As I See It: The stuntman

A certain candidate has a history of attention getting -events that serve to get his face and name in the news many times a day. Free publicity! Most not quite as dramatic as Sept 16. Or July 13. The Golden Escalator, Deus ex machina (God from the machine) tactic was an early warning that as a candidate he would not play fair, but as it is said, all’s fair in love and war. Politics are a bloodless (almost) form of warfare. He blithely talks about shooting someone on 5th avenue. Free publicity!

BIIF volleyball: Warriors, Ka Makani and Bulls sweep

HILO — Waiakea girls volleyball opened its two-match homestand with its second consecutive straight-sets victory on Thursday in Hilo. The Warriors beat the visiting Kea‘au Cougars by scores of 25-10, 25-14 and 25-11. It was the seventh straight-sets win of the season for Waiakea.

The unfair Electoral College: The Nebraska and Maine plan would be better provided every state divided their votes

Nebraska has long counted its electoral votes in presidential elections differently than almost every other state in the union. Forty-eight states are winner-take-all, meaning that the candidate who gets the most popular votes gets all of that state’s electoral votes. A single-vote victory in California or Texas or Florida or New York yields all those states’ 54 or 40 or 30 or 28 electoral votes, putting a candidate well on their way to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.

Trump’s welcome SALT switch: Restore the tax break back to what it was

Donald Trump is a late convert to restoring the federal income tax deduction of state and local taxes (SALT) that were capped at $10,000 when he signed his big Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2018. But Trump’s support is still most welcome and his fellow Republicans in Congress should follow his lead. The current law is simply unfair.

Obenski: School shootings

Do we really need to terrify our children about school shootings? While JD Vance says that is just a fact of life, so is cancer. That does not mean we just accept it. Most people say we can and should do better, and we must.

Telegram CEO’s arrest smacks of empty posturing

The arrest in France of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov has brought into sharp focus one of the major conflicts of our age. On one hand, we want privacy in our digital lives, which is why we like the kind of end-to-end encryption Telegram promises. On the other, we want the government to be able to stamp out repugnant online activities — like child pornography or terrorist plotting. The reality is that we can’t have our cake and eat it, too.

MAGA’s Trumpbilly Elegy

For the second time this summer, Americans have witnessed a presidential campaign debate unlike anything we’ve seen since the dawning of the Television Age.