District 21/22/23 Newsletter (Diamond Head to Kakaako, Waikiki to Moiliili-Pawaa)

This Wednesday (4th Wednesday), April 26, 2006, at 6 PM, Hawaii Republican Headquarters, is the last monthly meeting before the state convention May 26-28, at the Sheraton Waikiki. Everyone who wants to attend can attend either as a delegate, alternate or guest -- of which they all get treated basically the same except in voting matters. Only officially designated delegates get to vote -- but there's a lot more to the participation than the official business of being a duly certified delegate. You get to meet everybody who's involved in politics and government up close and personal -- which is quite another thing from learning about them only through the media -- and so I would avail myself of such opportunity to "be" the scene.

Rather than just sitting home and writing letters to the editor of the newspapers -- that the newspapers will edit out to maintain a favorable bias to their own candidates and positions -- you get to find out firsthand what's really going on. The state convention is the kickoff event for a lot of people's campaigns -- and the time at which we learn about most of them. However, the official deadline for registering one's desire to run is in July. The major qualification is one's own desire to run -- and nobody else can decide that for another or prevent another from expressing that will and desire. It's as simple as that -- in case anybody has ever entertained such an ambition.

Of course the worst secret in town, is that not even the Democrats believe there is anybody who can compete against Linda Lingle for re-election as governor -- but undoubtedly the media will do the best they can to sow those doubts so there will be some money spent on them to influence the unwary and uninformed. But by now, practically everybody has met the Governor and knows there couldn't be a better person to represent everybody as the governor of Hawaii. As good as she was the first time around, she never stops improving.

And so that establishes the foundation upon which more people like her can be in those positions of responsibility and accountability. In the past, it seemed like the governor's major role was coming up with new excuses of why government didn't work as it should -- and anybody who said so, didn't know what they were talking about. So the political climate has changed in that important regard -- and that is the beginning of change, in the hearts and minds of the citizens. One can't just dictate change from above -- but everybody has to be on board for society to have any meaning. So it is a slow and tedious process that requires and exercises patience, perseverance and dedication. Just playing the game is as important as winning.

I still encounter the old way of thinking -- that it is dangerous to declare oneself to be a Republican, or even be too interested in these matters -- because there might be repercussions, consequences, retaliation and retribution. And that mentality is a tremendous problem -- and why we needed a New Beginning -- in a society that aspires to be truly free and democratic. That old ways was not a good society, let alone evolving toward a more perfect one. That is the problem of government -- when it mainly exists to serve itself, and so there is that need for another perspective to oversee those possible abuses of power and trust. That's the role of the Republican Party in Hawaii -- to maintain that vigilance, and provide examples that government can be done right -- by the people.

The media used to regard that as their role -- of reigning in the dominating party so that a second political party was not necessary -- and so regards us somewhat as competitors to the niche they have reserved for themselves. But they too can be equally self-serving and are frequently aligned with the dominant party to maintain the rule of the self-designated few over the many -- while calling themselves "Democrats." Don't be misled by the words, labels or ideologies.

The most important quality to look for in leadership, is how a person relates to those they represent. And that is why I invite you to come and meet these people at whatever opportunities are presented to you -- and find out for yourselves, rather than depending on people to tell you how you should think about these things -- because they said so.

You can use these links to keep up with the latest thoughts and developments. The last is my personal thoughts summarizing what one needs to know in as few words as possible -- but that's just the way I see it. I don't presume to speak for anybody but myself.

http://www.gophawaii.com/
http://www.hawaii.gov/gov/
http://hawaiirepublican.blogspot.com/

Seeing Things Rightly

The newspapers, rather than being a useful source of information (as many of these practitioners believe), is mostly valuable for revealing the amount of ignorance and misinformation in the public consciousness -- that is ripe for opportunists to exploit and manipulate, beginning with the most vulnerable, who are the most vain and proud of their knowledge -- the reporter/editor themselves, seeing a steady stream of the rich and powerful reveal themselves to them, and feeling that they themselves could do that also because the world’s greatest make it seem so easy. They’re not aware of how much work went into perfecting that art -- and are likely to think that the most superficial aspects, are the profoundly distinguishing ones, proudly proclaiming on their first day of work, “I’m not sure what I want to do in life, but I’m pretty sure I want to be rich and famous,” as though that was what distinguished those who were, from those who aren’t.

So the envy and resentment against the truly rich and powerful, reach a frenzied pitch among these most ambitious yet frustrated types -- and every time, upon seeing the president, beg the question once more, “Why not me? I’m smarter than he/she is! I should sit in the front row, in the first seat, and ask the first and last question -- and talk as much as I want, because the First Amendment guarantees my right to speak as long as I want, saying whatever I want, and not allowing anybody else to speak. And you people have to listen to me.”

Which is not what the First Amendment says, of course, but that is what they will be saying in the many articles they present to us -- as well as the ones they exclude. While relentlessly suppressing every opinion not to their liking, they will tirelessly impose their right to speak as much as possible, exclusively, and everybody else better not get in their way and protest, or else the next day, it’ll be even worse for their "enemies."

And so today’s newspapers have become the veritable modern Tower of Babel (Babble) in which everyone speaks and demands to be listened to -- and nobody is interested in listening to anyone else anymore because in their attempts to bully and intimidate with their impressive jargon, they have become so obscure and obtuse (nuanced) that it doesn’t matter what they say anymore. They’ve tuned any possible audience out -- through their own oppressive censorship and arbitrary political correctness that has even themselves confused.

They no longer know if they are FOR the environment -- or want to burn as much of it as possible at guaranteed low prices. While suggesting that obesity might be a public health problem, they preclude all possibilities of making alternatives feasible by promoting favorable biking and walking conditions -- but instead, desire that everybody patronize the fixed rail solution as the answer to the "transportation" problem. So nothing is connected and related to everything else -- in their world of partisanship, fragmentation, confrontation, ambition, confusion, contention, disintegration and deterioration.

That is the Master Plan -- for creating infinitely more high-paying jobs to fix the ever-growing problems escalating out of control.

How Thems Do It

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/20/AR2006042002375.html

Los Angeles Times Yanks Columnist's Blog
Hiltzik Accused of Using Pseudonyms
By Howard KurtzWashington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 21, 2006;

The Los Angeles Times suspended the blog of one of its top columnists last night, saying he violated the paper's policy by posting derogatory comments under an assumed name.

The paper said in an online editor's note that Michael Hiltzik, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes the Golden State column, had admitted posting remarks on both his Times blog and on other Web sites under names other than his own. The Times said it is investigating the matter. Editor Dean Baquet declined comment, and Hiltzik said he could not comment.

The deceptive postings grew out of a running feud between Hiltzik and conservative bloggers in Southern California. One is Hugh Hewitt, a radio talk show host and blogger. The other is an assistant Los Angeles district attorney named Patrick Frey, who maintains a blog under the name Patterico's Pontifications.

When commenters on Frey's Web site criticized Hiltzik, an examination by Frey of the Internet addresses involved showed it was the Times writer who responded in remarks posted under the name "Mikekoshi."

Frey wrote that "the evidence is overwhelming that he has used more than one pseudonym. Hiltzik and his pseudonymous selves have echoed each other's arguments, praised one another, and mocked each other's enemies. All the while, Hiltzik's readers have been unaware that (at a minimum) the acid-tongued 'Mikekoshi' . . . is in fact Hiltzik himself."

Frey cited other examples. On another local blog called L.A. Observed, he noted, "Mikekoshi" described Los Angeles writer Cathy Seipp "as a 'tool' and as someone 'hampered by her own ignorance.' "

On Frey's site, "Mikekoshi" said of Hewitt: "The prospect of having Hugh Hewitt running around loose in public without a muzzle should make any intelligent person nervous."

"Mikekoshi" has also ripped Frey, writing, "Congratulations, Patterico, for a new high-water mark in dopey criticism," and "What a buffoonish post this is."

The public sniping has been just as antagonistic. Hewitt took a swipe this week at the Times's corporate parent, the Tribune Co., for a dip in profits and circulation. Hiltzik responded on his blog that Hewitt's Web traffic is down because "his peculiar brand of reactionary conservatism has become increasingly marginalized on the fringes of American political life."

Hewitt last night called the Times editor's note "very, very clever. It states the 'offense' is misrepresenting identity to the public, not the publication of false identities and the manipulation of opinions so as to influence opinions. Are they digging into all of Hiltzik's stories? All of the purported comments on his blog? . . . It does seem like a question of how a huge media institution will treat deception within its product."

Hiltzik and a Times colleague shared a 1999 Pulitzer for beat reporting for exposing corruption in the entertainment industry.

On his Times blog, before the editor's note appeared, Hiltzik did not deny using the name "Mikekoshi" and seemed to dismiss Frey's complaint: "This is amusing, because most of the comments posted on his website are anonymous or pseudonymous. . . . Anonymity for commenters is a feature of his blog, as it is of mine. It's a feature that he can withdraw from his public any time he wishes. He has chosen to do that in one case only, and we might properly ask why. The answer is that he's ticked off that someone would disagree with him."

The editor's note said that Times policy, both in print and online, is for "editors and reporters to identify themselves when dealing with the public."

Propaganda, Pride, and Direct Experience

“You know what propaganda is, don't you? It is to propagate, to sow or constantly repeat an idea. That is how the propa- gandist, the politician, the religious leader imprints on your mind what he wants you to believe. There is a listening involved in this process also. Such people constantly repeat what you should do, what books you should read, whom you should follow, which ideas are right and which are wrong; and this constant repetition leaves a mark on your mind. Even if you do not consciously listen, it is making an imprint, and that is the purpose of propaganda. But you see, propaganda is merely vested interest, it does not bring that truth which you immediately understand when you are really listening, when you are paying attention without effort.

Have you ever considered what it is to be successful as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a business man or politician? To feel that you have inwardly achieved a certain control over yourself which others do not have, or that you have succeeded where others have failed; to feel that you are better than somebody else, that you have become a successful man, that you are respected, looked up to by others as an example - what does all this indicate? Naturally, when you have this feeling, there is pride: I have done something, I am important. The feeling of `I' is in its very nature a sense of pride. So pride grows with success; one is proud of being very important compared with other people. This comparison of yourself with another exists also in your pursuit of the example, the ideal, and it gives you hope, it gives you strength, purpose, drive, which only strengthens the `I', the pleasurable feeling that you are much more important than anybody else; and that feeling, that sense of pleasure, is the beginning of pride.

Pride brings a great deal of vanity, an egotistic inflation. You can observe this in the older people and in yourself. When you pass an examination and feel that you are a little cleverer than another, a sense of pleasure comes in. It is the same when you outdo somebody in an argument, or when you feel that you are physically much stronger or more beautiful - immediately there is a sense of your own importance. This feeling of the importance of the `me' inevitably brings conflict, struggle, pain, because you have to maintain your importance all the time.

It is obviously essential to have knowledge at certain levels, but it is even more important to see how knowledge is used egotistically, for selfish purposes. Observe yourself and you will see how experience is employed by the mind as a means of self-expansion, as a means of power and prestige. Watch the grown-ups and you will see how they hanker after position and cling to their success. They want to build a nest of safety for themselves, they want power, prestige, authority - and most of us, in various ways, are after the same thing. We don't want to be ourselves, whatever we are; we want to be somebodies. There is a difference, surely between being and wanting to be. The desire to be or to become is continued and strengthened through knowledge, which is used for self-aggrandizement.

It is important for all of us, as we are maturing, to go into these problems and understand them, so that we do not respect a person merely because he has a title or a high position, or is supposed to have a great deal of knowledge. Actually, we know very little. We may have read many books, but very few have direct experience of anything. It is the direct experiencing of reality, of God, that is of vital importance; and for that, there must be love. “

--Krishnamurti,
Life Ahead

The Season of Renewal

The great message of the season is that one must die to the old -- to be reborn in the new. That is the profound significance of Easter; that’s what makes life possible at a higher level of being, consciousness and fulfillment. A lot of people never die to the past, and so as life goes on, they only live in the past -- their memories, thoughts, habits, traditions -- and are incapable of renewing themselves to live in the greater promise of the present, which implies both the past and the future -- in the summation and integration of existence that is the challenge of reality and actuality for every generation.

The memories, the thoughts, the generalizations, the theories, ideologies and speculations, are not real; it is only the awareness of the present, the actual occurrence of that moment, that is real. There is intelligence in the plant, in the house, in the road -- which an aware mind can read -- just like they can read a book, but the book can only tell one what the writer is thinking and knows -- and not about the totality of that which is reality -- even beyond what our conditioning (education) tells us it is.

One doesn’t need to remember that a red light means to stop; he can tell by the movements and reactions of everybody/everything else, that it is not wise to proceed at that moment -- and not just because the light is red. He is reading and relying on the intelligence of everything else -- and not just what he has been taught by someone else, to remember as an inviolable truth, overriding every other consideration. It doesn’t matter if one is fully “right” in exercising their right, if the consequences of merely being “right” and expressing it, cancels any future ability to be “right” again.

The past is always dying to the present -- but some hold onto the past more strongly than others. In many cultures and societies, one’s education and conditioning is not to learn any other but that one they are taught (indoctrinated) -- for all time; the truth that they are taught, is the truth they have been born into and can never relinquish -- even when some greater comes along, or is made manifest. Such people are trapped -- into thinking they can never be another way, other than how they are told they have to be -- by the many authoritarian figures they will encounter in their lives. Such people will insist they have to be whatever “they” expect them to be -- because that is who they are inescapably, and must be all their lives.

So to break this bondage is a great achievement in every life -- enabling one to move to a higher level of possibilities, and not only remain within the control of the authoritarians and demagogues who wish to determine these things for everybody else, for all time, and under every circumstances.

Such a moment of significance and challenge did not just happen once, thousands of years ago, in a fabled past, but occurs daily in life and society. How we answer that is the passion of our lives.

Changing Hawaii

The problem with being “paradise,” is that one is led to believe that nothing needs to be changed, to be improved, could be done any better -- which of course is the familiar complacency and indifference that is often our greatest frustration, living here. While tolerance for that which cannot be changed or is superficial, is wisdom, tolerance for that which can be changed and must be changed, is folly. Unfortunately, those who should know the difference, are famously proud that they cannot distinguish any difference -- and so we are on our own, to be those who can discern such things and make that difference.

To expect that others might be able to appreciate that -- would also be futile, as that would require that they knew beforehand, what was trying to be accomplished. In fact, that anything was being attempted at all, would elicit from them, a knee-jerk response to discourage and undermine any attempts to change the status quo -- of their unsatisfactory “perfection.” “Life,” they would philosophically lament, “is supposed to be this veil of tears, lamentations and frustrations,” and those who would tempt the gods otherwise, risked bringing down the wrath and displeasure of the gods themselves -- in whatever calamity of the day it was convenient to point out. And everyone would nod knowingly in agreement.

The modern high priests of knowledge -- the media, schools, universities -- would also add, that their authority on such matters should not be challenged, or even questioned -- and the usual annual increases in tribute, devotion and sacrifice must be continued, as the gods would be very angry, if their “chosen ones” were upset and inconvenienced in the least. After all, the reason they were exulted in the first place, was to be the servants of the people -- and so they were accepting the bounty of the people, “for the people” -- and not for their own benefit. In their minds, everything they had done in their lives “for the people,” could never be compensated but would always remain an entitled debt society owed them.

Even such privileges, status, and greatly higher than the median pay, were a meager acknowledgement of the much, much greater worth they were entitled to -- over everybody else in this world, in this life. Only in the next life, would they receive their proper due, sitting at the right hand of God, directing Him in all the right moves -- piling up another infinite debt from those less worthy.

Why There is No Hope for the Newspapers

Biased partisanship is the problem of the mainstream media; more, improved, even better, balanced, biased partisanship is not the answer.What's lacking in their writing is the non-partisan person without a preconceived idea of what is right and wrong -- but is a truly inquiring mind.

Instead, they give us more biased, close-minded, smug people of the familiar sort -- of the kind their organizations are dominated and infested with. And like failing businesses everywhere, they insist on selling us what they have -- instead of what we want. Their response is to go out and recruit better salesman to sell us what we don't want.

We don't want more biased, partisan information, no matter how good their deceptions and manipulations are. We don't care how much they claim they are "objective" because we can tell how biased they really are -- which further undermines their credibility.

And then when they do locate talent of this ability and quality, they promptly try to make them write just like them -- in the narrow-minded, biased, partisan way they call "objective," undermining that attempt. They just don't get it and all signs point that they never will; they will go down the way they are, and something new and fresh will supplant them.

Intelligence has the ability to respond and change -- instead of their editors demanding that the world change to suit them -- and recognize them as the next messiah -- the self-anointed ones who should do the thinking for all mankind.

It'd be appealing if they weren't such narrow-minded, petty people, who are to intelligent discourse what Helen Thomas is to beauty, truth and graciousness. But she's the best they've got -- and they wonder why there are no takers.