Following a morning visit to Queen’s Hospital to visit my father, much of yesterday was spent deconstructing Thanksgiving by converting the bird into a big pot of turkey soup. It doesn’t take much skill, just time, spices, and a few vegetables. This soup was particularly good for some reason. We served it with hot bread, a side plate of vegetables, and a generous spash of Sriracha hot chili sauce at the table.

And it’s a very good thing that it was a particularly good batch of soup because it was a big pot and there’s a lot left over!

And preparing that soup description led me to the Hot Sauce Blog, featuring the tag line, “If it’s not here, it’s not hot enough”.

Speaking of soup, cooking, and such, mahalo to Cousin Leslie for her comments and links regarding slow blogging. Yes, like slow cooking. Food for thought.

Did you notice yesterday’s rundown of 2010 state races at the Daily Kos? Interesting comments about Hawaii.

Hawai’i

There are two big questions here:

Will venerated Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye retire, enabling Republican Gov. Linda Lingle to run for the Seat?
What Democrat will attempt to succeed the term-limited Lingle as Governor?
The hot Democratic names for the Gov race are those of Representatives Neil Abercrombie and Mazie Hirono (the former Lieutenant Governor), Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, and State Senator Colleen Hanabusa. If Abercrombie or Hirono runs, you could see an interesting race for their Congressional seats (both of them safe for Democrats).

For the Republicans, Lieutenant Governor James Aiona will presumably run, but the Democrat will be favored.

If Inouye retires (indications are he won’t, but you never know), expect the same cast of characters, plus former Rep. Ed Case (who is, suffice it to say, not exactly a progressive).

Whoever is the nominee will have a crazy pitched battle against Lingle if she decides to run for Senate. She might run even if Inouye sticks around, but I suspect there’s no beating the legendary Inouye in Hawaii.

The Congressional races will depend on whether Hirono or Abercrombie runs for higher office. They’re both all set if they stay put.

I also need to note Rick Daysog’s story yesterday on the mess at Finance Factors, which included links to scanned versions of depositions filed in the case. It would be interesting to know which side disclosed copies of the depositions, which are not usually placed in the public record.

And it’s been a busy period for Daysog, who was also standing by for a possible bankruptcy filing by Hawaiian Telcom, which ended up happening early this morning on the East Coast. Rick’s story is online this morning, but I don’t know yet if it made it into the print version.

Finally, I found this review of international press reactions to the U.S.-Iraqi security pact quite interesting.