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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.

SIGNOFF QUOTE:

“The boxer known for running his mouth became a humanitarian who did not have to say a word. Referring to his Parkinson’s disease, which so diminished Ali’s voice, [Louisville resident] Diana Rupa said, ‘God had to shut him up, so that we could hear his heart.’ ” ~ Muhammad Ali Remembered, by Those Who Knew Him as Cassius, By KAREN CROUSE, JUNE 5, 2016 (NY Times)

POSSIBLE TOPICS:

• 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.
• No criminal charges for mother in Cincinnati gorilla death case, by By Sarah Larimer, Lindsey Bever and Mark Berman (Post Nation) June 6 at 3:08 PM, Washington Post:
  • The kid was checked out and was physically not seriously injured.
  • But the poor gorilla
  • Tranq guns should have been first choice. Lethal force would still have been available.
• Moon Express Nears Approval for Private Lunar Landing: The startup hopes for a 2017 mission liftoff, By Tom Risen | Staff Writer June 6, 2016, at 12:12 p.m.
  • Moon Express in October announced a contract with Rocket Lab USA for multiple lunar missions between 2017 and 2020, and has been working to clear federal approval to send its MX-1 lander to the moon. The small vehicle would deliver scientific hardware to the lunar surface.
• Behind the scenes of a U.S. superbug discovery that made headlines around the world: By Lena H. Sun [WASHINGTON POST] Health & Science June 6 at 4:50 PM
  • In mid-May, a colleague had found a strain of E. coli bacteria from a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman that tested positive for resistance to a drug called colistin. That’s the antibiotic used when all others fail.
  • S. health officials and experts had been bracing for this moment since the gene’s discovery late last year in China. They’d hunted for mcr-1 in tens of thousands of samples from meat sources, animals and people.
  • For infectious-disease experts, the nightmare scenario is for the gene to spread to bacteria that are now only susceptible to colistin. That would make them invincible to any antibiotic, unstoppable by the most life-saving drugs of modern medicine.
  • Raises again the question of overuse of antibiotics for non-medical uses like animal feed and unnecessary uses by doctors.
• Muhammad Ali Remembered, by Those Who Knew Him as Cassius, By KAREN CROUSE, JUNE 5, 2016 (NY Times)
  • Feeling about Muhammad Ali among whites may depend on age and the kinds of media coverage they were exposed to in their formative or early adult years.
  • What are you feelings about Muhammad Ali through the arc of your life?
• How Have Young Women Been Affected by Texas’ 6-Month-Old Abortion Restrictions?, By Ashley Lopez (kut.org, Austin) Jun 2, 2016
  • It’s been six months since a law went into effect that changes the rules for judicial bypasses – that’s when a judge allows a minor to have an abortion without getting consent or notifying an adult.
  • These bypasses are mostly sought by young women who fear abuse or can’t locate a parent or guardian. Advocates say this legal tool is vital to the young women who use it. But, since a law passed last year, it’s been harder than ever to get them.
  • Susan Hays is the legal director of Jane’s Due Process, an organization that gets its name from the pseudonym commonly used to refer to the girls seeking judicial bypasses.
  • we are finding out there six months later is that it wasn’t the legal changes that were mattering to the Janes. It’s that things were stirred up politically.”
  • Hays said the anti-abortion movement has a lot of power right now, and that is affecting how judges rule. In fact, some judges are campaigning on this issue.
  • Hays pointed out that HB 3994 gave judges like this more power, including giving them more time to rule on judicial bypass cases. It used to be that if the judge didn’t meet the deadline, the case was deemed granted. Now, if it doesn’t meet the deadline, it’s deemed a “nay.”
  • “And so if a judge does nothing, if a judge just doesn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole because you know, abortion, the Jane automatically loses, and we don’t even have a hearing transcript to take up on appeal,” she said.
  • John Seago with Texas Right to Life helped craft this law. He said when he started looking into the judicial bypass system, there wasn’t a lot of data.
  • “What we had, though, were these stories, from judges, from guardian ad litems. We would hear anonymous stories from these different kind of angles of the abuse of this system. And, unfortunately, the way that we kind of saw it happening was that it was not protecting minors, it was actually being used as a loophole for the abortion industry. So, that was very concerning.”
  • Advocates at Jane’s Due Process said this isn’t a loophole, but a way to help women who’ve been left behind by other public policies. They say nine out of 10 times a child involves a parent when they get an abortion, and those who don’t usually have a pretty good reason.
• Who gives money to Bernie Sanders?: Our analysis of nearly 7 million donations offers unprecedented detail about the army that’s funded his insurgent campaign, By Seema Mehta, Anthony Pesce, Maloy Moore and Christine Zhang (latimes.com) June 3, 2016
• SCAMS and PHISHING
  • BBB Warns of Suspicious Phone Calls Offering Government Grants, By Leslie Kish (BBB.org) – June 28, 2012Posted in: Alerts/Scams, National
  • Attachments
  • Emails from people you ‘know’ but that look odd.
• Obama visits Hiroshima: Obama said in his speech at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park: “’Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past, ‘We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.
  • In Hiroshima 71 years after first atomic strike, Obama calls for end of nuclear weapons, By David Nakamura (Washington Post) May 27 at 5:18 PM
    • Obama in Hiroshima calls for ‘world without nuclear weapons’, By Kevin Liptak and James Griffiths, CNN Updated 6:20 PM ET, Fri May 27, 2016
    • A-Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end WW2: Right or wrong?[Operation] “DOWNFALL” THE PLAN FOR THE [1946] INVASION OF JAPAN, www.history.army.mil/
  • Let’s talk ‘Military Math’.
  • Courses of action boiled down to surrounding Japan from est and west (the Asian mainland), land/sea/air invasion on the main islands of Honshu and Kyushu, or blockading and bombing to slowly strangle Japan into surrender.
  • The choices, then, were a potentially involvement in an Aisan land war, an invasion resulting extremely high casualties for both sides, or potentially endless war via blockade.
    • A working estimated ratio of losses (dead and wounded) was 1 American to about 5 Japanese.
    • Operation Downfall, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    • Because the U.S. military planners assumed “that operations in this area will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire, but also by a fanatically hostile population”,^[26] high casualties were thought to be inevitable…. [E]stimates, … varied widely in numbers, assumptions and purposes, which included advocating for and against the invasion. The estimated casualty figures later became a crucial point in postwar debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
    • A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson‘s staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7–4 million American casualties, including 400,000–800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.^[15]
    • Given a troop list of 766,700 men and a 90-day campaign, the US Sixth Army could be expected to suffer between 514,072 casualties (including 134,556 dead and missing)…
    • In order to sustain the campaign on Kyushu, planners estimated a replacement stream of 100,000 men per month would be necessary,…
    • In a letter sent to General Curtis LeMay from General Lauris Norstad, when LeMay assumed command of the B-29 force on Guam, Norstad told LeMay that if an invasion took place, it would cost the US “half a million” dead.^[81]
• Casualty Projections for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications, by D. M. Giangreco in the Journal of Military History, 61 (July 1997): 521-82
  • The implied top-end figure of approximately 1,700,000 to 2,000,000 battle casualties built on the basis of the Saipan ratio was slashed down to a best-case scenario figure that was not so huge as to make the task ahead appear insurmountable, and use of a 500,000 battle casualty figure was “the operative one at the working level”^60 during the spring of 1945.
  • This smaller figure, however, was based on the assumption that the U.S. military would learn to counter Japanese tactics, and it neglected the fact that, as evidenced by the casualty ratios then emerging from Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Imperial Japanese Army was likewise learning from its experiences. Thus, the “low” 500,000 number for total battle casualties, used widely in briefings, was a best-case estimate not accepted for strategic planning purposes
  • The Army did not sugar coat the prospect of a long war for the soldiers in the field and new inductees; it warned that various “major factors— none of them predictable at this stage of the game— will decide whether it will take 1 year, 2 years or longer to win the Far East war.
  • Dr. William B. Shockley from the War Department examine[d] the casualties question independently of the Army, but using classified data gathered by its Military Intelligence Division and Medical Corps. Shockley said: “If the study shows that the behavior of nations in all historical cases comparable to Japan’s has in fact been invariably consistent with the behavior of the troops in battle, then it means that the Japanese dead and ineffectives at the time of the defeat will exceed the corresponding number for the Germans. In other words, we shall probably have to kill at least 5 to 10 million Japanese. This might cost us between 1.7 and 4 million casualties including [between] 400,000 and 800,000 killed.”^139
• Differences between Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians and neo-Conservatives
  • Left–right politics, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    • History of the terms: The terms “left” and “right” appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution to his left. One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained, “We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp.” However the Right opposed the seating arrangement because they believed that deputies should support private or general interests but should not form factions or political parties. The contemporary press occasionally used the terms “left” and “right” to refer to the opposing sides.^[9]
  • Greens and Libertarians: The yin and yang of our political future, by Dan Sullivan (originally appearing in Green Revolution, Volume 49, No. 2, summer, 1992)
    • … Libertarians tend to be logical and analytical. They are confident that their principles will create an ideal society, even though they have no consensus of what that society would be like. Greens, on the other hand, tend to be more intuitive and imaginative. They have clear images of what kind of society they want, but are fuzzy about the principles on which that society would be based.
    • Ironically, Libertarians tend to be more utopian and uncompromising about their political positions, and are often unable to focus on politically winnable proposals to make the system more consistent with their overall goals. Greens on the other hand, embrace immediate proposals with ease, but are often unable to show how those proposals fit in to their ultimate goals.
    • The most difficult differences to reconcile, however, stem from baggage that members of each party have brought with them from their former political affiliations. Most Libertarians are overly hostile to government and cling to the fiction that virtually all private fortunes are legitimately earned. Most Greens are overly hostile to free enterprise and cling to the fiction that harmony and balance can be achieved through increased government intervention.
    • Amongst published researchers, there is agreement that the Left includes anarchists, communists, socialists, progressives, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, anti-racists, democratic socialists, greens, left-libertarians, social democrats, and social liberals.^[5][6][7]
    • Researchers have also said that the Right includes capitalists, conservatives, monarchists, nationalists, neoconservatives, neoliberals, reactionaries, imperialists, right-libertarians, social authoritarians, religious fundamentalists, and traditionalists.^[8]
• Bernie and the DNC ‘Conspiracy’
  • Yes he’s an independent and has no love for the Democratic Party or he would be a member of the Democratic Party.
  • What if he were a Democrat? What if he always was or had become one? Would that make a difference if everything else remained the same
  • Lyndon LaRouche was a registered Democrat,
    • LaRouchies are still a bain of the Democratic Party, and sometimes win primaries.
  • “Is Bernie Sanders a Democrat?” – Politifact, By Linda Qiu on Tuesday, February 23rd, 2016 at 5:45 p.m.
  • NYT Now: Bernie Sanders Makes a Campaign Mark. Now, Can He Make a Legacy?

• Payday Lenders
  • Usury: noun the illegal action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest. Archaic interest at unreasonably high rates.
  • Interest Caps
  • ‘Choice’
  • Are the many high-interest payday lenders a direct result of bank deregulation and the attendant fees and penalties that came with them?
  • How this Missouri man wound up paying $50K in interest after taking $2,500 in payday loans: ws/20onFHy pic.twitter.com/8krVicitx1
• Time for a return of the 2 ½ contingency war strategy?
  •  Will we ever see a return of the “Peacetime Army”?
  • Threat from Russian and Chinese warplanes mounts – USA Today

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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