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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: “World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor—it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.” ~ John F. Kennedy in his A Strategy of Peace speech, the Commencement Address at American University (10 June 1963). Citation

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.
• King Lear:
  • If she must teem,
    Create her child of spleen, that it may live
    And be a thwart disnatur’d torment to her!
    Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,
    With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,
    Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
    To laughter and contempt, that she may feel
    How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
    To have a thankless child! ~ King Lear Act 1, scene 4, 281–289
  • In this case, the “thankless child” would be Jihadism, and the mother would be those leaders and nations that fostered it, aided it or simply turned a blind eye to it.
    • SAUDI Arabia, arguably a ‘parent’ to Jihadism, is now a target. This the Shakespearean comparison.
      • Three suicide attacks in Saudi Arabia extend global wave of bombings and a bloody week, By Liz Sly (WASHINGTON POST) July 4,2016 at 6:00 PM
      • Bangladesh attack: Twenty hostages killed, army says: All of the dead were foreign, army says, most “brutally hacked to death” at popular restaurant in upscale neighbourhood, by Al-Jazeera, July 3, 2016
        • Violence has spiked in Bangladesh in the past 18 months with a spate of attacks, often using machetes, against individuals including liberals, gays, foreigners and members of religious minorities.
      • But the important point here is not entirely Jihadism. It’s extremism: Religious, political, ethnic, rational nationalistic.
      • Whether it’s the encouragement of a ‘favored’ brand of extremism by some, or the benign neglect or malign neglect of others, that nurtures it.
    • “First they came for the Communists
      And I did not speak out
      Because I was not a Communist
      Then they came for the Socialists
      And I did not speak out
      Because I was not a Socialist
      Then they came for the trade unionists
      And I did not speak out
      Because I was not a trade unionist
      Then they came for the Jews
      And I did not speak out
      Because I was not a Jew
      Then they came for me
      And there was no one left
      To speak out for me.” ~  Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (German: [ˈniːmœlɐ]; b. 14 January 1892 – d. 6 March 1984) was a German anti-Nazi theologian^[1] and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his statement, “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist …… and there was no one left to speak for me.” – Wikipedia  (Also See more at: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust))
  • This is really a statement against all extremism, intolerance and terrorism. To stand by while it happens is to aid and abet it.
  • Standing against extremism and ruthlessness is hard, but it doesn’t always take armies and guns. Sometimes just a word may do. Bravery can come in very small doses.
    • Anger, hate and frustration don’t create bigotry, but can convert it to violence ‘acting out’.
    • Magazine: Documenting America’s white nationalists: A photographer followed members of the National Socialist Movement for a year, until her project came to a dramatic end. By Julie Platner (for Al-Jazeera), 2 June 2015
    • Istanbul Airport attack: Is it possible to report too little news and too much speculation?
      • Drowning out other news even in the absence of any real new information.
      • Speculating on-air in ways that may actually aid terrorists in their attack.
      • What’s behind Turkey’s multi-front domestic and international security issues?
    • If the UK wants to leave the EU, there’s always room to make her a State, right?
    • Think twice, maybe three times, before cosigning loans, and even then, you probably shouldn’t do it.
      • In New Jersey Student Loan Program, Even Death May Not Bring a Reprieve, By ANNIE WALDMAN, (NY Times) JULY 3, 2016

  • TRUMP: The Latest: Ernst, a running-mate prospect, meets Trump, Washington Post: WASHINGTON – The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign. (All times EDT): 3:45 p.m.. If Donald Trump and Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst (The self-proclaimed pork castrator) discussed making her his running mate in a weekend meeting, mum’s the word.

  • BREXIT
    • Brexit is a reminder that some things just shouldn’t be decided by referendum,
    • Brexit Leaders Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage and their cowardly abandonment of responsibility for what they have wrought.

  • ‘He’s not a spoiled brat, he’s just like JFK’: Bill O’Reilly compares Trump to former president as they both can ‘say whatever they want because they’re rich’: O’Reilly said Trump says what he wants because he has ‘billions of dollars’, disagreed that Trump was a ‘spoiled brat’, Said [Trump] was merely using his ‘resources’ and claims JFK did the same, By Dailymail.com Reporter, Published: 11:57 EST, 3 July 2016 | Updated: 15:03 EST, 3 July 2016

• 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]

• 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.

 

 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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