional count and report on whether this ferry is really so important to Hawaii that people are actually using it. Will the editors actually allow an honest passenger count to be reported?

They might also be honest about the conditions on board. The first voyage last week seemed grim. People aren't supposed to get sick when they travel from one place to another.

Depend on the blogs

Not everyone who writes a blog is, well, just a blogger. We have several fine journalists out there, and they are following, among other topics, the ongoing Superferry saga.

Both Joan Conrow and Ian Lind have written about the appointment of Kauila Clark to the Superferry oversight task force, noting that he is closely tied to Superferry management although Say appointed him as a cultural practitioner. Remember where you learned about Say's own ties to the ferry: his son is/was an employee. Where is the editorial outrage? Not in the newspapers.

Joan wrote:

I was rubbed the wrong way by the revelation that Kauila Clark, appointed to serve on the Superferry oversight committee, actually blessed the vessel before it sailed. The connection was made in a comment on yesterday’s post, and followed up today by Ian Lind, who raises the question of whether Clark was paid by Hawaii Superferry for his various services.
 
...

It seems that of all the cultural practitioners in Hawaii, Rep. Calvin Say could have come up with one who wasn’t already so closely linked to Hawaii Superferry. That’s the sort of thing that further erodes the public’s confidence in what is already widely perceived as a bogus process that began when the state exempted Superferry from an environmental review.

Ian Lind's article is longer and has a picture, so I suggest clicking there and reading that.

And did any of the papers mention the machine guns toted by security personnel?

You just have to read the blogs to find out what is really going on with this ferry. But more than the ferry, you'll have to look at the pictures and read the blogs to learn about the seething resentment against our "popular" governor.

Protests or not, perhaps the ferry ridership will increase. Or maybe it won't. Predictably, protests will taper off. Nature, in the form of rough seas, will not, so let's see how this goes. Read the blogs and stay in touch with the pulse of the people.

It's not CompUSA anymore. They won't even take CompUSA credit cards. The liquidators bought it, and they will do their thing to make the most money at customer expense.  They are experts and have ways to part customers from their money, so buyer beware.

I went over there Thursday evening. Some shelves were already bare. I had my eye on a HP laptop which has been advertised each week for $999.99. The laptop was indeed on sale, but for $130 more, after discount ($1129). There were USB memory sticks on sale for more than you can get them elsewhere.

I was interested in a webcam I wouldn't have bought unless it was cheap, but it had no marked price. So I went over to one of the computers on display, visited the manufacturer's website, and looked it up. List price was $79. You can take items over to what used to be the business center desk and they will scan the barcode and tell you the price. So I did that, and it was, after discount, $79.  So no deal, since it's easy to find it cheaper on the web.

Liquidators know that many people will go for the discounts they are offering without checking the street price. Some buyers see "20% off" and figure they are getting a deal. If the base price was kited up, then it isn't a deal, is it?

Liquidators also move stock around. It's reasonable to expect that crap they have on hand can be moved to the stores they are currently closing. Perhaps there will be less of that in Hawaii simply because of the higher shipping cost, but it's still something to watch out for.

Also, be sure you know what each item should cost and make sure that the register price is what you thought it should be. They make that difficult by ringing up the full price, then when all items have been checked in, they apply the discounts. It is all supposed to work out, and the receipt shows the reduced price. But it's confusing if you're standing there wondering if the discount is what you thought it would be.

If the manufacturer has any rebates, you'll have to find out about them elsewhere. I didn't see any rebate action at all.

Typically, the discount will increase as time goes on. Also typically, the good stuff will be gone.

So I suggest knowing what an item should cost before you buy, and make sure you get the discount you expect. You mean nothing to them as a future customer, they just want your money now, and as much of it as they can get.

If you watched or listened to Democracy Now this morning, you already know that Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Senator Mike Gravel were excluded from the latest debate:

Kucinich, Gravel Excluded from Democratic Debate

And in Iowa, Democratic presidential candidates held their final debate of the year Thursday, just weeks before the first primary vote. Congressmember Dennis Kucinich was excluded despite having the same polling numbers as three other candidates both nationally and locally in Iowa. Also excluded was former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel. In a campaign first, Gravel has released a rap video criticizing his exclusion. The song samples John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Give Peace a Chance.” [Democracy Now! | Headlines for December 14, 2007]

(you can catch the program on Oahu at 10 pm on channel 56)

The Advertiser failed to mention the exclusion in its article today, which was part of this longer piece in the Des Moines Register, the sponsor of the debate. The Advertiser included something like the first third or so of the article.

Of course, neither the Advertiser nor the Register mentioned the exclusion. They are both owned by Gannett.

Thanks to Jeff Garland for the pointer to this USA Today blog (USA Today is also owned by Gannett, read it before someone can drop the axe on it): Kucinich protests debate exclusion; columnist says his absence was beneficial. Don't miss the comments.

In this case, Gannett both made the news (through its exclusion) and then failed to properly report its action and hence its complete roll in the debate.

I believe your Advertiser subscription currently costs about $209 annually. Perhaps that should buy readers some right to complain. We are entitled to fair coverage (the Advertiser probably does well on "balanced", for example, in comparison to the Star-Bulletin/MidWeek). Here is a case where the least they might have done would be to disclose their exclusion of a candidate very popular in Hawaii.

The front page of a newspaper is seldom funnier than the comics page, but I'll have to admit I laughed more at the Nauseating but enjoyable trip for passengers headline than I did at any of the funnies.

If you click on that link you'll see that the Advertiser changed the on-line headline to Some queasy, some easy in rough seas. Maybe someone noticed the print headline and thought twice about letting the whole world laugh at it.

After calming down, I read the story, which begins:

ABOARD THE HAWAII SUPERFERRY — Maccine Carter spent more than three hours vomiting aboard the Hawaii Superferry yesterday on the final day of her Hawai'i vacation and still enjoyed her trip from O'ahu to Maui.

"I was sick the whole time," Carter said after going through several motion sickness bags in the front, deluxe Hahalua Lounge cabin of the 350-foot ship Alakai. "There was a lot of choppy water. But it was my last day and I wanted to see Maui. It was beautiful — from what I saw."

How funny! As the rest of the story made clear, the article could, and probably should, have opened with mention of how sick passengers became, because it bodes ill (if you'll pardon the expression) for the future of the Superferry in Hawaiian waters, at least as far as passenger transport is concerned. The real story begins to unfold only on the continuation page:

At least 25 passengers all over the Alakai were openly vomiting, said Superferry cabinet attendant Leeann Toro, who passed out barf bags as if they were candy on Halloween.

One passenger in the Hahalua Lounge was in so much misery that he had to be carried and dragged off to a first-aid area to lie down, Toro said.

Reporter Dan Nakaso chose to interview and feature one passenger, the one who said she enjoyed the trip anyway. I wonder why he didn't interview some of the others? Likely they did not enjoy their voyage quite as much as the one he chose for his lead paragraph.

A much more realistic, I suspect, story appeared in the Garden Island News, Less than smooth sailing - Superferry arrives in Maui:

“It was torture,” said O‘ahu resident Nola Watasa, who was traveling to Maui with her son, Colby, and husband, Dave, for a varsity wrestling tournament. “I’m glad it’s over.”

She and others riding the $85 million jet-propelled vessel — such as Clayton Fernandez, an O‘ahu resident visiting Maui for the first time — filled up the “barf bags” that Hawaii Superferry staff handed out early on in the three-hour voyage.

Workers scrubbed the carpet and wiped down the faux leather seats for those passengers who were unable to find a paper sack or make it to the bathroom in time.

And the voyage did not take place in a storm, it took place in typical conditions (from the Advertiser story):

Veteran harbor