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Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 3-4 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Leti. Today’s show is a fundraising show, so, with apologies, we can’t take on-air phone calls,

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;
• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

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

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: 

“This too shall pass” ~ (Persian: این نیز بگذرد‎, translit. īn nīz bogzarad, Hebrew: גַּם זֶה יַעֲבֹר‏‎, translit. gam zeh yaʻavor, Turkish: bu da geçer ya hu) is an adage reflecting on the temporary nature, or ephemerality, of the human condition. The general sentiment is often expressed in wisdom literature throughout history and across cultures, although the specific phrase seems to have originated in the writings of the medieval Persian Sufi poets. It is known in the Western world primarily due to a 19th century retelling of Persian fable by the English poet Edward FitzGerald. It was also notably employed in a speech by Abraham Lincoln before he became the sixteenth President of the United States. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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Make sure you are registered to vote!

1. HarrisVotes.com (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965) Dr. Diane Trautman, Harris County Clerk
   1. In Texas, but outside Harris County? VoteTexas.gov
      1. You may vote early by-mail if
      2. you are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
      3. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
      4. Sick or disabled;
      5. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
      6. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
      7. Make sure you are registered:
   2. Sample Ballots are now available!
   3. HARRIS CTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. (a) A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
   4. Outside Texas? Try Vote.org.
   5. Make it a point to listen to my April 22, 2019 Interview with Harris County Clerk Dr. Dianne Trautman
   6. Jeffrey Epstein charged with running sex trafficking ring, By Mike Hayes, Meg Wagner and Elise Hammond, CNN, Updated 1:07 p.m. ET, July 8, 2019
      1. What we’re covering here
         1. JUST IN: Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein has been indicted. US prosecutors allege he operated a sex trafficking ring where he paid girls as young as 14 to have sex with him.
         2. About the charges: He is charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors.
2. HAWAII:
   1. Airplane seats
   2. Looooooong airport walks (miles between gates and baggage claim?) (“The Longest Walks at the Airport – As terminals expand and moving walkways disappear, you could be in for a serious hike to your gate”, By Scott McCartney | WSJ | Sept. 28, 2016
   3. People in Oahu
   4. Short drives, long drive times
   5. Prices (gas 50% more)
   6. Energy: lots of solar panels and windmills
   7. In a separate note, should anything be easier to return than lost cell phones???
3. MIKE – “The Squad” (Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan): In my opinion, a demeaning term that should not be used by the media.  
4. With Mueller testimony looming, Trump predicts trouble for special counsel and Dems, By QUINT FORGEY | politico.com | 07/22/2019 10:21 AM EDT
   1. President Donald Trump predicted Monday that Robert Mueller’s highly anticipated testimony before Congress this week will “be bad for him,” and again suggested that the former special counsel should not answer questions from lawmakers.
   2. “Highly conflicted Robert Mueller should not be given another bite at the apple,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “In the end it will be bad for him and the phony Democrats in Congress who have done nothing but waste time on this ridiculous Witch Hunt. Result of the Mueller Report, NO COLLUSION, NO OBSTRUCTION!” …
5. Poll: Americans Not Sold On Trump — Or Democrats, BY Domenico Montanaro | NPR.COM |   July 22, 201912:05 PM ET
   1. Democratic presidential candidates are proposing lots of progressive policies in this election. And while those policies may resonate with the party base, some of those ideas are not popular with a general election electorate, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.
   2. And overall, independent voters said they were not impressed with the direction either President Trump or Democrats want to take the country at this point ahead of the 2020 election, the findings show.
   3. “Independents are on the fence overall,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College, which conducted the poll. “They’re not willing to grant President Trump reelection, and yet they’re not persuaded by Democrats at this point.”
6. Louisiana police officer’s Facebook post says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘needs a round,’ report says, by William Cummings | USA TODAY | Published 9:30 a.m. ET July 22, 2019 | Updated 11:47 a.m. ET July 22, 2019
   1. A Louisiana police officer last week said in a Facebook post that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a “vile idiot” who should be shot. 
   2. A screenshot of the post by veteran Gretna police officer Charlie Rispoli was taken by The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. In it, Rispoli shares a blog post that falsely claims the New York Democrat said “We pay soldiers too much.” 
   3. … Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson said the post was “disturbing” but did not believe Rispoli, who has been with the department since 2005, intended it as a genuine threat, The Times-Picayune reported. 
   4. “I will tell you this: This will not go unchecked,” Lawson said, according to the newspaper. “I’m not going to take this lightly and this will be dealt with on our end. It’s not something we want someone that’s affiliated with our department to make these types of statements. That’s not going to happen.” …
   5. … Rispoli’s post comes amid mounting concern for elected officials’ safety in an increasingly rancorous political climate. …
   6. … In May, Ocasio-Cortez said she was regularly getting “hateful messages” and a “flood of death threats.” She said there was a connection between the threats and the reporting about her on conservative news media outlets and also blamed Fox News. 
7. Liz Cheney: ‘Send her back’ chant ‘inappropriate’ but not about race, gender, By Chris Mills Rodrigo | COM | 07/21/19 11:13 AM EDT.
   1. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) on Sunday said the “send her back” chant directed at Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) that broke out at a President Trump rally last week was “inappropriate” but not about race or gender.
   2. “You’ve heard him say the chant was inappropriate. We’ve all said the chant was inappropriate, but I think the news media really wants to make this about race. … This isn’t about race. It’s not about gender. It’s not about religion,” Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
   3. “These members of the House of Representatives — it’s not just these four — fundamentally believe in policies that are dangerous for this nation, and as Republicans we’re going to fight against those,” she added.
8. How Norway turns criminals into good neighbours, BBC.COM | 7 July 2019
   1. What is the point of sending someone to prison – retribution or rehabilitation? Twenty years ago, Norway moved away from a punitive “lock-up” approach and sharply cut reoffending rates. …
   2. [Are Hoidal governor of Halden Prison ] says “… in the early 1990s, the ethos of the Norwegian Correctional Service underwent a rigorous series of reforms to focus less on what Hoidal terms “revenge” and much more on rehabilitation. Prisoners, who had previously spent most of their day locked up, were offered daily training and educational programmes and the role of the prison guards was completely overhauled. … since our big reforms, recidivism in Norway has fallen to only 20% after two years and about 25% after five years. So this works!”
   3. In the UK, the recidivism rate is almost 50% after just one year.
   4. The architecture of Halden Prison has been designed to minimise residents’ sense of incarceration, to ease psychological stress and to put them in harmony with the surrounding nature …
   5. … “We start planning their release on the first day they arrive,” explains Hoidal, as we walk through to the carpentry workshop where several inmates are making wooden summer houses and benches to furnish a new prison being built in the south of Norway.
   6. “In Norway, all will be released – there are no life sentences,” he reminds me.
   7. Normalising life behind bars (not that there are any bars on the windows at Halden) is the key philosophy that underpins the Norwegian Correctional service. At Halden, this means not only providing daily routines but ensuring family contact is maintained too. Once every three months, inmates with children can apply to a “Daddy In Prison” scheme which, if they pass the necessary safeguarding tests, means they can spend a couple of nights with their partner, sons and daughters in a cosy chalet within the prison grounds. …
   8. … It takes 12 weeks in the UK to train a prison officer. In Norway it takes two to three years. Eight kilometres north-east of Oslo in Lillestrom, an impressive white and glass building houses the University College of the Norwegian Correctional Service, where each year, 175 trainees, selected from over 1,200 applicants, start their studies to become a prison officer.
   9. Hans-Jorgen Brucker walks me around the training prison on campus, which is kitted out with reproduction cells and prison-style furniture. I note a bulging pile of helmets and stab vests in one storage room. Brucker acknowledges that prison officers will undergo security and riot training, but he’s fairly dismissive of this part of the course.
   10. “We want to stop reoffending which means officers need to be well educated,” he says. He shows me a paper outlining the rigorous selection process, which involves written exams in Norwegian and English (about a third of the prison population is non-native, so officers are expected to be fluent in English) and physical fitness tests.
   11. “My students will study law, ethics, criminology, English, reintegration and social work. Then they will have a year training in a prison and then they will come back to take their final exams.” …
9. The hidden hunger affecting billions, By Michael Marshall | BBC.COM | 7-JULY-2019
   1. Two billion people do not get enough micronutrients in their diets, which can lead to severe health conditions.
   2. New kinds of crops could help to create better, more nutritious foods to beat these deficiencies.
   3. When children do not get enough iron in their food, the results are heartbreaking. They are slower to acquire language, struggle with short-term memory, have poor attention spans and ultimately do less well at school.
   4. “They can never live up to their full physical and mental potential,” says Wolfgang Pfeiffer, director of research and development at HarvestPlus, an organisation that develops nutritionally improved crops in Washington DC. “If they are deficient in their childhood, they learn 20% less as adults.”
   5. In the poorest parts of India and China, millions of children have their lives stunted through lack of iron. In South Asia, an estimated50% of pregnant women have iron deficiency, and it is also prevalent in South America and sub-Saharan Africa.
   6. But iron is only one small part of the story. There are several dozen other “micronutrients” – substances that we need to consume, in small quantities but regularly, to remain healthy. They include zinc, copper, vitamins and folates such as folic acid and vitamin B9.
   7. The traditional solution to micronutrient deficiencies has been to add more micronutrients to common foods, or to supply pills … But these strategies have limits. If people can’t afford pills or don’t have access to a pharmacy, they may still not get enough micronutrients. What’s more, adding micronutrients to food is a constant process: every batch of breakfast cereal has to be artificially dosed with iron and vitamins.
   8. A much simpler approach would be to go back to the crop plant from which the cereal is made, and ensure that it packs itself full of the micronutrient in the first place.
   9. This is the thinking behind “biofortification”, the process of creating crops that have unusually high levels of micronutrients like iron. HarvestPlus was founded in 2003 by economist Howarth Bouis, after a decade of lobbying and raising moneyto create biofortified crops and make them available where they are needed. Today HarvestPlus has members in more than 20 countries and has biofortified over a dozen crops, from rice to sweet potatoes.
10. Russia Did Not Offer to Free Ukrainian Sailors it Captured | INFO | June 28, 2019
    1. 24 Ukrainian sailors who were captured by Russia last November appearing in Lefortovo court, Moscow, Russia on January 15, 2019. …
    2. On June 27, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said via Facebook that … she has been compelled to respond to numerous inquiries regarding Kyiv’s refusal to accept Moscow’s offer to free Ukrainian sailors.
    3. Zakharova was referring to the 24 Ukrainian sailors who, along with their three ships, were captured by Russia last November while heading to the Kerch Strait, the only passage between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov via international waters. … Zakharova accused Kyiv of using the sailors to “blackmail” Russia while “caring nothing” about their fate.
    4. … While Zakharova is right that Russia sent a note to Ukraine regarding the captured sailors, she mischaracterized what Russia actually proposed in the note, as well as the controversy more generally.
    5. On May 25, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which is an inter-governmental organization established by the United Nations, ordered Russia to “immediately release” the 24 Ukrainian sailors and three ships without any preconditions.
11. FedEx will no longer provide express shipping for Amazon in the US, by Eugene Kim (@eugenekim222) | CNBC.com | Fri, Jun 7 2019 2:02 PM EDT Updated Fri, Jun 7 2019 2:58 PM EDT
    1. Key Points
       1. FedEx announces Friday that it won’t renew its express U.S. shipping contract with Amazon.
       2. The move comes as Amazon is more aggressively building out its own shipping and delivery network.
12. India’s blowout election is a lesson for US Democrats, By Annalisa Merelli | COM/ | May 24, 2019
    1. Narendra Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, defied expectations when he won his second election in an even bigger landslide than the first one. He did so at the expense of India’s Congress party, which campaigned on a secular and pluralist platform.
    2. Turns out the nationalist message of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is hugely popular with voters. It was a massive defeat—the second in a row—for India’s more liberal Congress party. It’s a bitter loss that came with many lessons, ones that Democrats in the United States would be wise to heed. …
    3. … Politics in India have traditionally been about the economy. This time, however, Modi and the BJP’s support of Hindu nationalism took a more prominent position than it had in past campaigns, exploiting tension with Pakistan to redirect the debate toward national security and anti-Muslim sectarianism. As Modi’s message grew stronger, [the once-dominant Congress Party] failed to really fight for India’s long-established secular ideals. …
    4. … The Congress isn’t known for its ability to learn lessons, but there are some more to note. And given that a left-leaning party promoting pluralism just lost to a right-leaning party promoting nationalism, the Democratic Party in the United States should probably read a long as it prepares for its own election season.
    5. Don’t make it about the candidate: Modi’s leadership of the BJP is strong, and there is no separating his party or government’s success and work from his own. His party capitalized on this, turning the election into a referendum on him—rather than his government’s record. Polarizing figures like Modi tend to benefit from these kinds of politics. His party understood this. His adversaries did not.
       1. Turning the campaign into a vote for or against Modi prevented the opposition from asserting its own ideas. Even when the Congress proposed policies that could have appealed to a broad electorate — for instance, guaranteed minimum income … — they received little attention. As George Lakoff explained in his 2004 book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, obsessing over a candidate’s flaws only makes him or her more popular.
       2. Democrats in the United States made this mistake in the 2016 election, running a campaign against Donald Trump instead of for their own policies.
    6. Dare to be different: … For many voters, the Congress party is associated with old-school elitist politics, corruption, and a perceived inability to bring change to India. Gandhi’s candidacy didn’t do much to change anyone’s minds.
    7. Make friends: Congress also failed to make strong alliances with other, smaller political parties…. Progressives seem to make this mistake a lot. While conservatives often stick together (the Republican Party’s support of Trump during the campaign is a textbook example), liberals often fail to find common ground. In the last presidential campaign, the Democratic primaries went on long after Trump was the presumed nominee. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spent more time tearing each other apart than focusing on the bigger fight. The extremely crowded field of potential democratic candidates suggests the same thing could happen again.
    8. Focus the narrative: Modi’s narrative of a new, strong, corruption-free India—one with international power, credibility and gravitas—appealed to many voters. It delivered a clear vision of what he was promising, and one that Indians were fast to embrace. Congress never presented a clear vision of its own.
       1. [The Congress Party] decried the threat to secular values [Modi’s Party] posed, and held itself up as its defender. But rather than communicating how those values could help India succeed, the party focused more on what would happen if protections further deteriorated.
    9. This is not unlike what happened during the 2016 election in the United States. Just look at the campaign slogans: Trump’s “Make America Great Again” had a clear if suspect mission. Clinton’s “Stronger Together” described a status, not an intention. Democrats could face the same problem they did in 2016—and the same problem India’s Congress party faced this week—unless they forget about the opposition, stop playing defense, and promote their own, clear vision.
13. Opinion – The Old Scourge of Anti-Semitism Rises Anew in Europe, Jews face threats from extremists on the left and the right. A third of European Jews have considered emigrating. By The Editorial Board (The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section. |com | May 26, 2019
    1. For years, Europe maintained the comforting notion that it was earnestly confronting anti-Semitism after the horrors of the Holocaust. It now faces the alarming reality that anti-Semitism is sharply on the rise, often from the sadly familiar direction of the far right, but also from Islamists and the far left.
    2. The worrisome trend was underscored by a report issued by the German government this month showing that anti-Semitic incidents in Germany had increased by almost 20 percent in 2018 from the previous year, to 1,799, with 69 classified as acts of violence. The most common offense was the use of the swastika and other illegal symbols; the rest ranged from online incitement and insults to arson, assault and murder.
    3. Of the total, the report attributed 89 percent of the incidents to the far right. Germany, like many other European nations, has seen a resurgence of a neo-fascist right, but much of the recent reporting in Germany on the rise of anti-Semitism has focused on hostility to Jews among Muslim migrants. A European Union survey conducted in 2018 likewise found that among German Jews who had experienced anti-Semitic harassment over the past five years, 41 percent perceived the perpetrators of the most serious incidents to be “someone with a Muslim extremist view.” …
    4. … That the rise in incidents was in Germany made the government report all the more concerning. But anti-Semitism is on the rise all across Europe, as well as in the United States. France reported an increase of 74 percent in anti-Semitic acts in a single year, with 541 incidents reported in 2018, including widely viewed videotaped insults shouted at the French Jewish intellectual Alain Finkielkraut during one of the Yellow Vest protests. In Britain, nine Labour members of Parliament quit their party in part over the cloud of anti-Semitism hanging over the party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. …
    5. … In the United States, attacks on synagogues by white-supremacist gunmen have led the growing list of assaults on Jews. [From ADL (the Anti-Defamation League – “The U.S. Jewish community experienced near-historic levels of anti-Semitism in 2018, including a doubling of anti-Semitic assaults and the single deadliest attack against the Jewish community in American history, according to new data from ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) issued today. ADL’s annual Audit of Anti-Semitic incidents recorded a total of 1,879 attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions across the country in 2018, the third-highest year on record since ADL started tracking such data in the 1970s.”]
    6. A tally of incidents does not tell the full story. To a degree, the numbers reflect the way hate speech, intolerance, anger and once-taboo themes have found their way into the open on social media or via populist movements, allowing hatred of Jews to come out of the shadows. But far-right and far-left politicians have often learned to project themselves as defenders of Jews while drawing on blatantly anti-Semitic tropes, as Mr. Orban has done in Hungary. Among the Muslims of Europe, and among some leftists, a resentment of Israel often crosses into hostility to all Jews. …
    7. … A CNN poll last November on the state of anti-Semitism in Europe found that a third of respondents said they knew little or nothing about the Holocaust. Nearly a quarter said Jews had too much influence in conflict and wars; more than a quarter said they believed that Jews had too much influence in business and finance. A 2015 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 51 percent of Germans believed it was “probably true” that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust.” These are the stereotypes that make anti-Semitism an especially pernicious form of bigotry, a grand conspiracy theory in which Jews spread evil in their countries through some illusory subterfuge, whether controlling capital, or the media, or whatever.
    8. All this is not news to European Jews, who for some time have been feeling less and less safe and welcome in their home countries. After polling more than 16,000 Jews in 12 European countries at the end of last year, the European Union’s Agency for Fundamental Rights concluded that anti-Semitic hate speech, harassment and fear of being recognized as Jews were becoming the new normal. Eighty-five percent of the respondents thought anti-Semitism was the biggest social and political problem in their countries; almost a third said they avoided Jewish events or sites because of safety concerns. More than a third said they had considered emigrating in the five years preceding the survey.
    9. As appalling as these statistics should be to every European, they should also ring a loud alarm for every American leader of conscience. Speak up, now, when you glimpse evidence of anti-Semitism, particularly within your own ranks, or risk enabling the spread of this deadly virus.
14. Report: Texas to lose billions if new major storm hits coast, Updated 9:00 am CDT, Sunday, May 26, 2019 (COM)
15. The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News – The current system for delivering news online is broken. Readers and journalists will need to work together to find a new one. By Michael Luo | NEWYORKER.COM | April 10, 2019
16. Commentary: The 45th president of the U.S. is poisoning his nation, By Michael Orton | Special to The [SALT LAKE CITY] Tribune | APR-14-2019
17. TALKED ABOUT THIS LAST WEEK, WANT TO RE-EMPHASIZE: FIGHT FOR YOUR State Legislature
    1. In 2010, the Republicans won a a swath of state legislatures which allowed them to gerrymander Dems out of State and Federal legislatures. It’s vital we must not allow that to happen again in 2020.
    2. Look for “flippable” seats in the State Lege and try to support this candidates.
    3. The battle for the Lege is gonna be lit, by Charles Kuffner | Off the Kuff | Jun 24th, 2019
       1. Citing from the Texas Tribune by Patrick Svitek | texastribune.org | June 13, 20193 AM: Some Democrats are mobilizing in hopes of taking the nine House seats they need for a majority in 2020 …
       2. …“Everything is focused on redistricting,” state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, said at a recent tea party meeting as he fielded questions about the demise of some controversial legislation this session. “There is nothing more important — not only to Texas, but literally the nation — than to make sure that we maintain the Texas House … going into redistricting because if you look at the nation — we lose Texas, we lose the nation. And there’s no other place to go.”
    4. ANALYSIS FROM CHARLES KUFF: At this point, the name of the game is one part candidate recruitment and one part raising money, which will be the job of the various PACs until the candidates get settled. In Harris County, we have two good candidates each for the [GOP] main targets: Akilah Bacy and Josh Wallenstein (who ran for HCDE [Harris County’s Trustee for its Department of Education] in 2018 …) in HD138, and Ann Johnson and Ruby Powers in HD134. In Fort Bend, Sarah DeMerchant appears to be running again in HD26, while Eliz Markowitz (candidate for SBOE7 in 2018) is aiming for HD28. We still need (or I need to do a better job searching for) candidates in HDs 29, 85, and 126, for starters. If you’re in one of those competitive Republican-held State Rep districts, find out who is or may be running for the Dems. If you’re in one of those targeted-by-the-GOP districts, be sure to help out your incumbent. Kelly Hancock is absolutely right: This is super-duper important.
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