Aloha

RIP, Senator Inouye.

Inouye a friend of Hydrogen

GM Looks to Hawaii for Hydrogen Infrastructure Pilot
Collaboration with The Gas Company Plans Stations on Oahu for Fuel Cells

U.S. Senator Dan Inouye , D-Hawaii, said he supports the pilot project.

"My small role was one of introduction between these two companies, not that many months ago, which resulted in this business announcement today," Inouye said. "It is an important step forward in the establishment of a hydrogen transportation infrastructure upon which new fleets, both military and civilian, can be tested and utilized.

I am committed to support the resourcing of this endeavor.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/…

He will be missed.

My first memory of him was watching him chair the Iran-Contra hearings. I was not impressed. I think whether intentionally or not, he let the Reagan/Bush administration and its criminal conspiracy, including Ollie North, pretty much whitewash the entire event.

He seemed like a good guy on other issues, but surely that's a stain on his memory.

Hawaii's only ever had five senators. That's pretty incredible for more than fifty years. Inouye held this seat almost from statehood, after just three years of Oren Long. That's a lot of seniority gone; Mr. Inouye was the second-longest-serving senator ever (after Robert Byrd of WV). Patrick Leahy takes over as President Pro Tempore, and probably chair of Appropriations, too.

It would be a nice tribute to Inouye to name a young person to the seat, so that she has the chance to serve as long as he did. Tulsi Gabbard would be an excellent choice: rising star, female combat vet, 31, would be the Senate's first Hindu, just as she is currently scheduled to be the first in the House instead.

Read the section of his Wikipedia entry describing his WWII heroics. If you saw such a scene in a book or movie, you'd reject it as being completely, ridiculously impossible.

@6 You rule

@7 Totally. Bona Fide hero and member of the so-called Greatest Generation. One of the last remaining Senators would could say he drank cocktails with the late Warren Magnuson at the Olympic Hotel and plotted enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

While I appreciate his service, I do wish the older Senators would resign prior to dying in office. Could we open an old folks home in D.C. so they can hang out with the current Senators, but allow someone younger to take office?

@ 6 Let Gabbard serve some time in the house, I think Hanabusa is the favorite.

@6:

Hawaii's 6th-ever Senator will be sworn in a few weeks from now. Mazie Hirono, whose soon-to-be-former House seat was won by Ms.Gabbard, beat ex-Governor Linda Lingle for the seat held by the state's (formerly-)junior Senator Daniel Akaka. FWIW, Akaka was also Inouye's junior in age ... by four days. Akaka has been in the Senate since 1990. With Inouye gone, he ranks 20th in seniority.

Thus, within just a couple of weeks, Hawaii will get the 6th and 7th Senators in its 52 years of statehood. In terms of Senate seniority, if the appointee is sworn in after 01/03/2013, Hawaii will go from [1,21] to [92,100]. It would be [88,93] if Governor Abercrombie makes a really quick choice.

Note on seniority -- 12 new elected Senators plus an upcoming appointee, so they go in seniority slots 88-100. Appointee will be 88 if sworn in before Jan 3, 100 if after. Six of them are former Representatives, who are ordered by length of term in the House. Baldwin (1998) and Flake (2000) top the list, followed by three who were first elected in 2006 -- Donnelly, Murphy, Hirono. Their tie is broken based on the state's population, so they go in in the above order.

RIP. And thanks for fathering Kenny, member of excellent DC hardcore band Marginal Man.

I grew up in Hawaii and got a chance to meet him during high school and listen to him speak. I've never been too sentimental on the whole hero thing, but if there ever was, it was Dan Inouye.

Go For Broke. RIP

@15, Byrd died a couple of years ago. Inouye was the longest-serving current Senator until today, second-longest in history, which is what it says above.

@12, fascinating stuff. Get her in early, whichever one it is.

Hell of a guy, with a hell of a story to share.

It's hard to imagine the bravery that he and the other 444s showed serving as Japanese soldiers in WWII, while we were calling Japansese all kinds of horrible names. Hawaii was not an easy place for Japanese to be before, during, or after WWII. The sugar growers were angry that the Japanese didn't shut up and toil in the fields and leave, but expected to be able to voice their opinions and join unions. The history that Inouye saw during his life is astounding.

@5, Cascadian: I refer 5 to Sen. Inouye's final comments at the end of the Iran Contra hearings, can be verfied in the archives of the Congressional Record:

"There exists a shadow government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interests free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself."

The Ultimate Christmas Book List for the Discerning Human

The Hellhound of Wall Street by Michael Perino

Wealth, Power and the Crisis in Laissez Faire Capitalism by Donald Gibson

The Billionaires’ Ball by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks

Extreme Money by Satyajit Das

Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson

Debt: the first 5,000 years by David Graeber

The Web of Debt by Ellen Hodgson Brown, JD

Retirement Heist by Ellen Schultz

The Fine Print by David Cay Johnston

Battling Wall Street: the Kennedy presidency by Donald Gibson

The Bubble and Beyond by Michael Hudson (All of Prof. Hudson’s books)

Wall Street Capitalism: The Theory of the Bondholding Class by E. Ray Canterbery

Greenspan’s Fraud by Ravi Batra

Other People’s Money: the corporate mugging of America by Nomi Prins

The Rich and the Super-Rich by Ferdinand Lundberg

Into the Buzzsaw by Kristina Borjesson

Thy Will Be Done by Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett (if you can obtain his books on Du Pont, they will be highly rewarding!!!!)

Fiction:

Absolute Friends by John le Carré

Relentless by Dean Koontz

For any uninformed about Iran Contra, please see the article at link below, thank you.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/18/t…

@13

that's pretty interesting. I always heard people offhandedly say that a bunch of those kids' parents were in Congress, but no specifics were even given. and yes, Marginal Man rules.