If you’re having trouble figuring out your Board of Education vote, retired UH law school dean Dick Miller recommends Carol Mon Lee, former associate dean at the law school. She is running for the Honolulu seat, and also recommends a vote for Janis Akuna, a financial advisor for Morgan Stanley, who is running for an at-large seat.

“She is sharp and will bring a very fine-tuned business and financial sense to the BOE”, Mon Lee says of Akuna.

Let’s see. Although national head-to-head polling is showing the presidential race a virtual dead heat, state by state polling and electoral vote counts shows a very different picture with Obama and the Democrats holding a clear lead.

Fans of that popular vote initiative take note–including the Democratic legislative majority who lined up to give their support: If your policy of bypassing the electoral college were in place this year, it might result in handing the election to John McCain. Perhaps you want to rethink your position in light of this new evidence.

Did you catch Frank Rich’s column in the NY Times yesterday regarding the lack of vetting of the GOP vp selection?

The McCain campaign’s claims of a ‘full vetting process’ for Palin were as much a lie as the biographical details they’ve invented for her. There was no F.B.I. background check. The Times found no evidence that a McCain representative spoke to anyone in the State Legislature or business community. Nor did anyone talk to the fired state public safety commissioner at the center of the Palin ethics investigation. No McCain researcher even bothered to consult the relevant back issues of the Wasilla paper. Apparently when McCain said in June that his vice presidential vetting process was basically ‘a Google,’ he wasn’t joking.

Hmmm. It looks like a new population measure will be the Wasilla Unit, or 6,311 (the population of Wasilla when Sarah Palin left office as mayor of the small Alaska city).

quick calculations

Oahu: 150 Wasilla units

Hawaii: 29.1 Wasilla units

Maui: 30.4 Wasilla units

Kauai: 12.9 Wasilla units

Here we go again, another peek at the weekend table at the Lind household in Kaaawa. Our regular Saturday dinner with a former neighbor was changed to another night, so I went digging into the freezer for something different. I came up with a couple of turkey drumsticks. I then found some fresh basil (no, not in the freezer), which I decided would set the tone.

So the turkey went into a small pan to brown, then turned to low and simmered after adding some fresh lemon juice, garlic, basil, and most of a jalapeno pepper. Then it left it to simmer until the meat was tender and beginning to fall apart. In the meantime, Meda began steaming the artichoke and started a small pot of rice. As we headed for the conclusion, I added a handful or two of carrots and more of the fresh basil and opened a bottle of Rosemount Shiraz. Then it was simply a matter of moving the cat out of my place and serving on a pair of Tampico dinner plates by Red Wing.

Not bad for one of those “I wonder what’s in the freezer” meals.