Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,528 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 21 of 153).

American government will keep on fighting to state the truth on Russia | TheHill

In the middle of Tuesday’s presidential walkback about Russian election interference, I couldn’t (or maybe I could, I’m not sure) help but think of a scene from the 1997 comedy “Excess Baggage.” In the scene, would-be car thief but inadvertently-turned-kidnapper Benicio del Toro asks his unexpected victim Alicia Silverstone, who had been hiding in the trunk of her dad’s expensive car, “How stupid do you think I am?” To which Silverstone replies, “How stupid is there?” To my mind, that just about sums it up when it comes to the president’s view of the American people.

To review the events this week, for the benefit of anyone who until recently has been hiding in the trunk of their own car, President Trump was attempting by the addition of a contraction to rectify what CNN’s Anderson Cooper rightly described as “one the most disgraceful performances” ever given by an American president at a summit.

Source: American government will keep on fighting to state the truth on Russia | TheHill

Trump’s behaving like a ‘Russian asset’, intel and natsec experts warn – Business Insider

In Helsinki on Monday, US President Donald Trump touted the “direct, open, deeply productive dialogue” he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And experts warn Putin played Trump like a fiddle.

That was the broad consensus of national-security and intelligence veterans following a bizarre press conference during which Trump stood next to Putin and spent more time denigrating his political opponents and intelligence agencies than he did a hostile foreign power.

Asked by Reuters’ Jeff Mason on Monday whether he held Russia accountable for anything, Trump stunned observers when he said he held “both countries responsible” for the deterioration in US-Russia relations.Trump failed to mention Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea, its involvement in Syria, and its aggressive cyber operations around the globe, as well as allegations that it has poisoned former Russian spies abroad, that it played a role in the downing of a Malaysian airliner in 2014, and, above all, that it interfered in the 2016 US election.

Source: Trump’s behaving like a ‘Russian asset’, intel and natsec experts warn – Business Insider

Putin’s Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor – POLITICO Magazine

In 2016, our country was targeted by an attack that had different operational objectives and a different overarching strategy, but its aim was every bit as much to devastate the American homeland as Pearl Harbor or 9/11. The destruction may not send pillars of smoke into the sky or come with an 11-digit price tag, and there’s no body count or casualty statistics—but the damage done has ravaged our institutions and shaken our belief in our immovability. But two years on, we still haven’t put any boats or men in the proverbial water. We still have not yet acted—just today, President Donald Trump, a beneficiary of this attack, exonerated the man who ordered it: Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

Source: Putin’s Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor – POLITICO Magazine

Jimmy Carter for Higher Office | GQ

A great look at a President who was infinitely more moral than the current jackass who’s in office.

About 40 Sundays a year, Mr. Jimmy materializes from thin air, flickering before us at Maranatha to lead Bible study, to say, No, the world’s not going to end. Not just yet. Though he’s elfin with age, you’d still instantly recognize him as our 39th president: with those same hooded ice-blue eyes, the same rectangular head, the same famous 1,000-watt smile. But when he teaches like this, he transforms from whatever your vision of Jimmy Carter is into someone different, some kind of 93-year-old Yoda-like knower, who in his tenth decade on earth still possesses that rarest of airy commodities: hope.

Source: Jimmy Carter for Higher Office | GQ

Opinion | Local Girl Makes Good – The New York Times

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez knows the importance of connecting with working voters.

WASHINGTON — At dawn on the day after the election that rocked her world and her party, working on three hours of sleep, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez walked out of her Bronx apartment building.

“A sanitation truck pulled up,” said the 28-year-old with the contagious smile and an energy that impressed even the dragon-energy president. “The driver reached out his arm to give me a high-five. What that moment tells me is what we did was right. We are touching the hearts of working people. Democrats should be getting high-fives from sanitation truck drivers — that is what should be happening in America.”

Source: Opinion | Local Girl Makes Good – The New York Times

This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson. | The Nation

Great take, apropos to my working class voter observation.

Fifty years after Thompson published his book, a lot of Americans have come to feel like motorcycle guys. At a time when so many of us are trying to understand what happened in the election, there are few better resources than Hell’s Angels. That’s not because Thompson was the only American writer to warn coastal, left-liberal elites about their disconnection from poor and working-class white voters. Plenty of people issued such warnings: journalists like Thomas Edsall, who for decades has been documenting the rise of “red America,” and scholars like Christopher Lasch, who saw as early as the 1980s that the elite embrace of technological advancement and individual liberation looked like a “revolt” to the mass of Americans, most of whom have been on the losing end of enough “innovations” to be skeptical about the dogmas of progress.

But though Thompson’s depiction of an alienated, white, masculine working-class culture—one that is fundamentally misunderstood by intellectuals—is not the only one out there, it was the first. And in some ways, it is still the best psychological study of those Americans often dismissed as “white trash” or “deplorables.”

Source: This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism. His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson. | The Nation

Skier’s disappearance, return may stay a mystery – Times Union

More than 100 days after Constantinos “Danny” Filippidis went missing from Whiteface Mountain, State Police and Filippidis’ family are no closer to understanding what led the skier to end up in a rental car section of the Sacramento Airport.

State Police said Thursday they considered the case still open but had no new information on Filippidis’ disappearance.

Filippidis was on a ski trip with some fellow Toronto firefighters. At around 2 p.m. Feb. 7, he decided to go on one last ski run while his friends returned to the lodge. When he still hadn’t returned by 4 p.m., they began to look for him.

Searchers eventually found his identification in his car but no sign of him. The disappearance sparked a massive search effort, involving more than 130 members.

Six days later, Filippidis’ wife received a call from a number she didn’t know. On the other line was Filippidis. He called her by a nickname he used for her but sounded lost and confused. After calling him back, she was able to convince him to call 911.

Source: Skier’s disappearance, return may stay a mystery – Times Union

Pompeo says China incident is ‘entirely consistent’ with Cuba ‘sonic attacks’ – CNN

Sonic attacks on American diplomats continue, this time in China.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that an incident involving a US government employee stationed in China who reported “abnormal sensations of sound and pressure” suggesting a mild brain injury has medical indications that are “very similar” and “entirely consistent” to those experienced by American diplomats posted in Havana.

US officials have issued a health alert in China following the incident. Additionally, the US State Department is looking into whether the incident is similar to what happened in Cuba in 2016 and 2017, a US diplomatic official told CNN, which the US government characterized as a “sonic attack.” That incident led to a reduction in staffing at the US Embassy in Havana.

Source: Pompeo says China incident is ‘entirely consistent’ with Cuba ‘sonic attacks’ – CNN

It’s Time For A New Maritime Strategy – U.S. Naval Institute Blog

In the current environment, the U.S. military is stretched too thin and lacks the strategic purpose and resources to effectively employ this strategy. There is no guiding principle for the employment of naval force and yet the Navy continues to be used as an active tool of diplomacy in an era without strategic priorities. As globalization continues to take hold but the U.S. begins to focus inward, the role of the Navy must be better defined. In April of 1991, as the U.S. faced a period of unchallenged superiority with the demise of the Soviet Union, then CNO Admiral Frank Kelso made the following statement in Proceedings:

We must shift the objective of our “National Security Strategy” from containing the Soviet Union to maintaining global stability. Our evolving strategy must focus on regional contingencies in trouble spots wherever our national interests are involved.

Source: U.S. Naval Institute Blog

Jolly Roger Telephone Company, saving the world from bad telemarketing | How Does it Work?

This is brilliant. It’s a service that screens your phone calls and answers with an annoying, delaying robot if the caller is a telemarketer or scammer.

How does it work?
1) You buy a subscription, telling us your phone numbers and your email address.

2) Pick a robot you like from our “Pick a Robot” page. Mark down the robot’s phone number and keep it handy.

3) When you receive a telemarketing call, you transfer it to the robot (see “Use a Robot” page for instructions).

4) After our robot is done talking to the telemarketer, it will send a copy to your email so you can have a laugh.

Source: Jolly Roger Telephone Company, saving the world from bad telemarketing | How Does it Work?