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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. Trump Calls for Deportations ‘With No Judges or Court Cases’, The Daily Beast, 2018-6-24
   1. President Trump on Sunday called for deportations to be carried out “with no judges or court cases” in his latest tirade against undocumented immigrants. …
   2. … “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order,” he tweeted. He went on to insist that America’s immigration policy is “laughed at all over the world.” On the contrary, the United Nations recently warned that the Trump administration was bordering on “torture” with the family separations carried out under its zero-tolerance policy.
3. Gun industry sees banks as new threat to 2nd Amendment, By LISA MARIE PANE Associated Press June 24, 2018
   1. … Gary Ramey … decided to start offering one of his handguns for sale on his website. That didn’t sit well with the company he used to process payments, and they informed him they were dropping his account. Another credit card processing firm told him the same thing: They wouldn’t do business with him. The reason? His business of making firearms violates their policies
   2. In the wake of high-profile mass shootings, corporate America has been taking a stand against the firearms industry amid a lack of action by lawmakers on gun control. Payment processing firms are limiting transactions, Bank of America stopped providing financing to companies that make AR-style guns, and retailers like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods imposed age restrictions on gun purchases.
   3. … “If a few banks say ‘No, we’re not going to give loans to gun dealers or gun manufacturers’, all of a sudden the industry is threatened and the Second Amendment doesn’t mean much if there are no guns around,” said Michael Hammond, legal counsel for Gun Owners of America. “If you can’t make guns, if you can’t sell guns, the Second Amendment doesn’t mean much.” … [C]hairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho sent letters criticizing Bank of America and Citigroup, which decided to restrict sales of firearms by its business customers, over their new gun rules in the wake of the Florida high school shooting in February.
   4. “We should all be concerned if banks like yours seek to replace legislators and policy makers and attempt to manage social policy by limiting access to credit,” Crapo wrote to Citigroup’s chief executive.
   5. The gun industry acknowledges that there’s nothing requiring companies from doing business with gun manufacturers or dealers. Monthly reports from the federal government show background checks to purchase a firearm are up over last year so far, so the early actions apparently have not put a dent in sales.
   6. … the industry believes it needs stronger laws against financial retaliation in the future. …
   7. “We may have to seek legislation to make sure it can’t be done and that you can’t discriminate against individuals from lawful exercise of a constitutional right,” said Larry Keane, senior vice president and legal counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gunmakers. “Imagine if banks were to say you can’t purchase books or certain books aren’t acceptable. That would be problematic and I don’t think anyone would stand for that kind of activity by the banking industry.”
4. Why Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant, By Dean Obeidallah/CNN.com / Updated 5:45 PM ET, Sun June 24, 2018
   1. On Tuesday night, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, while dining at a Mexican restaurant in Washington D.C., was heckled by protesters over her defense of Donald Trump’s immoral family separations at the border. And on Friday night, according to a tweet by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, she was politely asked to leave a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant by its owner because of her work defending Trump and his policies.
   2. Those shocked by these types of protests simply don’t grasp the level of emotion that many who oppose Trump feel. I hear it nightly on my SiriusXM radio show and see it firsthand on social media. Even Trump, in a rare moment of honesty, told his supporters a few weeks ago that those who oppose him are not just angry, but “really, really angry.” Many view Trump as a true threat to America. …
   3. … .But let’s make it clear, this is not about asking someone to leave or heckling them simply because they are Republicans or conservatives. That would be wrong. This is about targeting people who are very publicly involved in formulating and defending Trump’s immoral policies. …
   4. …Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen restaurant, who had asked press secretary Sanders to leave, told the media on Saturday that she is “not a huge fan of confrontation,” adding, “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive.” But as Wilkinson rightly noted, “This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
   5. Wilkinson further explained her approach to handling the situation. She first spoke with her employees, who disagreed with Sanders’ defense of Trump’s discriminatory ban on transgender Americans who want to serve in the military and her recent defense of Trump’s un-American family separation policy.
   6. In response, she then asked Sanders to step outside to the patio and “explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation.” Clearly, Sanders doesn’t comply with that standard.
   7. [HERE SPEAKS FOR ME AND MANY OTHERS] As a progressive, I feel that denying service to a person is instinctively troubling. For many, it may conjure up laws that banned blacks from being served at restaurants before the Civil Rights Act and the current campaign by some on the right to turn away same-sex couples who want professional services for their weddings. Or even a gun range owner who declared that no Muslims were allowed on the premises.
   8. But the situations with Sanders and even Nielsen are not even in the same universe as these discriminatory examples. No one is targeting them for their race, religion or sexual orientation. The backlash is because they have freely chosen to be a part of the Trump administration and have personally defended Trump’s policies. In fact, Nielsen has served up lies while championing Trump’s family separation policies while Sanders even invoked the Bible, telling reporters, “it is very biblical to enforce the law.” …
   9. … From a legal point of view, a person can be asked to leave a privately owned establishment because of their political views. For example, In April, a judge in New York City dismissed a lawsuit by a Trump supporter who wore a “Make American Great Again” hat to a bar and was asked to leave.
   10. But applying this to the average American divides us even more as a nation and makes it less likely that we can ever return to being the United States of America.
   11. Going forward, it’s likely that we will see more people speak out against Trump officials who publicly defend his cruel policies. The reality is that for many, the stakes are simply too high to remain silent as Trump attempts to radically transform our nation from the United States into Trumpistan.
5. Trump’s Roach-Infested Restaurants Are Vile Compared to the Red Hen. Seriously, some of the health-code violations in these places are disgusting, By Lachlan Markay [THEDAILYBEAST.COM] 25.18 10:33 AM ET
   1. … Trump tweeted Monday morning: “The Red Hen Restaurant should focus more on cleaning its filthy canopies, doors and windows (badly needs a paint job) rather than refusing to serve a fine person like Sarah Huckabee Sanders,”. “I always had a rule, if a restaurant is dirty on the outside, it is dirty on the inside!” … But perhaps those in glass restaurants shouldn’t throw stones. …
   2. The Lexington, Virginia-based restaurant [that] refused to serve White House press secretary Sarah Sanders on Friday, passed its most recent health inspection with flying colors. State authorities found no violations when they visited the restaurant in February, and gave the Red Hen their best possible health-risk rating.
   3. By contrast, the conditions of restaurants at Trump’s hotels and resorts have ranged from moderately unsanitary to outright revolting.
   4. In April, Washington D.C. inspectors visited the Trump International Hotel and found 10 health-code violations, including raw meat stored above ready-to-eat foods and containers of flour stored next to a hand sink that lacked a splash guard. Inspectors also found that the hotel was operating a number of on-site kitchens without city permits to do so.
   5. The hotel was given a “moderate risk” rating based on that visit.
6. Maxine Waters Warns Trump Cabinet: Steel Yourself For More Public Confrontations – “You think we’re rallying now? You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Waters vowed at a Los Angeles rally Saturday, By Mary Papenfuss [HUFFINGTONPOST.COM] 06/25/2018 12:48 am ET Updated 1 hour ago
   1. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) warned members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet to be prepared for a slew of outraged heckling and public shaming on the streets and in restaurants and stores if they continue to support the president’s controversial zero tolerance policy on undocumented immigrants.
   2. “You think we’re rallying now? You ain’t seen nothing yet,” she vowed at an enthusiastic Los Angeles rally Saturday. “Already you have members of your Cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants … protesters taking up at their house saying ‘no peace, no sleep.’”
   3. Waters repeated her warning on MSNBC Sunday, two days after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant. Restaurant owner Stephanie Wilkinson told The Washington Post she explained to Sanders that the business has “certain standards” to uphold,“such as honesty and compassion.” Last Tuesday the head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, was hounded out of a Mexican restaurant in Washington by protesters. On Friday, demonstrators loudly played an audio tape from an immigrant detention center of crying children who had been separated from their parents.
   4. The confrontations mark a new level of American protest in the wake of heartbreaking photos of young children separated from their parents. Though Trump signed an executive order last week reversing his own policy of separating children, thousands of immigrant families are expected to be detained in tent cities.
   5. “I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it is wrong what they’re doing … but they tend to not want to confront this president,” Waters said on MSNBC.
   6. Cabinet members who defend him are “not going to be able to go to a restaurant, stop at a gas station, shop at a department store. The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president: ’No … this is wrong, this is unconscionable; we can’t keep doing this to children.’”
   7. Waters called on protesters in Los Angeles to keep the pressure up. …
7. Supreme Court upholds Texas redistricting a lower court said discriminated against black and Hispanic voters, by Robert Barnes [washingtonpost] June 25, 2018 at 10:52 AM Email the author
   1. [In the case of Abbott v Perez,] The Supreme Court on Monday largely upheld Texas congressional and legislative maps that a lower court said discriminated against black and Hispanic voters. The lower court was wrong in how it considered the challenges, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in the 5 to 4 decision. The majority sided with the challengers over one legislative district.
   2. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent that was longer than Alito’s majority decision. She said the decision “does great damage to the right of equal opportunity. Not because it denies the existence of that right, but because it refuses its enforcement.”
   3. Alito was joined in the outcome by the court’s most consistent conservatives — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.
   4. Thomas and Gorsuch added they do not believe the Voting Rights Act applies to redistricting.
   5. … After the 2010 census, Texas was awarded four new congressional districts because of the state’s population growth. Almost all of the growth came from an increase in black and Hispanic residents, but the new maps produced by the legislature fulfilled its goal of protecting Anglo Republicans, the challengers charged.
   6. The maps were found by the district court to probably be unconstitutional, and the judges drew interim maps to be used in the 2012 elections. …
   7. … At oral argument, Roberts said the state’s adoption of the court-drawn maps “ought to give them some presumption of good faith moving forward, which is significant in the determination of their intent to discriminate.”
   8. The Texas case was one of three gerrymandering cases considered by the court this term and the only one involving charges of racial gerrymandering.
8. Entire Mexican police force arrested after mayoral candidate’s murder, By Tamar Lapin [NY POST] June 25, 2018 | 10:21am | Updated
   1. … A Mexican town’s entire police force has been arrested in connection with the slaying of a mayoral candidate.
   2. The 28 officers from the town of Ocampo in the western state of Michoacan were arrested Sunday on suspicion of involvement in the murder of Fernando Angeles Juarez.
   3. Juarez, 64, was running as the candidate for the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution in Ocampo, before being shot dead June 21.
   4. State officials took the cops in for having alleged ties with criminal groups possibly involved in the candidate’s killing, El Universal reported.
   5. Public Security Director Venancio Colin was chased out by 16 Ocampo cops in a hail of bullets when he first tried to arrest them Saturday, sources told the paper.
   6. He came back Sunday with reinforcements and arrested the entire force, who were cuffed and taken to the state capital for questioning.
   7. Juarez, a successful businessman with little previous political experience, was the third politician to be killed in Michoacan in just over a week, the BBC reported. …
9. GE may sell off industrial engine unit to private equity firm Advent International: WSJ – General Electric is poised to sell off its industrial engine unit for at least $3 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, The move comes as GE, recently booted from the Dow Jones industrial average, is trying to right years of underperformance. By Javier E. David (@TeflonGeek) 2018-6-24 (Published 1 Hour Ago Updated 38 Mins Ago com)
   1. General Electric may sell a unit that manufactures industrial engines [to private-equity firm Advent International for $3 billion or more], The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, as part of a wide ranging effort to revitalize the moribund manufacturing giant.
   2. Advent International (Wikipedia): Advent International is an American global private equity firm focused on buyouts of companies in Western and Central Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on international buyouts, growth and strategic restructuring in five core sectors.
   3. Since its inception in 1984, Advent has invested $40 billion (€34 billion) in private equity capital^[1] and, through its buyout programs, has completed more than 335 transactions in 41 countries.^[2] Advent operates from 14 offices in 12 countries, with affiliates in additional countries, and employs over 190 investment professionals.
   4. Private equity (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia): … Bloomberg Businessweek has called private equity a rebranding of leveraged-buyout firms after the 1980s. …
   5. Leverage (finance) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: In finance, leverage (sometimes referred to as gearing in the United Kingdom and Australia) is any technique involving the use of borrowed funds in the purchase of an asset, with the expectation that the after tax income from the asset and asset price appreciation will exceed the borrowing cost. Normally, the finance provider would set a limit on how much risk it is prepared to take and will set a limit on how much leverage it will permit, and would require the acquired asset to be provided as collateral security for the loan. For example, for a residential property the finance provider may lend up to, say, 80% of the property’s market value, for a commercial property it may be 70%, while on shares it may lend up to, say, 60% or none at all on some shares.
   6. Leveraging enables gains and losses to be multiplied.^[1] On the other hand, there is a risk that leveraging will result in a loss — i.e., it actually turns out that financing costs exceed the income from the asset, or because the value of the asset has fallen.
10. NASA reveals new plan to stop asteroids before they hit Earth – Despite what the movies show, deflecting space rocks isn’t something astronauts will do, by Hanneke Weitering / Jun.21.2018 / 9:38 AM ET / Updated 9:52 AM ET
    1. Five major objectives are detailed in the new plan. In the first, NASA is directed to lead a new effort to enhance the nation’s ability to detect, track and characterize near-Earth asteroids, in order to “reduce current levels of uncertainty and aid in more accurate modeling and more effective decision-making,” the document states. …
    2. NASA already supports several ground-based observatories that scan the skies for asteroids — like the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona; the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Maui; and the NEOWISE space telescope. While the new report doesn’t ask NASA scientists to start planning for additional missions, it does request that the agency “identify opportunities in existing and planned telescope programs to improve detection and tracking by enhancing the volume and quality of current data streams.” …
    3. The second goal listed in the document is the improvement of “modeling, prediction and information integration” across U.S. agencies to help predict the probability of an asteroid hitting Earth and determine exactly when and where an asteroid could strike. Emergency-management teams like FEMA would use this information to determine the best course of action when preparing for an asteroid strike and dealing with the consequences. …
    4. The focus of the fourth goal outlined in the document is to increase international cooperation to better prepare the rest of the world for the possibility of an asteroid strike — under the leadership of the United States. “This kind of cooperation is really important,” said Aaron Miles, a senior policy advisor with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It’s a global hazard that we all face together, and the best way to approach and address that hazard is cooperatively
    5. In the third objective, NASA is asked to come up with new ways to deflect an asteroid heading toward Earth. This involves developing technologies for “rapid-response NEO reconnaissance missions,” in which a spacecraft could launch toward an Earth-bound asteroid and somehow change the space rock’s course so that it no longer posed a threat. NASA had plans to attempt this with the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) in 2021, but the Trump administration scrapped that mission in 2017.
    6. The focus of the fourth goal outlined in the document is to increase international cooperation to better prepare the rest of the world for the possibility of an asteroid strike — under the leadership of the United States. “This kind of cooperation is really important,” said Aaron Miles, a senior policy advisor with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “It’s a global hazard that we all face together, and the best way to approach and address that hazard is cooperatively.”
    7. In the fifth and last objective in the document, the U.S. government is asked to come up with a plan that would go into effect if a large asteroid were found to be hurtling toward Earth — or if one were to crash into our planet with little to no warning. NASA and FEMA have been collaborating on emergency procedures for asteroid impacts since 2010, and the new report calls for the agencies to “strengthen and routinely exercise NEO impact emergency procedures and action protocols.”

i.     This graphic depicts the spatial extent of the damage if an asteroid measuring roughly 100 feet (30 meters) wide were to hit New York City. An asteroid that size famously exploded over Siberia on June 30, 1908. Known as the Tunguska event, this was the largest asteroid impact in recorded history. National Science and Technology Council

1. Asteroid-hunting astronomers have already found more than 8,000 near-Earth objects (NEOs) measuring at least 460 feet (140 meters) across — large enough to wipe out an entire state if one were to hit the U.S. But asteroids that size make up only one-third of the estimated population of near-Earth asteroids.
2. Smaller asteroid impacts may be less catastrophic, but they can still cause significant damage. The space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 was only 62 feet (19 m) wide, and it injured more than 1,200 people while damaging thousands of buildings as far as 58 miles (93 kilometers) away from the site of impact. NASA is starting to look for more of those smaller asteroids, now that most of the larger ones have already been cataloged.
3. The National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan is available to download as a PDF here.

1. French designer creates womblike habitat for space tourists – For $55 million, you can spend 10 days in one of the Philippe Starck-designed chambers, by Ella Koscher / Jun.20.2018 / 3:36 AM ET / Updated Jun.20.2018 / 8:53 AM ET
   1. … Renderings of the habitat show a womblike chamber with walls that are covered with tufted padding and studded with hundreds of color-changing LEDs. Plans call for chambers of this design to be installed aboard Axiom Station, a private space station that Axiom Space hopes to attach to the ISS in 2022. …
   2. … The habitat also features video screens as well as picture windows designed to provide clear views of Earth as it passes some 250 miles below. For a more expansive view, folks can visit the station’s glass-walled cupola — which Axiom calls “the largest window observatory ever constructed for the space environment.”
   3. In case the view gets old, there will also be high-speed internet connection. “There will be wi-fi,” company CEO Mike Suffredini told the New York Times. “Everybody will be online. They can make phone calls, sleep, look out the window.” …
   4. … This kind of luxury won’t come cheap. The company says a 10-day stay aboard Axiom Station will run $55 million, including the cost of a rocket ride to get there. That’s significantly more than the $9.5 million that Silicon Valley-based Orion Span set as the starting price for a ride to and a 12-day stay aboard its space hotel, which it plans to open in low-Earth orbit in 2022. …
2. IN RELATED NEWS …. ‘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.
3. Instead of Trump’s propaganda, how about a nice ‘truth sandwich’?, by Margaret Sullivan Media Columnist / WASHINGTONPOST.com / June 17, 2018 at 12:37 PM
4. Last week was a particularly rough one for journalists and truth-seeking citizens.
5. President Trump declared the news media the nation’s worst enemy. And time after shocking time, his acolytes demeaned or threatened reporters for doing one of their most basic jobs: asking questions of those in power.
6. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a reporter in North Korea that it was “insulting and ridiculous and ludicrous” for him to be asked about details of the verification process for the vaunted denuclearization.
7. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale suggested taking a CNN reporter’s credentials away after he shouted a question at the president.
8. It was ugly. Even uglier than usual.
9. … Enter George Lakoff. An author, cognitive scientist and linguist who has long studied how propaganda works, he believes it’s long past time for the reality-based news media to stop kowtowing to the emperor.
10. “Trump needs the media, and the media help him by repeating what he says,” Lakoff said.
11. That would be okay under normal circumstances, he told me, but “this situation is not normal — you have a sustained attack on the democracy and the news media.”
12. Unlike those who insist that what the president says is news and therefore must be reported, Lakoff proposes a radical reimagining of how the news media reports on Trump.
13. Instead of treating the president’s every tweet and utterance — true or false — as newsworthy (and then perhaps fact-checking it later), Lakoff urges the use of what he calls a “truth sandwich.”
14. First, he says, get as close to the overall, big-picture truth as possible right away. (Thus the gist of the Trump-in-Singapore story: Little of substance was accomplished in the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite the pageantry.) Then report what Trump is claiming about it: achievement of world peace. And then, in the same story or broadcast, fact-check his claims.
15. That’s the truth sandwich — reality, spin, reality — all in one tasty, democracy-nourishing meal.
16. Avoid retelling the lies. Avoid putting them in headlines, leads or tweets, he says. Because it is that very amplification that gives them power.
17. That’s how propaganda works on the brain: through repetition, even when part of that repetition is fact-checking. …
18. … Jay Rosen of New York University sums up one such proposal in three words: “Send the interns.” White House briefings, since the very beginning of Sean Spicer’s efforts to defend the indefensible about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd, are no place for talented, highly compensated reporters to spend their time and energy. They have also become a place that lacks not just candor but also civility, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed last week when she refused to answer reasonable questions, repeated lies about Trump’s immigration policy [of] tearing children from their parents, and then took a nasty swipe at CNN’s Jim Acosta: “I know it’s hard for you to understand even short sentences.”
19. So, Rosen says, go ahead and continue to staff these briefings. But send the interns. …
20. … Lakoff said he sees very few examples of doing what he suggests, even though news organizations have become more willing to forthrightly say that a Trump utterance is a lie, and more likely to include plenty of context in news reporting.

1. 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. …
2. Op-Ed: Texans should be wary of bullet train proposal, By Alain Leray  – Guest Contributor, Mar 22, 2018, 12:27pm –
   1. This opinion piece was written by Alain Leray, president and CEO of SNCF America Inc., which is France’s national state-owned railway company
   2. Amtrak partners with Texas Bullet Train for ticketing, access to national routes, By Dallas Business Journal staff, May 4, 2018, 1:09pm
3. $1B construction project to replace Houston Ship Channel Bridge starts, By Jen Para  – Web producer, [Houston Business Journal] June 1, 2018, 2:08pm CDT Updated a day ago
4. Human-Sheep Hybrids Could Grow Human Organs for Transplant and Even Cure Diabetes, By Katherine Hignett On 2/19/18 at 6:35 AM
   1. Scientists have created human-sheep hybrids in a step toward human organ production in animals.
   2. The approach could one day supply organs for transplantation in humans and even offer a cure for Type 1 diabetes.
   3. Researchers Hiro Nakauchi from Stanford University and Pablo Ross from the University of California spoke at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Austin, Texas, on Sunday.
   4. Approximately 115,000 people need a lifesaving organ transplant in the U.S, and every 10 minutes a new patient is added to the national waiting list.
   5. The demand for organs far outstrips supply in the U.S., as 20 people die every day waiting for a transplant.
   6. Animal-grown human organs could offer a sustainable alternative.
5. 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.” …
6. 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.
7. ‘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.
8. 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.
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/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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