This was a 2-hour show. Each audio link is 1-hour; i.e., half the show.

We will be taking callers during this show.

SHOW AUDIO:

First Half:

Second Half:

Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike (Dec. 14, 2015)

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 9-10 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Bob Gartner.

Listen live on the radio or on the internet from anywhere in the world! When the show is live, we take calls at 713-526-5738. (Long distance charges may apply.)

For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

POSSIBLE TOPICS:

SIGNOFF QUOTE: If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron. ~ Lee Trevino

TEXAS: REGISTER TO VOTE FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION

• ‘Unprecedented’: 5 Dead as Record Rainfall Floods Houston, by Elisha Fieldstadt, Tim Stelloh and Shamar Walters (NBCNews.com) Apr 18 2016, 7:47 pm ET
• TV reporter helps in rescue amid Houston flooding: In an incident captured on video Monday, KTRK reporter Steve Campion yells, “Dude, you’ve got to get out of the car!”, CBS/AP April 18, 2016, 2:25 PM
• Serious ROADWAY Flooding
  • Be aware of flooded underpasses.
    • Look for rain/depth gauges before proceeding.
    • In all cases, if you proceed, do so with extreme care.
    • When in doubt, don’t risk it.
    • If your vehicle stalls in high water, it may be best to evacuate the car; the water may become rapidly deeper. (They’re called FLASH FLOODS for a reason.)
    • If your car is flooded, don’t try to drive it. Water may have entered the transmission and other areas, and running the vehicle only makes damage worse.
    • A flooded car may be ‘totaled’, because the electrical systems may not be repairable in a reliable way.
  • BUYERS BEWARE: After serious flooding incidents, flooded cars may be put on the resale market by insurance companies in places where the title is not required to warn that a vehicle was totaled and/or flooded.
• Home Flooding
  • Check your local flood plain maps. HCFCD.org. You can also check FEMA maps. (FEMA Flood Map Service Center | Welcome!) (https://msc.fema.gov/)
  • Federal Emergency Management Agency: About Flood Map Service Center. The FEMA Flood Map Service Center (MSC) is the official public source for flood hazard information produced in support of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
  • When in doubt, call your home insurance provider
• Preparing for future insurable disasters:
  • Consider buying a 2-Hour-rated Fireproof Safe.
  • Periodically contact your insurer and go over your policies.
    • Some policies have a 30-day waiting period, so don’t wait until a hurricane is in the Gulf.
  • Consider recommendations regarding coverage increases and ‘riders’.
  • Know your exceptions (e.g., Water damage versus rising water damage)
  • Try to keep photographic records of all your property, and try to keep them up to date.
  • Keep a 2-hour fire/water-resistant safe in the house for irreplaceable or difficult-to-replace items.
    • Humidity control
  • Medicaid, Food stamps are subsidies for low wages.
    • We must also consider subsidized housing and the earned income tax credit.

• The Next Step in Animal Welfare? Breed a Better Chicken, by Maryn McKenna, (nationalgeographic.com) March 24, 2016
  • A … program … announced last week by the Global Animal Partnership, a nonprofit that works with farmers and retailers to improve animal welfare, asks chicken farmers to change the breeds of the birds they are raising to a more hardy, slower-growing breed. …
  • So what the new GAP standard asks producers and retailers to do is to switch to broilers that have been bred to grow more slowly and in a more balanced manner: gaining no more than 50 grams of weight per day, which translates to a bird that lives 56-62 days instead of 35-42.
  • To investigate whether the change was feasible, GAP commissioned a working group of major chicken producers… , and involved Whole Foods, which evaluates all its meat purchases using the 5-step GAP scale. “All of our suppliers were interested…’” [said] Theo Weening, Whole Foods’ global meat buyer… “Some of them had long histories in the chicken industry, and they remembered when chickens were slower-growing and had more flavor. So when GAP came up with the standard, I went back to the suppliers, and they said, let’s work together, instead of having one guy make it to the finish line first.”
• What Are Cats Trying to Tell Us? Science Will Explain, By Carrie Arnold [National Geographic] PUBLISHED March 28, 2016
  • Nearly all New York State pet owners talk to their pets like they’re fellow humans, according to a recent poll.  Many believe their dogs and cats can respond with barks or meows that communicate hunger, fear, or simply the need to pee.  But do the animals tawk back in a Brooklyn accent? That’s the sort of thing Swedish cat lover and phonetics researcher Suzanne Schötz is working to find out. After executing this strategy on every government program except the military and corporate welfare, is it now the turn of the Supreme Court?
• Congress and the Supreme Court: “I simply want to reduce [government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub. … ~ Grover Norquist – Wikiquote https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist
  • Shrinking from 9 to 8 Justices
• The Science of Meow: Study to Look at How Cats Talk: A new project is underway to decode kitty communication—and figure out if cats really like all that baby talk.
• THE TRUMP REPORT
  • Kerry says Republican campaign rhetoric an ‘embarrassment’ to U.S., by Ros Krasny Bloomberg (Salt Lake Tribune) 3-28-2016
• Done by 2100 CE? “Fukushima Keeps Fighting Radioactive Tide 5 Years After Disaster” http://nyti.ms/1QQuxbn 
  • Fukushima is out of the news media but stil very much an ongoing disaster.
  • Filtered water with reduced radioactivity is still being dumped into the sea.
  • Cleanup is estimated to take 50-100 years
• The Republican Party should have disavowed Trump long ago.
  • The biggest joke – except it’s not funny – is the number of Republicans who say that they don’t like what Trump stands for but they’ll support him if he’s the nominee.

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

======================================================

• The dos and don’ts of open carry, By Robert Arnold – Investigative Reporter (click2houston.com) Posted: 9:37 AM, December 31, 2015 Updated: 10:04 AM, December 31, 2015
• TERMINOLOGIES: Words Matter
  • The term “Conservative” is so inaccurate as currently used by the Media, the Media and all of us really need to rethink their classifications and terminology.
  • There are Liberals/Progressives and there are Conservatives. Both of those ae fine and serve a useful purpose in civil opposition to each other.
  • Today’s “Conservatives” are conservative in name only
• How much influence does the media really have over elections? Digging into the data: “My sense is that what we have here is a feedback loop. Does media attention increase a candidate’s standing in the polls? Yes. Does a candidate’s standing in the polls increase media attention? Also yes.”By Jonathan Stray @jonathanstray [www.niemanlab.org] Jan. 11, 2016, 2:49 p.m
• Poll: Whites and Republicans Rank as Angriest Americans, by Andrew Rafferty (Meet the Press) Jan 3 2016, 11:54 am ET
• Obama’s team says the GOP earned Donald Trump: Loyalists say that after two terms of obstruction, Republicans are getting the anger candidate their rhetoric created. By Edward-Isaac Dovere, 12/27/15 (com, 07:45 AM EST) Updated 12/27/16 11:17 AM EST
  • “’It’s not that the country has changed, it’s that a narrow band of mostly white, low- and middle-income Americans are supporting a candidate who is speaking to their anxiety about being left behind in this economy,’ said Bill Burton, a former deputy White House press secretary.”
  • “Blue collar anxiety” is a real thing with real causes. That’s why so-called “Post-industrial Economies” are a fraud perpetrated against semi-skilled workers, and why industry needs to be re-invigorated in this country. We NEED blue collar jobs. Not everyone is cut out for ‘service’ work.
• Houston Toll Road Authority (HTRA) is slowly going all-electronic. What does this mean to you?
  • Rates – Sam Houston Tollway Counter-Clockwise
• Hillary Clinton targets corporate inversion with new ‘exit tax’ plan: Tax is part of Democratic presidential frontrunner’s strategy to ‘rein in Wall Street’ on the heels of Pfizer’s plan to merge with Allergan and move to Ireland. The proposals are part of Clinton’s larger economic agenda, which includes boosting infrastructure spending by $275bn. Photograph: Jose Luis Magana/AP

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