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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.

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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. Make sure you are registered to vote:
   1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965)
   2. VoteTexas.gov

2. If companies want you to accept e-statements instead of paper statements, why do they make it so hard to get the e-statements?

   1. Why not an attachment (or a permission to attach)?
   2. Why make you log in, go to statements, find the new statement, and have to download it?
   3. I’d be much more willing to accept e-statements if they were attached to an email so I could just save them electronically.
   4. Only a handful of companies do it this way, and no banks.
3. Supreme Court gives Ohio right to purge thousands of voters from its rolls – The U.S. Supreme Court gave Ohio a victory Monday in a fight over the state’s method for removing people from the voter rolls, by Pete Williams /com/ Jun.11.2018 / 9:11 AM ET
   1. In a 5-4 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court gave Ohio a victory Monday in a fight over the state’s method for removing people from the voter rolls, a practice that civil rights groups said discourages minority turnout.
   2. At least a dozen other politically conservative states said they would adopt a similar practice if Ohio prevailed, as a way of keeping their voter registration lists accurate and up to date.
   3. “You’ll see more red states making it easier to drop people from the voter registration rolls,” [said Prof. Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine].
   4. … Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, said the court’s job was not “to decide whether Ohio’s supplemental process is the ideal method for keeping its voting rolls up to date. The only question before us is whether it violates federal law. It does not.”
   5. Ohio election officials send notices to anyone who fails to cast a ballot during a two-year period. People who do not respond and don’t vote over the next four years, including in two more federal elections, are dropped from the list of registered voters. …
   6. … A federal appeals court ruled against the state, concluding that roughly 7,500 Ohio voters — in a state that’s perennially a presidential battleground — were wrongly purged from the list in the 2016 election.
   7. Opponents of Ohio’s system, led by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, said it violated the National Voter Registration Act, which specifies that voters can be purged from the rolls only if they ask, move, are convicted of a felony, become mentally incapacitated, or die. More than half the voters in Ohio fail to cast a ballot over a two-year period, the group said, and those who receive the state’s notices simply throw them away.
   8. “The Supreme Court got this one wrong. The right to vote is not ‘use it or lose it,'” said Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters of the United States. “This decision will fuel the fire of voter suppressors across the country who want to make sure their chosen candidates win reelection, no matter what the voters say.”
   9. `Justice Stephen Breyer authored the dissent, which was joined by liberal justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, who also wrote a separate — and scathing — dissent. …
   10. … The Obama Justice Department supported the challengers in the early stages of the court fight, arguing that the mere exercise of the right not to vote cannot be the basis for removing a name from the voter rolls. But the Trump administration switched sides and supported Ohio, saying in a court brief that the state’s system strikes a balance between “on the one hand dramatically increasing the number of voters on the voter rolls but, on the other, giving states the flexibility they need to manage the issues that arise when you have over-inflated [my emphasis] voter rolls.”
4. Day 1 of a Worse Internet-Net neutrality is officially dead. Here’s how you’ll notice it’s gone, By April Glaser / SLATE.com / June 11, 20185:55 AM
   1. Monday, June 11, is the first day of the post-net neutrality internet. In December, the Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal the Obama-era rules that prohibit internet companies from slowing down or speeding up access to certain websites, but it took about six months for the repeal to get a sign-off from the Office of Management and Budget and for the new rules to be published in the federal register. Beginning, well, now, your internet access could—emphasis on could—feel dramatically different than it did yesterday. …
   2. … The FCC’s move to rescind the Obama-era open internet protections, however, is facing serious challenges, both from multiple lawsuits expected to be filed in the coming days against the repeal as well as from Congress, where Democratic lawmakers have led an effort to undo the FCC’s actions. In May, every Senate Democrat and three Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, John Kennedy of Louisiana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska— voted to reverse the net neutrality repeal with a Congressional Review Act resolution, which is used to overturn or eliminate a federal agency’s action. Congressional Republicans have used the same process to reverse more than a dozen regulatory actions since Donald Trump won the election in 2016—but those were rules passed under President Obama. In order for the resolution to go into effect, a simple majority in the House also has to vote to undo the repeal, and President Trump has to sign it. But in the House, Republicans outnumber Democrats 235-193, meaning more than 20 Republicans would have to get on board if every Democrat voted in favor. …
5. Trump is a bully who thought Canada was weak. He was wrong about us–The president’s temper tantrum shows Canada can’t trust its closest ally – and we’ll go to the wall for our overpriced cheese if it becomes a point of national self-respect, By Jen Gerson / The Guardian / Mon 11 Jun 2018 00 EDT /Last modified on Mon 11 Jun 2018 10.52 EDT
   1. … “There’s a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J Trump and then tries to stab him in the back on the way out the door,” said Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade advisor, on Fox News Sunday.
   2. What he was referring to was a stock standard press conference in which Trudeau referenced Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, noted “Canadians did not take it lightly”, said labelling the country a national security threat was “kind of insulting” to Canadians who have lost daughters and sons alongside Americans in Afghanistan, and reiterated his plans for retaliatory tariffs on symbolic American products like bourbon and pickled gherkins. …
   3. Trump may be a polarizing figure in the US, but he is turning out to be a great unifier of Canadians …
   4. … Trump has focused his ire on Canadian dairy, where we maintain a “supply management” system that keeps foreign products out of the country. Many Canadians would like to see the back of it, and Trump could have pushed Canada closer to dismantling this system as part of ongoing Nafta renegotiations. Best of luck with that now, Mr Art of the Deal. …
   5. … It is remarkable that the one thing this G7 summit has highlighted is that, in the long run, Canada can’t trust or rely upon its closest and most trusted ally. We need to rapidly diversify our economy and trade partnerships. …
6. As tensions with Trump deepen, Europe wonders if America is lost for good, by Griff Witte and Michael Birnbaum [washingtonpost.com] May 19, 2018 at 12:00 PM Email the author
   1. Since Jan. 20, 2017, European leaders have managed U.S. relations with one eye on the clock, anxiously counting down the hours until President Trump’s term is up and hoping the core of the Western alliance isn’t too badly damaged in the meantime.
   2. But as Trump’s aggressive rhetoric toward America’s closest allies has evolved into hostile action this spring, a new fear has swept European capitals.
   3. Trump may not be an aberration that can be waited out, with his successor likely to push reset after four or eight years of fraught ties. Instead, the blend of unilateralism, nationalism and protectionism Trump embodies may be the new American normal.
      2. 1. 1. “It is dawning on a number of European players that Trump may not be an outlier,” said Josef Janning, head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “More and more people are seeing it as a larger change in the United States.” …
7. China increasingly challenges American dominance of science, by Ben Guarino, Emily Rauhala and William Wan June 3, 2018 [WASHINGTONPOST.COM]
   1. … [Spanish geneticist José Pastor-Pareja] struggled to renew his visa and was even detained for two hours of questioning at a New York City airport after he returned from a trip abroad. In 2012, he made the surprising decision to leave his Ivy League research position and move to China. 
   2. … After decades of American dominance, Chinese science is ascendant, and it is luring scientists like Pastor-Pareja away from the United States. Even more China-born scientists are returning from abroad to a land of new scientific opportunity.
   3. The United States spends half a trillion dollars a year on scientific research — more than any other nation on Earth — but China has pulled into second place, with the European Union third and Japan a distant fourth.
   4. China is on track to surpass the United States by the end of this year, according to the National Science Board. In 2016, annual scientific publications from China outnumbered those from the United States for the first time. …
   5. … The scientific advances are a small piece of China’s larger ambitions. President Xi Jinping aims to supplant the United States as the world’s economic superpower within three decades. In October, Xi vowed to produce “a world-class army by 2050.”
   6. Meanwhile, China is spending more on infrastructure than the United States or Europe, and the middle class has ballooned …
   7. … Under the Trump administration, many U.S. researchers say their work has been devalued, threatened by budget cuts and hampered by stricter immigration policies that could deter international collaborations and the influx of talent that has long fueled American innovation. …
   8. Within the scientific community, one of China’s most successful plans has been an aggressive recruiting program called Thousand Talents.
   9. …For the past decade, the program has targeted Chinese citizens who have studied at elite universities in the United States and elsewhere. It has lured back these foreign-trained experts by, essentially, throwing money at them. The program has also gone after a smaller number of foreign-born scientists who have won prestigious prizes or made internationally recognized scientific contributions. …
   10. … American authors of scientific papers are more likely to collaborate with Chinese scientists than with colleagues from any other nation, according to National Science Foundation data.
   11. Leaders in Washington should embrace the cooperative spirit of working scientists, Simon said, rather than treating China as a threat. “The Chinese, for the first time, really have something to offer us,” [said Denis Simon, who has studied Chinese science for 40 years and is the executive vice chancellor of Duke-Kunshan University]. “It is vitally in the U.S. interest to plug in.”
   12. … The scientific advances are a small piece of China’s larger ambitions. President Xi Jinping aims to supplant the United States as the world’s economic superpower within three decades. In October, Xi vowed to produce “a world-class army by 2050.”
8. SpaceX Falcon Heavy with Block 5 rockets targets November launch debut, By Eric Ralph / teslarati.com / Posted on June 10, 2018
   1. 27 Engines, 70 Ton Thrust, 100% Heavy, [TESLARATI ]
   2. According to several of its satellite passengers, SpaceX’s second launch of Falcon Heavy – this time with three Falcon 9 Block 5 boosters – is understood to be targeted for no earlier than November 2018 and will mark the first commercial mission for the world’s most powerful operational rocket.
   3. Under the blanket label Space Test Program-2 (STP-2), Falcon Heavy’s first operational mission will be conducted for the US Air Force and see 25 various spacecraft – some weighing as much as 500 kilograms – launched into an equally varied selection of orbits, requiring a complex series of restarts and burns for the rocket’s upgraded Block 5 second stage. STP-2 also includes a huge 5000-kilogram ballast mass as a result of the decision to fly the mission as a demonstration of Falcon Heavy instead of a less powerful but cheaper and simpler single-booster Falcon 9. The total mass of all 25 payloads is likely far beneath the powerful rocket’s actual capabilities, as are the performance and propellant reserves required for the upper stage to inject different spacecraft into a number of orbits, hence the inclusion of so much dead mass. …
9. Advertisers flee Samantha Bee’s show after backlash for Ivanka Trump remark – State Farm and Autotrader stated publicly last week that they would no longer advertise on the show, by Claire Atkinson / com/Jun.07.2018 / 3:36 PM ET / Updated Jun.07.2018 / 4:15 PM ET
   1. Samantha Bee returned to her TBS show “Full Frontal” … with significantly [my emphasis] fewer advertisers following a scandal around her use of crude language toward Ivanka Trump.
   2. Bee apologized the day after making the remark, calling it “inexcusable.”
   3. The weekly comedy show had just a handful of advertisers during the broadcast, including premium TV service Epix, movie advertiser Warner Bros., PlayStation 4 and Universal Pictures, according to measurement firm iSpot.tv. (Universal Pictures is a unit of NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.) The network also ran promotional spots for its own shows and for sister channel TNT.
   4. The previous week’s episode — which aired on May 30 and included a segment in which Bee used a vulgar slur to describe Trump — carried 17 commercials, with advertisers such as Taco Bell, Geico, Jim Beam, State Farm and others.
   5. Last week, State Farm and Autotrader stated publicly that they would no longer advertise on the show.
   6. Advertisers have shown a growing willingness to pull ads from shows that spark public criticism. Fox News host Sean Hannity lost advertisers after a liberal activist group targeted him over his coverage of Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore. Numerous advertisers pulled their ads from Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News after she mocked Parkland, Florida, shooting survivor David Hogg.
10. How Trump changed everything for The Onion – The comedy website has had to develop new strategies and new characters for a president who often defies satire, By ANDREW RESTUCCIA [POLITICO.COM] 05/20/2018 06:49 AM EDT
    1. A lot has changed since 2013, when the editors of The Onion got an angry email from Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen. Back then, Cohen was an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, and his client was just a TV mogul, still years away from announcing his first serious presidential bid.
    2. Cohen was fuming over a satirical article published under Trump’s name with the headline, “When You’re Feeling Low, Just Remember I’ll Be Dead In About 15 Or 20 Years.” On Trump’s behalf, Cohen demanded that The Onion immediately remove the article and apologize.
    3. “This commentary goes way beyond defamation and, if not immediately removed, I will take all actions necessary to ensure your actions do not go without consequence,” Cohen wrote, according to a copy of the email provided to POLITICO. “Guide yourself accordingly.”
    4. Five years later, Trump is in the White House, Cohen is under federal investigation and the article is still on The Onion’s website, which many West Wing staffers begrudgingly admit to occasionally reading.
    5. … As The Onion tries to find its footing in the Trump era, its writers have increasingly focused on the people around the president. Vice President Mike Pence is often depicted as a repressed religious fanatic who, in one memorable article, refused to be alone with a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup until his wife arrived. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., known as the “Trump boys” in The Onion’s lexicon, are cast as bumbling simpletons whose misadventures — from setting up their own makeshift law firm in the White House’s electrical room to interrupting an intelligence briefing with sofa cushions duct-taped to their bodies — are the closest thing to the site’s wildly successful mockery of former Vice President Joe Biden. …
    6. “… Trump poses definitely an interesting challenge [says editor-in-chief Chad Nackers], and it goes pretty deep. We’re so divided in this country politically right now that I feel like people can be very dismissive if they think you’re doing a joke that’s critical of Trump. They’ll be like, “That’s not funny. That’s no good.” On the other hand, I think overly left-leaning people can be too on board with anything someone says, not even an Onion thing. They’ll believe anything as long as it’s hammering Trump. …
    7. … The First Amendment is very important to all journalists, and that’s something I’ve always been appreciative of with The Onion, that in America you feel very protected and you can comment on things. So, it scares me when, regardless of the political group, when people start saying, “Well, that person shouldn’t be allowed to say anything.” Because that’s a pretty slippery slope. …
    8. … The other challenge about this administration is that so many of their policies and things, like for the EPA, they almost feel like satire. You’re just cutting everything that would protect the environment or making it easier for people to pollute. That’s the kind of thing that you would in the past make jokes about. I think we had an article years ago that said something like: “EPA: Rivers Aren’t Supposed to Smell like Shit.” And you can’t really do that kind of joke now because that’s not really where their focus is.
    9. It goes throughout the Department of Interior. We used to do lots of jokes about various things — laying off animals and stuff like that. It’s not quite as relevant now because they’re not functioning at a normal level.
11. ‘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.
12. 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.
13. 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:

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