Blog Heap of Links for the day 16 January 2017

…I am also now in the habit of checking my bank accounts, if not daily then every other day, to catch anything that may be wrong. Probably something I should have been doing all along, but had not been. It's a good thing for me that Navy Fed has such a sharp anti-fraud division.

The upside to all this technology is it makes things convenient. The down side to all this technology is...it makes things convenient. We have always had scammers of one sort or another, the digital world just gives them another outlet to perpetuate their fraud. This one is just immediate and more convenient since they never have to leave their mother's basements in order to scam you out of all your hard earned life savings, as well as your good name.…

…"I always knew I'd be one of the last because I was one of the youngest when I joined," Buckles said in his interview with the Daily News, after he became the last surviving member of those 4.7 million.

"But I never thought I'd be the last one."…

With Buckles' passing, there are only two documented surviving veterans of The Great War left - 109-year-old Claude Choules and 110-year-old Florence Green, both of whom are British.

"Somebody has to pass it down. If I'm the last one, then I have to be the one to do it…"

Tommy Allsup, a guitarist best known for losing a coin toss that kept him off a plane that later crashed and killed rock 'n' roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "Big Bopper" Richardson, has died. He was 85.…

One can truly say that we have now passed out of perhaps the golden age of space flight . Apollo 17 Commander and the last man to stand on the moon, Gene Cernan, died today at the age of 82.…

…Newborn abducted from hospital found alive 18 years later…

An Oklahoma man is hoping to change the law after he was ordered to pay child support for a baby that’s not his. … When Thomas' high school girlfriend got pregnant, he married her. Five months later she had a little boy and he believed he had a son, but, as happens to a lot of young marriages, theirs fell apart. The boy was three when Thomas decided to take a paternity test.… At first, the judge ruled Thomas was off the hook financially, but then reversed that decision because Oklahoma law says men must question paternity within two years of the child's birth.…

Today, Bowdoin College is set to show off an incredibly rare acquisition—a vintage photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration from 1861. The image, one of only three known to exist, shows a large crowd gathered outside the east side of the US Capitol to attend Lincoln’s swearing-in ceremony.…

After 146 years, the curtain is coming down on "The Greatest Show on Earth." The owner of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus told The Associated Press that the show will close forever in May.…

President-elect Donald Trump may invite talk show hosts and bloggers to take part in press briefings as credentialed members of the media, according to sources in the Trump team. If I find out where to get the forms, I’ll fill them out, apply for credentials, and hotfoot it up to DC to ask The Donald a few pertinent questions.

In other news, according to the latest polls, Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) is on track to win the March parliamentary elections in the Netherlands.…

A job: Topless trampoline health officer…
Single Mom Builds An Entire House For Her Family Using YouTube Tutorials…
FAKE NEWS: WaPo Did Not Tell Whole Story on DC National Guard Chief’s Resignation…

…On this day in 1883 the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act, establishing the United States Civil Service, was passed.…

…I've chosen a number of particularly infuriating items today that have the common themes of chutzpah and hypocrisy. So, I've been inspired to coin a new word: chutz-pocrisy.…

…A coalition of black pastors is unveiling its national agenda and addressing what it calls “the current sabotage that is inspiring civil unrest against the new president.”

Led by Rev. William Owens (pictured), the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) convened in Washington, D.C. Saturday to formally “denounce racial over tones against President-elect Donald Trump and challenge other black leaders to cease pushing division among people of Color for political expediency.”

“Leadership has to be proven,” Owens said. “The current path by Democrats and some Republicans is aimed strategically to disrupt, where in the end, it’s the citizenry that will lose; we need strong leadership to move America forward.”…

…WNU Editor: Kmberly Dozier is making the assertion in her post that the President-elect is attacking the U.S. intel community .... but from my vantage point it looks like some in the intel community are actually the ones who are attacking President-elect Trump. I know that the rift will be healed with time .... especially when President-elect Trump's people have been appointed to the various intel agencies. But this entire episode has given the public a peak into what the intel community is capable of doing on the political level .... and in turn the intel community has also received a lesson on the dangers of confronting a future Commander in Chief, and (again from my vantage point) they are not as omnipotent as their reputation says they are (at least for now).…

…The chairman of the foreign affairs’ committee in the German parliament, Norbert Röttgen, told German public radio Monday that Trump’s thinking was a “dangerous novelty for Europe and the world.”

“Perhaps one could say that in reality in his thinking the West does not exist,” said Röttgen. “Whether the European Union is divided or contested doesn’t matter to him, whether NATO is there or not, doesn’t matter to him. It’s obsolete to him anyway.”…

…U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said NATO was obsolete because it had not defended against terror attacks, but that the military alliance was still very important to him, The Times of London reported.…