e will be taking callers during this show.

SHOW AUDIO:

 Link is usually posted within about 72 hours of show broadcast.

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: The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. … anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. …A Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” … Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.” (Benjamin Franklin)  http://www.ourrepubliconline.com/Quote/41

• TEXAS: REGISTER TO VOTE FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION
  • To vote in November 8th’s presidential elections, you have to be registered by October 8th. It will be here before you know it, so make sure YOU are registered!
  • HarrisVotes.com or VoteTexas.gov.
    • Next Election: May 24, 2016 – Primary Runoff Election
    • May 16 – May 20: 7:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m
    • State and Local races in runoff

o Twitter ‘to stop counting photos and links in character limit’ (BBC)

• Microblogging site Twitter is to stop counting photographs and links in its 140-character limit for tweets, according to a report from Bloomberg.

o KSK(africa) ‏@lawalazu So the Danish president asked PBO for a Lame Duck Recipe. I took the liberty. Viola!!

o Hillary Clinton and the 2-for-1 presidency, By Lisa Lerer and Catherine Lucey (Washington Post)| AP May 16, 2016 at 5:10 PM

• Hillary Clinton is telling Americans that Bill Clinton will take the lead on the economy if she wins the White House.
• What his work would be remains unclear: not a cabinet post, she indicated. But in some way, he’d be “in charge of revitalizing the economy.”
• The situation is highly unusual: Not only would Clinton be the first president to have a “First Dude,” she’d also be the first to have a former president in the East Wing.
• Clinton has begun sketching out a bit more of a role for her husband. She told West Virginians that he’d focus on helping economically distressed communities, like those in coal county, reinvent themselves in a changing economy.

o Trump Report:

• Dan Quayle: Trump is ‘more qualified’ than Clinton in this election, Eliza Collins, [USA TODAY] 12:55 p.m. EDT May 12, 2016

  • The former vice president, who served under George H.W. Bush, appeared on NBC’s Todayshow Thursday and said that Trump was more qualified than Clinton in this particular election because people want an outsider.
  • “On paper, you’d say, well, she’s more qualified. But you know what? He’s more qualified in the sense that the American people, I think, want an outsider,” Quayle said. “And they want an outsider this time. She’s not an outsider, so if you’re looking for an outsider, no, she’s not qualified, and he is.”
• Trump: Rescind Obama’s transgender directives, but ‘protect everybody’, by Michael Hiltzik and Robert Costa (Washington Post) May 16, 2016 at 5:37 PM
  • Donald Trump vowed Monday that if elected president he would rescind the Obama administration’s new directivesaimed at protecting transgender people against discrimination in schools and health-care coverage.
  • But even as Trump accused the administration of federal overreach and argued that such matters should be addressed by the states … Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post that the government must act “to protect all people” and that he was eager to learn more about the movement for transgender rights.
  • [According to Trump], “It is a very, very small portion of the population, but as I said, you have to protect everybody, including small portions of the population,”
• From United Kingdom: Donald Trump says he might not have good relationship with David Cameron
• In Depth:Donald Trump: London mayor made ‘very rude statements’ about me [CNN]
• Obama: Trump shouldn’t make Supreme Court pick, USA TODAY, 5-16-2016 ‎WASHINGTON – President Obama suggested Monday that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump isn’t qualified to nominate justices to the Supreme Court – and therefore the Republican-controlled Senate should give his nominee a hearing and a vote…

o How much do the Saudis own in U.S. Treasuries? After four decades, it’s no longer a secret, by Michael Hiltzik (LA Times) 5-16-2016

• The Treasury Department on Monday opened the curtain on one of our longest-lasting, and strangest, state secrets: how much U.S. debt does Saudi Arabia own?
• The Treasury Department on Monday opened the curtain on one of our longest-lasting, and strangest, state secrets: how much U.S. debt does Saudi Arabia own?
• The answer, as of March, is $116.8 billion. That may sound like a lot, but it places the Saudis only at 13th on the list of major foreign holders of treasuries. Leading the roll among the foreign holders of $6.3 trillion in securities are mainland China ($1.245 trillion) and Japan ($1.137 trillion).

o Government Debt in the United States – Debt Clock:  (www.usgovernmentdebt.us/): Total Federal Government Debt in 2016. At the end of FY 2016 the gross US federal government debt is estimated to be $19.3 trillion, according to the FY17 Federal Budget.

o India to ‘divert rivers’ to tackle drought, By Navin Singh Khadka Environment reporter, (BBC World Service) 16 May 2016

• India is set to divert water from its rivers to deal with a severe drought… [affecting] At least 330 million people are … affected by drought in India.
• The drought is taking place as a heat wave extends across much of India, with temperatures in excess of 40C (~104^oF).
• The Inter Linking of Rivers (ILR) has 30 links planned for water-transfer, 14 of them fed by Himalayan glaciers in the north of the country and 16 in peninsular India.
• Environmentalists have opposed the project, arguing it will invite ecological disaster but the [Indian] Supreme Court has ordered its implementation.
• Of its 29 states, nearly half were reported to have suffered from severe water crisis this dry season.
• The federal government in Delhi has had to send trains carrying water to the worst affected places.

o Libya: US backs arming of government for IS fight, (BBC.com) 5-15-2016

• The US and other world powers have said they are ready to arm Libya’s UN-backed unity government to help it fight the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group.
• Speaking in Vienna, US Secretary of State John Kerry said world powers would back Libya in seeking exemption from a UN arms embargo.
• He said IS was a “new threat” to Libya and it was “imperative” it was stopped.
• Last month, the Libyan government warned that IS could seize most of the country if it was not halted soon.
• There is a risk that future arms shipments will either fall into the wrong hands, or exacerbate the civil conflict there between rival militias.

 

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

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• 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?
• 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.
  • What Are Cats Trying to Tell Us? Science Will Explain
    [National Geographic Society]:

• 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 are fine and serve a useful purpose in civil opposition to each other.
  • Today’s “Conservatives” are conservative in name only

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