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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.)

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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;
  

  Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike, just before the show. (Dec. 7, 2015)

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]:

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1. Are you ready for the runoffs? Make sure you are registered to vote.
   1. Make sure you are registered:
   2. HarrisVotes.com
   3. VoteTexas.gov
2. Theresa May points finger at Putin’s Russia over spy’s poisoning,
   1. May told British lawmakers on Monday that Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were exposed to a nerve agent known as Novichok, a weapon developed in the Soviet Union in the end of the Cold War.
   2. Prime Minister Theresa May said Monday that the British government believed it was “highly likely” that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, 66, a onetime double agent for Britain who exchanged for Russian spies in 2010, and his daughter, Yulia, 33.
   3. “Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others,” she said.
   4. May added that the attack in a city in England fits a pattern of Russian aggression and that Britain had given the Russian ambassador in London a deadline of Tuesday to explain which version is true.
   5. She said: “We will not tolerate such a brazen attempt to murder innocent civilians on our soil.”
   6. …”Should there be no credible response, we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russia state against the United Kingdom.”
   7. MIKE: This used to be called an Ultimatum. It often led to war.
3. Qataris opted not to give info on Kushner, secret meetings to Mueller, by Julia Ainsley, Carol E. Lee, Robert Windrem and Andrew W. Lehren
   1. Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to special counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions….
   2. … It is unknown whether Qatari officials were the source of the recent news stories detailing activities by [George] Nader and [Republican donor Elliott] Broidy published by The New York Times and CNN.
   3. … Qatari officials believe Trump’s verbal backing of the blockade was a form of retaliation by his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, whose family’s negotiations with Qatari investors had recently fallen apart, according to several sources familiar with the Qatari government’s thinking.
4. Putin reveals he was ready to shoot down hijacked jet in 2014, by Associated Press
   1. MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin approved of a plan to shoot down a hijacked passenger jet four years ago, according to a new documentary.
   2. A Ukrainian man tried to hijack a Turkey-bound flight and demanded that it go to Sochi as the Winter Olympics were about to start there in February 2014. The Sochi Games were Putin’s pet project designed to showcase Russia.
   3. The plane’s pilot instead tricked the man, who was drunk and falsely claimed he had a bomb, and landed in Istanbul. Officials credited the pilot and crew for convincing the 45-year-old-man that they were following his wishes.
   4. Putin said in a two-hour documentary … that the chief of domestic intelligence agency FSB had briefed him on the phone and said they were prepared to shoot down the plane with 110 passengers onboard.
   5. [Putin said} “I asked: ‘what are you suggesting?’ and the answer was the one I expected: shoot it down in line with the contingency plans for such situations,” Putin said, quoting his conversation with FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov. “I said: ‘act according to the plan.'”
   6. …Minutes later, the FSB chief called Putin to say it was a false alarm and that the plane was due to land safely in Turkey.
   7. QUESTION: What should Putin have said and done?
5. Australian gun laws stopped 16 mass shootings, new calculations show, by Maggie Fox
   1. An Australian program to buy back firearms and tighten rules on gun ownership has prevented an estimated 16 mass shootings over two decades, researchers reported Monday.
   2. The buyback law was enacted in 1996 after a mass shooting in which 35 people were shot and killed and 23 injured at a cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
   3. … Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney and colleagues have watched to see what happened in Australia since then.
   4. In the 18 years preceding and including the Port Arthur massacre, the new analysis of firearm deaths showed that 13 mass shootings had occurred between 1979 and 2013. “None has occurred in the 22 years since,” they wrote.
6. ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli weeps during sentencing, ordered to 7 years in prison
   1. Martin Shkreli is ordered to spend seven years in prison for securities fraud. The so-called “Pharma bro,” who became infamous for raising the price of a life-saving HIV drug by 5,000 percent, will also serve three years of probation after his release and pay a $75,000 fine.
   2. Do we need regulation of Big Pharma and what constitutes a reasonable profit?
7. What is a “Populist”?
   1. From Wikipedia: … a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against a privileged elite.^[1] Critics of populism have described it as a political approach that seeks to disrupt the existing social order by solidifying and mobilizing the animosity of the “commoner” or “the people” against “privileged elites” and the “establishment”.^[2] Populists can fall anywhere on the traditional left–right political spectrum of politics and often portray both bourgeois capitalists and socialist organizers as unfairly dominating the political sphere.^[3]
      1. Political parties and politicians^[4] often use the terms “populist” and “populism” as pejoratives against their opponents. Such a view sees populism as demagogy, merely appearing to empathize with the public through rhetoric or unrealistic proposals in order to increase appeal across the political spectrum.^[5]
   2. From Merriam-Webster:
      1. 1: a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially, often capitalized : a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
      2. 2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
   3. oxforddictionaries.com:
      1. A person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.
8. America’s Cultural Revolution, by Catherine Rampell
   1. Last month in Shanghai, Chinese venture capitalist Eric X. Li made a provocative suggestion. The United States, he said, was going through its own “Cultural Revolution.” …
   2. Li said he saw several parallels between the violence and chaos in China decades ago and the animosity coursing through the United States today. In both cases, the countries turned inward, focusing more on defining the soul of their nations than on issues beyond their borders.
   3. He said that both countries were also “torn apart by ideological struggles,” with kinships, friendships and business relationships being severed by political differences.
   4. “Virtually all types of institutions, be it political, educational, or business, are exhausting their internal energy in dealing with contentious, and seemingly irreconcilable, differences in basic identities and values — what it means to be American,” he said in a subsequent email exchange. “In such an environment, identity trumps reason, ideology overwhelms politics, and moral convictions replace intellectual discourse.”
9. 7 Reforms After Trump, by Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) 12/3/17, 19:31
   1. Repeal Shelby v Holder (LEGISLATE: Renew Voting Rights Act)
   2. Repeal Citizens United (LEGISLATE/AMENDMENT: Limit Money in Politics, abolish anonymous money in politics)
   3. Abolish electoral college (or can it be saved?)
   4. Apply anti-nepotism law to White House (It was WRITTEN for White House [Robert Kennedy serving with JFK])
   5. POTUS candidates must release tax returns (LEGISLATE/AMENDMENT: for how many years)
   6. Presidents may not self-pardon (AMENDMENT OR LEGISLATION: or pardon executive appointees?)
   7. Special counsel has power to indict president
      1.  ADD:
         1. 2/3 Senate vote to confirm SCOTUS appointment

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

1. What do belts around Proxima Centauri mean for exoplanet research?, By John Wenz  |  Published: Friday, November 03, 2017 [http://www.astronomy.com]
2. TV Talk:
   1. “The Good Place”
   2. “The Orville”
   3. “Adam Ruins Everything”

LINKS:

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

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