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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.

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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[s]:

“You know, comrades, that I think in regard to this: I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.” ~ Joseph Stalin (A historical source has been found for one version of this quote. The source is Boris Bazhanov’s Memoirs of Stalin’s Former Secretary, published in 1992 and only available, so far as I know, in Russian. The pertinent passage, which appears near the end of chapter five, reads as follows (loosely translated with the help of Google)

POSSIBLE TOPICS: Presidential & VP Debates, GOP Fracking, Ana Navarro, Columbus Day, more.

• TEXAS: REGISTER TO VOTE FOR THE GENERAL ELECTION
  • To vote in November 8th’s presidential elections, you have to be registered by TUESDAY, October 11^th  – TOMORROW! Make sure YOU are registered!
    
  • Go to HarrisVotes.com or VoteTexas.gov.

• Today is Columbus Day. How do we feel about that?
  • How have times and thinking changed around Columbus Day?
  • Is it:
    • A conflict of cultures?
    • A recognition that cultures other than Euro-American have value?
    • Were Indo-American cultures, mores and reasons for conquest:
      • Better?
      • Equal?
      • Inferior?
    • Convenient ‘winner’s guilt’ now that the deed is done?
    • Over the millennia, peoples and cultures have routinely conquered and even obliterated competitors. Was conquest of the so-called New World different?
      • If so, how?
    • Why We Celebrate Columbus Day: The meaning of the holiday honored on the second Monday in October. (It was formerly observed on October 12.) by scholastic.com (Grades: 3–5, 6–8, 9–12 )
      • The holiday honoring Christopher Columbus’s sighting of America on October 12, 1492, is observed in the states of the United States and also in parts of Canada, in Puerto Rico, and in some cities in Italy and Spain.
      • Although Columbus was not the first explorer to set foot in the Western Hemisphere, his landing at San Salvador Island in what is now the Bahamas was very important. It opened the way for the settlement of America by Europeans. It is probable that the first celebration honoring the event was held in 1792. Columbus Day became a legal holiday in the United States in 1892, 400 years after the famous voyage. It was then called Discovery Day. Many cities and organizations sponsor parades and banquets honoring the holiday.
        • October 12 is celebrated in Latin American countries not only as Columbus or Discovery Day, but also as the Day of the Race (El Día de la Raza). It honors the many different peoples of Latin America. Schoolchildren in the larger cities join parades. Fiestas, sometimes lasting several days, are held in the areas with large Indian populations. (Reviewed by William R. Keyser, Author, Days of the Week)
      • Support grows for Indigenous People’s Day amid Columbus Day criticism, by USA TODAY NETWORK 2:45 p.m. EDT October 10, 2016
        • As Christopher Columbus Day becomes an increasingly criticized federal holiday, some cities are celebrating Native Americans instead.
        • The cities of Phoenix and Denver will celebrate their first official Indigenous People’s Day on Monday. The cities are part of a growing movement to acknowledge Indigenous People’s Day, in recognition of the suffering Native American people endured during American colonization.
        • In Vermont, Gov. Peter Shumlin proclaimed Monday Indigenous People’s Dayin the state, replacing what had been observed in previous years as Columbus Day. In a proclamation signed Oct. 6, Shumlin said he encouraged Vermonters to “recognize the sacrifice and contributions of the First Peoples of this land” on what has nationally been a day recognizing the arrival of explorer Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492.
        • Cincinnati’s city council rejected a proclamation last week that would have recognized Indigenous People’s Day instead of Columbus Day. Likewise, Oklahoma City leaders shot down a proposal to recognize Indigenous People’s Day for the second time in a row.
        • The idea for Indigenous People’s Day was first proposed in 1977 by a delegation of Native Nations to the International Conference on Discrimination Against Indigenous Populations in the Americas, according to the Vermont proclamation.
• Last TUESDAY’S VP debate & SUNDAY’S Presidential debate between Hillary and Donald
  • TUESDAY’S Vice Presidential Debate (Tim Kane vs Mike Pence)
    • Tim Kaine: Over-enthusiastic interruptor, or shrewd long game player?
    • What seemed a wash has become a “Kaine Win”
  • Sunday’s 2^nd Presidential Debate
    • How was the moderating?
    • Was the threat to jail Hillary the high “Low Point”?
    • Donald’s NEW “Captain Queeg Moment” (From “The Cain Mutiny” 1954)
  • It’s happened before: Are we seeing the breakup and re-formation – whatever it will call itself – of a major political party in our lifetime?
    • Is there room in the GOP for an “Ana Navarro Wing” of the party?
      • Republican strategist, Ana Navarro Flores (born December 28, 1971) is a Nicaraguan-born American Republican strategist and political commentator for various news outlets, including CNN, CNN en Español,^[2] ABC News and The View.^[3]  ~ from WIKIPEDIA
    • CNN’s Ana Navarro Demolishes Trump In 2 Languages: ‘He Is A Flat-Out Racist!’; “Es un racista.”, by Rebecca Shapiro Senior Editor, The Huffington Post (10/06/2016 11:26 pm ET | Updated 10/7/2016)
    • The Real-Time Crack-Up of the GOP Is Happening Right Now on Twitter, by Marcus Wohlsen [WIRED Business) OCT 16.

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

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

• • GROWING STORY –
    • Trump Foundation ordered to stop fundraising by NY attorney general’s office, By David A. Fahrenthold October 3, 2016 at 6:11 PM (Washington Post):
      • The New York attorney general disclosed Monday that it ordered Donald Trump’s personal charity to cease fundraising immediately after determining that the foundation was violating state law by soliciting donations without proper authorization.
      • The message was conveyed in a “notice of violation” sent Friday to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, of which Trump is president.
      • The night before, The Washington Post had reported that Trump’s foundation — which had subsisted entirely on other people’s donations since 2008 — had failed to register with the state as a charity soliciting funds.
      • `Because of that, Trump’s foundation had avoided rigorous annual audits that New York state requires of charities that seek the public’s money. Those audits would have asked, among other things, if the Trump Foundation’s money had been used to benefit Trump or one of his businesses.
    • The most shocking part of Donald Trump’s tax records isn’t the $916 million loss everyone’s talking about, By Allan Sloan October 2 at 4:22 PM
      • How Trump could have avoided paying income taxes for 18 years, and that’s NOT the shocking part
  • Donald Trump Losing by a Landslide Would Heal the Nation: It would signal that the GOP’s scorched-earth political tactics don’t work, By Cody Cain [TIME.com] Aug. 29, 2016 10:33 AM ET (est.) Cain is a writer
    • When our two-party system of Democrats vs. Republicans is functioning properly, there is much to recommend it. …
    • In recent years, however, something has gone terribly awry. The Republican Party made the deliberate calculation that its best prospects for success lied not in abiding by the system and offering its superior ideas for governing, but instead in undermining the system by seeking to destroy its opponent.
    • This deplorable strategy from our political leaders is hardly the sort of conduct that our great democracy was designed to foster.
    • If Trump were to win the election in November, this would send a horrible message. A Trump victory would loudly proclaim that all of these underhanded political strategies of creating gridlock and sowing the seeds of frustration and division are indeed successful strategies…
    • If the election turns out to be close—even if Trump were defeated—these vile political strategies would still flourish. The Republican Party would likely conclude that their tactics brought them near to victory, so these tactics are effective and should be pursued more vigorously.
    • If, on the other hand, Trump suffered an enormous defeat in an overwhelming landslide, well, then, this would send a very different message. And imagine if this landslide also led to the Democratic Party gaining control of the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House, and various state and local governments as well.
    • Republicans would be forced to face the reality that… their vile strategies of division and destruction incited the worst instincts in their party, led to the rise of the disastrous Trump candidacy and resulted in utter failure. They would be forced to abandon their scorched-earth tactics, and instead return to the good old-fashioned concept of what our system is all about in the first place. Namely, the Republicans would be forced into focusing less on destroying their opponents, and more on offering positive and constructive ideas of their own. They would also be forced to abandon their “my way or the highway” approach, and instead compromise with the Democrats to forge bipartisan solutions to governing.
    • Our system would then be returned to balance, and the public trust in our government would be restored. A landslide defeat of Trump would not only dispatch with a dangerous demagogue, but it would also go a long way toward restoring the proper functioning of our democracy.
  • Longtime Republican consultant: if black people voted Republican, voter ID laws wouldn’t happen – Vox, Updated by German Lopez on September 2, 2016, 2:40 p.m. ET @germanrlopez lopez@vox.com
    • If there was any remaining doubt that North Carolina’s voting restrictions — which require a photo ID to vote and limit early voting days — are about disenfranchising black people, recent comments by a top Republican consultant in the state should put that doubt to rest.
    • William Wan reported for the Washington Post: Longtime Republican consultant Carter Wrenn, a fixture in North Carolina politics, said the GOP’s voter fraud argument is nothing more than an excuse.
    • “Of course it’s political. Why else would you do it?” he said, explaining that Republicans, like any political party, want to protect their majority. While GOP lawmakers might have passed the law to suppress some voters, Wrenn said, that does not mean it was racist.
    • “Look, if African Americans voted overwhelmingly Republican, they would have kept early voting right where it was,” Wrenn said. “It wasn’t about discriminating against African Americans. They just ended up in the middle of it because they vote Democrat.”
    • From MIKE: Texas has the same logic, and even presented it in court, when the Texas Voter ID law was challenged. To paraphrase, ‘We’re not discriminating against minorities. We’re discriminating against Democrats.’
    • “The Florida Bar says it has no jurisdiction. The state attorney in Leon County has taken a pass. So have the governor’s office and the Legislature, both of which could demand hearings if they wanted.“Imagine you were robbed and the prosecutor gave the suspect a pass after taking $25,000 from him. There would be universal outrage — and rightfully so. This is not the behavior of an ethical prosecutor. If Floridians want action, they should speak up. But it may be up to the U.S. Justice Department.When a prosecutor has been asked to investigate someone — and instead takes $25,000 in campaign cash from him — it’s the prosecutor who most needs probing. That’s why I began digging into this way back in 2013 — long before Trump was even a candidate for the White House.”The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell – who uncovered Trump’s illegal political bribe to Bondi in the first place – was given the honor of publishing an op-ed column [“New records show Bondi needs probing in Trump mess, Maxwell says“] explaining that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi deserved the bulk of the scrutiny as both a Republican elected official and as a lawyer who betrayed the public trust and that federal prosecution is the only genuine option available for the state’s top law enforcement officer:
    • Donald Trump paid the IRS a $2,500 penalty this year, an official at Trump’s company said, after it was revealed that Trump’s charitable foundation had violated tax laws by giving a political contribution to a campaign group connected to Florida’s attorney general.
    • The Washington Post and a liberal watchdog group raised new questions about the three-year-old gift. The watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed a complaint with the IRS — noting that, as a registered nonprofit, the Trump Foundation was not allowed to make political donations.
    • In that year’s tax filings, The Post reported, the Trump Foundation did not notify the IRS of this political donation. Instead, Trump’s foundation listed a donation — also for $25,000 — to a Kansas charity with a name similar to that of Bondi’s political group. In fact, Trump’s foundation had not given the Kansas group any money.
    • The prohibited gift was, in effect, replaced with an innocent-sounding but nonexistent donation.

This is from Breitbart. It’s written as an inflammatory piece for their readers, but Progressives will actually read it as a tribute piece!

• Texas Grocery Magnate Forbids ‘Open Carry,’ Opposes School Choice, Supports Sanctuary Cities, by Merrill Hope3 Jan 2016 (BREITBART.COM): Charles Butt, the Texas billionaire magnate behind the H-E-B supermarket chain which forbid the open carry of firearms law that went into effect January 1, 2016, opposes school choice, funds anti-school choice lobbyists, and is even credited for his role in killing a 2011 state bill banning “sanctuary cities.”
• His vested interest in Texas public education includes H-E-B handing out $800,000 a year to public education pursuits through the Excellence in Education Awards. In 2006, he founded Raise Your Hand Texas, which lists Butt as an advisor. The Texas Tribune describes Raise Your Hand Texas as a “seasoned lobbying force on education issues at the Capitol.”

• 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
• Every Major Florida Newspaper Just Demanded A Criminal Investigation of Trump, By Grant Stern (http://occupydemocrats.com) Posted on September 12, 2016
  • The Tampa Bay Times wrote a tough editorial entitled “Feds should investigate Bondi-Trump connection”: “Federal prosecutors should investigate whether there is any connection between the decision by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office not to pursue fraud allegations against Trump University and a $25,000 campaign contribution he gave her. Since Florida prosecutors will not touch this mess, the Justice Department is the only option. …
  • The Miami Herald’s editorial board laid out the most obvious observation about unequal media coverage which has nearly excused Trump’s pay-for-play scheme to avoid prosecution, saying that Trump’s ‘gift’ to Bondi “deserves a closer look”: “Unlike the faux scandal over the Clinton institution, there were actual victims here — people who paid good money to Trump University and feel they were duped. Why is Pam Bondi not investigating that?”
• 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
• 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.

• 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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