• 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.

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?

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.”

***

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.

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.

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.

***

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.

• After pledging to fight a voter initiative on transit by any legal means, Mayor Mufi Hannemann now says he’ll support putting the question on the ballot if it’s worded right. His preferred wording: Should we tie Charles Djou or Ann Kobayashi to the tracks for the train’s inaugural run?

• An Advertiser poll found that two-thirds of O’ahu voters polled support rail, but most say they won’t use the train themselves. Kind of like good manners — nice for other people to have.

• Hawai’i is spending up to three times the national average on our roads, but their condition is the 47th worst in the nation, a study says. Anybody heard if Chinatown bookies think we’ll do any better with rail?

• Duke Bainum, who’s lived mostly in Arkansas lately, rushed back to Honolulu and rented an apartment so he could run for the council when Kobayashi declared for mayor. Don’t they have city councils in Arkansas whose dysfunction he could contribute to?

• Gov. Linda Lingle test-drove fuel-efficient vehicles at a federal energy lab in Colorado. She must have been relieved to get home to the comfort of her new gas-guzzling Infiniti SUV.

• The state’s chief elections officer Kevin Cronin says he meant to register to vote as the law requires of him, but it kept slipping down his to-do list. Makes you curious what other parts of the election law he considers optional.

• Tesoro Corp., owner of Hawai’i’s largest gasoline refiner, said high oil prices and less demand cut its profits to a fraction of last year’s. All together now: Awwwwwwwww.

• Michelle Wie’s best LPGA showing this year is a DQ, but she’s still one of the five highest-paid female athletes at $12 million, according to Forbes. No wonder she didn’t sign her scorecard. She must have writer’s cramp from endorsing the checks she pulled from Nike’s clenched teeth.

• John McCain mocked Barack Obama by likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. I guess a man McCain’s age is more into the Gabor sisters.

And the quote of the week …

… from Councilman Romy Cachola on the need to give voters a say on rail:

“I’m willing to hold hands, because if we don’t, the public will crucify this institution.”

I promise not to crucify him if he keeps his hands to himself.

While she giggles at cute pictures of the fannies of many creatures, I’m more interested in the clever quotes that accompany the photos. Some of my favorite bits of wisdom from the bottom:

• “My arse contemplates those who talk behind my back.” — Frances Picabia

• “If you could kick the person responsible for most of your troubles in the backside, you wouldn’t be able to sit down for weeks.” — Anonymous

• “A leader who keeps his ear to the ground allows his rear end to become a target.” — Angie Papadakis

• “The greatest monarch upon the proudest throne is obliged to sit upon his own arse.” — Benjamin Franklin

• “He that makes himself an ass must not take it ill if men ride him.” — Thomas Fuller

• “Your brain can only absorb what your ass can endure.” P. Dan Wiwchar

• “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.” — Catfish Hunter

• “Hell, by the time a man scratches his ass, clears his throat and tells me how smart he is, we’ve already wasted fifteen minutes.” — Lyndon Johnson

• “Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.” — Ernest Hemingway

• “Knowledge without wisdom is like a load of books on the back of an ass.” — Japanese proverb

And my own contribution: “The next person who calls me a Volcanic Ass will be the 7,942nd to have had that original thought.”

You got any?

Now, the mayor’s races in Honolulu, Kaua’i and the Big Island are all hotly competitive, there are interesting council races around the state and it seems increasingly likely that a rail transit question will be on the O’ahu ballot.

ConCon has slipped into the background and the discussion has gone nearly silent, raising the question of whether its prospects are improved or diminished in an election that is suddenly generating excitement elsewhere.

A hot-button rail initiative, especially, would draw away attention and resources that otherwise would have gone into advocacy for or against a ConCon.

My guess is that while the new developments may mean a quieter ConCon debate, they may well increase the chances that enough voter support will materialize to call a Constitutional Convention.

According to the Advertiser’s Hawai’i Poll, partisans on both sides of the rail dispute agree by a good majority that voters should get a say on the matter, a strong showing of support for direct participatory democracy that could transfer to the ConCon question.

The embarrassing fumbling by elections officials on qualifying candidates at the filing deadline seems to be increasing the sense that something is wrong with our political system that needs to be fixed.

Whether or not a ConCon is the sexiest issue on the ballot, it remains one of the most important things we’ll decide this year.

Groups like HawaiiConCon.org will have to find ways to keep a vibrant discussion going — not only on whether to call a ConCon, but how it should be set up to assure a true citizens’ convention and not a gathering of the status quo.

Basically, the broker who described herself as a probate specialist was offering her services to help my kids as the presumptive heirs prepare the house for sale when my wife and I take our eternal rest so they can get their cash quickly.

“You want your money … when???” she pitched. “Unfortunately, probate is a process. It can take months before your property is ready to put on the market. While you are waiting, we can help you.”

Their property? Never mind that my wife and I are still breathing and hope to continue to do so for awhile, unless the broker knows something we don’t.

My wife and I have never filed public papers naming anybody as our heirs, although we probably should.

This solicitation struck me as slimier than ambulance-chasing. It’s beyond even hearse-chasing; hopefully the hearses won’t be rolling for a bit. Perhaps most insulting is her assumption that my kids are as sleazy and greedy as she is.

I’m curious as to whether this is a common practice and if others have received similar entreaties.

Kobayashi set off a flurry of activity when she announced hours before the filing deadline that she was leaving her council seat to run against Mayor Mufi Hannemann.

Former councilman and mayoral candidate Duke Bainum filed to run for Kobayashi’s council seat, and Caldwell, the House majority leader, scrambled to get in nomination papers to oppose Bainum — with the encouragement of Hannemann.

Caldwell had already filed papers to run for re-election to his House seat and didn’t have to withdraw before he filed for the council.

In another scramble, Hannemann aide Chrystn Eads rushed to get in papers to run for Caldwell’s House seat against Republican Jerilyn Jeffryes.

Elections officials accepted the nomination papers for both Eads and Caldwell — partly as a result of badgering by Democratic chairman Brian Schatz — despite serious questions about whether they had obtained enough legal signatures by the 4:30 p.m. deadline.

In Caldwell’s case, an employee of the city clerk signed for him when he was apparently one signature short, a troubling breach of impartiality by elections administrators.

The state elections office ruled Eads’ filing invalid the next day, but allowed Democrats to appoint a replacement candidate — Isaac Choy, who has served as campaign treasurer for prominent Democratic legislators Caldwell, Calvin Say and Brian Taniguchi.

If Eads’ late nomination papers had been properly rejected on filing day and if Caldwell had been required to withdraw as a House candidate before filing for the council, there would have been no duly filed candidate for the Democrats to replace and they would have been out of luck.

Caldwell says he’ll seek a ruling from the city clerk on whether his filing for the council seat was legal, and Bainum may also challenge it.

But let’s be real: What are the chances that Democratic patronage workers are going to tell the House Democratic majority leader who is supported by the Democratic mayor of Honolulu that he can’t run.

Democrats control 44 of the 51 House seats and nearly all of the supposedly nonpartisan Honolulu council seats, and there’s no chance that they’ll lose their dominance in this election, whatever happens in Manoa.

Tainting the process with seedy manipulations to get their way on a couple of seats only feeds public doubts about the fairness of our elections.