Now in our 11th year on KPFT!

Going forward, new shows will post for Thursday at 6PM (CT) broadcast and re-run on Sundays at 1PM and Wednesdays at 11AM.

AUDIO:

POSSIBLE TOPICS:

1. Fulshear opens applications for free city-focused academy;
2. Houston mayor looks to launch $70M pilot program to deal with homelessness;
3. Texas bill would reclassify abortion drugs as controlled substances;
4. Crypto miners must register with state and reveal power usage under new Texas rule;
5. Texas ballot secrecy issue draws attention in Legislature, courts;
6. MSNBC confronts viewer frustration, changes and an identity crisis;
7. Experts: DOGE scheme doomed because of Musk and Ramaswamy’s “meme-level understanding” of spending;
8. The world welcomes the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, but worries remain;
9. Gaza deal appears distant even with Lebanon cease-fire;

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. 

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. 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

Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig on KPFT Houston at 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, and Huntsville at 91.9-HD2. KPFT is Houston’s Community Media. On this show, we discuss local, state, national, and international stories that may have slipped under your radar.

As much as possible, I’m still trying to do an aggravation-free post-election show. Or at least, minimally aggravating. We’ll see how long that can last.

1. Fulshear opens applications for free city-focused academy; By Aubrey Vogel | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 9:00 AM Nov 22, 2024 CST. TAGS: Fulshear (TX), Civics, Fulshear Academy for Civic Training and Service (FACTS),
   1. Fulshear residents looking to learn more about city government will have a new opportunity in the new year.
   2. … Fulshear officials will host the city’s first class of the Fulshear Academy for Civic Training and Service, or FACTS, beginning in January, city officials announced in a 20 Facebook post. The FACTS program will feature a new city government-related topic weekly with guest speakers, group divisions and activities, according to the program website.
   3. The program is open to all Fulshear and surrounding area residents who are at least age 16, although applicants within city limits will be prioritized due to class-size restrictions.
   4. … The FACTS program aims to provide residents with the opportunity to learn more about local government, spark an interest in local issues, provide a space for residents to help plan the city’s future and develop a pool of residents willing to serve as representatives on city boards and commissions, according to the program’s website.
   5. The 2025 program will meet for seven consecutive Mondays from 6-8 p.m. [The story includes a schedule breakdown which you can see by clicking on this show’s article link.] …
   6. Program participants must attend at least five of the seven class sessions, partake in a City Council and city commission meeting, and participate in a class service project, according to the program website. A graduation ceremony will be held March 18 at a City Council meeting.
   7. … Applications opened Nov. 20 and will be accepted through around Jan. 1, Communications Director Mariah Gallegos said in an email.
   8. Accepted applicants will be notified the week of Jan. 6.
   9. MIKE: Any opportunities provided by a municipal government for civic education and participation is a good thing. I’ll be interested in any further reporting I see on this program and its results.
2. Houston mayor looks to launch $70M pilot program to deal with homelessness; By Cassandra Jenkins | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 1:25 PM Nov 25, 2024 CST/Updated 1:24 PM Nov 25, 2024 CST. TAGS: Houston Mayor John Whitmire, Homelessness, Greater Houston Community Foundation,
   1. [On Nov. 21,] Houston Mayor John Whitmire announced tentative details on a pilot program intended to start the process of dealing with the city’s homelessness issue.
   2. … Houston currently ranks 22nd in the United States for cities with the most homeless people, according to Understanding Houston, a collaborative initiative led by the Greater Houston Community Foundation.
   3. An annual report released in June by the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris County showed that approximately 3,280 people experience homelessness in the Houston region, with roughly 1,107 individuals experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
   4. “If you don’t admit you have a problem, you’re never going to solve it,” Whitmire said during a 21 news conference. …
   5. … Whitmire, along with city and county officials, laid out how Houston plans to improve homelessness starting with what’s been the city’s biggest roadblock—funding.
   6. Michael Nichols, director of the Housing and Community Development Department, said the idea is to have a $70 million year-one funding plan. According to the Small Business Administration, a year-one funding plan is a detailed financial document that outlines the expected income expenses for a project during its first year of operation.
   7. Nichols said the plan starts with the city committing $25 million from various funding streams. He also is expecting Harris County to contribute approximately $20 million to the plan as well as nonprofit organizations donating $15 million and other governmental entities contributing $10 million.
   8. The $70 million will be spent on: Outreach; Rapid rehousing; Permanent supportive housing; The Diversion Program; A navigation center; Shelter support; [and] Hub operations.
   9. Nichols said the initial $70 million does not include other expected funding, such as Houston Housing Authority vouchers, affordable housing contributions, or additional state funding for mental health resources.
   10. [Nichols said,]”The only constraints we have in meeting this goal, the only constraints we have to ending homelessness, lies in the funding and the collaboration.”
   11. Nichols said the city will look to Texas legislators for sustainable program funding beyond year one. The 89th Texas legislative session starts Jan. 14 and ends June 2.
   12. … Whitmire said other details of the program could include implementing further civility ordinances.
   13. Houston’s current ordinance, established in 2002, prohibits sitting, lying down, or placing personal items on sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. in a designated area.
   14. To enact a civility ordinance, property owners must seek the extension from Houston City Council, who vote on the proposition after a public hearing session. There are currently 12 civility zones in Houston.
   15. Whitmire said he believes it’s a concept that should be enacted across the entire city. He also is looking to extend the hours of the ordinance to prohibit sleeping on the streets after 9 p.m.
   16. “Today, is a call of action,” Whitmire said. “We are going to address Houston’s homeless conditions. It’s not rocket science. It’s us coming together. Everyone who can hear my voice has a role to play. I can’t do it by myself.”
   17. MIKE: I applaud Mayor Whitmire’s ideas on how to aid Houston’s homeless in finding long-term shelter off of Houston’s streets. That’s the carrot. But then there’s the stick.
   18. MIKE: Houston’s current “civility ordinance” prohibits sitting, lying down, or placing personal items on sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. in a designated area. I’ll note that the PDF of the ordinance has a map showing the current designated areas.
   19. MIKE: Whitmire then suggests prohibiting sleeping on the streets after 9 pm.
   20. MIKE: In total, that means that homeless people can’t sit, lie down, put things down, or sleep, pretty much ever.
   21. MIKE: My former co-host, Andrew Ferguson, introduced me to the concept of “hostile architecture”. Wikipedia defines hostile architecture briefly as “an urban-design strategy that uses elements of the built environment to purposefully guide behavior. It often targets people who use or rely on public space more than others, such as youth, poor people, and homeless people, by restricting the physical behaviours they can engage in.^[1]”
   22. MIKE: Don’t misunderstand me. If I had a homeless encampment outside my subdivision, I would not be happy about it and I would want it moved. But moving homeless people from an area means that they must have someplace habitable that they can be moved to. Simply keeping them in perpetual motion is an impossible and inhumane solution.
   23. MIKE: Society needs to find a permanent and ongoing answers to homelessness, hopefully ones that deal with the homeless in a human and ongoing fashion that keeps them off the streets and, to the extent possible, integrates them back into mainstream society.
   24. MIKE: Mayor Whitmire’s ideas for finding long-term solutions to homelessness are admirable, but the cart needs to follow the horse. Put the solutions in place first, before putting more “civility” constraints on people with no place to go.
   25. REFERENCE: CIVILITY ORDINANCE, ART. XVI, CH. 40, CODE OF ORDINANCES — HOUSTONTX.GOV
   26. REFERENCE: Hostile Architecture — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3. Texas bill would reclassify abortion drugs as controlled substances; By Eleanor Klibanoff | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 25, 2024@12 hours ago. TAGS: Health care, Politics, State government, Abortion,
   1. A Louisiana law that reclassified abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances has made it more difficult for doctors to treat a wide range of gynecological conditions, doctors say.
   2. Now, a similar proposal has been filed in Texas.
   3. Texas Rep. Pat Curry, a freshman Republican from Waco, said the intent of House Bill 1339 is to make it harder for people, especially teenagers, to order mifepristone and misoprostol online to terminate their pregnancies. Doctors in Louisiana say the measure has done little to strengthen the state’s near-total abortion ban, but has increased fear and confusion among doctors, pharmacists and patients.
   4. [Said Dr. Nicole Freehill, an OB/GYN in New Orleans.] “There’s no sense in it. Even though we kept trying to tell them how often [these medications] are used for other things and how safe they are, it didn’t matter. It’s just a backdoor way of restricting abortion more.”
   5. These medications are often used to empty the uterus after a patient has a miscarriage, and are commonly prescribed ahead of inserting an intrauterine device. Misoprostol is also often the best treatment for obstetric hemorrhages, a potentially life-threatening condition in which women can bleed to death in minutes. Since the Louisiana law went into effect, hospitals have taken the medication off their obstetrics carts and put them in locked, password-protected central storage.
   6. One hospital has been running drills to practice getting the medications to patients in time, and reported, on average, a two minute delay from before the law went into effect, the Louisiana Illuminator reported.
   7. [Dr. Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, said in a statement after the Louisiana law passed,] “In obstetrics and gynecology, minutes or even seconds can be the difference between life and death. Forcing a clinician to jump through administrative hurdles in order to access a safe, effective medicine is not medically justified and is, quite simply, dangerous.”
   8. [Rep.] Curry said these restrictions won’t stop doctors from prescribing these medications when necessary, but will stop the “wide misuse” of the drugs to circumvent the state’s near-total abortion ban.
   9. Curry said he consulted with the author of the Louisiana law, as well as OB/GYNs in Texas to draft the bill. He said the doctors who have criticized the legislation are raising these concerns as a “smokescreen” because they don’t want more restrictions.
   10. [Curry said,] — MIKE: And I insert an irony alert here —“I understand that. We don’t need or want all kinds of regulations. Especially as Republicans, regulations should not be high on our list, but in this case it’s a necessary evil given the situation.”
   11. … In March 2022, Mason Herring, a Houston attorney, spiked his wife’s water with misoprostol to force her to have an abortion. Catherine Herring was pregnant with the couple’s third child, a daughter who was born 10 weeks premature. She survived, but has significant developmental delays, according to the Associated Press.
   12. Mason Herring was charged with felony assault to induce abortion, and pled guilty to injury to a child and assault to a pregnant person. He was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 10 years of probation.
   13. Catherine Herring’s experience led her brother, Louisiana state Rep. Thomas Pressly, to file a bill that would have made it a crime to coerce someone into having an abortion.
   14. But at the last minute, the bill was amended to also reclassify abortion-inducing drugs as controlled substances, according to the Louisiana Illuminator, leaving hospitals and doctors scrambling to comply with the new restrictions. …
   15. It’s rare for a state to decide on its own to classify a drug as a controlled substance. …
   16. Prescription monitoring has been key to combating the opioid epidemic by identifying doctors who were overprescribing and patients who were getting prescriptions from multiple providers. But with so much political attention on mifepristone and misoprostol as abortion-inducing drugs, doctors are worried about scrutiny for frequently prescribing these common medications. …
   17. A group of Louisiana health care providers recently filed a lawsuit arguing the law discriminates against people who need mifepristone and misoprostol for other conditions, and challenging whether the last minute amendments to the bill were proper. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill MIKE: Whom I will note is trained as a lawyer and not a physician — has said the new restrictions are clear and should not delay care. Those who “have attempted to sow confusion and doubt,” she said in a statement, “profit from misinformation.” …
   18. Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, conservative groups have turned their attention to restricting access to abortion-inducing medications. A group of anti-abortion doctors filed a lawsuit to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, which the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rejected.
   19. Curry said there are reasons to keep these medications on the market beyond abortion, but they need tighter restrictions.
   20. “You can lie about your age, you can lie about your name, you can lie about your address, there’s no verification whatsoever,” he said, referring to online prescribers. “And it gets shipped to a 15-year-old girl, a 13-year-old girl.”
   21. It is already a crime to mail abortion-inducing medications in Texas, and many of the online pharmacies operate in a legal gray area outside U.S. jurisdiction. Others are working in states that have “shield laws” that protect doctors’ ability to prescribe and mail pills into states that have banned abortion. None of these interstate and international legal questions have been tested in court with regards to abortion.
   22. Freehill said she would encourage Texas doctors to learn from what has happened in Louisiana as they prepare to advocate against this bill this session.
   23. “There’s a lot of education that needs to be done surrounding what this means and what these drugs are really used for,” she said. “I don’t know that we would have been able to sway people, even with more time, but we can at least educate on why this is completely inappropriate and really governmental overreach.”
   24. MIKE: So Texas doesn’t have enough oppression of women by the self-described party of personal freedom. The noose gets tighter. I’m sure we’ll here more about this in the upcoming legislative session.
4. Crypto miners must register with state and reveal power usage under new Texas rule; By Kayla Guo | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 25, 20242 hours ago. TAGS: Energy, State government, Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT), Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT),
   1. Texas’ utility regulator on Thursday adopted a rule requiring cryptocurrency mining facilities connected to the state’s main electric grid to register with the state’s grid operator.
   2. The rule, which was mandated by lawmakers in a 2023 bill, requires crypto mining facilities that consume more than 75 megawatts of power to tell the [Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT)] and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas [ERCOT], which oversees the state’s power grid, the facility’s location, ownership and electricity demand.
   3. Crypto mining, which consumes vast amounts of power to run and cool its computers, has been growing in Texas, contributing to a surge in electricity demand across the state. The rule was designed to help the state see how much electricity crypto facilities will consume and protect the grid’s reliability. …
   4. Existing facilities must register by Feb. 1 and renew their registration annually. Companies must also provide each facility’s anticipated peak load for the next five years, in addition to the actual power the facility consumed in the prior year.
   5. Failure to register could result in up to a $25,000 penalty per violation per day.
   6. Crypto facilities are considered “large flexible loads” by state regulators, meaning they can adjust their power consumption quickly — such as powering off their computers when the grid is strained.
   7. As of July, ERCOT estimated that crypto facilities on the main grid could use up to 2,600 megawatts of power — about the same amount of power used by the city of Austin. The state recently approved crypto mining facilities that are expected to use another 2,600 MW of electricity, and more are expected to locate in Texas soon.
   8. That growth, in addition to increasing interest in Texas from data centers, hydrogen production facilities, and oil and gas companies that are electrifying their drilling operations largely concentrated in the Permian Basin, has driven ERCOT’s prediction that electricity demand in Texas could nearly double within six years.
   9. Demand on the power grid hit a record of 85 gigawatts last year, which was the hottest ever recorded in the state. ERCOT experts now say demand could reach around 150 gigawatts by 2030.
   10. MIKE: In my opinion, crypto-currency generally and crypto-mining particularly have no redeeming economic or social value. Crypto-currency is a concept looking for a legitimate economic use. It’s a highly speculative asset — and I use the term “asset” loosely — with its primary value seeming to be for illicit transactions having to do with drugs, cybercrime, and evasion of money laundering.
   11. MIKE: Crypto-mining is a waste of electrical resources that strains power grids and contributes uselessly to global warming. Further, in Texas, one of the most profitable transactions for crypto-miners is selling electric power that they don’t use back to the grid at a profit.
   12. MIKE: Crypto is the “Dutch Tulip Mania” of the 21^st century, amplified by 21^st century communications and computing technology..
5. Texas ballot secrecy issue draws attention in Legislature, courts; By Natalia Contreras (Votebeat and The Texas Tribune), and Blaise Gainey (Texas Newsroom) | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Nov. 25, 2024@12 hours ago. TAGS: Politics, 2024 elections,
   1. Texas officials had to issue emergency guidance this year to patch holes in new election transparency laws that threatened to expose the choices people made on their ballots.
   2. Now that the 2024 election is over, the issue of protecting ballot secrecy is receiving renewed attention in both the courts and the legislature.
   3. A national conservative nonprofit last week filed a federal lawsuit against Harris County, alleging the county isn’t taking steps to protect voters’ right to a secret ballot. Another case, involving an activist who claims to have uncovered the ballot choices of more than 60,000 voters, is ongoing.
   4. And Republican state Rep. Ryan Guillen proposed a bill this month that would make it a felony for individuals to obtain information that could tie voters back to their ballot choices.
   5. It’s the first concrete sign that lawmakers plan to tackle the ballot secrecy issue since an investigation by Votebeat and the Texas Tribune in May showed how laws touted as increasing election transparency have made it possible — in limited instances — to determine how individuals voted, using publicly available records and data.
   6. … The push for increased transparency gained momentum after the 2020 presidential election when then-former President Donald Trump successfully convinced activists statewide that the election had been stolen from him. In an effort to uncover evidence of voter fraud, they began filing open-records requests for original voted ballots and cast-vote records — anonymized electronic representations of how each voter voted — in almost every Texas county.
   7. At the time, the law said voted ballots had to be kept private for 22 months after an election. But in 2022, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released a non-binding legal opinion advising county officials to release voted ballots as soon as they are counted, while redacting any information that could identify the voter.
   8. After at least three counties challenged Paxton’s advice in court, the Texas Legislature rewrote the law to allow public access to ballot images, cast-vote records, and the original voted ballot just 61 days after an election.
   9. In the past three years, the requests for election records have become more expansive, election officials said. Activists are now requesting copies of voting equipment manuals, data from election servers, and other information produced by voting equipment, including electronic poll books used to check in voters at polling locations.
   10. Officials came face to face with the risks of releasing these records in May, when the conservative news site Current Revolt published what it said was the image of the ballot that former Republican Party of Texas Chair Matt Rinaldi cast in the March 5 Republican primary.
   11. The site did not explain how it obtained the ballot, or how it linked it to Rinaldi, but Votebeat and the Tribune were able to verify that such a match was possible. Using public records, reporters were able to identify the choices of voters who’d cast ballots in precincts with a small number of voters.
   12. That same month, longtime conservative activist Laura Pressley claimed in a federal lawsuit that she had discovered an “algorithmic pattern” in public records that allowed her to link 60,000 Williamson County voters to their ballot choices. Her lawsuit, which is still pending, alleges that a failure by state and local election officials to comply with a ballot-numbering law has allowed her to match voters to their ballots.
   13. Pressley has been reluctant to share details of the purported “algorithmic pattern” with state officials. Still, the Secretary of State’s office this year directed election officials who use electronic poll books to print serial numbers on the ballots to stop doing so, and to switch to paper with preprinted ballot numbers, which must be redacted before being released to requestors.
   14. … State and local election officials said they had been concerned about the risks to ballot secrecy for some time as lawmakers made it easier to access voter data. But it wasn’t until after the May disclosures that Paxton and Secretary of State Jane Nelson issued additional guidance to election officials, ordering more redactions and instructing them to stop releasing information that can help expose how people voted.
   15. Conservative election activists have been vocal about their opposition to redactions and lengthening the timeline to make ballot images public. Such moves, they say, would prevent them from performing their own election audits.
   16. In a legislative hearing this summer, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, said he believed there could be bipartisan support for other measures, such as a bill that would require information from small precincts to be aggregated into larger ones. That was one of the solutions outlined by Christina Adkins, the elections division director in the Secretary of State’s office, to better anonymize voters who cast ballots in precincts where few others are cast. …
   17. Some voting rights advocates say that without some action from lawmakers, voters will be vulnerable to breaches of privacy, harassment, and intimidation.
   18. [Said Elisabeth MacNamara, vice president of advocacy for the League of Women Voters of Texas,] “You’re guaranteed a secret ballot. That is something that you take into the polling place with you. And if you can’t count on that, then our concern would be that folks who might otherwise vote, may not due to fear.” …
   19. MIKE: That’s an important point. As just one small example, how many couples split their votes where this could cause serious domestic discord or even conflict?
   20. MIKE: There’s also this: “Linking a voter to their specific ballot choices isn’t easy. It requires a process of elimination and the use of multiple public records. It is more likely to succeed in circumstances involving less populous counties, small precincts, and low-turnout elections.”
   21. MIKE: The story has quite a lot more detail about legal challenges, solutions to potential violations of ballot secrecy that are labor- and cost-intensive, and possible legislative fixes to the problem.
   22. MIKE: There’s one conservative group that claims that countywide balloting endangers ballot secrecy, but the story says nothing about how that’s supposed to work.
   23. MIKE: It’s hard not to feel like our very elective democracy is under serious threat from various groups under claims of “election transparency”. It may be that we need a national commission of experts and election officials to determine “best practices” for election security, election honesty, and ballot secrecy that addresses the needs of all three, but I have no confidence that such a commission can occur and be trusted for at least the next four years.
6. MSNBC confronts viewer frustration, changes and an identity crisis; By Jeremy Barr | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | November 27, 2024 at 2:21 p.m. EST. TAGS: MSNBC, Cable Television, Comcast,
   5. Strangely enough, MSNBC was one of the winners on election night. For the first time in its 28-year history, the network brought in more total viewers than CNN, and it was the second-most-watched channel in all of traditional television during the prime-time hours of Nov. 5.
   6. Things have gone downhill since then. In the days that followed, MSNBC began seeing a significant decline in viewership (as has CNN), as left-leaning viewers opted to turn off the channel rather than watch the aftermath of Donald Trump’s victory. One of the network’s most valuable franchises, “Morning Joe,” faced backlash after hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski revealed Nov. 18 that they had traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in an effort to “restart communications.” They framed the visit as a necessary nod to the reality that voters elected a man the co-hosts have decried in the past as exemplifying fascist behaviors. Some viewers felt otherwise and turned off the show in protest in the days that followed.
   7. Forget short-term ratings drops — questions about the future of the network picked up considerably [on] Nov. 20, when parent company Comcast announced that it would spin off MSNBC and some of its other cable channels into a separate company. Network bigwigs framed the new entity — temporarily called SpinCo — as a lean, future-oriented machine that could provide an off-ramp for the declines in traditional television viewership that have shrunk revenue for major broadcast and cable companies. Others saw it as a way to peel off the cable companies that are seen as declining assets, with a potential sale down the road.
   8. Given all this, MSNBC employees are trying to wrap their heads around what it all means and the potential changes ahead. The fear inside the building is about whether the move could portend a less ambitious future for MSNBC — with a smaller, lower-compensated staff and a lot less journalism, considering the network will be separated from the NBC News operation that contributes much of the reporting.
   9. “We’re going to become a guest-driven, fully opinion operation that doesn’t even have the appearance of being a news-driven operation,” predicted one MSNBC journalist who, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
   10. But there’s also some openness to a new structure, which could result in more investment in the cable news network.
   11. “I’m potentially optimistic because I think if they do it right, it’s a big opportunity, but you also have to be frozen or blind not to see that there are risks,” said another network insider.
   12. “It’s the reality of the business. It’s just going to change constantly,” said a third network staffer, a producer. “The message that was trickled down to me was that this is a genuine attempt to make this work as a second company. It is not us being primed to be bought. You take everything with a grain of salt, but that’s obviously better than the alternative.”
   13. One risk ahead is the loss of brand identity and recognition, a concern that spread after a report on the morning of the announced split that a top executive told an internal gathering that he wasn’t sure whether MSNBC’s name and branding would have to change. “The name matters a lot,” the network insider told The Washington Post. “People have to find you. It’s harder than ever to find things.”
   14. (MSNBC launched in 1996 as a joint venture between Microsoft and NBC, combining online news with cable news. The years brought several updates to the brand and its approach; Microsoft got out of the TV operation in 2005 and the website by 2012, while NBC wrapped MSNBC into its overall digital and televised news coverage.)
   15. Some inside the network view the decline in ratings as cyclic. After Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in November 2020, Fox News — the network most associated with the former president — briefly saw a decline in ratings. In January 2021, Fox attracted a smaller audience throughout the day than both MSNBC and CNN for the first time in 20 years. By the following month, however, Fox was back on top. MSNBC’s audience also declined after Trump’s victory in 2016.
   16. There’s a belief inside MSNBC that exhausted, dispirited viewers will return in droves once Trump is inaugurated in January and begins taking executive orders and other actions. “I’ve heard from so many people that they just can’t watch the news,” one network veteran said. “I don’t want to watch the news. I don’t even want to read it.”
   17. [MIKE: I totally empathize with that. As many of you have noticed, I’ve been doing very few stories about the Trump transition, and most of those have only mentioned Trump tangentially. Continuing …]
   18. The drop in viewers that began the week after the election has flattened out, though it still represents a significant decline in audience — the network averaged more than 1 million viewers for the week starting Nov. 4, but just 539,000 last week.
   19. The numbers were stark for “Morning Joe.” Compared with an average of 1.09 million total viewers per episode this year, the show attracted audiences of 680,000 and 647,000 viewers the two days after the hosts revealed their Trump meeting. Still, the show’s average audience last week, while much smaller than normal, was similar to the previous week, indicating that the Trump meeting did not decimate the show’s viewership.
   20. In a podcast interview last week, Brzezinski said she was surprised by the backlash to the Trump meeting. [She said,] “I think we’re going to talk again, and I hope that we do. Some people really disagree with this, and I don’t. I regret talking about people and not to them.”
   21. Some critics questioned what the hosts meant by saying they were going to take a “different” approach to covering Trump.
   22. [The network insider said,] “The big problem with the announcement is that they all but said they’re going to give warmer coverage, which is a strange thing to announce.”
   23. While that may have been a common interpretation of their comments, the hosts said they will cover Trump aggressively and call out his actions and words as president.
   24. Bigger questions remain about what exactly MSNBC is supposed to be. In the past two decades, the network has tried to reposition the brand on multiple occasions. There have been attempts to bring on more conservative voices and attempts to create more — or less — separation between the news programs on the channel during the day, and the opinion programs in the morning and the evening. …
   25. Even before the announced split between the cable channel and NBC News, MSNBC was seen as moving in a more opinion-focused direction.
   26. Some longtime critics of MSNBC, however, view that ideological orientation as not sufficiently progressive. Cenk Uygur, co-creator of the digital outlet the Young Turks (and a onetime MSNBC contributor and host), cited the number of Republicans and lapsed Republicans on the channel, including hosts such as Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace and Michael Steele.
   27. [Uygur said,] “MSNBC is a giant corporate propaganda operation to trick Democratic voters into voting for the most Republican candidate.”
   28. Still, Uygur said that MSNBC’s audience — “older Democratic viewers that decide primaries” — is an important one, making the network’s success vital for anyone who cares about electing liberal Democrats.
   29. While MSNBC is not on the market, according to Comcast, Uygur recently floated a potential acquisition — not unlike Elon Musk, who also raised eyebrows by asking on his X platform how much the network might cost.
   30. “Anything is possible,” Uygur said. “If you’re looking to reform MSNBC into something that is popular, it makes sense to go to a popular online network, and see if they can do the trick.”
   31. MIKE: That comment in the story about fewer people watching news to avoid hearing about Trump, I can totally get that. If I didn’t do a news-oriented weekly radio show, I’d probably do the same, but I don’t have much choice. Sometimes, I’m tempted to say that I watch the news so that you don’t have to — a thought I had often from 2017 to 2021 — but I know that’s a bit presumptuous.
   32. MIKE: This article also clarified something else for me. I watch Rachel and Lawrence at night to catch up on news and commentary that I haven’t read during the day. I’ve been feeling for some time that there’s too much bloviating on MSNBC evening shows and not enough news, but I couldn’t crystallize that into an observation. Now I can, and I can say that it has really been annoying me. Doing news analysis requires news to analyze, and I feel that there has been mostly opinion on MSNBC evening shows. I can form my own opinions, but informed analysis can be useful.
   33. MIKE: But as regards the heart of the story, the spinoff by Comcast of MSNBC and other cable channels, I wouldn’t begin to predict how that will pan out. One alternative mentioned in the story is that Comcast could strip their cable subsidiaries for parts and sell them cheap.
   34. Another is option mentioned is that “SpinCo” would be set up for success with adequate financing and advance planning to make it viable as its own entity.
   35. MIKE: But corporations can be as inscrutable as God, except we know that corporations are driven entirely by profit. We don’t know what might drive God. We will simply know, as the saying goes, in the fullness of time.
   36. MIKE: I did click on the link to that comment from Cenk Uyger provided in the story, and here’s what Cenck said: “Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur — Imagine if @TheYoungTurks bought @MSNBC. We’d need financing to do it, but imagine if we turned it into a populist channel! It would get far better ratings and could actually help the national conversation. It would be the ultimate sign that online media has won. 7:55 PM · Nov 20, 2024. https://x.com/cenkuygur/status/1859415419381219535
   37. MIKE: I haven’t watched Cenk in many years, so I can’t comment on what MSNBC might look like if he bought it. It’s just another possibility to mix into the metaphorical pot.
7. Experts: DOGE scheme doomed because of Musk and Ramaswamy’s “meme-level understanding” of spending; By Tatyana Tandanpolie, Staff Writer | SALON.COM | Published November 23, 2024 6:00AM (EST). TAGS: Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),
   1. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaires President-elect Donald Trumppicked to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have made their aspirations of slashing government spending clear, promising to bring a “chainsaw” to federal bureaucracy and costs.
   2. To cut back on hundreds of billions in government spending, one approach Ramaswamy has suggested is eliminating programs that have lapsed spending authorizations despite still being funded by Congress, which include veterans’ healthcare services, housing assistance and the Justice Department. But not only does that proposal misunderstand the function and role of funding authorization in Congress, the lack of authorization doesn’t indicate wasteful expenditures, federal fiscal policy experts told Salon.
   3. “They have a fundamentally superficial understanding of what they’re doing,” argued Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress. “They have a meme-level understanding. ‘Let’s get rid of unauthorized spending’ is the sort of thing that you might see in a Facebook meme.”
   4. Ramaswamy and Musk expanded on that suggestion in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday, outlining the newly minted out-of-government advisory commission’s plans for reducing excess spending. DOGE, they wrote, will target some $500 billion in annual federal expenditures that “are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended” in an effort to help “end” federal overspending.
   5. But the notion that any spending is not approved by Congress or used outside of how the legislative body intends is “inaccurate,” said David Reich, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The Constitution requires Congress to authorize any and all government spending, which it does through funding bills, or appropriations. 
   6. “For anything the federal government is spending, there’s going to be an appropriation,” Reich told Salon in a phone interview. “It could be an annual appropriation. It could be an appropriation and authorizing law, but Congress will have authorized that expenditure.”
   7. The authorization that Musk and Ramaswamy take up actually refers to an internal House of Representative’s rule that creates a separate process for authorization and appropriations, experts said. 
   8. Authorizing committees in the House make laws dictating provisions for the creation of agencies and their functions, which include “aspirational-level” provisions for how funds can be used like requirements for eligibility to receive that funding and stipulations on its use, Kogan explained in a phone interview, and the authorization is usually temporary to allow the committees to reevaluate those details over time. 
   9. “For a while it was a very common practice for authorizing legislation to say, ‘And there is hereby authorized to be appropriated X dollars in year one and Y dollars in year two’ and so forth,” Reich said.
   10. But the House’s use of that language has lessened in recent years, and the chamber often waives the rule, explicitly or implicitly, by considering the funding bills, which it does “often completely consistent with what the authorizing law does,” he added, calling the authorization of funding via authorizing laws a “technical step.”
   11. For programs where Congress has allowed its authorization to lapse, appropriations legislation covers it. Instead of needing two laws —  an authorizing law that approves funding for an agency and another to actually allocate those funds — Congress only passes the appropriation, which then gives the program the authority to spend its funding, according to The Washington Post. 
   12. In their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy pointed to $535 million allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $1.5 billion for “grants to international organizations” and nearly $300 million allocated to “progressive groups like Planned Parenthood” as examples of excess spending that could be cut, appearing to cite figures from a Congressional Budget Office reporton programs with unauthorized funds. 
   13. But Kent Smetters, the faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model and a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School professor of business, economics and public policy, told Salon that these unauthorized funds don’t inherently amount to wasteful or excess spending either. 
   14. “In practice, unauthorized funds give a federal agency more flexibility to direct funds toward the needs that the agency sees as a higher priority at any point in time,” he said in an email, adding that “unauthorized funds are probably a bit more efficient because an agency might have more information about immediate needs after the funds were appropriated by Congress at a more aggregate level.”
   15. Programs without separate spending authorization amount to more than $516 billion of the budget, with the 10 largest programs comprising $380 billion of that share, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. Health care for veterans has the largest amount of “unauthorized” government spending, coming in at $119.1 billion. Funding for other programs like housing assistance under the 1998 Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, and government entities like the State Department and Justice Department would, in theory, be on the chopping block, per Ramaswamy and Musk’s suggestions.
   16. Still, as an out-of-government entity, DOGE can only make recommendations to Congress for ways to pare down the federal budget. “Congress will still decide whether authorized or unauthorized programs get funding,” Smetters said. “It is not up to the discretion of the White House.”
   17. While policymakers have room to eliminate excess federal spending in bipartisan ways, Kogan said, the amount of wasteful government spending is far smaller than what Ramaswamy and Musk suggest.
   18. “People have this idea of just huge and absurd amounts of government waste, and it’s just not borne out in the data,” he said.
   19. Two-thirds of federal spending is mandatory, while the remaining discretionary spending largely goes toward defense. Over 70% of the nation’s non-interest spending is public benefits to Americans, like Social Security, SNAP, WIC, Medicaid and Medicare, Kogan said, and “by definition, if you’re cutting those, you’re cutting aid to people.”
   20. “I think a lot of this comes down to people saying, ‘Well, I just don’t want us to do that program, and that’s fine,” he said, adding: “That is a stance someone can take, but it is flatly incorrect to pretend the money we give to states to help them make sure that kids with disabilities have enough money to succeed — that’s not waste. You might not like the program, but is just not waste.”
   21. MIKE: I don’t have much to say about this story except that I hope that these two evil clowns fail spectacularly. How am I defining “evil” here, that I apply it to these two men? Well, the programs these two guys and many Republicans want to cut — or gut, as it were — are programs designed to level the socio-economic playing field in the US and to help those who are most in need.
   22. MIKE: I am reminded of a quote I once found that I’ll probably be citing from time to time over the next four years.
   23. MIKE: Captain Gustave Mark Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials in wrote in his book, “Nuremberg Diary”: “In my work with the defendants [at the Nuremberg Trials, 1945-1949] I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men.  Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.
   24. MIKE: Think about that and consider it in the context of the policies and ideas being espoused by Trump and his cabinet picks, and Musk, Ramaswamy, and the Republican Party as it stands today. You could summarize their ideas as, “Let them eat cake.” Marie Antoinette never actually said that in so many words, but neither have the Republicans. Nonetheless, that’s what their plans amount to.
   25. MIKE: Their ideas aren’t for a Square Deal or New Deal or a Fair Deal. You can call their Trump agenda the “Let Them Eat Cake Deal”. And remember that that attitude started a nasty revolution.
8. The world welcomes the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, but worries remain; By Scott Neuman | NPR.ORG | November 27, 20243:44 PM ET. TAGS: Israel, Lebanon, Ceasefire, Hezbollah, Israel And Hezbollah, Iran-Backed Groups, N. Peacekeepers, United Nations, Diplomacy,
   1. Celebratory gunfire rang out in the Lebanese capital Beirut overnight Tuesday to mark the start of a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon to end almost 14 months of fighting.
   2. The truce, brokered by the United States and France, went into effect at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday. Fighting, however, continued up to the zero hour, with Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon far into the night.
   3. Underlining the potential fragility of the truce, the Israeli military says it fired toward suspects in a prohibited zone just hours into the ceasefire, and the suspects left. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said they were Hezbollah operatives in a border village.
   4. In a joint statement, President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron said the deal “will cease the fighting in Lebanon, and secure Israel from the threat of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations operating from Lebanon.” They said it “will create the conditions to restore lasting calm and allow residents in both countries to return safely to their homes” along the border.
   5. Hezbollah started firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Hamas after the Palestinian militant group led an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel and Hezbollah have exchanged fire since then. The fighting — which intensified eight weeks ago, when Israel initiated a ground invasion of southern Lebanon aimed at eliminating Hezbollah fighters and weapons capabilities from the border region — has killed more than 3,700 people in Lebanon, according to Lebanese health officials, and around 80 people in northern Israel, according to Israeli officials.
   6. The conflict has driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese — about a fifth of the population — from their homes, according to the United Nations. Israel estimates about 60,000 people evacuated northern communities to flee Hezbollah’s rockets.
   7. Israel also stepped up airstrikes across Lebanon in recent months, which damaged homes and infrastructure, and killed top Hezbollah officials — including longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah, its senior commander in the south, Mohammed Nasser, and rocket and missile commander Ibrahim Qubaisi.
   8. Israel has fulfilled its military objectives, primarily eliminating Hezbollah infrastructure, says Randa Slim, director of the Conflict Resolution and Track II Dialogues Program at the Middle East Institute. [Slim says,] ” On the border, it’s pretty much destroyed. But on top of that, they have wiped out their military command council, as well as their political leadership, top senior political leadership. So these are severe blows to Hezbollah, which is going to take a long, long time to recover from.”
   9. Many Lebanese already began trying to return to their southern villages, despite Israeli military warnings not to do so yet, while Israeli troops are still deployed.
   10. In southern Lebanon, Patricia Taleb, 24, was driving Wednesday to reach the home she was forced to abandon earlier. [She told NPR,] “We know that this is the end days of the war. We know that ultimately it’s going to be OK.”
   11. For now, Israel is discouraging its residents from returning to their abandoned homes in the border area. Education Minister Yoav Kisch said on Israel Army Radio [that] there will be a 30- to 60-day period of renovating buildings and institutions damaged by Hezbollah fire before Israel initiates a return of Israeli residents.
   12. Orna Peretz, an Israeli displaced from Kiryat Shmona, a town less than a mile from the Israel-Lebanon border, told NPR he thinks Hezbollah — founded during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war — has been taught a lesson “it never endured in its entire lifetime.” …
   13. The ceasefire agreement calls for a 60-day timeframe for Hezbollah fighters to withdraw from an area south of the Litani River — effectively creating a buffer between the militants and northern Israel. Israeli forces are expected to similarly withdraw to the Israeli side of the border.
   14. To ensure security in the area, the deal calls for thousands of Lebanese government soldiers to deploy to the south, along with U.N. peacekeeping forces known as UNIFIL, according to a copy of the deal seen by NPR. A U.S.-led international panel will monitor for violations of the terms of the agreement.
   15. In addition, the agreement calls for Lebanese government authorities to prevent Hezbollah or any other armed group from carrying out attacks on Israel. It further requires Lebanon’s military and security forces be the only armed group allowed to operate in southern Lebanon, and that Lebanese authorities prevent the reestablishment and rearming of any non-state armed group in the country.
   16. [Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters. Israel has pledged to aggressively respond to any breach of the terms, saying] “Any violation of the ceasefire will be met with fire.” He said Israeli “soldiers are still positioned in southern Lebanon, in villages and areas from which the forces will gradually withdraw in accordance with the agreement.”
   17. [Says Shalom Lipner, a Jerusalem-based Middle East expert at the Atlantic Council,] “This is all going to be about the enforcement. They’re telegraphing that there will not be any exceptions [as] in the past.”
   18. [Lipner continues,] “The stated intent is that at the smallest infraction, they will go through the motions of reporting this to the [U.S.-led international] supervisory committee and [if] Israel doesn’t get satisfaction, they will take action on their own.”
   19. Iran and Israel’s Arab neighbors have welcomed the ceasefire
   20. After the U.S.- and-France brokered deal was announced in Paris, Iran — which has long been the primary backer of both Hezbollah and Hamas militants in Gaza — said it welcomed the news to end “aggression against Lebanon.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei emphasized Tehran’s “firm support for the Lebanese government, nation and resistance.”
   21. In separate statements, Jordan and Egypt each said Israel’s “aggression in Gaza” should be stopped. Jordan called the Lebanon ceasefire “an important step.”
   22. Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Cairo hopes the ceasefire “will contribute to the beginning of the de-escalation phase in the region.” It called for Israel to allow “full access to humanitarian aid without obstacles in light of the catastrophic humanitarian conditions in the [Gaza] Strip, in addition to stopping the unjustified violations in the West Bank.”
   23. Saudi Arabia said it hoped the ceasefire “will lead to the implementation of [U.N.] Security Council Resolution 1701,” referring to a previous agreement renewing UNIFIL’s mandate at the end of a 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia called for “the preservation of Lebanon’s sovereignty, security and stability and the return of the displaced to their homes in safety and security.”
   24. … Still, some Israelis remain skeptical. … [Avraham Moreno, displaced from Shlomi, a village on the border with Lebanon, tells NPR. “This deal, we still know nothing about it. We have very, very mixed feelings, even though we really want to return home.”
   25. And in Gaza, there are worries as well. Wala Hanuna, 34, a Palestinian displaced by Israel’s nearly 14-month military offensive there, worried that the Israeli military would now be free to wreak more destruction on the territory[ saying,] “We read the news that the Israeli army fighting in Lebanon will go now to Gaza. Maybe the war here will last another year, with no one thinking how we will get out of this.”
   26. Hamas, the militant group that Israel has been fighting in Gaza, thanked Hezbollah for its “pivotal role … in support of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian resistance, and the great sacrifices,” including the death of Nasrallah.
   27. On the Lebanese side of the border, “many of the country’s displaced may not be able to return home for months, as Israel has razed entire villages near the ‘Blue Line’ border,” according to David Wood, a senior analyst on Lebanon at Crisis Group. The Blue Line is the demarcation in southern Lebanon from where Israel withdrew in 2000.
   28. The United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says the fighting has limited access to southern Lebanon, where more than 188,000 people live in more than 1,000 government-assigned collective shelters, many of which have reached maximum capacity. [The agency said,] “The heavy bombardments have also had a devastating impact on public services and infrastructure,”.
   29. In a statement on the ceasefire, UNICEF said it hopes the agreement “will bring an end to the war which has killed more than 240 children, injured around 1,400, and upended the lives of countless others. Urgent work must now begin to ensure this peace is sustained. Children and families must be able to return to their communities safely, especially those displaced in shelters and host communities,” the agency said.
   30. MIKE: Aside from the cessation of hostilities and the relief it brings to inhabitants on both sides of the border, there is another very important aspect to this ceasefire.
   31. MIKE: It provides an opportunity for the actual Lebanese government to reassert its authority in southern Lebanon and elsewhere for the first time in at least 30 years.
   32. MIKE: On my show from October 3, I made these remarks: “Since the Lebanese Civil War of 1975 to 1990, Lebanon has been politically precarious. Palestinian militias effectively control Lebanon as the most potent military forces in the country, rendering the Lebanese military as barely more than a police force. …
   33. MIKE: If Israel is able to sufficiently weaken Hezbollah’s forces, it might actually present an opportunity for the central Lebanese government and its military to reassert itself as the sole sovereign power it’s supposed to be in control of its own territory.”
   34. MIKE: Now we have the US, France, and regional Arab nations politically invested in an outcome that very much resembles my optimistic prediction.
   35. MIKE: Could we be seeing glimmerings of that hopeful prediction actually coming to pass? If it does, it will be a major geopolitical alignment for the region.
   36. REFERENCE: US envoy dismisses ‘fantasy’ of deal that would include IDF buffer zone in Lebanon —By Jacob Magid | COM | |2024-11-28
9. Gaza deal appears distant even with Lebanon cease-fire; By Rebecca Tan, Shira Rubin, and Hajar Harb | WASHINGTONPOST.COM| November 27, 2024 at 1:06 p.m. EST. TAGS: Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Ceasefire, Hostages,
   1. The cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah reached this week has revived hopes that a peace deal to end the longer, even more destructive war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip could soon be within grasp.
   2. But analysts said Wednesday that despite signs of momentum, significant gaps remain between Israel and Hamas over key issues, including the shape of any withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the long-term role, if any, that Hamas will play in the enclave, which it had governed for more than 15 years.
   3. A top Israeli demand is for Hamas to release dozens of hostages who were captured during its assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas, however, has little incentive to relinquish this trump card unless its demands are met, said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst. “The gaps have not narrowed,” he said. “It’s very much the same as before.”
   4. In the coming days, U.S. officials will “make another push with Turkey, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and others to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza,” President Joe Biden announced Tuesday. But previous U.S.-led attempts at reaching a sustained cessation of hostilities in Gaza have fallen short in the past year.
   5. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition depends on support from far-right lawmakers who have called for a “total victory” in Gaza and are unlikely to accept a cease-fire with Hamas, analysts say. Israeli forces have emptied much of northern Gaza of Palestinian residents, and several top Israeli officials, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called for Israel to reoccupy Gaza permanently.
   6. Still, others within Israel’s government are seeking to use the Lebanon deal to revive negotiations with Hamas, said a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak on the ongoing discussions. Officials are considering even a short-term agreement that would free a limited number of hostages with the hopes that this could “get momentum” toward a more ambitious deal, the person said.
   7. As Israeli officials raced toward finalizing the Lebanon agreement, they have sought to rebuild their relationship with Egypt, which could serve as a mediator with Hamas. [A person said,] “The idea is to convey to Hamas, ‘You’re on your own now. There’s no one helping you, so make the deal’.”
   8. In an official statement Wednesday, Hamas said it would “cooperate with any efforts” to bring an end to the war in Gaza but set conditions, including the withdrawal of Israeli forces, the return of displaced people, and a “real and complete” prisoner exchange deal. Hamas has said it is still interested in playing a political role in Gaza — a condition that Israel and the United States have rejected.
   9. Hezbollah began attacking Israel hours after Hamas’s surprise assault last year. The Israeli military, now freed from fighting on the northern border, could intensify its campaign in Gaza, said Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser, in a briefing with reporters.
   10. [Said Amidror,] “Our ground forces can cope with the issue of Hamas in a much more intensive way than today and for a very, very long time.”
   11. This could exert pressure on Hamas but is unlikely to force a cease-fire, said Abusada, the Palestinian analyst. More likely, this escalation would merely increase the suffering of the 2 million people still left in Gaza. [He said,] “It could be that we haven’t seen the worst of what the Israelis can do to the Palestinians in Gaza.”
   12. As the Lebanon cease-fire came into effect Wednesday, Israeli forces continued to pound Gaza, carrying out multiple strikes overnight, Gaza residents and the Gaza Health Ministry said.
   13. About 4:30 a.m., airstrikes hit a shelter housing displaced people next to Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the remaining health facilities in northern Gaza, causing huge fires, said Mohammad Abd al-Rahman, 34, who witnessed the attack from a building nearby. Israeli military vehicles surrounded the shelter and fired continuously toward it for more than two hours, he said.
   14. A strike was also carried out on al-Tabeen school east of Gaza City, where displaced people were sheltering, causing multiple casualties, according to local reports. In a statement, the Israeli miliary said its target was Mumin al-Jabari, a member of Hamas’s sniper unit, who had allegedly stored weapons inside the school.
   15. More than 30 people were killed and dozens more injured in Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours, said Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
   16. Ahmed al-Ras, 40, a Gaza resident in Deir al-Balah, said he was relieved but envious as he saw photos of Lebanese civilians returning to their homes in the country’s south in the wake of the cease-fire. He and his family were forced to leave their homes in Gaza over a year ago, he said, and have been displaced multiple times by Israeli attacks.
   17. [Said al-Balah,] “Here in Gaza, I do not care who makes the decision to stop the war. What is important is that it ends as soon as possible.”
   18. MIKE: Perhaps with Hezbollah out of the picture and Iran seeming to acquiesce to the new realities in Lebanon, at least for the time being, there may be more hope for a peace in Gaza than either side currently believes or is willing to discuss publicly. I hate sounding like a broken record, but time will tell.

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