Megalextoria: April 2019

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Arabsat 6A

SpaceX Falcon Heavy Arabsat 6A - SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch on April 11th as seen from the Melbourne, Florida area. See the link below for higher res pictures. #space #launch #SpaceX #FalconHeavy #share2steem

https://supload.com/S14kLgA54 **SpaceX Falcon Heavy Arabsat 6A**

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (269-272)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

This set continues a rather large batch of slides that originally came from an estate sale and appear to have belonged to a locally well known photographer from the Spokane Washington area and later Northern Idaho named Leo Oestreicher. He was known for his portrait and landscape photography and especially for post cards. He career started in the 1930s and he died in 1990. These slides (thousands of them) contain a lot of landscape and portrait photos but also a lot of photos from day to day life and various vacations around the world. Here's an article on him from 1997 which is the only info I have found on him: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/jan/04/photos-of-a-lifetime-museum-acquisition-of-leo/

Many of these slides had the date they were processed (presumably) stamped or printed on them (month and year). I've found that in cases where I could verify the date, either because a more specific date was hand written or there was something to specifically date the photo in the photo itself, that this date has typically been the same month the photos were taken. In other words, I expect that in MOST cases these photos were taken relatively near the processing date. No doubt there are some exceptions.

Some in this set are labeled and are from the late 1950s. There's a bush covered in snow under a neon sign (hence the red color), a girl in a cap and gown (presumably just graduating high school), what appears to be the same girl with perhaps her mother and grandmother, and a baby picture. The bush is labeled 1957, the baby picture was processed in 1958 and the other two are unlabeled but probably from the same time period.

Click on one of the images or the link below to also see versions processed with color restoration and Digital ICE which is a hardware based dust and scratch remover, a feature of the Epson V600 scanner I am using. There are also versions processed with the simpler dust removal option along with color restoration.

https://supload.com/BkfSkSgON

Briwall (1990)

Briwall (1990)

Widespread usage of the internet and the Commodore 64 didn't really overlap. Before you could order whatever you wanted on the internet (or download software within seconds for that matter), you could order things via mail order. But often we were talking several weeks to get your items, not two days or less. Briwall was one of many mail order companies supporting the Commodore 64, even as late as 1990.

I used to love looking at the long lists of stuff I could get for my Commodore 64 in these ads if I only had the money. Ads like this provide a time capsule of what was available at the time. Stuff listed here in bold is "new" though this likely means they are titles that came out several months previously given the relatively long lead time of magazines then. I ordered stuff for my Commodore 64 via mail order a few times though I can't remember now if Briwall was one of the places I ordered from or not.

This ad is from the November 1990 issue of Run magazine.

yohkob - Devil Hunter Yohko

US-Russia Tensions Are Escalating Because of Collusion Fever

Establishment media and politicians began to sound the alarm on fake news after Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, blaming deception and ignorance for his victory. But as much as they might worry about the spread of false narratives and disinformation, their thirst for stories about Russia colluding with then-candidate Trump during the 2016 election proved to be a powerful brand of fake news—one that has most certainly put lives at risk.

“Putin’s Puppet”

In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, the “Russia hacked the election” narrative quickly became the gospel of the mainstream left. It was only a matter of time, they claimed, until the facts revealed the nefarious relationship between Trump and the Kremlin and exposed the flagrant collusion that led to Clinton’s defeat. There was just one problem: the outlets drumming up this narrative lacked evidence to substantiate it.

In one instance, The Washington Post reported that Russia had penetrated the US electricity grid only to be forced to issue a correction admitting they had their information wrong. In another show of sensational Russiagate journalism, The Post published a story citing an anonymous group called PropOrNot claiming Russia had infiltrated alternative news outlets to spread Russian propaganda.

After respected journalists like The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi roundly condemned the article’s betrayal of basic journalistic standards, the Post issued a tepid clarification two weeks later—after the story had already made its rounds as fact.

A slew of sparsely substantiated speculations and stories has flooded the consciousness of millions of Americans since 2016. In another example, a story published by The New York Times claimed the CIA had proof Russia was behind Trump’s victory but cited nothing more than anonymous officials’ statements. As Greenwald observed at the time:

Democrats — still eager to make sense of their election loss and to find causes for it other than themselves — immediately declared these anonymous claims about what the CIA believes to be true, and, with a somewhat sweet, religious-type faith, treated these anonymous assertions as proof of what they wanted to believe all along: that Vladimir Putin was rooting for Donald Trump to win and Hillary Clinton to lose and used nefarious means to ensure that outcome.

Despite apt criticism like this, elaborate theories of Russia’s infiltration of American democracy spurred hysteria among Americans, politicians, and journalists who oppose Donald Trump’s presidency. This panic, in turn, has plunged America into Cold War 2.0 with Russia, which, as Hillary Clinton warned, puts “lives at risk” without producing evidence to remove Trump from power.

Cold War 2.0

Despite rampant, unverified narratives that the president worked hand-in-hand with Putin, the media’s ongoing claims of his traitorous activity at worst contributed to the president’s already hawkish policies—and at best failed to hold him accountable for them. As The Nation magazine noted last April,

Democrats and much of the media ... have incessantly demanded Trump “‘get tougher’” with Russia and its President Vladimir Putin in order to demonstrate that his election had not been abetted by “collusion with the Kremlin."

As the Russiagate narrative insisted Trump was Putin’s pawn, the president was actually heightening tensions with his alleged collaborators, playing a global game of chicken. On numerous occasions, US forces have been in direct opposition to—and exchanged gunfire with—Russian forces in Syria. Considering the left-leaning media’s ongoing demonization of Trump, from his dietary preferences to his mental health, challenging this aggressive foreign policy should have been low-hanging fruit.

He campaigned on the promise of ending America’s longstanding policy of nation-building, a promise he has failed to keep with his ongoing bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere which have killed record numbers of civilians. Despite his rhetoric indicating a withdrawal of troops from Syria, US troops remain stationed there. (This is, of course, not unique to Trump. It is par for the course in modern American politics: war is the health of the state.)

Aggressive Foreign Policy

Instead of seizing the opportunity to promote peace and discourage violent conflict, however, outlets chose to side with the jingoists. When Trump launched an airstrike in Syria over claims of Assad’s use of chemical weapons attacks in 2017, pundits from MSNBC and CNN lauded his aggression (only to later report that Mattis admitted the US lacked proof when they decided to launch the strike). Of the 47 editorials written about that strike in major outlets, only one expressed opposition. CNN host Fareed Zakaria praised him. “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night,” he said.

In contrast, when Trump announced he would be bringing US troops home from Syria, the media called it a “win for Putin.” This pro-war push from the left is not a fringe trend in the age of Trump. As Greenwald reported in January of this year following the president’s (now compromised) plan to withdraw troops,

Of people who voted for Clinton in 2016, only 26 percent support withdrawing troops from Syria, while 59 percent oppose it.

He continued:

While Democrats were more or less evenly divided early last year [2017] on whether the U.S. should continue to intervene in Syria, all that changed once Trump announced his intention to withdraw, which provoked a huge surge in Democratic support for remaining.

Greenwald views this data as representative of a “reversal by Democrats on questions of war and militarism in the Trump era.”

If Democrats were rationalizing Barack Obama’s pro-war policies when he was in power, they are now actively advocating for them as long as doing so is in defiance of Donald Trump.

Confrontation with Russia

Despite his rhetoric, however, Trump’s overall foreign policy remains aggressive, and the media and Democrats’ animosity toward Russia could move the US toward a confrontation with Russia. In February, the Trump administration announced it was withdrawing from the decades-old “Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces” treaty with Russia that previously banned the placement of nuclear weapons in Europe. Both sides had accused each other of violating the agreement, and Putin warned of retaliation against the US should they position missiles in Europe. The Nation magazine observed that

more than two years of Russiagate allegations, which have demonized both Trump and ‘Putin’s Russia,’ have probably made it easier, if not tempting, for Trump to quit the INF Treaty.

Similarly, Russiagaters admonished Trump’s diplomacy summit with Putin last year, dismissing the fact that such talks have been a tradition for US presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Stalin.

The Trump administration is also posturing against Russia in other parts of the world; his ongoing trade war with China is part of the reason for the nuclear treaty pull-out, and late last month, Trump ordered Russia to remove its troops from Venezuela. He has also imposed numerous rounds of sanctions on Russia and Russian officials and armed Ukraine against Russian interests.

Pervasive Anti-Russian Hysteria

This is not the first time Russia scares have influenced global politics. The first Cold War and the threat of the Soviets’ destruction of democracy was a foundational justification for US wars in Korea and Vietnam, for example. The “domino theory” compelled the US government to act aggressively. Years later in Afghanistan, the CIA armed and funded the mujahideen, which evolved into al-Qaeda, in the name of beating back Soviet influence in the country.

Afghanistan remains war-torn and overrun with terrorists to this day. US aggression has also been encouraged by the media’s complicity with unsubstantiated government claims, whether in their perpetuation of Lyndon Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin lie or the weapons of mass destruction debacle in Iraq. The media and politicians’ use of flimsy claims to justify militarism is nothing new.

Unfortunately, fears of external threats serve to catalyze public support for government conflict over diplomacy and cooperation, as the left-wing reaction to Russiagate demonstrates. Equally concerning is the willingness of many citizens to embrace this heightened tension and drumbeat of war under the “fake” presumption that doing so is equivalent to opposing Donald Trump.

In truth, one of the best ways to do that is to oppose his aggressive foreign policy, which has real-life consequences for innocent people around the world and consequently puts the lives of Americans at risk. Considering the US media has refused to own its failures on Russiagate, it’s likely the pervasive anti-Russian hysteria will continue to the detriment of humanity.

Carey Wedler

Carey Wedler is a video blogger and Senior Editor for Anti-Media.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Yohko Azusa - Devil Hunter Yohko

Tomorrowland at Night

Tomorrowland at Night - people in line for the Astro Orbiter with the People Mover in the background. For higher resolution pics, see https://supload.com/HJ0bRs2cN

My Trip to the Philippines (16)

A shot from Mt. Sabrina. This is a resort in the GenSan area near Sarangani Highlands. We stayed here one night. For higher resolution shots, see https://supload.com/SJnQ3hiqN

Harmony Explosion 2018 (18) – London by Night

Source: Bit.Tube | Harmony Explosion 2018 (18) - London by Night

Adrenaline introduce themselves and perform 'London by Night' at Harmony Explosion 2018 at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

View on Daily Motion

View on Bit.Tube

IGS TURBOGRAFX-16 GAMES AD

IGS TURBOGRAFX-16 GAMES AD

https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/182313112161/videogameads-igs-turbografx-16-games-ad-ask-me

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (265-268)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

There are no dates or labels on this set but photos include a large house, what looks to be an entrance to a cave at perhaps a state or national park and a bridge. If you can identify any of the locations please comment. These are probably from the late 1950s or early 1960s.

https://supload.com/B1ceD4dwN

Friday, April 26, 2019

Disney World - Peter Pan

Peter Pan float at a Disney World Magic Kingdom parade with Peter Pan, Wendy and Captain Hook. For more pics at higher resolution, see https://supload.com/SyT6CEiq4. #disneyworld #MagicKingdom #share2steem #smartphonephotography #disney

Red Asphalt (PlayStation)

Red Asphalt (PlayStation)

Red Asphalt is a racing game that was released for the PlayStation in January 1998. Technically, it is a direct sequel to Rock 'n Roll Racing which was released for the Super Nintendo in 1993. Taken on its own, Red Asphalt is a decent game. However, as a sequel to Rock 'n Roll Racing, it is somewhat of a disappointment. The problem with Red Asphalt isn't that it is a bad game, it's just a completely different type of game than the original. The original was an excellent game and played kind of like a more advanced R.C. Pro Am and had a similar overhead perspective. Red Asphalt went in a completely different direction and was more of a clone of Wipeout XL. There's nothing wrong with that if you like that type of game. However, Wipeout XL was a better game and personally, I like the original style of Rock 'n Roll Racing better.

If you like racing games, particularly Wipeout style racing games, then this one is worth a shot. However, do yourself a favor and definitely try the original Rock 'n Roll Racing (on the Super Nintendo...the Genesis version isn't as good) as it is a much better game. To the best of my knowledge, Red Asphalt has not been re-released so you will have to track down an original or use emulation to play it. Unfortunately, the same is true of Rock 'n Roll Racing. The ad above is from the October 1997 issue of PSM.

Trump’s Washing Machine Tariffs Cost Consumers $800,000 Per Job Created

Three economists at the University of Chicago and the Federal Reserve Board studied the effects of Trump’s 2018 tariffs on imported washing machines in a new research paper titled “The Production, Relocation, and Price Effects of US Trade Policy: The Case of Washing Machines” and concluded that (italics added):

Despite the increase in domestic production and employment, the costs of these 2018 tariffs are substantial: in a partial equilibrium setting, we estimate increased annual consumer costs of around $1.5 billion, or roughly $820,000 per job created.

Jim Tankersley reviews the new research on Trump’s washing machine tariffs in a New York Times article “Trump’s Washing Machine Tariffs Stung Consumers While Lifting Corporate Profits,” here’s a slice (italics added):

President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on imported washing machines has had an odd effect: It raised prices on washing machines, as expected, but also drove up the cost of clothes dryers, which rose by $92 last year. What appears to have happened, according to new research from economists at the University of Chicago and the Federal Reserve, is a case study in how a measure meant to help domestic factory workers can rebound on American consumers, creating unexpected costs and leaving shoppers with a sky-high bill for every factory job created.

Research to be released on Monday by the economists Aaron Flaaen, of the Fed, and Ali Hortacsu and Felix Tintelnot, of Chicago, estimates that consumers bore between 125% and 225% of the costs of the washing machine tariffs. The authors calculate that the tariffs brought in $82 million to the United States Treasury, while raising consumer prices by $1.5 billion.

……
The goal of all those moves [tariffs] was to push production….to America. The study authors credit Mr. Trump’s tariffs with 200 new jobs at Whirlpool’s plant in Clyde, Ohio, and a further 1,600 jobs for a Samsung factory in South Carolina and an LG factory in Tennessee. That’s 1,800 new jobs, at the cost—net of tariff revenues—of just under $1.5 billion for American consumers. Or, as the authors calculate, $817,000 per job.

The researchers’ empirical findings that Trump’s washing machine tariffs cost consumers more than $800,000 per US job created is consistent with previous research including a 2012 study by the Peterson Institute (Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Sean Lowry) that estimated that the 2009 tariffs on Chinese tires cost consumers $926,500 for each of the 1,200 US jobs saved (see CD post on that research here).

Protectionism Is Expensive

A previous and more comprehensive study by Hufbauer of 26 different case studies of trade protection in the US revealed that the average annual cost to consumers per job saved was more than $500,000 (in 2016 dollars) and in some cases exceeded $1 million per year per job, see related CD post “Yes, protectionism can save some US jobs, but at what cost? Empirical evidence suggests it’s very, very expensive” that featured the table below.

As the cartoon above by Michael Ramirez illustrates graphically, the tariffs imposed last year on imported washing machines that launched Trump’s insane trade war are imposing YUGE costs on American consumers and businesses that make the US economy worse off, not better off. Assuming the new 1,200 factory workers at Whirlpool and Samsung are making the average annual pay for US manufacturing workers of $43,000, the costs to American consumers exceeds the value of each new job by a factor of 19-to-1.

If the Dealmaker-in-Chief thinks it’s a good deal to force US consumers to pay $820,000 annually in higher costs to create a new $43,000-per-year factory job, then he might have to re-think his deal-making strategies or take some remedial economics courses in the economics of trade protection. Is that Trump’s idea of the kind of “winning” we’re supposed to get sick of?

This article is republished with permission from the American Enterprise Institute.

Mark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

My Trip to the Philippines (15)

Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in General Santos City. For more and higher resolution pictures, see https://supload.com/Bk7DFgt94

Harmony Explosion 2018 (17) – Goody Goodbye

https://bit.tube/play?hash=QmRnAbGCzj6Jb1xmovrECLec53KfTPs9ZVCrnmZKQvaBEC&channel=181882

Adrenaline performs 'Goody Goodbye' at Harmony Explosion 2018 at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

View on Daily Motion

View on Bit.Tube

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Disney World Parade - Merida from Brave

Merida from Brave at a Disney World Magic Kingdom parade. #disneyworld #magickingdom #smartphonephotography #share2steem #disney

For a higher resolution version and more images, see https://supload.com/Synv-IvqV

Computer Gaming World (June 1988)

Computer Gaming World (June 1988)

Computer Gaming World was hands down the best computer magazine there ever was. It hit its peak in the early to mid 1990s by which time it was exclusively a PC magazine. However, in 1988 it was still covering some other computer platforms as well. The June 1988 issue includes: Features

Inside the Industry - New, Notes and Quotes
The Hunt For Red October - Tom Clancy's Bestseller on Computer
Bard's Tale III - The Trilogy Concludes
Wasteland Hints - Scorpion's Tale Looks at EA's Latest
Long Lance - Tactical Naval Combat
Return To Atlantis - EA's "Latest" Release
Project Stealth Fighter - Tactics for Computer Pilots
Universal Military Simulator Modifications - Adding Objectives to UMS
Wooden Ships and Iron Men - A Boardgame Classic Meets The Computer
CGW Contest - Win Subscriptions to CGW
Twilights's Ransom - Paragon Software's Graphic Adventure
Networking The Light Fantastic - Gaming On Compuserve and Genie
Video Gaming World - Video Games Are Back!
First Clash - A Mech Brigade Scenario

Departments

Taking A Peek
Editorial
Reader Input Device
CGW Hall Of Fame
100 Games Rated

...and more!

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

My Trip to the Philippines (14)

This shot is outside the KCC Mall in General Santos City. As you can see, this is a busy pick-up/drop-off area. For a higher resolution picture, see https://supload.com/HJeuprU9V

Yohko101 - Devil Hunter Yohko

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (257-260)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

Most of these slides are stamped as having been processed in the early 1960s. There's a mountain stream, two women on a front porch (they look like Mother and Daughter), and a man grilling.

August 1961

March 1963 - Polly + Barbara

July 1962
https://supload.com/BkV-nsSPN

The National Debt is the Most Serious Crisis America Faces

A generation ago, the national debt stood at just a smidgen over USD $4 trillion and a young presidential candidate named Bill Clinton was discussing a great plan he had to have it entirely paid off by now. Oops. The national debt is now 5.5 times bigger.

More than anything, this astoundingly bad public policy is the fault of Barack Obama, undoubtedly the most irresponsible president in our history…who added on more to the national debt than all other presidents combined in an orgy of Washington, DC, debauchery that saw the size of the federal government mushroom while hundreds of thousands of new bureaucrats were added to federal payrolls, and Washington, DC, housing prices skyrocketed as federal government employees and private industry sub-contractors paid for by the government reveled in their six-figure paychecks and outrageously lavish healthcare and pension plans… all paid for by us, the taxpayers.

Unwarranted Trust

Obama’s stewardship of our national finances was truly obscene, but George W. Bush was nearly as bad. He has even less of an excuse, in fact, because he had a Republican Congress to work with for most of his eight years. During that time, Bush took us from USD $5.8 trillion to USD $10 trillion, something that seemed reckless at the time. Of course, in light of the Obama USD $10 trillion spending extravaganza, Bush looks prudent by comparison.

people with law and medical degrees and MBAs from Ivy League universities, people that come from the finest law practices and accounting firms and consultancies and banks and financial institutions in the country…and our end result is the debt avalanche we now have before us?

Why do we believe politicians of either party when they tell us that they will make our national debt a top priority?

Why is it that the American people seem to fail to understand how ruinous our national debt truly is and what an astounding percent of our national budget we are now spending on servicing that debt?

Interest Is Adding Up

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell has penned an op-ed which presents some eye-opening statistics as to just how bad our national debt really is. By next year, the cost of servicing the national debt (paying interest on it), will exceed the cost of Medicare. By 2025, it will exceed the cost of our military spending, making it the most expensive item in our entire national budget!

Yikes!

Today’s high school and college students are well-versed in a whole host of social justice topics, courtesy of their Marxist professors. How much would you venture to bet that they hear little to nothing about the national debt and what it means for American workers and families?

Today’s campus culture social justice themes include the “right” to “free” healthcare and education… transgender bathrooms… the need for “safe spaces”… the enforcement of campus “speech codes” designed to make sure that no one ever gets their feelings hurt… a robust and comprehensive policy on identifying and denouncing inappropriate Halloween costumes… and a stale and tired Marxist discourse on the exploitative nature of American capitalism.

But… when was the last time college students ever got together to protest a USD $22 trillion and rising national debt? Do they understand the threat, even?

And even more importantly… do they understand why and how we have gotten here?

Corrupt Politics

Quite simply… we have arrived at this point by spending infinitely more than we collect in tax revenue, mainly on things that have no mention in the Constitution as being a function of the federal government.

Public sector unions, and the millions of workers and hundreds of millions of dollars that they spend every year to support the Democratic Party, play a fundamental role in not only our ruinous levels of federal debt but the debt crisis facing our state and local governments as well.

Nothing is more ruinous to our future than the ever-increasing demands of government employees… specifically public sector union employees such as those at AFSCME and the SEIU. They live like kings and queens on the backs of actual working class people… all the while donating hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democratic Party to ensure that their six- and seven-figure paychecks never run dry.

They couldn't care less about government budgets or the national debt or actual working-class people. They couldn't care less about “public service.” There are only two things that public sector unions care about: soaking the rest of us for the biggest paychecks possible… and shoveling money to socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

But it is not merely their salaries and the fact that government employees rarely, if ever, get fired. It’s the highly lucrative nature of their healthcare and pension plans… plans to which they contribute far less than their private sector counterparts.

For states, these plans have proved a bitter pill to swallow, and have led to the greatest fiscal crisis in the United States that you have most likely never heard about: unfunded pension liabilities. When you drill down into the details, it is almost impossible to believe that the situation is true. Essentially, states promise outrageously generous pensions to state employees (who, of course, rally to support whichever candidate promises them the most money), and then fail to fund those very plans… kicking the can down the road to future administrations and generations.

The Snowball Keeps Getting Bigger

Now, it amounts to a USD $6 trillion crisis.

For the libertarian and conservative movements, it’s time to stand for fiscal responsibility and common sense. It’s time to stand against government employees and their demands, and explain to the American people that the government is spending their money on entirely unconstitutional (read: illegal) things. It’s time to take a strong stand against the public sector unions like AFSCME and the SEIU that are leading this country to fiscal ruin.

And more than anything, it’s time to force Trump to actually live up to his promise of draining the swamp: reigning in the excess and beginning to drastically reduce the size of our bureaucratic state: firing large numbers of government employees.

These government employees are driven by self-interest.

It is hard to envision government employees stepping back from the situation and saying:

Well, I have a pretty generous salary, healthcare, and pension. It’s far more generous than the private sector enjoys. And we are $22 trillion in debt, and the government is spending too much money. So… as much as it pains me to say… me and some other government employees should lose our jobs. The government is spending too much money, deficits and debt are growing, and I should go look for a job in the private sector.

That is never going to happen. Public sector unions are a millstone around our neck, and as many commentators have noted, they have no natural enemies.

Except, of course, for citizen watchdog groups and independent media outlets who are not afraid to denounce them and point out their ruinous nature.

I, for one, will not rest until we return our government to the vision of the Founding Fathers, who would not have approved of any of this. Let’s start by ending the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture. That would be a good start. We could use the money we saved to begin paying off our national debt, and government employees would have to do something that the vast majority of real working class people have to do every day: compete in a highly competitive free market economy to earn our daily bread.

This article is reprinted with permission from Panam Post.

David Unsworth

David Unsworth is a Boston native. He received degrees in History and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis and subsequently spent five years working in real estate development in New York City.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Monday, April 22, 2019

Maleficent's Dragon

A more up close view of Maleficent's dragon at a Disney World Magic Kingdom parade. For more and higher resolution pics, see link below.

https://supload.com/Hky7-Grc4

My Trip to the Philippines (13)

The GENSAN region (General Santos City) is known, among other things, as the Tuna capital of the Philippines. It shouldn't be surprising then to see a giant metal tuna sculpture outside a nearby port...

See https://supload.com/ryvMOxHqE for more and higher resolution photos...

Yohko 17 - Devil Hunter Yohko

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (253-256)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

These slides were all processed in in the late 1960s or early 1970s. They are unlabeled and I don't recognize the locations but they definitely look like locations that someone might recognize...

May 1968

March 1967

August 1967

May 1972
https://supload.com/SyyEEiSvV

yohko14 - Devil Hunter Yohko

My Trip to the Philippines (12)

This photo was taken at Sarangani Highlands Garden. This is a resort near Gensan. They didn't have any vacancies the night we wanted to stay so we ended up at another place just up the road. For more photos at a higher resolution, see https://supload.com/SyrPOOQ54

Harmony Explosion 2018 (16) – Cabaret

https://bit.tube/play?hash=QmRthrxox6K7ThpZKqaP1QYv8humVgqHZU9fh94t62yasN&channel=181882

Mix It Up perform 'Cabaret' at Harmony Explosion 2018 at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida.

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Friday, April 19, 2019

Vintage Photos - Oestreicher (249-252)

See the previous post in this series here. Feel free to skip the quoted intro text if you have read it before.

I had the opportunity to pick up a huge batch of slides recently. These are pictures spanning from as early as the late 1940s to as late as the early 1990s (maybe earlier and/or later but these are what I have sampled so far). These came to me second (third?) hand but the original source was a combination of estate sales and Goodwill. There are several thousand...maybe as many as 10,000. I will be scanning some from time to time and posting them here for posterity.

Apparently, getting your pictures processed as slides used to be a fairly common thing but it was a phenomenon I missed out on. However, my Grandfather had a few dozen slides (circa late 1950s) that I acquired after he died. That along with some negatives is what prompted me to buy a somewhat decent flatbed scanner that could handle slides and negatives (an Epson V600). That was the most money I was willing to spend on one anyway. It can scan up to four slides at a time with various post-processing options and does a decent enough job. The scanner has been mostly idle since finishing that task but now there is plenty for it to do.

These slides were all processed in 1960 or 1961 and feature various nature scenes including a pretty cool shot of lightning.