Since Sen. Barack Obama is gracing us with a visit, we’ll start with presidential politics as we “flASHback” on the week’s news that amused and confused:

• Obama plans to prepare for the Democratic National Convention while chilling out on our beaches. I hope we don’t see a parade of vice president hopefuls in swim trunks.

• Sen. John McCain, who hasn’t cast a vote on the Senate floor since April, knocked Obama and other senators for taking a break instead of staying in Washington to work on the energy crisis. Then he resumed his nap.

• Paris Hilton responded to McCain’s ad mocking Obama at her expense by calling him a “wrinkly white-haired guy” and referring to both candidates as “bitches.” You usually don’t get that kind of respect until after you’re elected president.

• Top legislators defended Hawai’i Tourism Authority CEO Rex Johnson, who was caught e-mailing porn from his state computer, saying he’s vital to reviving Hawai’i’s visitor industry. How, by stealing sex tourists from Bangkok?

• The Department of Education sent more than 650 people to a conference at the Disney resort in Florida for $1.2 million. No wonder the school board can’t find money to pay for $35 drug tests for teachers.

• Some state employees started a four-day work week. If they can get it down to 2 1/2 days, maybe they’ll get their pay doubled like Kamehameha Schools trustees.

• An attorney who’s suing Kamehameha Schools over its Hawaiians-first admissions again after collecting $7 million last time says it’s a matter of principle. Sad but true. Greed is one of the the oldest legal principles.

• An auditor criticized the city for a 44-percent increase in its energy costs. And that’s for just talking about trains. Wait until they start running them.

• University of Hawai’i enrollment is up as the local job market shrinks. These are mean times when you need a college degree to be unemployed.

• A Kaka’ako massage parlor was robbed by eight men masking their identities. In other words, they looked like any other men going into massage parlors.

• Theresa Harden of Kane’ohe followed a carjacker and his abducted victim across the Pali and guided police to him by cell phone. Looks like “Dog” Chapman can be replaced if he shoots off his mouth again.

And the quote of the week …

… from mayoral candidate Ann Kobayashi on Mayor Mufi Hannemann’s $2.7 million war chest:

“Money isn’t everything. Money is power but so is people power, and I think people power is greater.”

This campaign will test the power of wishful thinking.

It’ll be interesting to see if Hawai’i Sen. Daniel Inouye draws any flak from fellow Democrats for going to Alaska to campaign with embattled Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, Inouye’s best friend in the Senate whose re-election is in trouble after he was indicted for corruption.

You’d think a Democratic senator helping a Republican would rankle party leaders at a time when Democrats hope to win enough GOP Senate seats to achieve a veto-proof majority — with Alaska a prime target of opportunity.

In Hawai’i, lesser Democrats have been brought up on charges for consorting with the opposition.

This isn’t the first time Inouye has put friendship ahead of party. Local Democratic activists objected in 2006 when he continued to support Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman after he lost the Democratic primary and ran as an independent.

The Hawai’i Democratic hierarchy did a tap dance to duck punitive action against their titular leader, and Inouye finally let them off the hook by finding an excuse to drop his support for Lieberman.

But it’s hard to see that happening with Stevens as long as he remains unconvicted and stays in the race.

Not only does their personal friendship run deep after serving together for 40 years, but they’ve forged a unique political alliance as senior members of the appropriations and commerce committees that has enabled both to bring home big pork no matter which party is in power.

Good enough reason for Democrats to look the other way?

Bad ideas never seem to die around here, they just lay low for another chance to pounce.

So it is with the latest attempt to drastically raise the pay of Kamehameha Schools trustees from about $100,000 to $217,500 for chairman Nainoa Thompson and $187,000 for trustees Diane Plotts, Robert Kihune, Corbett Kalama and Douglas Ing.

The current compensation is more than generous for part-time positions that require 2 1/2 to 3 days of work a week.

Trustees had to decline similar raises four years ago after protests by native Hawaiian beneficiaries still testy about the scandal that resulted in the removal of the previous million-dollar trustees in 1999.

The pay panel appointed by the Probate Court came up with the new raises based on bogus comparisons with for-profit corporations instead of comparing Kamehameha Schools with other large charitable trusts that pay directors less than half of what Kamehameha trustees already receive.

If the court approves these increases, trustee appointments will once again becoming fat political plums in a selection system that remains ripe for political manipulation because of a lack of consistent and transparent criteria for choosing trustees.

I look at the issue more closely in my column in the Opinion section of today’s Advertiser, “Estate trustees should decline pay increase.”

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In case you haven’t seen it. Paris Hilton has a saucy retort to John McCain’s ad mocking Barack Obama at her expense. She even plugs Maui as the best place to get a tan. It elevated my opinion of her by a thousand-fold. Of course, a thousand times zero is still zero …

Check out her video at this link.

It’ll be fascinating to see how the drama plays out over the discovery that Rex Johnson, president of the Hawai’i Tourism Authority, used his state computer to email pornography to friends.

After a board meeting last week, two board members urged Johnson to resign from the $240,000 position. But in advance of another board meeting tomorrow, some heavy political muscle is lining up behind Johnson, including House Speaker Calvin Say and Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and Vice President Donna Mercado Kim.

When those three get together on anything, my first instinct is to cover the groin.

Johnson has apologized, but isn’t exactly contrite. His political backers say now would be a bad time to change leadership at the tourism agency given the slumping visitor market.

I don’t have strong feelings about what the proper punishment is for such indiscretions. The board of the tourism authority is in the best position to decide how much Johnson’s unbecoming behavior has damaged the agency’s credibility and whether the authority can effectively move forward without him.

I only hope members make the decision based on their own best judgment and don’t give in to the heavy-handed political interference.

The state Elections Commission is backing its embattled chief elections officer Kevin Cronin, with the panel’s chairman William Martson saying, “The commission feels that somebody has put a target on his back and has unfairly gone after him.”

Oh, really? Let’s look at some of the arrows that have pierced Cronin since he arrived here from Wisconsin last year with little experience running elections:

• He’s embroiled the Office of Elections in a still-unresolved dispute over the purchase of new voting machines that has left us precariously close to not having a reliable and transparent system in place for this year’s elections.

• Bewildering decision-making by his office and poor communication with the city clerk resulted in two candidates being disqualified after they had been certified as eligible at the filing deadline.

• He ignored state law and ordered potentially confusing primary election ballots printed without letting the political parties exercise their legal right to review them.

• He failed to personally register to vote in Hawai’i until prodded to do so seven months after he was hired, a clear violation of the conditions of his employment under state law.

It seems that if there’s a target on Cronin, the dripping paintbrush that put it there was wielded by his own hand.

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Kirk Caldwell is one of the big losers of this election after giving up his House seat and powerful position as majority leader to run for the City Council, only to be disqualified because of problems with the paperwork in his last-minute switch.

There’s little question that the city clerk made the right call under the law in ruling Caldwell ineligible, but it’s hard to feel good about it.

Caldwell was a decent majority leader, a straight-shooter with a sense of humor who was often the closet thing to a voice of reason in the endless squabbling between the House, Senate and Lingle administration.

His disqualification means that Duke Bainum will be unopposed in claiming the council seat being vacated by mayoral candidate Ann Kobayashi, which isn’t easy to take given that Bainum has spent most of his time on the Mainland licking his wounds since losing the 2004 mayor’s race to Mufi Hannemann.

I thought the aborted council showdown between Bainum and Caldwell was mostly about getting a leg up on succeeding Hannemann as mayor when he moves on.

That battle could still materialize if Hannemann, who recruited Caldwell to run for the council, offers him a role in the city administration from which to remain visible.