POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; COMMENTARY: Thinkwing Radio; Top Texas Republicans resist gun control and push for more armed teachers and police at schools in wake of Uvalde shooting; Confronted with mass shootings, Texas Republicans have repeatedly loosened gun laws; Ken Paxton, you might have heard we had runoff elections yesterday. Republicans liked Ken Paxton over George P Bush by over 70% of voters; U.S. Sen. John Cornyn calls Ken Paxton scandals an ’embarrassment’ when asked about attorney general runoff; Pearland to set restrictions on doing business with former council members; Houston’s new guaranteed income program will give some residents $375 a month; US Department of Housing and Urban Development letter gives Texas 10 days to fix Hurricane Harvey funding discrimination; Republicans threaten businesses over abortion access; Too Fragile to Fight: Could the U.S. Military Withstand a War of Attrition?; Latest on Monkeypox: Genetic Clues and How It Might Be Spreading; Smallpox vaccines can protect against monkeypox, and U.S. has 100 million doses; Amazon [Rain Forest] nears ‘tipping point’ where rainforest could transform into savanna; More. 

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

1. Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
2. Podcast on your phone’s Podcast App
3. Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter InformationTEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   1. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
      1. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
      2. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      3. Liberty County Elections (Liberty County, TX)
      4. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      5. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      6. Waller County (TX) Elections
      7. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      8. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
      9. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
      10. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting CentersHARRIS COUNTY – 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
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          7. 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)
          8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
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             5. Make sure you are registered:
             6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
             7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
             8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
             9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. COMMENTARY
   1. Thinkwing Radio. … It’s been a while since we’ve discussed why we use that name. The idea is that discussions on this show are not ideologically inflexible. That opinions should have reasons backed by ideas and facts, not just ideology and party affiliation. And that other points of view are worth hearing, even if we don’t agree with them.
   2. That was a lot easier to do when the show was live and had callers, and we could exchange ideas in real time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do that again at some point
   3. I hope that you, listening out there, feel that we haven’t drifted too far from that ideal.
   4. So why bring this up now?
   5. One of the basic principles I have when I assemble each show is that I try not to cover stories that are already being amply covered by major media unless I have something that I feel I can contribute that perhaps major media are not contributing. As a general rule, I prefer to cover stories or discuss stories that are worth listeners knowing about, but that they may not otherwise encounter. Or in some cases, I feel that I’ve had a thought on a topic or some lateral piece of information or experience that may be relevant in a fresh way.
   6. As you probably know, there was a school shooting on Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas.
   7. We also had elections and runoff elections on Tuesday.
   8. We have a general election on November 8^th. Vote like your life depends on it.
   9. Vote like you’re against the killing of children and teachers in schools. Vote like you’re against the killing of people shopping in supermarkets. Vote like you’re against the killing of people in church or in synagogues or in mosques.
   10. Vote like you favor reasonable regulations and reasonable laws to keep guns out of the hands of unreasonable people. Of homicidal people. Whether it’s requiring gun registration. Gun education. Background checks for prospective gun owners. The elimination of open carry laws. The restriction of concealed carry. Maybe start regulating the purchase of ammunition and regulating the size of ammunition clips.
   11. Perhaps, and this is crazy, maybe actually read the Second Amendment and require people to enroll in a state-sponsored militia if they must own guns. I don’t know. That may be a crazy thought, but something worth considering. And it’s in the Constitution. If you’re a constitutional literalist, maybe that’s how we should do it.
   12. And remember that when the Second Amendment was written, in order to fire 10 bullets in quick succession, you needed ten separate guns. The founders never envisioned the kind of repeating, high-capacity, high-powered weapons and ammunition we have today.
   13. Vote like your life and the lives of people you know and love matter.
   14. That’s how it starts to end. Elections have consequences. Sometimes deadly consequences.
   15. ANDREW: Mike, I join you in condemning the unjust attack in Uvalde. I join you in encouraging people to vote, in saying that voting matters, that the people who make decisions in our society do have great influence on our lives, and that relinquishing your influence on choosing those people is a bad idea, even if your influence is small, even if you cannot vote your way to the world you want to live in.
   16. But I cannot join you in advocating for gun control measures as a response to violence that ultimately is not caused by guns and will not be solved by the removal of them. Mass violence can occur with any kind of weaponry, even with a lack of weaponry. In order to stop unjustified violence, we must ask what motivates people to commit it, and how we can remove those motivations.
   17. I believe those motivations are fundamental components of the society we live in. Prejudice, to keep us divided and blaming each other for the problems caused by the powerful. Stress from the exploitation we endure every day, generating value and giving it up to the powerful in exchange for scraps most of us can barely live on, with those who can’t live on them being left for dead. Self-obsession, where the names and faces and ideologies of the people who commit these inexcusable acts are paraded all over TV, radio, print, and the Internet, leading the people who fear their own obscurity more than anything else to follow those examples and continue the cycle of violence.
   18. Restricting guns will only change the method of violence, and at the same time will severely harm the ability of the people to make demands of the powerful. Many of the biggest events of the labor movement weren’t strikes, but battles. Anti-oppression movements the world over have succeeded by giving the powerful a choice: meet the demands of the peaceful groups, or negotiate at the gunpoint of the violent groups. Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” I believe those demands must have force behind them to be heard, and that force must match the force of the powerful. That includes guns.
   19. It falls to all of us to choose people who understand that ending violence and changing its form are not the same thing. People who are willing to ask the questions and take the actions that are difficult but necessary to achieve a world where we can all be safe. Elections do have consequences. We are the only ones who can make them have the right consequences.
   20. MIKE: I don’t agree with your position on this, but that’s what Thinkwing is supposed to be about.
3. IN RELATED NEWS: Top Texas Republicans resist gun control and push for more armed teachers and police at schools in wake of Uvalde shooting; by Joshua Fechter | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | May 24, 2022, 1 hour ago
   1. … As the death toll mounted from the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde and President Joe Biden vowed to push for stricter gun laws, Texas Republicans made it clear that any kind of gun restriction in response to the tragedy was off the table.
   2. “Inevitably when there’s a murder of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”
   3. In an appearance on the far-right television network Newsmax, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly dismissed the notion of enacting restrictions on firearms — reasoning that shooters wouldn’t follow the law anyway.
   4. “I’d much rather have law-abiding citizens armed and trained so that they can respond when something like this happens because it’s not going to be the last time,” Paxton said. …
   5. [So] in gun-friendly Texas, any laws restricting access to firearms have been a nonstarter. Instead, state legislators have expanded access to firearms — including with a law allowing residents to carry guns without a permit.
   6. On Tuesday, Republican officials revived ideas to stop future mass shooters — arming teachers and school administrators, putting more police officers on campus and limiting entryways to school buildings.
   7. REFERENCE: Confronted with mass shootings, Texas Republicans have repeatedly loosened gun laws; Greg Abbott and other Republican leaders signaled an openness to some gun restrictions after recent mass shootings. But in the last several years, lawmakers have eased gun laws, most notably by passing a permitless carry bill last year. by Kate McGee and Jolie McCullough | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | May 24, 2022 Updated: 3 hours ago
   8. MIKE: In Prison-loving Texas, it’s no surprise that the Government’s answer to gun violence in school is to make teachers and school officials more like armed prison guards, expected to deal with any disturbance with lethal force. Because, isn’t that what all teachers went into education for?
   9. MIKE: In the words of ROBOCOP’s homicidal madman, Clarence Boddicker: “Oooh. Guns, guns, guns!”
   10. MIKE: In my humble opinion, that should be the new official motto of the Texas Republican Party. And probably the national Party, too.
4. MIKE: Speaking of Ken Paxton, you might have heard we had runoff elections yesterday. Republicans liked Ken Paxton over George P Bush by over 70% of voters. The Houston Chronicle endorsed Bush over Paxton just because Bush isn’t Paxton, so not exactly a rousing endorsement from the very centrist, slightly conservative Chronicle.
   1. Even S. Sen. John Cornyn calls Ken Paxton scandals an ’embarrassment’ when asked about attorney general runoff; Cornyn is the most prominent Texas Republican to criticize the attorney general’s rocky record ahead of the runoff election against George P. Bush. (By Andrew Zhang | THE TEXAS TRIBUNE | Published: 9:34 AM CDT May 20, 2022, Updated: 5:26 PM CDT May 24, 2022)
   2. MIKE: Coming from a shameless politician from a shameless party, that’s saying a lot.
   3. MIKE: In other news, it looks like Democrat Joe Jaworski will be running against Paxton in the November general election.
5. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL YOUR MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2022
   1. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
6. Pearland to set restrictions on doing business with former council members, By Andy Yanez | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 8:07 PM May 23, 2022 CDT | Updated 8:07 PM May 23, 2022 CDT
   1. … Pearland City Council at its May 23 regular meeting passed the second reading of an ordinance that amends the city’s ethics ordinance, making it so the city cannot enter a contract with former council members and any business they have a substantial interest in for at least 12 months after their successor is sworn in. …
   2. According to the Texas Local Government Code, a person has a substantial interest in a business if that person owns 10% or more of the business’ voting stocks or shares; if the person owns $15,000 or more of the fair market value of the business; if funds received from the business make up 10% or more of a person’s gross income the previous year; or if a person related to the former council member has a substantial interest in the business.
   3. The ordinance was originally set to limit the city from entering contracts with former council members and any business they have a substantial interest in for only nine months, but Council Member Alex Kamkar made a motion to extend the limit on doing business with former council members to a full year. The amendment was unanimously adopted by council.
   4. While the ordinance passed on May 23 applies only to former council members, at the May 9 meeting, the current Pearland City Council requested a subsequent amendment to the ethics ordinance applying the same provision to current council members.
   5. That amendment will come to council for discussion in June, Coker said. If adopted, the standard would be stricter than what is required by state law, he said. …
   6. MIKE: I would like to see them add language including a former council member being offered some personal or material consideration for the promotion of entering a contract with the city, but you have to start somewhere.
7. Houston’s new guaranteed income program will give some residents $375 a month; Applications for the pilot program are due by midnight Wednesday. Jay R. Jordan | CHRON.COM | May 24, 2022
   1. Some of Houston’s most under-served residents could get a much-needed financial boost through a new guaranteed income pilot program, but the application due date is just around the corner. 
   2. The Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a nationwide advocacy group of which Mayor Sylvester Turner is a member, is funding the program that will give $375 a month to 110 people in need for a year through the Houston Fund for Social Justice and Economic Equity. The payments amount to $4,500 over a year.  To qualify, you must live in Houston, be at least 18 years old and have a household income at or below the federal poverty level. …
   3. Houston follows Austin, which recently became the first city in Texas to approve a guaranteed income pilot program. At least 28 U.S. cities are trying out some variation on guaranteed income, according to The Texas Tribune, and the mayor of San Antonio is also a member of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.
   4. The funds will be targeted toward people facing income inequity, joblessness or who are unhoused. Those who are facing barriers because they have been in the criminal justice system will also be considered, according to the fund. …
   5. To apply, visit the fund’s website.
      
8. US Department of Housing and Urban Development letter gives Texas 10 days to fix Hurricane Harvey funding discrimination; By Sofia Gonzalez | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 5:00 PM May 18, 2022 CDT | Updated 9:31 AM May 20, 2022 CDT
   1. After finding discrimination in the Texas General Land Office’s Hurricane Harvey recovery fund plan, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is giving the office 10 days to respond and fix the issue.
   2. Despite being heavily hit by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017, the GLO initially gave $0 in recovery funds to Houston and Harris County. After outcry from local officials, GLO leadership pledged $750 million to Harris County.
   3. HUD held a previous investigation in March, when it found discrimination on the basis of race and national origin, according to a March 8 announcement from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office.
   4. According to May 16 letter from HUD to the GLO, the Harvey recovery plan uses “two scoring criteria that substantially and predictably disadvantaged Black and Hispanic residents.” GLO excludes areas HUD has identified as most impacted and distressed and scored applicants based on jurisdiction size, giving more to a smaller jurisdiction than it would a larger one for an equivalent project, the letter said.
   5. During Houston City Council’s May 18 meeting, Turner said he will be watching the situation between HUD and the GLO unfold closely. He said if the GLO fails to enter the voluntary reconciliation agreement within the 10 days given, HUD will turn the matter over to the U.S. Department of Justice. …
   6. In an email, GLO Director of Communications Brittany Eck told Community Impact Newspaper that HUD’s letter is a reiteration of the previous letter and a continuation of “blatant political attacks,” saying the claims are false allegations and lack factual or legal foundation. …
   7. According to Eck, two-thirds of the beneficiaries in the GLO’s plan are Black and Hispanic and benefit majority low- and moderate-income communities. …
   8. In a May 18 statement, Turner said he thinks HUD’s letter is a step in the right direction and that they have rightfully determined discrimination in GLO’s plan.
   9. “This is about equity and fairness,” Turner said. “It is time for the GLO to allocate a fair (or proportional) share of the federal funds to allow our communities to have adequate climate change mitigation and resilience resources. I urge the GLO to do the right thing for our most vulnerable communities.”
   10. TAGS: Hurricane Harvey Houston Harris County Houston Metro Texas General Land Office Houston Metro Government
   11. MIKE: FYI, it’s George P Bush’s GLO that has been making these decisions.
9. Republicans threaten businesses over abortion access; by Charles Kuffner | OFFTHEKUFF.COM | May 24th, 2022
   1. KUFFNER: If you didn’t see stuff like this coming, you haven’t been paying attention.
   2. TEXAS TRIBUNE: With Texas poised to automatically ban abortion if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, some Republicans are already setting their sights on the next target to fight the procedure: businesses that say they’ll help employees get abortions outside the state.
   3. Fourteen Republican members of the state House of Representatives have pledged to introduce bills in the coming legislative session that would bar corporations from doing business in Texas if they pay for abortions in states where the procedure is legal.
   4. This would explicitly prevent firms from offering employees access to abortion-related care through health insurance benefits. It would also expose executives to criminal prosecution under pre-Roe anti-abortion laws the Legislature never repealed, the legislators say.
   5. Their proposal highlights how the end of abortion would lead to a new phase in … the fight in Texas over the procedure. The lawmakers pushing for the business rules have signaled that they plan to act aggressively in the next legislative session. But it remains to be seen if they’ll be able to get a majority on their side.
   6. The members, led by Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, laid out their plans in a letter to Lyft CEO Logan Green that became public on Wednesday.
   7. Green drew the lawmakers’ attention on April 29, when he said on Twitter that the ride-share company would help pregnant residents of Oklahoma and Texas seek abortion care in other states. Green also pledged to cover the legal costs of any Lyft driver sued under Senate Bill 8, the Texas law that empowers private citizens to file lawsuits against anyone who assists in the procurement of an abortion.
   8. “The state of Texas will take swift and decisive action if you do not immediately rescind your recently announced policy to pay for the travel expenses of women who abort their unborn children,” the letter states.
   9. The letter also lays out other legislative priorities, including allowing Texas shareholders of publicly traded companies to sue executives for paying for abortion care, as well as empowering district attorneys to prosecute abortion-related crimes outside of their home counties.
   10. Six of the 14 signers, including Cain, are members of the far-right Texas Freedom Caucus. How much political support these proposals have in the Republican caucus is unclear. House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, declined to comment. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott did not respond. …
   11. KUFFNER: We are living in Briscoe Cain’s Texas now. If he doesn’t get what he wants now – and mark my words, he wants to arrest people who have anything at all to do with abortion – he’ll get it next time, as long as his Republican Party is in charge. The business community needs to recognize that they are right in the crosshairs along with the rest of us. Daily Kos has more.
   12. MIKE: Legal implications aside, here’s another interesting wrinkle I see here. This is becoming a battle between an increasingly autocratic political party and corporate and individual oligarchs. I don’t think this could end well. Or might it?
10. Too Fragile to Fight: Could the U.S. Military Withstand a War of Attrition?; By Conrad Crane | WARONTHEROCKS.COM | May 9, 2022
    1. … It has been a long time since the United States fought a high-intensity war of attrition, and the Pentagon, despite its renewed focus on large-scale combat operations, is not ready for it. Over the last half-century, the U.S. military has secured relatively bloodless conventional successes in Grenada, Panama, Operation Desert Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Then it fought two long-running but low-intensity wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. … As a result, current war plans still imagine relatively quick military actions with low casualties that remain within current capabilities. The resources for a longer and more brutal conflict have atrophied or been forgotten.
    2. However, both history and the ongoing war in Ukraine suggest that such a possibility is more likely than we think. … Cathal Nolan argues that wars between peers or near-peers almost always become bloody contests of attrition, and these have gotten worse over time. In The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost, he writes that “modern industrial and mobilization realities” have “helped bring about wars in which mass death and destruction, on scales hardly foreseen at their outset, become the ultimate means of reaching a lasting decision in quarrels among nations and empires.” …
    3. The war in Ukraine has highlighted the importance of having competent soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines — one of America’s great strengths. But how a country fights is more important than what it fights with. While the services maintain quality personnel, they should be prepared to continue the fight as more sophisticated technologies are destroyed or depleted. The Pentagon should also be more restrained in how it deploys precision weaponry. Javelins should not be wasted on thin-skinned vehicles. Perhaps artillery or dumb bombs will suffice for some targets instead of precision-guided munitions. The joint force, and the nation that supports it, should prepare to deal with significant losses of both personnel and equipment, and relearn how to regenerate combat power, perhaps in a multi-theater fight.
    4. The recuperative powers of modern states make it increasingly difficult to achieve victory in a few decisive engagements. We are watching this happen again on our TV screens. Russian ineptitude and overconfidence combined with Ukrainian tenacity and Western military technology has turned what on paper seemed a David versus Goliath match into a near-peer fight. …
    5. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine, with its images of ravaged cities festooned with wrecked Russian armored vehicles, highlights the destructiveness of modern war and the lethality of the contemporary battlefield. But it also indicates the fragility of modern high-technology militaries. … The Russian use of so many “dumb bombs” may be because they are running short of more expensive precision munitions.  … As of April 12, the war bulletin from the Ukrainian Embassy claimed their armed forces had killed almost 20,000 Russians and had also destroyed 732 tanks, 1,946 armored personnel carriers, 140 helicopters, and 157 aircraft.
    6. The American military can scoff and swear that nothing like that could ever happen to them. …
    7. But what if these optimistic assumptions are wrong? In a rare example of official pessimism, the 2018 bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission concluded that the United States “might struggle to win, or perhaps lose” a war against either Russia or China, suffering “unacceptably high casualties” in the process. What if technology like the F-35 doesn’t perform as well as expected, or we suffer another case of technological surprise? In nine days of fighting over the Dunkirk beachhead, the Royal Air Force lost at least 106 air superiority fighters, Hurricanes and Spitfires. That’s almost as many F-22 Raptors as there are in the whole U.S. Air Force. How fast could the Pentagon replace losses of expensive high-technology aircraft?
    8. This would be merely one of the challenges facing Washington in a high-intensity war of attritions … Estimates are, with current production rates, it will take three to four years to replace the Javelin missiles sent to Ukraine. Delivery time for a new weapon is 32 months, but at least they are on an active production line. Washington has not purchased any new Stingers since 2003. It could take as long as five years to make up for those shipments. Moreover, that all assumes no further similar assistance for Ukraine.
    9. The damage Ukraine has inflicted on invading Russian forces with Javelins and Stingers brings back memories of the carnage of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Overconfident from its overwhelming 1967 victory and surprised by Arab anti-tank missiles and air defenses, the Israeli military lost a third of its air force in the early days of the conflict and over 400 tanks by the end. As in Ukraine, America was forced to expend its own stocks to resupply a proxy by airlifting tanks, helicopters, and missiles. F-4 Phantoms were even stripped from aircraft carriers and squadrons in California. American observers in postwar Israel were shocked by the lethality and demands of the modern conventional battlefield. And that war only lasted 19 days.
    10. This raises the question of how robust America’s defense industry would be in a major war today. How fast can the United States produce precision munitions or cruise and air-defense missiles? And how about the capacity of American industry to transition to building tanks and other weapon systems? In World War II, Westinghouse converted factories from producing household appliances to making items like aircraft parts and ammunition. Would Samsung and LG do the same? The American automobile industry produced one fifth of all the military equipment the nation required for World War II. The General Motors Corporation alone furnished one tenth of all American war production. The Ford company produced more army equipment than the whole nation of Italy — their aircraft factory at Willow Run rolled out a new bomber every 63 minutes. Could Toyota or Hyundai match that? Would they even try? Today’s high-technology platforms would likely take much longer to build. International supply chains will complicate this further. Even the Russians have run into difficulties because some of the key parts for their tanks have been cut off by Western sanctions. …
    11. MIKE: I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Coming into WW2, the US was already the industrial power of its time; the “China” of its time, if you will. Today, we don’t even have the domestic capacity to make even medical PPE. We’ve exported much of our industrial defense potential to other countries that are oceans away.
    12. MIKE: We can’t turn defense industry production lines on and off like a water spigot, but we have to re-examine what our needs will be in a peer or near-peer war, both in terms of how much we can produce in a national emergency, and how much we keep on hand until that industrial capacity comes online. That’s just one of the lessons Ukraine is teach us.
11. Latest on Monkeypox: Genetic Clues and How It Might Be Spreading; Early evidence suggests that the virus hasn’t changed to become more transmissible, though it may be spreading more often through sex than it has in the past. By Ed Cara | gizmodo.com | May 24, 2022, Yesterday 1:14PM
    1. Cases of monkeypox continue to climb across the globe, with more than 200 confirmed and suspected cases documented in over 20 countries. Scientists are starting to gather their first clues about these outbreaks, including how the virus may have begun spreading farther than it ever has before. … No deaths are reported so far; the type of monkeypox virus associated with these cases is known to have a fatality rate around 1%.
    2. The viral disease tends to cause large bumpy rashes throughout the body, along with flu-like symptoms. It can take up to three weeks following exposure for symptoms to start and two weeks for the illness to clear. The virus primarily spreads through direct contact, though it may also be spread through contaminated surfaces as well as respiratory droplets and aerosols. Infected people aren’t considered contagious until after they start showing symptoms.
    3. Monkeypox, closely related to the now-extinct smallpox virus, is endemic to parts of Africa and is thought to typically infect rodents. Following its discovery in the 1950s, it has occasionally jumped from animals to humans, causing localized outbreaks with limited transmission between humans. That makes these newest cases far different from past incursions of the virus. But we may have some early indications of what’s going on. …
    4. So far at least, there doesn’t seem to be evidence that the virus has mutated in any significant way since [2018], … But further research will be needed to rule out the possibility that it somehow became more inherently transmissible between humans. …
    5. Other experts have argued that the virus may be spreading more now because of declining immunity to the related smallpox virus, following its eradication in 1980. Poxviruses often cause cross-immunity to other poxviruses, but this protection has faded over time in the general population for various reasons, according to Jo Walker, an infectious disease epidemiologist and modeler at the Yale School of Public Health.
    6. “This ‘declining immunity’ is less due to waning immunity at the individual level, and more due to people with immunity dying, and people without immunity being born and then staying non-immune,” Walker told Gizmodo last week.
    7. MIKE: This article implies and answer to a question I had; namely, will people vaccinated against smallpox be relatively immune to monkeypox? The answer seems to be ‘yes’.
    8. MIKE: Another bit of information I got from another article I read is that there are still a couple of companies that can manufacture smallpox vaccine.
    9. REFERENCE: Smallpox vaccines can protect against monkeypox, and U.S. has 100 million doses; Two FDA-approved vaccines for smallpox are in the Strategic National Stockpile, one of many reasons this outbreak is nothing like the coronavirus. By Evan Bush and Aria Bendix | NBCNEWS.COM | May 23, 2022, 6:35 PM CDT / Updated May 24, 2022, 10:26 AM CDT
12. Amazon [Rain Forest] nears ‘tipping point’ where rainforest could transform into savanna; The Amazon may be nearing a “tipping point.” By Nicoletta Lanese | LIVESCIENCE.COM | published March 8, 2022 (about 6 hours ago)
    1. If deforestation continues, the Amazon rainforest could reach a critical tipping point where most of it transforms into a dry savanna, a new study warns. 
    2. The study, published Monday (March 7) in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that more than 75% of the rainforest has steadily lost “resilience” since the 2000s, meaning those portions of the rainforest now can’t recover as easily from disturbances, such as droughts and wildfires. Regions of the rainforest that show the most profound losses in resilience are located near farms, urban areas and areas used for logging, Inside Climate News reported.  
    3. Climate change, rampant deforestation and burnings conducted for agriculture and ranching have left the Amazon far warmer and drier than in decades past, and since 2000, the region has endured three major droughts, The New York Times reported. …
    4. The new study adds to existing evidence that the world’s largest rainforest is hurtling toward a tipping point, beyond which large swaths of the forest could suddenly die off. The study cannot pinpoint when this tipping point might be reached, but the forest could hit it within decades, the study authors told Inside Climate News. 
    5. If the rainforests surpasses this tipping point, the ecosystem could swiftly change into a vast savanna, unleashing tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide during the transformation, The Guardian reported. …
    6. At this point, can anything be done to prevent the Amazon rainforest from turning into the Amazon savanna? Experts say there is.
    7. “These systems are highly resilient, and the fact that we have reduced resilience doesn’t mean that it has lost all its resilience,” Brando told the Times. “If you leave them alone for a little bit, they come back super strongly.”
    8. But it requires key steps to be taken, experts said.
    9. “We have to get to zero deforestation, zero forest degradation,” Carlos Nobre, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil, who was not involved in the study, told the Times. “We still have a chance to save the forest.”

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• Transmitter and equipment costs
• Programs like Thinkwing Radio, Politics Done Right, and other locally-generated political talk shows
• KPFT’s online streaming
• Maintaining a wide variety of music programs

Each time you turn on the radio, you can hear your dollars at work!

Make your contribution to this station right now. Just call 713 526 5738. That’s 713-526-5738. Or give online at KPFT.org!