I stand with Kaneohe veterinarian and family physician Gary Johnson, who wrote in the Star-Advertiser that “I have never seen a research article showing harm from genetically modified organism (GMO) products.” And with Monsanto Hawaii, which says, “there have been many wild accusations about us, with no basis in truth.” The Food & Drug Administration [...]
In 1961, Harcourt, Brace and World published Hawaii Pono: A Social History by Lawrence H. Fuchs. “One of the major purposes of this book is to celebrate Hawaii,” Fuchs wrote in his preface. ” … In the Islands, people of many races and cultures … offer the world’s best example of dynamic social democracy.” Hawaii [...]
Finding signs of life in Hawaii’s Republican Party can be frustrating – almost as frustrating as being a Republican in Hawaii. Hawaii’s congressional delegation belongs to the Democrats – so, too, the governorship and both houses of the state Legislature. Republican numbers are near record lows. They own but one seat in the 25-member state [...]
Political speeches come in various forms: after-dinner speeches, when the two scoops rice weigh heavily on the audience; the campaign rally speech to send the faithful out to ring doorbells, and the serious policy speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, the NAACP convention or the AFLCIO conclave to make the candidate sound serious, thoughtful [...]
In his lifetime, Dan Inouye did the seemingly impossible: He gave the profession of politics a good name. He didn’t do it by the current standards of the profession: by assuming stances of rigid ideological purity, filling every camera lens with his face, or orating to the masses. (Though what orator wouldn’t want that voice [...]
First came Black Friday, then Small Business Saturday followed by Cyber Monday. Out of fear engendered by television footage of last year’s Black Friday tramplings, I skipped it this year. But on Small Business Saturday, I made a point of driving down to my favorite wine shop. Maybe I bought two bottles. Perhaps three. Two [...]
Abraham Lincoln has been given to us in many forms. He’s the granite savior of the Union, watching over us as Washington’s most famous monument. He’s the Indiana rail splitter, the embodiment of the common man’s story of rags-to-riches – or to the highest office in the land. He’s “Father Abraham,” who freed the country’s [...]
Whoever wins – or has won by the time you get your MidWeek – last week’s general election contests, 2012 will go down as the most warped campaign in Hawaii’s history. The discredit goes to a host of characters. Let’s start at the top. President Barack Obama’s presence on the Democratic ticket this year ensured [...]
On the eve of the first debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, I found myself reading A Call from Jersey by friend and frequent Hawaii visitor Paul Kluge. The setting is 1930s New York and New Jersey, his main character a recent German immigrant named Hans Greifinger. Greifinger and a group of fellow [...]
In a recent piece on the president in Vanity Fair, journalist Michael Lewis discovered that Barack Obama keeps the television set on Air Force One tuned, not to MSNBC, not to CNN, certainly not to FOX, but to ESPN, “the place for sports.” According to Lewis, the president considers the relentless partisanship of the cable [...]
