SHOW AUDIO: Link is usually posted within about 72 hours of show broadcast. We take callers during this show at 713-526-5738.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 2-3 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Don Dwayne

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.)

Please take a moment to visit Pledge.KPFT.org and choose THINKWING RADIO from the drop-down list when you donate.

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]:

 

______________________________________________________________________

1. Are you ready for the runoffs? Make sure you are registered to vote?
   1. Make sure you are registered:
      1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965)
      2. VoteTexas.gov
      3. Who’s on the May 22 Texas primary runoff ballots?, By Ryan Murphy [TEXAS TRIBUNE] 
      4. More than 30 Texas primary races are headed to a runoff. Here’s what you need to know. [TEXAS TRIBUNE]
      5. March 14, 2018
         1. Early voting for the May 22 runoffs begins on May 14 and ends on May 18.
2. 52 Palestinian Protesters Killed, Gaza Officials Say, As U.S. Opens Jerusalem Embassy, By Bill Chappell [NPR] May 14, 20188:07 AM ET
   1. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are protesting the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and Israeli army forces have killed 52 protesters, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry also says some 2,400 people have been hurt in demonstrations and clashes.
   2. … “The rioters are hurling firebombs & explosive devices, burning tires, throwing rocks, & attempting to ignite fires in Israeli territory,” the army said via Twitter. “IDF troops are responding with riot dispersal means and fire, and are operating according to standard operating procedures.”
   3. Both sides of the conflict had been preparing for today’s events. In Hamas-ruled Gaza, violent protests have erupted every Friday since March, venting anger over Israeli’s blockade. The Israeli Defense Forces say that terrorists are using civilians to cover their actions; military jets have been dropping leaflets warning Palestinians not to come near the security fence. …
   4. … As NPR’s Camila Domonoske reported when Trump announced the change in December, the president said that “his announcement does not mean the U.S. is taking a position on any possible future peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians or on the ‘final status’ of Jerusalem after such talks.”
   5. “Today we finally acknowledge the obvious,” Trump said. “This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality.”
   6. To thank Trump for his decision, Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, renamed a square near the new U.S. outpost. Secretary Mnuchin received a plaque today bearing its new name: “United States Square in honor of President Donald J. Trump.”
   7. MIKE; So Trump got his name on something else. Written in absolutely preventable bloodshed.
3. Trump pledges to help Chinese phonemaker ZTE ‘get back into business’ – Trump insists it’s ‘trade negotiations,’ not a trade war, by Tony Romm, Damian Paletta and Steven Mufson [WASHINGTON POST] May 13, 2018 at 5:34 PM Email the author
   1. President Trump says he’s working with China to save ZTE, by Jackie Wattles and Sherisse Pham @CNNMoney May 14, 2018: 4:30 AM ET
   2. ZTE has also long been the target of scrutiny for regulators and officials in the United States, which is wary of its ties to the Chinese government. The company’s controlling shareholder is Shenzhen Zhongxingxin Telecommunications Equipment, a Chinese state-owned corporation.
   3. One 2012 congressional report about ZTE and Huawei, another huge Chinese tech company, said the companies “cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems.” Both companies strongly disputed the report’s findings.
   4. Adam Schiff, a Democratic congressman from California, responded to Trump’s tweet Sunday, saying he “should care more about our national security than Chinese jobs.”

   6. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

      China and the United States are working well together on trade, but past negotiations have been so one sided in favor of China, for so many years, that it is hard for them to make a deal that benefits both countries. But be cool, it will all work out!  2:22 PM – May 13, 2018 88.9K 28.3K people are talking about this

4. iOS 11.4 to Disable USB Port After 7 Days: What It Means for Mobile Forensics, by Oleg Afonin (ElcomSoft blog) May 8th, 2018
   11. A new iOS update is about to roll out in the next few weeks or even days. Reading Apple documentation and researching developer betas, we discovered a major new security feature that is about to be released with iOS 11.4. The update will disable the Lightning port after 7 days since the device has been last unlocked. What is the meaning of this security measure, what reasons are behind, and what can be done about it?
5. Trump White House axes Nasa research into greenhouse gas cuts, com, 10 May 2018
   1. President Donald Trump’s administration has ended US space agency Nasa’s monitoring system into greenhouse gases, a US journal has revealed.
   2. The Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10m (£7m)-a-year project which remotely tracks the world’s flow of carbon dioxide, is to lose funding.
   3. Science magazine reports that its loss jeopardises the ability to measure national emission cuts – as agreed to by nations in the Paris climate deal.
   4. MIKE: Not Climate Change Denial. Climate Change concealment.
6. Texas town elects first Muslim councilman, defeating Tea Party candidate, By Fernando Ramirez [COM] Updated 10:29 pm, Friday, May 11, 2018
   1. A slim margin of 37 votes decided the election of Euless’ first Muslim councilmember this past Saturday.
   2. Thousands of voters in the small town outside Dallas turned out to support Salman Bhojani, a Pakistani immigrant attacked on the campaign trail due to his faith. …
   3. … A little over 4,000 votes were cast in the election that pitted Bhojani, 38, against Molly Maddux, a 63-year-old retired teacher and Tea Party candidate.
7. Congress Is Quietly Nudging NASA to Look for Aliens – The space agency hasn’t funded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence for 25 years. Could that soon change?, By Marina Koren [The Atlantic] May 9, 2018
   1. In October 1992, astronomers kicked off an ambitious project years in the making. Two radio telescopes, one in Puerto Rico and the other in California, started scouring the night sky for potential signals from alien civilizations somewhere deep in the cosmos….
   2. A year later…. A senator from Nevada wiped out all funding for any efforts in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, in NASA’s budget…
   3. That could soon change. Lawmakers in the House of Representatives recently proposed legislation for NASA’s future that includes some intriguing language. The space agency, the bill recommends, should spend $10 million on the “search for technosignatures, such as radio transmissions” per year, for the next two fiscal years.
8. ‘Daily Show’ Host Trevor Noah On President Trump: He ‘Reminds Me Of An African Dictator’, By Nicole Rojas [NEWSWEEK] On 5/13/18 at 4:08 PM
   1. “Daily Show” host Trevor Noah said President Donald Trump reminds him of an African dictator in an interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter on Sunday. 
   2. Noah pointed to recent news about Trump’s personal lawyer receiving payments from companies as evidence that the president appeared to act like dictators in the African continent. The comedian, who hails from South Africa, has previously compared the president to African dictators on his show on Comedy Central.
   3. “I’ve said from the very beginning that Donald Trump reminds me of an African dictator and if you know anything about African dictators, the first thing that you have to do is follow the money and you follow the money with the closest people to them,” Noah said on “Reliable Sources.”
9. ‘Tricked by the devil.’ They backed Trump. Now, his foreign labor cuts may ruin them. | Lexington Herald Leader, By Tom Eblen [COM] teblen@herald-leader.com, May 10, 2018 11:34 AM (Updated May 13, 2018 06:20 AM)
   1. Eddie Devine voted for President Donald Trump because he thought he would be good for American business. Now, he says, the Trump administration’s restrictions on seasonal foreign labor may put him out of business. “I feel like I’ve been tricked by the devil,” said Devine, owner of Harrodsburg-based Devine Creations Landscaping. “I feel so stupid.”
   2. Devine says he lost a $100,000 account because he didn’t have enough men to do the job. He’s worried he may be out of business next year if things don’t improve.
   3. He isn’t alone. Cuts in H-2B visas are hurting small businesses across the country that can’t find Americans willing to do hard, manual labor: Maryland crab processors, Texas shrimp fishermen, and Kentucky landscapers and construction companies.
   4. … “We live and die by these visas,” said Ken Monin, owner of Monin Construction, which specializes in home additions, roofs, decks and garages. “Last year we about went bankrupt. The workers we were supposed to get in March didn’t show up until August because they couldn’t get visas.”
   5. Monin applied for eight H-2B workers this year, but he isn’t optimistic he will get any. Employers seeking H-2B workers must prove they have advertised and tried unsuccessfully to hire local workers.
   6. “Americans don’t want most of these jobs,” said Monin, who pays his workers about $17 an hour. “I’ve been in this business 20 years. It’s hard, hot work.”
   7. … what makes him most angry is that Trump’s properties in Florida and New York have used 144 H-2B workers since 2016. “I want to know why it’s OK for him to get his workers, but supporters like me don’t get theirs,” Devine said.

China’s first home-built aircraft carrier begins sea trials as Beijing ramps up its maritime might, By Neil Connor, Beijing [telegraph.co.uk] 13 May 2018 • 1:16pm

1. North Yorkshire Moors Railway plans new WW2 scenario, 29 April 2018 [BBC.COM]
   1. A heritage railway line that barred a group who dress as German soldiers for its annual World War 2 re-enactment says it is working on a new scenario.The North Yorkshire Moors Railway said the decision not to include the Das Reich group came in response to negative publicity in the press.
   2. MIKE: I’m always a little concerned about guys who enjoy dressing up in Nazi Wehrmacht and SS uniforms for fun.
2. VULTURE CAPITALISM: Lampert and his ESL Hedge Fund have been sucking SEARS dry for over a decade. Now we appear to be in the end-game.
   1. Sears CEO Eddie Lampert offers tentative deal for real estate, Kenmore, Nathan Bomey, USA TODAY Published 8:53 a.m. ET April 23, 2018 | Updated 10:11 a.m. ET April 23, 2018
      1. Sears Holdings CEO and hedge fund investor Eddie Lampert has offered to potentially buy the distressed retailer’s real estate, Kenmore brand and other assets.
      2. Lampert’s hedge fund disclosed Monday that it had sent a letter to the retailer on Friday offering to work out a deal to help the distressed company raise cash.
      3. Any deal between Lampert and Sears would also deepen the reclusive executive’s financial entanglement with the retailer amid its decline. He has already orchestrated a series of deals in which he has gained control of the retailer’s most valuable real estate and other assets.
      4. Sears investors liked the development. The company’s stock rose 3% to $3.10 shortly after the opening bell Monday.
3. California’s future: More big droughts and massive floods, new study finds, By Paul Rogers | progers@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group [mercurynews.com] PUBLISHED: April 23, 2018 at 8:00 am | UPDATED: April 23, 2018 at 9:18 am
   1. The extreme weather swings that Californians have experienced over the past six years — a historic drought followed by drenching winter storms that caused $100 million in damage to San Jose and wrecked the spillway at Oroville Dam — will become the norm over the coming generations, a new study has found.
   2. Those types of extremes are not new, but because of climate change, they can be expected to occur more frequently, as hotter global temperatures and warming oceans are putting more water vapor into the air, concluded the study, which was published Monday in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.
   3. And perhaps most ominous, the odds are rising that a mega-storm — like the one that famously flooded California in 1862, forcing Leland Stanford to take a rowboat through the streets of Sacramento to his inauguration as governor — will strike again. Such a storm “is more likely than not” to hit the state at least once in the next 40 years and twice in the next 80, the study found. The 1862 event, the largest recorded flood in California history, saw 43 days of continuous rainfall that washed whole towns away and forced the state capital to be temporarily moved to San Francisco.
4. Uber’s Self-Driving Car Just Killed Somebody. Now What?, By Aarian Marshall [www.wired.com] 03.19.18
   1. At about 10 pm on Sunday evening, a self-driving Uber struck and killed a woman crossing the street in Tempe, Arizona. The crash appears to be the first time a self-driving vehicle has killed someone—and could alter the course of a scantily regulated, poorly understood technology that has the power to save lives and create fortunes.
   2. The Tempe Police Department reports the Volvo XC90 SUV was in autonomous mode when the crash occurred, though the car had a human safety driver behind the wheel to monitor the technology and retake control in the case of an emergency or imminent crash. The woman, Elaine Herzberg, was transported to a local hospital, where she died from her injuries. The police department will complete its full report later today.
   3. Uber, Waymo, and other autonomous vehicle developers like Arizona not just for the sunny weather and calm conditions but for the near total lack of restrictions on how they test: Self-driving vehicles don’t need any sort of special permit, just a standard vehicle registration. And their operators don’t have to share any information about what they’re doing with the authorities.
   4. Thus far, only California demands developers make public specific data on their operations, including descriptions of any crashes, how many miles they drive each year, and how often their human safety operators take control from the robot. Even those numbers are less than helpful in understanding the pace of their work or just how well these things really drive. The state will begin allowing the testing of totally driverless vehicles—without safety drivers for backup—on public roads next month.
   5. …companies … await legislation that would put the federal government firmly in charge of all autonomous vehicle design, construction, and performance, and allow even more testing—as many as 100,000 vehicles per manufacturer—all over the country. The bill, called the Self Drive Act, passed in the House this fall. But the companion Senate bill, the AV Start Act, has been held up by a few senators who wonder whether the young technology needs more aggressive oversight.
   6. … Tempe police report the woman was outside the crosswalk when she was hit and killed.
   7. … human drivers kill just 1.16 people for every 100 million miles driven. Waymo and Uber and all the rest combined are nowhere near covering that kind of distance, and they’ve already killed one.
5. 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]
   2. 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]
   3. 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
   4. 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.
6. 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.”
7. 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/Revise 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. All declared POTUS candidates must release at least 5 years tax returns and medical physical data. (LEGISLATE/AMENDMENT: for how many years)
   6. Presidents may not self-pardon (AMENDMENT OR LEGISLATION: or pardon executive appointees?)
   7. No “self-funding” of campaigns beyond legal donor limit.
   8. Special counsel has power to indict president
      1.  ADD:
         1. 2/3 Senate vote to confirm SCOTUS appointment

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

1. TV Talk:
   1. “The Good Place”
   2. “The Orville”
   3. “Adam Ruins Everything”

LINKS:

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

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

__________________________________________________________________