It appears Felicia will be a less damaging storm than we’ve expected for much of the past week.

There’s a down side, pointed out by my friend Mike in Hilo: “The storm skeptics on the Big Island must feel vindicated and will take the next storm even less seriously.”

Meanwhile, Mike also found this reference to a hurricane hitting the Big Island and Maui back in 1871.

The gale continued in all its fury until two o’clock, when it subsided. It was fearful to see the havoc during its duration. Trees were prostrate in every direction; the mill and engine house, the boiling house, the bowling alley, sugar house, cook house, two of the Chinese and one native house were down. One store house at the beach, and all the native houses there had been blown into the sea . . .

Well, while we’ve been waiting to see which way Felicia would go, Governor Lingle’s been off apparently bolstering her national conservative image.

Lingle was featured in the lead of a story in Politico.com regarding a press conference held to attack President Obama’s health care initiative and to support the organized protesters who have been disrupting public meetings.

Three leading Republican governors on Monday defended the heated exchanges and vigorous protests taking place at health care town hall events across the country.

“I think you see a heightened emotion and passion and, you say anger, because people are scared,” said Hawaii GOP Gov. Linda Lingle, during a conference call with reporters organized by the Republican Governors Association.

“You’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts in spending on Medicare, and that’s why you see members of the AARP separated from their leadership on this issue, because they’re scared,” the Hawaii governor said. “The heightened anger is out of fear for what it’s going to mean for their lives and the lives of their families.”

It must make the governor’s heart go pitter-patter to be at the head of a group described as “leading Republican governors”.

So the question remains whether her hard line in dealing with the budget by relying on public worker cuts is being driven by national political ambitions?

And Chuck Smith responded to the brief history of the Hawaii People’s Party with a link of his own.

Your posted link goes to Jeff’s history page; mine is here.

There is a link to this on Jeff’s page (via my name) but it’s easy to miss it.

Jeff’s history is the “cleaned up” version… mine is a little livelier, IMO, heh.