O’Reilly riles up Hawaii’s Hanabusa

It’s Bill O’Reilly, so really, take things with a grain of salt. A lot of salt.

But his comments on TV Thursday was enough to rile U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who called for an apology.

Hawaii is one of his "favorite places in the world," O’Reilly said, but has "a lot of social problems." He went on: "35 percent of the Hawaiian population is Asian … Asian people are not liberal, you know, by nature. They’re usually more industrious and hard-working."

Hanabusa reacted: "Leave it to Bill O’Reilly to thoughtlessly insult 1.3 million people with one sweeping misstatement. … (His) attempt to characterize Hawaii’s Asian-American population is most insulting of all … the kind of one dimensional and paternalistic attitude that we should have gotten past decades ago."

No word yet on any apology. Maybe O’Reilly will invite Hanabusa to his show, so the Democratic congresswoman can tell him just how "not liberal, you know, by nature" she is. Watch out.

It’s confirmed: Oahu traffic is really bad

Rush-hour traffic in Honolulu is third worst in the United States, according to the TomTom Congestion Index, topped by Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Hot spots were gauged at U.S. and Canadian cities from July to September last year and researchers found that journey times in L.A. are 34 percent longer than when traffic is flowing freely, the same as in Vancouver, Canada. San Francisco’s traffic is 33 percent longer and Honolulu’s is 31 percent longer.

The data "allows us to provide governments with real insight into the realities on the roads and provide solutions that will help to reduce traffic congestion," said Ralf-Peter Schafer, head of traffic at TomTom. Of course, Honolulu already is working on rail as a partial solution.