Eric Gerwig, owner of dogwalker etc!, forwarded this plea on behalf of a couple whose dogs were stolen by burglars who entered their home. All you pet owners will shudder when reading this. Oh, don’t forget to click to read the notice at full size.

Dear friends,

“Our home was burglarized Sunday and we’re asking for your assistance in locating our two Staffordshire Bull Terriers, Pele (10 mos) and Zeus (2 yrs), who were taken from us along with other personal property. Attached is a flier that we are circulating to as many locations and people as possible. There is a cash reward with no strings and no questions asked.”

I am hoping someone can help this family find their beloved pets.

If you have any information please contact owners…

Name: Robert and Cynthia Houck
Phones: 561-9252 or 561-4016 and 638-2180

Okay, posse. Keep your eyes open.

Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report last night, speaking of the stock market: “It’s like a roller coaster, only you vomit your money.”

Hey, how about that Linda Lingle? Now she’s off saying Hawaii is not a western state, and telling people on the mainland that Obama really isn’t “from” Hawaii because he just lived here as a kid and graduated from high school here.

In the Hawaii where I live, graduating from a local high school is just about the basic element of calling Hawaii your “home”, and the essential element for understanding someone’s place in the islands.

Lingle’s comments came while she was campaigning for John McCain in Greeley, Colorado. According to the Greeley Tribune:

Lingle’s visit comes a couple of weeks after McCain’s opponent, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama joked with the Tribune to “Keep in mind, I’m somebody from the West first. Hawaii is about as far west as you can get.”

“That’s a stretch, come on,” Lingle said after addressing Republican volunteers, adding that she didn’t think Obama’s comments were genuine. “Hawaii is a very different part of America.”

Lingle added that Obama spent only a few years in Hawaii during his high school years, and that his claim of Hawaii as one of his home states is disingenuous.

Of course, Obama was born in Hawaii, his family lived here, his grandparents lived here (and grandmother still lives here), his sister and her husband live here, he attended kindergarten at Noelani Elementary School in Manoa, he graduated from Punahou, his mother came back here to finish her Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii, etc., etc.

Speaking if “disingenuous”, I would put Lingle’s campaign rhetoric right up at the top of the list.

The Tribune reports Lingle has already campaigned in New Hampshire, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania. I hope she’s not drawing a Hawaii per diem or other benefits while on these campaign tours.

I’m watching the politically complex Honolulu mayor’s race from somewhat of a distance. There are, on the one hand, real issues. On those, I find myself siding with Mayor Hannemann on the transit issue. In the long run, building public transportation planning on the premise that the primary people mover must be the individual automobile above all else is, in my view, short sighted. And that seems to be the planning premise of the anti-rail advocates. People want to drive, so we should cater primarily to the drivers, and offer some buses to the others. I don’t agree. We need a realistic alternative to individual automobiles that can leverage people out of their addition to cars.

But I don’t think transit is the interesting thing here. I’m fascinated by the liberal-right coalition that Kobayashi is trying to harness.

On the one hand, you’ve got Eric Ryan and his crowd who lean so far to the right that it’s a wonder they can stay upright. Ryan was the one who wanted to throw Lingle and the other less-than-totally-Conservative sellouts out of the State Republican Party. Then you’ve got Charles Djou with his “never seen a project worth spending public money on” approach. And then Kobayashi is trying to meld those conservative Republicans with her more traditional liberal base.

What unites most of them isn’t opposition to rail. It’s opposition to Mufi’s next race. Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, obviously seeing Mufi as a likely rival in 2010 and beyond, is in Kobayashi’s camp, along with other pols who are lined up against Mufi’s faction of the Democratic Party.

One amazing thing is seeing Congressman Neil Abercrombie backing Mufi’s rail in this context. It was Hannemann’s unfair attacks during the 1986 primary election that temporarily derailed Neil’s Congressional ambitions. Neil won the special election to serve out the last months of Cec Heftel’s term (Heftel resigned to return to Hawaii to run for governor), but lost the Democratic Primary to Mufi, who’s campaign had smeared Neil as a radical drug user. Neil was bitter about Hannemann’s tactics for years. I guess time has healed those wounds. Or, at least, politics has made room for some polite accommodations.