Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Voting Glitches

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Many precincts all over the United States are reporting problems at polling places. Didn’t we learn anything with the hanging chad situation that cost Al Gore the Presidency, and ultimately the many lives lost in Iraq?

 I go to the ATM way to often. Occasionally I get to the gas pump (I don’t own a car) with my moped and motorcycle and use a credit card. I pay all my bills online. I file my taxes online. I’ve never caught a mistake. Why the hell can’t we vote online? I’m sure there are folks at American Idol that think we could even text it. This would ease the burden on the process and save us all a hell of a lot of money. Who set up the IRS payment website? Let them do it. Enough of this.

Mark Ida

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Election Eve 2008

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

There are lines all over America filled with people waiting to vote. I can not recall a time when this has happened. This is the first year that “early voting” has become so popular and it’s been going on for days now. I’ve known about absentee ballots, but not early voting.

Now what makes this election so different? Hmmmm? Do Republicans really think the lines are for McCain? If you listen to them on the airwaves this the eve of the election, they are going to surprise Obama. If they do, we should all kill ourselves, I may.

Mark Ida

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No Vote, No Grumble!

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

We have all heard this one. I think there is some truth to that, but would take it further. One shouldn’t vote, just because they can. If they don’t know the issues they should stay out. I wouldn’t even say just leave what you don’t know blank, because sometimes that is an automatic no vote.

There are only two days left to go until Barack Obama becomes President of the United States of America. Can you believe that many people are undecided? Are you fricken kidding me? It’s like finally deciding on which entree to order while your friends at the table have all finished dessert.  Just sit out if you are undecided at this late juncture.

Mark Ida

 

 

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Presidential Experience

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

The major knock on Barack Obama is his lack of experience. What kind of experience would qualify? Many years ago my friend Randy Nakagawa made a great point that Governors more than Senators make better candidates for President. He reasoned that Governors are executives and thus shot callers, whereas Senators rule by committee. This made sense and I bought into this.

 I’m putting my faith in Obama regardless of this. I think there are just born leaders and he is one of them. The JFK of my time.

How is anyone qualified for anything? Teacher to principal, reporter to legislator, pageant queen to weather girl (this is Hawaii, so the last two are ok), actor to President, daughter to mother? Some times we just have to take a calculated chance.

 In the argument of experience, isn’t the only person that is truly qualified, one who has already served a four-year term. Maybe that’s why we gave Bush another four. He was “experienced”.

Mark Ida

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McCain Smear Tactics

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

The only apparent talent Sara Palin has is wisecracking. Do her supporters really think that her style will win over our allies or have a prayer with our enemies around the globe? Can you see her sitting across from Vladimir Putin? Would Putin be carefully listening to her concerns or would he be thinking, “Hey, she kinda looks like a stripper!”

 When they should be telling us how they are going to get us out if this grave financial crisis, the McCain/Palin ticket is resorting to character association smear tactics. During her debate with Biden, Palin said she didn’t want to talk about the past, only the future. So much for that.

 This is all an act of desperation. I remember McCain swearing he would make his campaign about issues not personal attacks. So much for that.

 If they keep it up, will someone call Maya Soetero-Ng and tell her to tell her brother to play the adultery card. All the accusations of Obama’s relationships take an incredible amount of imagination. Was eight-year-old Barack helping William Avery wire up bombs to blow up Federal targets? Was Barack crafting offensive sermons late into the night with Reverend Wright? But there is absolutely no need for imagination to see that John McCain’s current marriage to Cindy McCain is a product of good old American adultery. What is most unsavory about his story is that while faithfully waiting for her husband during his imprisonment in Vietnam, Carol McCain was in a serious car crash. She was ejected out the front windshield and suffered severe injuries. She didn’t allow news of her accident to reach her husband’s ears while he was imprisoned. When McCain finally came home, he reunited with his wife, a former model, only to find that she was now 4 inches shorter, on crutches and quite a bit heavier. Just a few years later here in romantic Hawaii, the married John McCain fell head over heels in love with Cindy McCain. He then divorced his wife Carol and a month later married Cindy.

 If a man’s own wife can’t trust him, how can all the people of the greatest nation on earth trust him? What I find most curious about this, is that all the bible thumpers seem to overlook this very important, relevant trust issue. Thou shall not…..?

 If this race is close and the vote from women could make or break, it is time to unleash the truth. Last I checked, women aren’t very fond of adulterers.

 And if any thing more is needed, the Obama camp can always point out that Cindy McCain was a narcotic addict and stoled her drugs from a non-profit charity. The DEA was involved and she faced a twenty-year prison sentence.

 Mark

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Was That Tina Fey?

Friday, August 29th, 2008

 

Whoa, that was crazy. Did McCain just pick this Governor from Alaska as his VP? She is a wisecracker, I thought she was Tina Fey when she first came out. She is so not a statesman. They just sealed their fate, Obama wins!

Mark Ida

 

 

 

 

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Hawaii, Stepchild of the Presidential Race

Friday, February 15th, 2008

The Honolulu Advertiser’s headline read, “Clinton, Obama Campaigns Taking Hawaii Seriously”

Are we to really believe that? Looks to me like we are being bypassed. Both these candidates are going after bigger fish. Texas and Ohio maybe? I’m not blaming them; it’s a numbers game. The candidates must be thrilled that we don’t take their absence here personally, even though the next caucus after ours isn’t until March 4.

That’s ok, we get Chelsea and Barack’s sister…half sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. Kinda like showing up at an appointment with Governor Lingle and you get stuck with Duke Aiona. Well, not that bad, sorry. Maya’s kinda hot and if Hillary wins how would it be to be Chelsea? So as you were saying Chelsea, your Dad was President, and what does your Mom do again?

I think the reason we won’t see either candidate here has more to do with fundraising than it has to do with delegates. We are ranked a paltry 43rd when it comes to contributions made for Presidential candidates.

I think the candidates should thank the local newscasts for doing the campaigning for them. They promoted the turn ‘em and burn ‘em press junkets as if they were Barbara Walters’s Specials. Dan Meisenzahl had an “exclusive” with Hillary Clinton and boy did he ask the tough questions. I hear 60 Minutes calling. He even asked her to be his Valentine. Gosh that is so fricken cute it kills me. Ahhh the indignity. See it at: Unreal Exclusive

Gina Mangieri from Khon2 was “On the Road” with the candidates. I’m confident that after one of these Dems make it to the Oval Office we’ll see her on Air Force One.

If I had the chance this is what I would ask;

Senator Clinton: Senator Dan Inouye, State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and many other old school Hawaii Democrats are endorsing you. Don’t you think you should have at least showed up and given them some run? I mean after all, when Obama wins, our State will be out in the cold and these backers of yours in the shitter, unless Abercrombie (Obama backer) can save us. Senator, if you lose, are we in the shitter?

Senator Obama: I’ve followed you closely ever since your speech at the last Democratic Convention. You gave me a JFK type feeling. For much of the same reason we see more highlights of Shane Victorino than games that have relevance to the pennant race, the focus here in the islands wasn’t that you may become the next President, but that you were born and raised here. Following that speech some of the local writers found it curious that you weren’t trumpeting your roots here. Well, since then, they did it for you. Perhaps they were expecting, following your most eloquent speech in 2004 just before John Kerry was introduced, that you would throw a few shakas to the roaring crowd. The way I see it, you didn’t really dig Hawaii. I’m thinking your growing up here was less Jasmine Trias and more Bette Midler. I think the alumni at Punahou thought you were going to go Steve Case on them. I don’t know brother, the way I see it is that the only ding on your record is that you did drugs when you were younger. (not a ding in my opinion, I have more respect for you knowing you hit the pipe) And where did you do those drugs? Did someone say Punahou? Sorry to keep you waiting Senator, my question is; if you win, are we due for some serious payback because most of our leaders didn’t back you?

Mark Ida

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Paper or plastic? …or cloth?

Monday, February 11th, 2008


Perhaps very soon, I will have to bring my own bag to the store. It sounds good to ban all those plastic bags, but is it realistic? These bags are flying all over the place. I see birds collide with them in midair; turtles I see while snorkeling always have them wrapped around their necks as if they were lei. Really? Considering how many of these things are out there, I don’t see many of them around. I see way more diapers in parking lots. After thses bags make it home, does anyone just throw them away? I’m thinking that most are filled with trash or dog poop. It is the luggage of choice for our local homeless.

I do foresee having dozens of these cloth bags under our kitchen sinks soon. We will amass them as a result of showing up at Long’s without a bag and being forced to buy a fabric one that we can use hundreds of times. The cloth bag idea is good in an ideal situation. A family is lounging at home as Mom or Dad announces, “Hey everyone, we are all going to Foodland right now, get the fabric bags!” But aren’t many of our visits to the store unplanned? This is where I think we will begin our bag collection.

On a recent trip to the mainland a store gave me a bag that looked like the kind we get here but this one said “biodegradable”. What does that mean? It takes only 100 years to breakdown and the type we use now takes 500 years? Could we use these new types?

The thing I would miss most about those bags is using them in my trashcans at home. Don’t we all do that? I favor the bags from Don Quixote and Price Buster’s. Wal-Mart used to have good ones, but they got to small. I take a few of the bigger ones from the divider behind the cashier. Safeway’s suck. I remember my Mom buying Glad trash bags at the time when the grocery stores used paper bags. I guess we’ll have to buy those again. Won’t we still have the same amount of bags then? I think we may all need to go without liners. We would just need to rinse our cans often. I can see the trash truck driving by dripping…peeeyoooh!

I’ve wondered how something decomposes when it’s put in a bag first. When I clean and cut fish I put all the scraps in a plastic bag and knot it up tight. People do the same with dog shit. I wonder how that all ferments in the landfill. If the bags lasts a 100 years I imagine mutant life forming from within.

I’ll go with the fabric bag then. My Mom and I just picked up some cool ones from Target in Tampa for $1 each. In the kitchen I’ll rotate a small trashcan. I’ll dump my full kitchen can into the city one outside. I’ll have to rinse out the kitchen one and leave it out to dry, then take a second one back inside. This may not work for the condo folk. For me, a minor inconvenience for the sake of birds and sea life.

Mark Ida

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Aspartame Ban

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

I’m not an expert on Aspartame, but I can tell you I don’t blame any of my dizziness, headaches, bouts with epilepsy or even the weird lump on my left testicle on the gum I chew. Of course I’m kidding, I don’t suffer from any of these……well maybe headaches.

How is it that a large number of people are urging our Legislators to ban aspartame commonly known as Equal and NutraSweet? Do they realize there are over 6000 products that contain aspartame? The shelves at Foodland may soon be bare. This stuff could slowly be killing us like many other things. But shouldn’t we first start by educating the public. We would then start avoiding these products, and then manufactures would have to react. Much like we see with transfat. I still can’t tell you why it’s bad, but if I have a choice of a bag of chips and one has transfat and one doesn’t, I go with the one without. An argument could be that it is impossible to avoid aspartame because it’s in everything. That is my point too; it’s in so many products there will be nothing left to buy if a ban passes.

You would think we would have banned MSG by now. I still see it in everything. Every bowl of Saimin is a year’s supply of MSG. This subject makes me think of my years as a hairdresser. I had many clients that saw me on a regular basis to color their gray hair. It would be cause for a big freak out when one of these women got pregnant. They all said their doctor said to stop, and most would. Some I remember told me to stop with a Diet Coke in their hands. What I found to be curios was that they had me put this color on their heads once a month for the last ten years and now they are going to stop because it’s hazardous to the baby? What the hell was it doing to them all this time? I always told them that the negative effect it would have on them or their unborn child was minimal compared to the stress they would feel when they looked in the mirror everyday with a full head of grey hair. Maybe the cause of some cases of post partum depression is bad hair. I’ll ask Brooke Shields or maybe Tom Cruise.

What’s so bad about Aspartame again?

Mark

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