Before the nostalgic topic of the day, the latest on what is happening in the Israel-Iran War. The fact that Israel actually had the audacity to bomb Iran was a shock. The Iranian response came, but was weaker than expected. So far, after four days. Iran:  220 deaths, with 1,000 injured.  Don't believe what they report. Israel:  24 deaths, 600 injured. The Iron Dome defense does have U.S. participation, but still allows maybe 5% of drones and missiles to penetrate. Incidentally, Trump wants a  Golden Dome for America  at a  cost of $175 billion . Won't be easy, for Israel is 400 times smaller than the USA.   Much of the hardware came from the U.S. in many billions of dollars since 2011 . The critical contention is that the difference between the iron and golden ones is like comparing a kayak to a battleship. This is not a war for territory.  Israel just wanted to eliminate their most serious existential threat, that of extinction, and felt th...

  First, Happy Mother's Day. I recall growing up in Honolulu that there was some rivalry between Hawaii and Alaska to become the 49th state. Alaska was a Russian colony from 1744 until the USA bought it in 1867 for $7.2 million. Hawaii was a kingdom until 1893, became a republic in 1894, and through insider links with Congress, was ceded to the USA in 1898.  Much of what happened has continuously till today been contested by the local Hawaiian community for the illegality of it all. In 1893, Queen Lili'uokalani was deposed by a group of American sugar growers and missionaries through a coup d'etat, with the support of the U.S. Marines.  She was last in the long line from the Kamehameha dynasty founded in 1795 by King Kamehameha I. The sugar industry began to form after the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778.   The first permanent plantation was on Kauai in 1835, in time called Koloa Plantation, where my father grew up. Over the next 30 years, the four major i...