China Preparing for Drone Warfare

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lijianUAVChina’s military plans to produce nearly 42,000 land-based and sea-based unmanned weapons and sensor platforms as part of its continuing, large-scale military buildup, the Pentagon’s annual report on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) disclosed Friday.

China currently operates several armed and unarmed drone aircraft and is developing long-range range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for both intelligence gathering and bombing attacks.

“The acquisition and development of longer-range UAVs will increase China’s ability to conduct long-range reconnaissance and strike operations,” the report said . . .

“China is working on a range of technologies to attempt to counter U.S. and other countries’ ballistic missile defense systems, including maneuverable reentry vehicles (MaRV), [multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles], decoys, chaff, jamming, and thermal shielding,” the report, made public Friday, states . . .

The Chinese military, once a backward, ill-equipped force, is rapidly becoming a very sophisticated high-technology military organization that is focused on developing asymmetric warfare capabilities that will allow it to defeat the United States or other advanced militaries in a future conflict. (Read more from “China Preparing for Drone Warfare” HERE)

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What America Thinks: Americans Want Freedom to Choose Health Insurance

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healthcareVoters still haven’t warmed up to President Obama’s health care reform law for a variety of reasons, and one thing they’ve been consistently adamant about is personal choice when it comes to health insurance coverage. What does that mean? We decided to find out what America thinks.

The majority of voters have consistently rated their own health insurance coverage as good or excellent. But more than ever (39%) say they have had to change that coverage because of Obamacare, and they don’t appreciate one-size-fits-all, government-mandated changes in their health insurance. Sizable majorities believe individuals should have the right to choose between insurance plans that cost more and cover nearly all medical procedures and plans that cost less but cover only major medical procedures. They also say Americans should be able to choose between plans with higher deductibles and lower premiums and lower premiums with higher deductibles. Voters think, too, that individuals and employers should be allowed to buy health insurance plans across state lines rather than ones limited to their state.

The cost of health care cost has long been Americans’ number one health care concern, and 61% think more free market competition is the best way to reduce those costs. Half say the same of letting states compete to determine the most effective standards and guidelines rather than having the federal government mandate a single set of standards. (Read more from “Americans Want Freedom to Choose Health Insurance” HERE)

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Huckabee Staff Picks Underline New Focus on Fundraising

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Photo Credit: Time

Photo Credit: Time

At Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign headquarters just outside downtown Little Rock, Ark., the political team is stacked with veterans of his previous campaigns. His fundraising operation, however, is staffed with almost all new faces who are tasked with avoiding a repeat of Huckabee’s 2008 campaign, which went broke just as he was capturing the GOP’s imagination.

A staff roster, obtained by TIME, shows that of the headquarter’s 19 senior political aides, 12 are veterans of his Huckabee’s earlier efforts, including daughter-turned-campaign manager Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In the finance department, however, five of the six top officials are newcomers to Huckabee’s orbit.

Their resumes include stints working for the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty.

Huckabee on Tuesday launched his campaign with a speech in his hometown of Hope, Ark., and signaled he would run a more-polished campaign than his 2008’s effort. An upstart eight years ago, Huckabee now is a known candidate whom voters will expect to run a more professional operation . . .

Huckabee Sanders is her father’s top aide but hardly a nepotistic hire. In 2014, she managed John Boozman’s successful Senate campaign in Arkansas and was a top adviser to Tom Cotton’s winning campaign in North Carolina. She previously was an adviser to Pawlenty’s failed 2012 bid for the GOP nomination and guided her father’s 2008 campaign in Iowa to a win as his national political director. (Read more from “Huckabee Staff Picks Underline New Focus on Fundraising” HERE)

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Military Training Exercise Causing More Worry in Texas, but Gov. Perry Says Chill

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Governor-Perry-HeadshotFormer Gov. Rick Perry said Texans — including new Gov. Greg Abbott — don’t have any cause for worry about an upcoming military training exercise in Texas.

Abbott last week directed the Texas State Guard to monitor Operation Jade Helm 15, an eight-week federal training exercise that will bring about 1,200 troops to Texas this summer to simulate special operations, because he’s worried the training could infringe on Texans’ rights.

“I think it’s OK to question your government,” Perry, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, said Tuesday before speaking to a World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth luncheon at the Tower Club in Dallas. “I do it on a pretty regular basis” . . .

Some officials and citizens in Texas, including Congressman Louie Gohmert, see something potentially more nefarious in the exercise.

In a Tuesday statement, Gohmert said his office has been inundated with calls referring to the Jade Helm 15 military exercise scheduled to take place between July 15 and September 15. His statement said the military practice has some concerned that the U.S. Army is preparing for modern-day martial law. He went on to say that he understands these concerns. (Read more from “Military Training Exercise Causing Worry in Texas” HERE)

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Flashback on Stupid: FBI Spent Years ‘Researching’ the Lyrics to ‘Louie, Louie’ Before Realizing the Copyright Office Must Have Them [+video]

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download (10)Last week, as you may or may not have heard, a guy named Jack Ely passed away at the age of 71. The name may not be that familiar, but the voice almost certainly is. Jack Ely was — fairly briefly — the lead singer of the Kingsmen, and happened to do a cover song in a single take under poor conditions, that created one of the most memorable songs in rock and roll history, also known as Louie Louie:

You know the song. You also know the lyrics are completely indecipherable. However, with Ely’s death, there’s been renewed attention to the fact that the FBI spent nearly two years investigating the song. It is just as ridiculous as it sounds, but the FBI has released the file on its investigation and it’s a rather hilarious read. It turns out it wasn’t just the FBI, but involved the FCC and the Post Office:

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Apparently, the government was being inundated with claims from people (some of which you can see in the file) insisting that they had heard the indecipherable lyrics were actually “obscene.” If you want to see the supposedly “obscene” interpretation of the lyrics, there’s one set on page 14 [pdf] of the document, though I warn you, even the falsely heard “obscene” lyrics are not particularly obscene by today’s standards (and I’m at a loss as to how they’re that obscene by the standards of 1963, frankly). On page 22, there’s another, mostly different set of falsely heard “obscene” lyrics that at least includes the word “f***.” On page 35, yet another version with both “f***” and “b****.”

Photo Credit: Tech Dirt

Photo Credit: Tech Dirt

(Read more from “FBI Spent Years ‘Researching’ the Lyrics to ‘Louie, Louie’ Before Realizing the Copyright Office Must Have Them” HERE)

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Woman Launches Legal Challenge to Give Birth to Her Dead Daughter’s Baby

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Photo Credit: The Independent

Photo Credit: The Independent

A mother is launching a legal battle for possession of her dead daughter’s frozen eggs so that she can become pregnant with her own grandchild.

In what may be the first case of its kind, the 59-year-old woman and her husband, 58, are challenging an independent regulator’s refusal to allow them to take the eggs to a US fertility treatment clinic.

The couple say it was the dying wish of their daughter, an only child who died of bowel cancer in her late twenties, that her eggs be fertilised by donor sperm and implanted into her own mother’s womb.

The daughter initially had her eggs frozen after being diagnosed with cancer in the hope that she herself could have children in the future. Her parents want to export the eggs to New York, where a clinic has indicated it is willing to provide treatment at an estimated cost of up to $92,500.

Dr Mohamed Taranissi, who runs the ARGC fertility clinic in London, said: “I have never heard of a surrogacy case involving a mother and her dead daughter’s eggs. It’s fair to say that this may be a world first.” (Read more from “Woman Launches Legal Challenge to Give Birth to Her Dead Daughter’s Baby” HERE)

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Airport Security Advances Clash With Privacy Issues

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Photo Credit: NY Times

Photo Credit: NY Times

At a mock airport in an underground laboratory here at Northeastern University, students pretending to be passengers head through a security exit in the right direction, while a young man enters going the wrong way. On a nearby computer screen, a newly developed video surveillance software program flags the wayward person and sounds an alarm.

In a lab across the street, researchers are developing a new way to detect explosives using radar.

Just down the hall, a professor and a team of students are working on a scanning system that they hope will speed up security lines. The system uses machines installed in walls or other places to scan passengers as they walk past instead of having them walk individually into a conventional scanning machine.

“The goal is to have a system that provides better scanning of individuals going through security, while at the same time making it more convenient,” said Jose Martinez Lorenzo, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, who is directing the project.

But the ambitious research in the name of passenger safety and easing air travel delays is colliding with pressure to protect privacy and to reduce federal spending. (Read more from “Airport Security Advances Clash With Privacy Issues” HERE)

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Americans Living Abroad Set Another Record for Giving up Citizenship

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naturalization-citizenshipMore Americans living outside the U.S. gave up their citizenship in the first quarter of 2015 than ever before, according to data released Thursday by the IRS.

The 1,335 expatriations topped the previous record by 18 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Those Americans are driven to turn in their passports in part because of laws that have expanded bank reporting and tax compliance requirements for expatriates . . .

An estimated 6 million U.S. citizens are living abroad, and the U.S. is the only country within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that taxes citizens wherever they reside.

In many cases, those choosing to give up their citizenship have limited connections to the U.S. and have lived outside of the country for most of their lives. Anyone born in the U.S. automatically receives citizenship, and people born abroad to U.S. parents are typically citizens as well.

“The cost of compliance with the complex tax treatment of non-resident U.S. citizens and the potential penalties I face for incorrect filings and for holding non-U.S. securities forces me to consider whether it would be more advantageous to give up my U.S. citizenship,” Stephanos Orestis, a U.S. citizen living in Oslo, wrote in a March 23 letter to the Senate Finance Committee. “The thought of doing so is highly distressing for me since I am a born and bred American with a love for my country.” (Read more from “Americans Living Abroad Set Record for Giving up Citizenship” HERE)

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The Government’s War on Christianity

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ten-commandmentsThe number one goal of all governments is to control and dominate their own citizens. The more deceptively it can be done, the more complete and long-lasting the tyranny.

I have been telling you for many years that the face of modern tyranny is benevolent totalitarianism. Police state totalitarianism went out with World War II. The “Gestapo” knock at the door in the middle of the night and barbed-wire detainment camps are history, though there are steps in place to recreate them here via FEMA resettlement camps. Benevolent totalitarianism is an advanced stage of people control through mind control and mass psycho-political manipulation.

The individual (individualist) is an enemy of the state. Therefore individuality must be removed. So the individual and the nuclear family, which is an individual and sovereign unit, are under attack. . .

Government is attacking the individual and family unit in a myriad of ways: through social programs, class warfare and altruism, which is selfless self-denial to the point of literal self-sacrifice for a myth called society, and propaganda.

Social welfare programs are destructive to the individual and the family unit because they absolve the parents of their parental responsibilities and promote dependency on government. There are now “families” that for two or three generations have been wards of the state. Many if not most of them are without a male head of household. They depend upon the state to provide their sustenance, their housing, their transportation, their healthcare and their entertainment. They know nothing of individuality or personal responsibility. Their provider is the state, and the state is their god. It is 21st Century Baal worship. (Read more from “The Government’s War on Christianity” HERE)

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Michelle Obama Says Minorities Are Not Welcome in These Places

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Photo Credit: WSJ

Photo Credit: WSJ

In a pandering speech this week, Michelle Obama addressed an unavoidable issue in today’s cultural climate: racism. Rather than use the forum to enumerate the myriad ways – an obvious example being her husband’s two terms as the nation’s chief executive – blacks have progressed in America, she chose to further stoke racial tension by declaring “museums and concert halls” unaccommodating to minorities.

“You see,” she told an audience at New York City’s Whitney Museum, “there are so many kids in this country who look at places like museums and concert halls and other cultural centers and think to themselves, ‘Well, that’s not a place for me, for somebody who looks like me, for somebody who comes from my neighborhood.’”

She went on to “guarantee” that, within a mile of the location, there is a population of children “who would never in a million years dream that they would be welcome in this museum.”

Without mentioning exactly how she came to the conclusion, Obama instead opted to appeal to the audience’s emotion by sharing a chapter from her own past.

“So I know that feeling of not belonging in a place like this,” she said. “And today, as first lady, I know that feeling limits the horizons of far too many of our young people.” (Read more from “Michelle Obama Says Minorities Are Not Welcome in These Places” HERE)

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