Honolulu mayoral candidate Kobayashi turns against rail transit

[KamaAina]

Eeeeesh. The back story here: In a three-way primary race, incumbent mayor Mufi Hannemann, who supports a rail transit system to Leeward O'ahu (the City and County of Honolulu includes the entire island) fell just short of the 50% plus one he would have needed to win re-election outright. Instead, he's in a runoff with councilmembher Ann Kobayashi, who has up to now been waffling on transit, backing a different system than Hannemann.

Now, however, Kobayashi needs the votes of the third candidate, UH professor Panos Prevedouros, a political neophyte who garnered nearly 18% of the primary vote by running a single-issue anti-rail campaign. This is the result:

http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20081001_Kobayashi_wins_support.html

Mayoral candidate Ann Kobayashi plans to unveil a new mass-transit plan next week - a compromise she reached to receive the endorsement yesterday of former opponent Panos Prevedouros.

Kobayashi declined repeatedly yesterday to provide more details on her new transit plan, saying only that it is a hybrid of her preference of enhanced buses, or "a rubber-tire system on concrete," and Prevedouros' plan of building more dedicated highway lanes and tolls....

After his primary-election loss with 17 percent of the vote, Prevedouros said he did not have any plans on endorsing Kobayashi because of their drastic differences on mass transit....

Kobayashi has also named Prevedouros her "chief adviser for infrastructure" for her campaign. She declined to say whether she'd offer Prevedouros a job with the city if elected mayor.

Eurghh. "More highway lanes and tolls". Great -- except that some of us don't drive :grr: and many other families have only one car. Not to mention that, in some areas, the H-1 freeway, which runs roughly parallel to the proposed rail line, already has six lanes in each direction -- and is still a linear parking lot that at times rivals anything in L.A. Where are "more highway lanes" going to go?

So I and presumably many others are faced with an unpalatable choice between a mayor who sucks in just about every respect except this one, and a challenger who has apparently been co-opted by the "Stop Rail Now!" fanatics. :eyes:

[nxylas]

1. Sounds like a Greek name

As a person of Greek descent myself, I apologise on behalf of Greece for producing this fuckwit.

[KamaAina]

2. It is. I refer to him as "the malaka".

For those of you just joining us, "malaka" is the Greek equivalent of "wanker" or "jerkoff". It is used to devastating effect by most excellent NOLA blogger Adrastos, who is of Greek and Norwegian (!) descent.

http://adrastos.blog-city.com/malaka_of_the_day_john_labruzzo.htm

I did everything but swear on a bible that I wouldn't cross-post anything I wrote for Humid City. I just wrote a pretty darn good post over there called Snip, Snip and decided that my "rule" was silly. (Besides, an atheist swearing on a bible doesn't mean squat.) I have, however, slightly altered the post to reflect the utter malakatude of my subject:

It seems that not all local pols with Italian surnames are running for District Attorney. State Rep. John LaBruzzo (R-Metry) has other things on his mind. LaBruzzo is advocating a plan to pay poor folks to get their tubes tied to save on "welfare costs." LINK. It's a pity that LaBruzzo doesn't have a phallic name but he's definitely a dickhead who deserves to be beaten with a plaster schmeckle as well as a malaka of epic proportions....

Obviously, LaBruzzo's bill provides an *incentive* for the "wrong sort of people" to be sterilized instead of making it mandatory but the intent is the same. Basing public policy on bigotry and stereotypes is another form of imbecility. And imbecility and malakatude are synonymous so that's why State Rep. John LaBruzzo is malaka of the day.

Since he's such a malaka, I'm not sure if Signore LaBruzzo would agree with this song by Neil Young & Crazy Horse:

After the farcical ABC primary "debate", Adrastos suggested that George Stephanopoulos be "de-Greeked". I should ask him what the procedure is, so we can de-Greek the malaka.