 Bingo we're back. We're here with Marianne Sasaki and we're doing uh, what are we doing? We're doing what happened to the discussion? He said, she said, HSSS. That's what we used to do in law school when we were unhappy. Marianne Sasaki is a lawyer down the street and she's a regular host of life in the law and she's a very important person for Think Tech and she joins me every now and then and we do this thing called, well actually it's more frequent than that. I wanted to be more frequent than that. I wish it was more frequent than that too. She said, and we talk about things we agree on or not. And frequently they are things we're interested in, in this case, some politics. Politics always, always politics. So we're talking about ruminations political. Yes, let's ruminate. Let's ruminate. What happened this weekend? What happened at the polls? It was the voting show, right, as opposed to all the other shows we watched. It's just another show, there's a blend, you know, a morphing between fact and fiction. This one was both. Both? So where was everybody though at the beach? You know, that's a really good question, they weren't voting. You know, who said recently in the paper, the remarkable thing is that they don't vote but then everybody gets very interested in watching the results of the voting. That's so strange. It's so bizarre. That's so opposite of the way it should be, right? Yeah. Right? And you know, you really have no, you can't be disgruntled if you don't vote. No. I mean, you can't say I don't like the way things are going if you're not participating. You walk down the street and ask people if they voted and remarkably so many of them, either they won't tell you, which means they didn't vote, or they'll tell you they didn't vote. They don't care. No. They're interested in the result but it's as an observer, as a spectator. We get spectator government here, right? That's what we have. It's a show. It's a spectator citizenry. Well, you know, but I have a little, I think, I think Kirk Holdwell is going to pull out. 34%. Pull it out. I know. That's lower than ever before. You know, and for months it's been the biggest news item on all the channels, all the news channels, all the regular channels every day, the drumbeat of politics, and yet when you know, when you get to election day, not granted, it's a primary election day. Right. But still, you get to election day 34% in this state. That is embarrassing. And really, what kind of a message does it send to the millennials, by the way, who didn't vote? No, they're not big voters. They're not really bad. You know, here we sit every day, we talk about how they got to come in, come in from the cold, get, this is your time. It's their turn. They don't change from within and all that. And no, they don't come in. And it's worse than other states. It's worse than ever before. The trend is clear. We're not voting. What an awful situation. People have lost faith in the system, you think? Yeah. That's got to be what it is. Well, they're too busy. Too busy doing what? Too busy watching TV, watching the results of the voting, that they'll actually go out and vote. That's what. Well, the Olympics were on this weekend, too, so maybe that affected it. Yeah, it's old news already. I know. I don't watch the Olympics. There's only like two sports, like biathlon, you know, shooting and skiing. I think that's a very interesting sport, like shot put. So what about the mayor? I think Kurt Colwell's going to pull it out. I really do. Even though despite all the early signs and all the poor tents and everything, I think he's going to win. Because now Carlisle's not in anymore, right? So Carlisle was drawing votes away. I think so. His pro-rail, you know, drawing votes away from the other pro-rail. So now he's out. What happened to Carlisle? What made him fail? I don't know. I don't know. Did he fail? I mean, I think anybody that has the nerve to run is, you know... What made him lose? Well, he only served one term, right? So I guess the people of Honolulu were not very affected by his leadership qualities. I think they're very affecting, but... You had him on the show. I had him on the show. I like his politics. He's a little bit pro-law and order, because, you know, he was a prosecutor attorney for me. You know, I'm a little more Frenchy. A Frenchy girl. Everyone watching this knows that. We're no more than that. She's on the left side of the left. The left of the left. The French side. So I don't know. You know, I think he's engaging, but, you know, it also comes down to money. He didn't have any money, either. I think DeJu is very well funded. DeJu is better funded, you know, than Kurt Colwell. Yeah, I think so. But doesn't he have money outside of donations? I mean, doesn't he have... I think I thought he had came from family money or something like that. I just have... I just...that's what I thought I heard, that is positive. He may have support money coming from Republican organizations on the mainland, you know, entirely possible. Really? Well, he's a Republican. And he was, you know, connected with the Republican Party during the lingual years anyway. And so although he went... You know, when he went to the city, he became non-denominational. Right, right. I think he still has those old connections. Oh, I didn't know. Okay. And as and when he runs for governor, you know, you'll see all that pop up again. I think he's going to run for governor, too. He might, but, you know, it's going to be hard to beat David E. Gaye right now. That's going to be hard for him to run as a Republican. Republicans have really, you know, pulled the rug out from under themselves. Well, in general, yes. Well, this has been a very bad year. Republicans are going to remember this year very like they had a hangover for the whole year. Because nothing good... Everything goes bad for them. You talk as if it's temporary. Well, I mean... A lot of people feel it's permanent, that the party is permanently finished. You think? I don't think so. I think they'll recover, but I don't think they'll ever let any, like the barbarians, like Donald Trump in the gates ever again. I think they'll keep that pretty closed off, you know. So back to the mayor. So you say that Caldwell will win because... Well, he has a following. He's the incumbent. Right, and he's more, I think... He's very affable. Yeah, and he's more consistent with the ideology of the people, I think. You know, I think that if, you know, it's a liberal town. It's a democratic town. It's not a Republican town, you know. They don't want to quash everything, you know. People want to see real. Maybe they don't want to see it to Middle Street. Maybe they want to see it a little further or whatever, but, you know... I agree with that. I mean, just, of course, it's a bad and total conversation. I find that most people say, well, it doesn't matter how we got here. It was a torturous route, and we don't agree with it, but here we are. Yeah, we're here. These are our options. We have to pick reasonably, rationally, pick an option, and we're going to tear it down. I can't tear it down. Can't tear it down. It's already too late. You can't put that genie back in the bottle. So, you know, yes, but I think he's affable. I don't think the Jew is so affable. Is that wrong to say? He's just not charming. Do you find him charming? He's not charming. I do. I find him charming. You do? You really do? That doesn't rule the day for me, but I find him charming. Oh, that's interesting. I think he's a little bit... Oh, he's very friendly. Maybe it's me. It's you. It is you. Because you're a J-fide-out. I know him for a long time. Well, that you probably know him since he's... Yeah, right, right. Okay. So, yeah, I'm just talking about... You know, I only have seen him on TV. I've never met him or whatever. So, I mean, you might be very charming, Mr. J-fide, personally, but... Well, I think he's more charming than Charles J-fide. Charles J-fide was a little bit standoffish. Oh, yes? Yeah. Although, you know, he's got good policies, and he's very akamai about these things. And, you know, if you go into... If you're anti-rail, he's a pretty appealing candidate. Right. So, are you going to vote for him, being anti-rail? He's too late for that. I'm not telling you. Secret ballot. Read my lips. You're so opposed to it. Yeah, it's too late. You have to take a much more Zen approach. It's here. Well... It's going to be here. It's going to affect us. You want to talk about that for a minute? Sure. You want to digress to rail? I always like to talk about rail because I think it's a good idea. There was something recently about Grubowski and how he was going to be the next sacrificial lamb, I think, was the term. And I agree. I think he will be the second... Oh, yeah. Colleen Hunter-Boosa is going to have him. And he's going to go the way of all sacrificial lambs. That doesn't solve the problem at all. No. The problem is a money problem. And, you know, we really spent too much already. We were extravagant in so many things we did. We could have made this whole project a lot cheaper. How are we extravagant? Because, you know, I only... Didn't have to be, you know, raised rail. Didn't have to be this kind of rail. It could have been at grade. It would have been fine. But, you know, we had to be fancy. Like the city of the future? Yeah. I mean, is that what... Was it aesthetic concerns? I made them... No, I think the more money you spend, the more the workers get paid and put it together. Really? That's so cynical. You don't think they... That's my view? Yeah. Really? I think... Wait, we're looking for excellence here. That's not a thing we were looking for. But the design is excellent. And I've seen the cars. And the cars are excellent. You can buy excellent cars anywhere. But, you know, queries. Is this going to be an excellent system? I don't... You know, I think once people start... Or it starts with the root. Do you can't... You know, I think once people start using it, they'll... I gotta imagine, at the beginning of other rail systems, people must have felt the same way. They must have felt, we don't need this. It's a tremendous amount of money. It's a tremendous incursion into our lives. And then you get used to it. You get used to the benefits of riding around and not having to worry about your car and getting places quickly. We have a long way to go before it reaches... I hope I live this long enough to ride on the rail. Do it. Me too. I'm not kidding. It's not... You know, there's going to be so many issues. I mean, why is not good at big projects? You know, this became clear in the case of the convention center, which was the $350 million project. And like so many issues, so many consternations, so many controversies. And the same thing with the medical school. It was, you know, a big argument about it. If it costs more than $100 million of taxpayer money, you can expect big arguments about it. Hawaii, the land of protest. And so, you know, no surprise here. This is the biggest one of all. I think people realize how big it is. It's big. It's big. What's it at now? How much they spend already? Probably less than $5 billion, but they get a long way. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money, yeah. So, you know, what's going to happen with it? I would say it's going to take a long time. There'll be a lot of distraction. I would say there'll be cost overruns to beat the band. It'll be $10, $12 or more billion. Don't you think they should just tax the rich and get it built? There you go. Remember, the rich are the ones who get the campaign. Isn't that, isn't that, don't you think that would be a terrific idea if you made over a certain amount of money? You should contribute some extra to the, to the rail because of civic pride. You know what's going to happen? The people, the people who don't have a lot of money, who are on the, you know, the disadvantage side of the disparity equation, they're going to ride the rail. Right, but so are other people. You don't believe me that other people. In New York, everybody does it. In Hawaii, there's the thing called, I call it the blush. The blush is if it's new, if it's just opened its doors, everybody has to go see it. Right. Everybody has to be there for a while. Right. And then the blush wears off, and then it's, you know, it's nothing. I think it really depends on where it goes and how extensive it is. I mean, students would definitely use it if it went to the college. I think millennials are prone to use it because they're not even buying cars. They're riding bicycles. They don't even, are not even interested in car culture. So I found it an interesting little fact about the millennials. You know what? They don't use credit cards. They don't use credit cards, which is sort of somehow consistent with riding a bicycle. They don't have money. Well, they don't have money, but they also don't want to get even more to mesh in the credit system, more mesh than student loans and stuff like that. How do they actually spend cash? I guess so. I think there'll be something on their phones coming up soon, you know. Oh, well, there is. Like in China, you know, they'd be crazy. Quick pay with your phone. Quick pay with your phone, so you don't need a credit card for that. Right. That's not credit, but it comes out of their bank account. But I mean, they're unwilling to buy like big cars and large, as their parents did, large investments like appliances and things like that. They're not doing it. It's hurting the credit industry. The credit industry really, really wants these people like badly. Well, yeah. But, you know, the thing about it is that they're in a generation where it's hard to get a job that will support an extravagant lifestyle. Well, right. And they, you introduced me to this. It's the, what do you call it, the gig economy. Oh, the gig economy. And everybody thinks, oh, that's great. That's freedom. But in fact, you make a lot less money. It's insecurity. And the employer, you know, pays a lot less to get the same work done. So it's really a matter of efficiency rather than, you know, making a lot of money. It's not a personal, it's not the best personal choice. I mean, people do it because they have to do it because they need a job. But I mean, I think people would like benefits. I think people like sick days and holidays and help medical benefits rather than, you know, driving around for Uber. And, you know, well, over they give you a paycheck. I don't know if they have benefits, but they, you know, everything is contractual now. Certain amounts of money. It's the way the world is going. It's the way the world, and in a funny way, it's more efficient. But I think it's, it requires, you know, flexibility and to change. And it's happening. If you look around, you'll see it's happening. And you know what else is happening? What? A break. A break is happening. Watch this. Aloha. I'm Carl Campania. I hope you please visit us this summer. It's a wonderful summer. It's actually a cooler summer than we're used to. But I hope that you come back and visit us and watch our show Education Movers, Shakers and Reformers here on Think Tech Hawaii. It's at noon every Wednesday. See you then. Hi. My name is Kim Lau and I'm the host of Hawaii Rising. You can watch me live every other Monday at 4 p.m. Aloha. Aloha. I'm State Senator Russell Ruderman. I represent the Pune and Ka'u District on the Big Island and the host of Ruderman Roundtable. We're here on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 2 p.m. You can join us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. You can find a link there to a page where you can see past episodes and we talk here about good government, environmental issues and issues of the day facing the state of Hawaii. I'm Russell Ruderman. Please join us for the Ruderman Roundtable. Mahalo. Okay, we're back with, you know, what do you call it? What do you call the show again? He said, she said, and we're talking about political rumination or rumination is political. And now we get to my favorite part of the show. That's what I was going to ask you. My favorite part, too. Common thing, you know. We can't help but doing the Trump Report. What? Right, it is. It's the Daily Trump Report. We bring you the Daily Trump Report in which immigrants, well, this is the, straight from the pages of the New York Times, immigrants are going to face heightened scrutiny for coming into the country, which I don't even know what that means. I mean, it has, it really has a really negative specter. Like, you know, like we're going to, we're going to do something to you before you come in and take these tests of what, I don't know what heightened scrutiny means. And then he, Donald Trump also has a little problem of his former campaign manager getting payments from Russia, which is, put a little thorn in his little, in his side. And should we talk about the polls in which he's tanking miserably? I don't know. There's so much here. I know, I know. Let's go stream of conscious as we always do. Go ahead. Apparently, Donald Trump is reacting very badly to his drop in the polls. And he says that if he doesn't win Pennsylvania, which he's like 10 points behind in Pennsylvania now, that it will have been rigged that you could be sure that something, something shady had gone on that there were, he's, he's hiring what are those things, poll checkers? You know those people who check the polls to make sure the vote is correct. He doesn't have any ground. He has no people knocking on your door. He has nobody like that, but he's, but he's hiring poll checkers. Creating suspicion where there is none. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, he really is going to undermine the system if it, if it benefits him at all. It will benefit him because the only way for him to retain his credibility is to discredit the system, right? Yeah. So the whole thing is rigged. If he doesn't win, it's not his fault. He is the winning candidate no matter what. The funny thing is, is it was rigged, but the Democrats rigged it. I mean, there was an argument to be made for rigging, right? I mean, something happened in what, Nevada, with Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Hillary Clinton, and we know something. And so it's funny, he's taking that trope and he's sort of bending that trope for his own benefit. It's just terrible. But he came up with, within the last 24 hours, that he wants to, he wants to stop doing diplomacy with our world with our customary friends. He wants to focus on foreign policy on crushing ISIS. That's what he wants to do. You mean the group founded by President Obama, that ISIS? And he blames, he blames President Obama. And co-founded Hillary Clinton? Right, co-found, right, exactly. Oh, the very same one, huh? All their fault and he's going to go out and crush them and that's job one. You know, the greatest thing about him saying that they founded ISIS was that there was this conservative talk show host who tried to give him and said, well, we understand you don't mean that they actually founded it. You mean that they set up a circumstance of world geopolitics so that, you know, they could have, and Trump was adamant, he's like, no, they founded it. Nope, founded it. They founded it. They founded ISIS. And I thought, wow. That's what I call loose thinking. Yeah. Well, I mean, and everybody says, I mean, the Democrats come back on that as he doesn't think properly. He's not qualified either by knowledge to be president. John Oliver said something funny about him last night. John Oliver said, you know, there's this game, like a sort of prison's dilemma game where one person always tells the truth and one person always lies and you sort of have to figure out which one. And he said that Donald Trump is the person, those two people, but in one person, he always tells the truth and he always lies at the same time. It's a neutralize. It's kind of funny. But you know, when he comes up with the stuff, we have to, you know, redirect our efforts and it's an important thing. It's, you know, they're a threat and we have to go out there and spend every dollar and take every step, crush them. There's a lot of people who buy into that. A lot of people who buy into that. I don't think they're crushable. It's not a dumb, you know, position to take. And this reinforces his relationship with all those people who thinks that's job number one. Right. You know what's funny, I lived through the biggest terrorist attack in the United States, right? I was in New York and I lived away from the World Trade Center. And sometimes, when I see people in mid-America, it's just absolutely terrified of terrorism and terror, we had it at our footsteps and we knew that it was anomaly and it's just a matter of, you know, statistics or whatever. But people are terrified that terrorism is going to just explode like down and every episode of violence is in terrorism just because you have some nut with a gun who says that ISIS sent some messages that he should do this. That's not an act of terror. You know, they're not that good. You know, even in 9-11, we said, you know, it was so much more successful than they expected it to be. They were surprised. Yes, they were surprised. That's right. And I think anytime one of these big terrorist attack goes off, they're like surprised actually. Yeah. The interesting thing too is we have, I mean, people have learned to live with this rather than react to it all the time. Like Israel. I wish the press would learn that. Like Israel. Right, good example. You live with it. You do what you have to do. Right, you live your life. You protect yourself. You do the best job you can, you know, avoid being hurt and killed. And, you know, in a funny way, the world is still better than it was in 1920. You know, you know, in 1920, people died from disease. That's a penicillin, right? They died from a million causes. Right. And the numbers were staggering. And they had, you know, outbreaks of this and that and, you know, a lot of people would die. Hundreds of thousands of people back in World War I, I mean, from disease here in this country. Yeah, you know, absolutely. Yellow fever after World War II. Oh yeah, the infant mortality rate. Yeah. So it's not, it's not, the world is not coming apart and this is just another risk and we have avoided some risks that we had in the past. Now we have this risk. So, I mean, it's a philosophical thing, but at the end of the day, we learn to deal with it. I think, I agree with you. I think the world is a better place. I mean, I think this, people ignore the advances like in science and other areas that we're making. Like, even, okay, the racial situation in the United States is very complicated. But I do think we're making advances. We're making advances with respect to people that are not like ourselves. Where we're learning, we're growing. So, I agree with you. I mean, I don't think, you know, it's Donald Trump who says, these are the last days. You saw a speech during the Republican Party. A lot of people feel that we, he's trying to get resonance with them and some of them are going to agree, but I don't think they're the enlightened ones. So, in terms of the world change, you know, I firmly believe the world is changing. It's got to be changing in a time when everything's coming together by telecommunications and, you know, information and all that. And it's changing everywhere because people in places that don't know about stuff, they are learning about stuff. Yeah, you can get almost any information anywhere. And that changes the way you do business, the way your community works. Right. And it rises, it raises you up. So, I want to tell you about Defret, the IFRET. Tell me about Defret. It's a movie made, produced actually, maybe directed too by Angelina Jolie, who is a very common good kind of person. Yes. She's really inspired visionary person. And it goes way beyond her good looks and her acting. No, she's a humanitarian. A big humanitarian and she keeps on doing this stuff. And as we all know, making movies reaches a lot of people. Defret is a movie that should reach and it's got great reviews, you know. And it's about a young 14-year-old girl in a small town not too far from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia who is subjected to marriage by kidnapping, which is what they have done there. And there's a woman who is her lawyer in a woman's lawyer organization. You'd love to work for this one. You know, they protect women. Right. This is one big issue for them and they defended her against all odds and they broke the back of that custom. And it's the story of this 14-year-old girl how she became the symbol of changing that custom. That sounds terrific. So it sounds like Ethiopia is a better place because of this is about a real-life case. Right, right. And so it's heartening. It's heartening in the sense that things are happening positively. Women's rights, for example. Would this happen without learning about how it happens in other places? Would this happen without learning about the fact that lawyers can go out and represent causes and women lawyers can represent women's causes if they want to. I mean, I think there's few places on earth that are worse than there were with respect to individual rights like women's rights. But there are many places that are better. I mean, and that's not to say there are horrible places like Saudi Arabia or Qatar or where women have no rights to certain places in India. But I think generally there's been an uplift of women's rights. I mean. And it has to do with knowing how the rest of the world lives. Yeah. I mean, we live in times that are that are becoming, you know, better. You know, I want to make a point about ISIS too. You remember during the Vietnam War and one of the reasons we failed so miserably in the Vietnam War was because it was a guerrilla war, right? And these were passionate guerrillas. There were, it wasn't a, you know, an army theater, you know, kind of war as a jungle war. ISIS is merely that type of war, that type of guerrilla war written large, globally. And so it's not even new. I mean, there, there've always been maniacs or, I shouldn't say maniacs, passionate people willing to defend their, again, so what? We would, the United States were people like that who go against England? No. So, you know, this is not a new concept. It's a writ large thing that I think is absolutely right now. Yes, the writ large is new. It's not small. That's why it feels pervasive. Right. It's not in Vietnam. It's everywhere, and it can happen. That's why people bite their nails and are worried that... That's why they worry, that's why they like Donald Trump, because he's going to put an end to all that. But it's not, you can't put an end to that. It'll take us back to a time when that did not happen. You know, Vietnam taught us that, too. Vietnam taught us that you, you kind of can't be like a passionate enemy. You can't crush them not with normal military strategy. So what's your secret? How do you deal with this? I'm making a decision. I really do. I think in, with the right kind of education, you know, Thomas Friedman, who I, by the way, loathe, said, did say... You say, love alone. Loathe. Loathe. Thank you. I love, love, love. Do you love him? Yeah. Well, he's a reductionist, though. He's so reductionist. But anyway, but he made it... You don't want to be reductionist in this life. No, no. Whatever that is. Let's face it, thinking about McDonald's or every place that has some form of western culture like ultimately becomes a more open place, you know. It's when it's closed that you can actually like foster this kind of foment, you know, this kind of political foment. So I think it's that I think, like we should go back to, you know, sending money, you know, Peace Corps. You name it and go in there I agree with you a thousand percent and yes, you know for a while it might be dangerous But after a while, I think we'll have a salutary effect everywhere more powerful. It's more powerful to change a person's Mine than to crush their body. Well, I just made that up. Isn't that sounds like that like that it applies So it's a man is the ultimate soft power is what it is. We're selling decency. How can you not buy decency? Right, right, and you know, it's funny people say that like in Iraq. They they We tried to make it a democratic state and they resisted that We don't have to make people exactly in our image. We just have to bring That certain values people might not want to be a democracy No, just some of them is okay, right? Just the values that you're gonna you're entitled to to a life liberty pursuit of happiness If that includes women if you yes If you start with that and and all the people in the world who don't have that or it be begin to feel that I think you're making a huge change in the Middle East. It is changing the Middle East You know where a few years ago women's rights were really not possible, right? Not discussed not happening right and not even in the future now The issue has been raised and everyone knows that's an issue there And they would be better off if they could you know take the mantle of the Taliban off You know and be regular people right and I think it may not it might not express itself right away But soon enough knowledge of how it works on the other side will permeate their world Right, and they will raise themselves up. I think so either that we or we march in their ass Thank you, Mr. Trump. So that's the Trump report you might have thought we were going left and right on that and we were We were but it's like he said she said yeah, well, you know He's so he I just don't think he understands the magnitude of the problem and How fundamental it is to people to people's lives? It's not it's not a war It's not a war war, you know doing a fighting a war war. So the question is whether the American voter is Perfectable or not perfectable. This is a test of how you can feel about the American voter and thus the American Democracy okay. Oh, it's it's now ten weeks away, and we're gonna see what happens Hey, I'm my prediction continuing to plummet in the polls. I don't think he I think he's in a death spiral My prediction is don't be so sure really he's gonna think of something you think smart guy He knows about this you want to figure out a way? He's gonna go down fighting, but he's gonna go down Yeah That's he said she said Marianne Sasaki and me Jake by del doing our thing every couple weeks or so Just trying to explore anything that comes to mind. We'll be right. We'll be back soon