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November 6, 2004 - Saturday

John Kerry's concession speech spoke of "healing". I'm afraid many more Kerry voters are interested in fleeing. The number of Americans visiting the official Canadian immigration web site the day after the election was six times normal, the BBC reports. Ditto for New Zealand and Australia, according to other reports.

The plot thickens. The press advisories from D.C.-based Qorvis Communications that were received right before the election, offering to arrange interviews with Hawaii Reporter's Malia Zimmerman, also pointed to a web site, www.hawaiiansfortruth.com, "for more information on the (Bainum) scandal."

The site was registered on October 30, 2004 and disappeared immediately after the election.

A quick check shows it was registered using an address in Paonia, Colorado, a town of no more than a few thousand people. Interesting to note, though, the telephone number listed is in Arlington, Virginia. Nowhere near Paonia. I tried calling the number yesterday and got a recorded message. No call back as yet. It smacks of a bit of false info to obscure those actually controlling the site. But we'll see.

Whois Output for: hawaiiansfortruth.com

Domain Name Owner:
Seeking Truth
4024 P Lane
Paonia, CO 81428
US

Administrative Contact:
Seeking Truth
Kline, G [GK-135]
4024 P Lane
Paonia, CO 81428, US
Phone: 571-217-3630
Email: *********@comcast.net

Technical Contact:
Omnis Network
Network, Omnis [ON-1]
3655 Torrance Blvd Suite 230
Torrance, CA 90503, US
Phone: (310)316-2744
Fax: (310)316-4991
Email: ******@omnis.com

Billing Contact:
Seeking Truth
Kline, G [GK-135]
4024 P Lane
Paonia, CO 81428, US
Phone: 571-217-3630
Email: *********@comcast.net

Record Information:
Domain Record Created: October 30, 2004 00:00
Domain Record Updated: October 30, 2004 19:33
Domain Record Expires: October 30, 2005 00:00

More to follow, I'm sure.

It's a few minutes before 6 a.m. and I can hear Leo down the hall in my bathroom. He sits on the counter and knocks things around until I pay attention. Sometimes things end up on the floor. Sometimes he turns to other countertop tactics. I'd better go shower him with attention and get him out of there before any damage occurs. Then it's off to see the sunrise.

November 5, 2004 - Friday

The Advertiser's online edition was up and available before StarBulletin.com again this morning. Something my fuzzy brain noted when I first stumbled down the hall in the very early morning.

A friend and experienced media relations professional offered up his comment on yesterday's entry::

To have "disavowed, discouraged or contradicted" the smear would have made it an issue. I think Mufi approached this in the right way.

But you're right - it will be associated with this campaign (maybe not with him) in the books.

My reply (only slightly edited):

You're right. "The less said the better" is certainly the conventional wisdom, and is also the path taken by the daily media and by the Bainum campaign itself.

But the Internet appears to be changing the traditional calculations. The conventional approach used to mean that fringe rumors fizzled and died due to lack of public attention. Today, the conventional silence means that the fringe rumors can spread quickly and without challenge through calculated use of the Internet.

I'm just trying to puzzle through whether or not the conventional calculus can be relied on anymore. I'm sure there are lots of editors and campaign advisors going through this same exercise as well.

Meanwhile, another reader reminds us that the "smear" wasn't the only issue in play in this election:

Has anyone else noticed that in all the post-election analysis both by news media and the candidates themselves, no one has mentioned leasehold as the one differentiating issue between the two mayoral candidates? I find that AMAZING that they don't recognize that Mufi is mayor because he agreed to sign 38, while Duke promised veto. The candidates and media are so focused on money, smear and dirty campaigns that they don't realize that the Hawaiians probably tipped the scale!

Then there is this sobering view from a friend of a friend. The writer worked in the Kerry campaign in central Wisconsin. She writes:

"And for those of us blue state folks who don't understand how anyone could support Bush or this war, I urge you to take a few minutes and scan some of the newspapers in this part of Wisconsin - or any small town. Here we were up against Gannett papers with little or no national news, always pulled from the wires and always skewed toward Bush, with no competing facts. It's sad but true that most non-city Americans get their news from right-leaning papers and radio stations now. The hard working, incredible volunteers that I lived and worked with here 14-16 hours a day have to work hard to find alternative information in these parts. Everyone else just turns on the one radio station to hear people rant all day about lesbians, taking away their guns and killing babies before they're born. They aren't stupid, they are just not exposed to much else.

Maybe there really are more of them than us. Maybe the world needs to fall apart before people wake up to the realities of this administration. Maybe once Bush takes away Social Security and we slip into an economic depression or the body count reaches into many thousands in Iraq, people will start thinking beyond guns and abortion."

After all that, it's important to remember the lessons of dawn. The sun rises anew every day. On most mornings the ocean has wiped the sand clean of the footprints and other signs of human activity from the day before. And even rainy days can be beautiful. The cycle goes on.

November 4, 2004 - Thursday

For the record, here's a comment received yesterday from Keith Rollman, a Hannemann campaign consultant:

You recently wrote:

"But what a shame that instead of winning the head-to-head campaign against Duke Bainum, he relied on a last-minute lowbrow campaign against his opponent's wife."

I have to disagree with you on all counts. It was more of a head-to-wallet campaign. Hannemann will most likely be remembered as defeating a moneyed juggernaut willing to spend and obscene $4.5 million dollars to buy the office of Mayor of Honolulu. If the "last-minute lowbrow campaign against (Bainum's) wife," you refer to is the story published in HawaiiReporter.com on 10/18/04 it is neither Hannemann's, as you claim, nor "last-minute."

If you have a problem with the reporter or the story, deal with them. If you have a problem with individuals who referred others to her story via the Internet, deal with them. If you have a problem with first amendment deal with that. The gestation of this story is very clear, out in the open, and does NOT include Mufi or his people. All Duke is willing to state is that it was all done by "some of Hannemann's supporters." I must remind you that that now includes half the population of Oahu.

Hannemann has steadfastly refused to involve his campaign in the dissemination of this story, and in fact, has NEVER mentioned it. He wouldn't even allow a link to Zimmerman's Web site on his own, even though he was urged to do so by some of his consultants. Your continued assertion that it was HIS campaign tactic is exactly the type of "smear" you claim to abhor.

Best regards,

Keith Rollman
Media Advisor

Rollman is correct in making Bainum's money an issue. The use of personal deep pockets raises legitimate questions.

But I don't think I've attributed the Zimmerman attack and subsequent whispering campaign directly to Hannemann's camp. Most of what has appeared here has dealt with the reporting of Hawaii Reporter, and the whole thing has more of Zimmerman's conservative Republican flavor to it. But if, for the sake of argument, we agree that neither Hannemann nor campaign insiders had anything to do with the aggressive effort to spread the story, they certainly did acquiesce and accept it. The "smear" was not publicly disavowed, discouraged, or contradicted by the Hannemann campaign, and seems to have provided the thin margin of victory. Like it or not, Rollman's protestations not withstanding, it seems to me that it will continue to be associated with Mufi in the way that things do in the long memories of island residents.

Changing the topic just a bit, it occurred to me yesterday that Hannemann will be the first mayor to take office since the mainstream media abandoned full-time coverage of city hall. It's going to be most interesting to see what difference the decline of media scrutiny makes as the administration gets up and running.

Still suffering an election hangover? You're not alone. San Francisco's Mark Morford nailed the feeling of "our" half of the country in his column yesterday.

November 3, 2004 - Wednesday - The Day After

So it's Mayor-Elect Mufi Hannemann. He finally got a big win after twenty years of trying.

But what a shame that instead of winning the head-to-head campaign against Duke Bainum, he relied on a last-minute lowbrow campaign against his opponent's wife. So that although Hannemann will be mayor, his career will be remembered as tainted from start to finish by his choice of campaign tactics, from his 1986 Congressional camapaign to the present.

The smear campaign was finally mentioned, although somewhat obliquely, in the Advertiser and Star-Bulletin this morning. Both newspapers quoted Bainum campaign officials referring to the smear.

Gov. Lingle's attempt to pick up enough votes in the Legislature to be veto proof fizzled, with House Democrats increasing their majority presence.

And isn't it interesting that the night's winners included both former legislator Clayton Hee, elected to represent Senate District 23 (which includes Kaaawa), and Hee's former wife, Lyla Berg, elected to the House from District 18 (which includes my parent's home at the edge of Kahala).

Now we're going to walk down and watch the sunrise and try not to imagine four more years of the smirking Texan.

November 2, 2004 - Tuesday - Election Day

The plot thickens. I'm told that two media "advisories" were sent to news desks yesterday by the Washington D.C.-based public relations firm of Qorvis Communications. The D.C. company was offering interviews with Hawaii Reporter's Malia Zimmerman and Dennis Murasaki, the key player in Zimmerman's recent stories attacking mayoral candidate Duke Bainum's wife which have been used as the basis for a fast moving smear campaign.

This link to Qorvis, coming on the eve of the election, more clearly positions Zimmerman's efforts as political rather than journalistic, in my view.

Qorvis Communications has been best known recently for its representation of Saudi Arabia as that country has tried to improve it's post 9-11 image. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Qorvis has been the largest beneficiary of "the Saudis' political and PR largesse, taking in $4.5 million during October 2003 through March 2004."

During an earlier six month period in 2002, Qorvis reportedly took in an astounding $14.5 million for their Saudi image making.

Most recently, the company was hired to bolster the image of insurance giant American International Group, facing a major probe of its practices in New York. But Qorvis lost the account after a booking agency, allegedly acting on Qorvis' behalf, offered to pay financial commentators and industry experts at least $25,000 each to take pro-AIG positions, both the Washington Post and the New York Times have reported.

An August 29, 2004 snippet in the political blog, Wonkette.com, describes a "Qorvis/NRA/tobacoo lobby party" with the comment, "so much evil, so little time".

The question of who is paying Qorvis Communications to intervene in the Honolulu mayor's race is going to make for a fascinating follow-up to this whole affair, since this bit of spending will eventually create a paper trail to be followed.

With all the anxiety in the air on this election day, I figured it's time to rush out another round of cat photos. Isn't that what pets are for? Cats (and dogs, I guess) are supposed to contribute to lowered blood pressure and decreased stress. That's certainly what we'll all need before the day is over.

Please click for more cats....

November 1, 2004 - Monday

We were staggered yesterday at the news of the extensive flood damage at the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus. Hard to comprehend, really. I want to cry at the description of the destruction of library holdings. And with a budget already slashed to the bone, where will the university system find the money to clean up, do structural repairs, replace equipment, and all the rest needed for the post-flood recovery? The fortunate part is that so far it looks like no one was injured. Beyond that, though, there's not much good news.

According to the temporary UH web site with emergency flood information, the UH library's computer system has suffered "extremely severe damage" and there is no guess as to when library services, including access to the computerized catalog system or data services such as electronic journals, will be restored.

Other "services" knocked out by the flood include the entire computer system used to maintain student records, class schedules, and grades, email (now partially restored), and other computer services throughout the campus.

We stopped at Windward Mall at the end of last week to cast our votes. Now we wait for tomorrow's results. Whatever the outcome of the presidential race, it looks like another turbulent four years with the country deeply divided.

I have a hard time even imagining what it will take to overcome the cultural chasms that split the country now that the Republican Party has become so heavily reliant on the American Taliban of conservative evangelical Christians--religiously intolerant, sexist, anti-modern, anti-science, and if that weren't bad enough, aggressively evangelical. I used to think this couldn't take hold in cosmopolitan Hawaii, but the Gabbard and Cavasso campaigns with their open appeals to religious bigotry and homophobia certainly put that myth to rest. From where I sit, the religious right appears intent on undermining the pillars of our constitutional experiment by seeking to reimposing religious orthodoxy, the exact thing that brought many of our country's founders to these shores. Well, not these shores exactly, but you get the drift. Tough times ahead.

Of course, in the midst of this drift towards depression, I received a contrary email worth sharing:

On the way home, I jumped off the bus and saw one of my favorite local candidates, Tommy Waters, doing sign waving at Castle Junction. I haven't done my share of candidate support ... this was the perfect opportunity. Pretty soon there was a good crowd and lots of waving, smiles, shakas and honking from local folks (Tommy is a Waimanalo guy). The area was being used by two groups ... Tommy's supporters and the supporters for his opponent, Wilson Ho. After about half an hour, Wilson Ho showed up on the same triangle of grass.

Then things got interesting.

I have been getting mailers from Ho -- pretty slimy stuff -- glossy anti-Tommy ads that are not only inflammatory, but racist. (like the one of a guy breaking into a house - a brown guy, of course - and the words are 'Tommy Waters wants you to meet your new neighbor' - insinuations that Tommy is weak on drug crimes). These are strange things to see in Hawai'i. I have also been on the email list that has people screaming about Ho's tactics (actually, someone called them 'Karl Rove tactics'). I was wondering what this Ho guy was like.

Ho went over to Tommy, shook his hand (they know each other) and began to apologize. I couldn't overhear it all, but someone later told me that Ho didn't have anything to do with those ads -- they were all mainland manufactured. Someone else told me that Ho used to be a Democrat and the Republicans paid him $$$$$! to specifically run against Tommy (who two years ago had unseated a Republican who had the worst environmental record in the State Legislature). Most everyone feels pretty confident that Tommy will keep his seat.

Whew ... what one learns just standing and holding a sign! LOL.

The best part of the day was watching the two candidates, who stood talking ... then stood holding their signs and waving at people driving by. Both seemed to personally know a large number of the drivers. What could be more Hawai'i! These two stood side by side for a couple of hours smiling and waving -- each wanting the same seat. People driving by loved it. Some of the sign holders got a few pictures of them together (I wish I had asked for copies). Both candidates are well known and liked by the community. (I have great anxiety about the evangelical support for Ho and his anti-gay, anti-abortion, etc. position, but I would not say he is a 'bad guy')

Watching these two guys together really gave me hope. Standing up for a great candidate was a great ending to a long day -- not to mention all the joy of talking and laughing with fellow sign holders who were so full of ideas and information. Hawai'i is just so special

I sincerely hope so.

I've unearthed another round of old photographs, this time from an appearance at Honolulu's old federal court by several people charged with trespassing during protests against Navy bombing of Kahoolawe. I believe these were taken around mid-1977. Just click on the photo to get the full gallery.

click for more

By this time, as opposed to a year earlier, Hawaiians had visibly embraced a cultural as well as a social and political opposition to the bombing of Kahoolawe. This is my favorite photo, showing a crowd of people pushing through the federal building's main entrance. It's a dark image but in the center one person is looking back towards the camera and her face catches the light. It's Emma DeFries, cultural and spiritual advisor to the early Kahoolawe movement.

October 31, 2004 - Sunday

When we left home about 6 p.m. last night bound for dinner with a friend in Kaneohe, it was cloudy but dry. It started raining as we passed over the little bridge in Waikane that had flooded earlier in the week. By the time we were on Kahekili Highway, the two-lane straightaway beyond Temple Valley, it was pouring. Actually, it was raining so hard that even with windshield wipers on hyper, we were having those "no visibility" moments that brought traffic to a crawl. I would have stopped in place except that I knew the car behind would have plowed into us before being able to see us.

I turned off Kahekili and we called our friend from around Windward Mall, but decided it would be better to just keep going at that point than turn around. We probably should have just stopped in the mauka parking lot of the mall and waited, but you usually don't think that way when you've got a destination in mind.

The last mile along Kamehameha Highway was as spooky as it gets, passable only by straddling the high ground in the middle of the two lanes, as crazy people in trucks tried to squeeze by through rising water on either side as lightning flashed on all sides. The National Weather Service flood warning interrupted Garrison Keiler just before we reached our destination. But we made it to a waiting meal of barbecue chicken and a glass of wine while the storm headed over the mountains to cause flooding in Manoa and beyond.

And by 9 p.m. it was already history. No rain, no flooding, and we headed for home.

Courtesy of Tom Engelhardt and MotherJones.com comes this excellent guide to careful reading of a news story, in this case a bit of Washington official-leak reporting. I suppose that more extended examples like this are necessary to teach the art of precision digestion of news.

Tonight's appearance of Dick "Bogeyman" Cheney is shaping up as an interesting Halloween event, according to this email making the rounds yesterday.

It's a Dick Cheney Halloween Party! By now you likely know that the Republicans are sending in Vice President Dick Cheney to help put Hawai'i into the red column next Tuesday. The chief architect of the Iraqi war will be "a special guest along with other Republican candidates at the 2004 Victory Rally" at the Hawaii Convention Center, Sunday, October 31 at 11:00 P.M. NOTE: This late-hour event time is indeed correct, likely due to Cheney's schedule as he is flying in from New Mexico. The Convention Center doors will open at 7:30 P.M.

INTERNATIONAL MEDIA WILL BE THERE - so join the spontaneous protest beginning at 7:00 P.M. around the Convention Center. Appropriate SPOOKY!! Halloween COSTUMES AND SIGNS are suggested but not required.

Despite the evening flooding, yesterday started relatively normally. The 6:34 a.m. sunrise gave no clues of the rain to follow. As usual, just click on the photo for a larger version.

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