Air Force Base Hosts Drag Queens

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsMilitary personnel at the Los Angeles Air Force Base were treated to a Diversity Day musical performance featuring three individuals dressed in drag. The performance sparked outrage among some airmen who called the performance “totally offensive and inappropriate.”

The Diversity Day celebration featured a speech by Brigadier General Tammy Smith and included booths representing and honoring a number of ethnic heritages as well as an LGBT booth.

The airman said he was troubled when three individuals dressed in drag began performing on the air base.

Photographs of the event show an individual wearing a giant wig performing to a sparse crowd underneath the American flag. It’s unclear whether the individuals in high heels and form-fitting dresses are members of the Air Force.

Read more from this story HERE.

Reid Says Obamacare Just a Step Toward Eventual Single-Payer System

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In just about seven weeks, people will be able to start buying Obamacare-approved insurance plans through the new health care exchanges.

But already, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is predicting those plans, and the whole system of distributing them, will eventually be moot.

Reid said he thinks the country has to “work our way past” insurance-based health care during a Friday night appearance on Vegas PBS’ program “Nevada Week in Review.”

“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.

When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

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Video: GOP Rep. to College Student on Vote Against Atheist Chaplains in the Military – ‘I Thought it Was a Dumb Idea’

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Photo Credit: YouTubeYou’d think the question of adding “atheist chaplains” to the military was put to rest by the House of Representatives, which voted against the controversial proposal several few weeks ago, but the secular humanist lobby is continuing to battle.

This time an atheist college student, Daniel Moran, took to the microphone at a town hall meeting Thursday and asked U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) why he twice voted against the measure.

Instead of shrinking from the student’s pointed question, Burgess had this to say: “Yeah, I thought that was a dumb idea. I’ll do it again.”

The audience erupted in applause and hoots and hollers upon hearing Burgess’ response. One man in the crowd shouted, “There are no atheists in foxholes!”

Read more from this story HERE.

Sudden Flood of Asylum Requests at U.S./Mexico Border

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At the Otay crossing near the San Diego border last Monday, about 200 people coming from Mexico gained entry to the United States all using the same key phrase; they claimed they had a ‘credible fear’ of drug cartels. According to KSAZ FoxPheonix:

So many were doing this that they had to close down the processing center and move the overflow by vans to another station.

“They are being told if they come across the border, when they come up to the border and they say certain words, they will be allowed into the country,” said a person who did not want to be identified on camera. “We are being overwhelmed.”

This apparent new shift in tactics to enter the United States comes at a time when the Associated Press is reporting a spike in the number of asylum requests in the past few years:

According draft testimony for USCIS Associate Director Joseph Langlois that was to be submitted for a congressional hearing on asylum requests last month, USCIS received more than 19,119 asylum requests through the end of May. The agency anticipates receiving more than 28,600 by the end of the fiscal year . . . during the 2009 budget year the agency received just 5,369 such requests.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sour Note: God Ditched from Swiss National Anthem

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Photo Credit: WNDThe Swiss government is holding a competition where artists are being asked to rewrite the nation’s national anthem because it references God too much, and officials want that played down.

According to a report Thursday from the Christian Institute, the Swiss Psalm, as the anthem is known now, will be rewritten and the winning composer will get a prize of about $10,000.

Lukas Niederberger, who is running the competition for the government, told the BBC, “The real problem is above all the text.”

In English, the words include, “When the morning skies grow red, and over us their radiance shed, Thou, O Lord, appeareth in their light. When the alps glow bright with splendor, pray to God, to Him surrender for you feel and understand that He dwelleth in this land.”

Another verse includes, “When to Heaven we are departing joy and bliss Thou’lt be imparting for we feel and understand that Thou dwellest in this land.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Apple, Google and AT&T Meet Obama to Discuss NSA Surveillance Concerns

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Photo Credit: APBarack Obama hosted a summit on government surveillance and digital privacy attended by Apple chief executive Tim Cook, Google vice-president Vint Cerf and the boss of US telecoms network AT&T on Thursday.

The US president attended in person, sources told the Politico blog, as did other technology company executives. Additional attendees included representatives of the Center for Democracy and Technology and Gigi Sohn, leader of internet campaign group Public Knowledge.

The meeting was apparently prompted by growing concerns among US technology companies that revelations from the Guardian and others about the extent and depth of surveillance by the National Security Agency, and the companies’ obligation to allow access to data under secret court rules, could be damaging their reputation and commercial interests abroad.

The gathering followed a closed-doors meeting earlier this week with Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough and general counsel Kathy Ruemmler at the White House.

On the agenda at Tuesday’s meeting were the surveillance activities of the NSA, commercial privacy issues and the online tracking of consumers.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Mural of George Zimmerman Shooting Trayvon Martin Unveiled in Florida State Capitol

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A Miami artist has unveiled a painting of George Zimmerman shooting Trayvon Martin in the Florida State Capitol, WFTS-TV reported.

Photo Credit: WKMG-TV

itled, “We Are All Trayvon Martin,” the painting shows Zimmerman firing a gun at a hoodie-wearing figure. The painting features a mirror to signify that the shooting could have happened to anyone. There is also an image of Martin Luther King Jr. with blood trickling down his head.

Read more from this story HERE.

Coal is No Longer our Parents Energy…it is 21st Century Power

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Photo Credit: Irish Central The backbone of our modern civilization is based on relatively cheap and abundant energy. Coal has been the inexpensive and reliable engine of our economy for generations and up until the 70’s, billowing smokestacks were the sign of economic prosperity for the United States and other developed countries.

But we learned that cheap energy from burning coal and other fossil fuels came with a price tag to our environment and the dirty skies over our cities, proved to be hazardous to our health. The very fuel that powered our modern society was poisoning our environment.

In response, governments and the energy industry set about to enact new standards for energy production. Soon the air in big cities started to clear up and you could even swim again in rivers that were once deemed too polluted to set foot in.

Smokestacks that once billowed thick black smoke, become steam stacks. A study in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that air quality in major American cities is better now than at any time in the last two decades.

Human ingenuity is amazing and when pushed, great advances can be achieved. Coal which has been the poster child of demonization by environmentalists on the left has made tremendous advances in clean burning technology. After 40 years of advances, clean coal power is on the cusp of making new strides in providing the planet with relatively clean and massive amounts of energy.

See: Fueling the Future with 21st Century Coal by Gregory H. Boyce

Now is not the time to demonize coal but to nurture and support the new coal technology that can help power humanity out of poverty throughout the world.

Energy is looked upon as a human right; studies show that each tenfold increase in electricity is linked to a 10-year increase in life. The United Nations linked life expectancy, educational attainment, and income with per capita energy use….So why deny the rest of the world the same life expectancy the US and other developed nations enjoy?

The developing world wants to step into the modernity of the 21st century too; they want lights, refrigeration, air conditioning television and modern medicine as well. …..Clean coal power can be their answer.

Coal power lead the greatest mass migration from human poverty into prosperity as China became a manufacturing behemoth. China is building more ultra modern supercritical and ultra-supercritical coal plants than any other nation in the world. China has also said they will decommission their older power plants and adapt modern emissions control to the existing fleet of coal power plants.

Instead of punishing their main source of cheap reliable energy, China is embracing coal to adapt and modernize….to make it a 21st century fuel that will bring clean economic prosperity to their 1.3 billion people.

Next-generation clean coal plants are capable of producing energy at near-zero emissions. With new technology at work to help coal become even cleaner and more efficient…..

Unless “renewable” forms of energy such as wind and solar, achieve significant breakthroughs in technology, they will never be able to compete with clean coal power on a level playing field.

Already countries such as Spain and Germany, which heavily invested in renewables, have started to have second thoughts as the bills come due for years of subsidizing these forms of energy. Germany’s finance minister even declared solar was the path to bankruptcy. See story. Spain under a new government is backing out of commitments it made to renewables and is actually going to make them pay taxes. See story.

From the excellent piece “The Fundamental Limitations of Renewable Energy” posted in the Energy Collective: “It appears unlikely that we will see a large scale market driven displacement of fossil fuels by renewable energy in the first half of this century.”

Coal is no longer our parents energy…it is 21st century power.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

80 Percent of College Students Chipping in for Education

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Photo Credit: APJust as the Great Depression left a lasting mark on the generation who lived through it, the children of the Great Recession may already be shifting their world view about money, judging by a new survey that says about 80 percent of them are shouldering some or all of their college costs.

“I think kids are stepping up and it requires a degree of financial responsibility,” said Linda Descano, the president and CEO of Citi’s Women & Co.

“I think it’s a huge financial wake-up call,” she said. “I think they’re really seeing, they really have to own themselves. They don’t have the security their parents did.They see their grandparents struggling to cover health care. I think they’re realizing those safety nets are no longer there. How are you going to stay relevant? You can’t just go to one place and stay there forever.”

Four out of five college students are now working while going to school, typically 19 hours a week while classes are in session, according to the 2013 College Student Pulse survey conducted by YouGov for Citi and Seventeen Magazine. The survey, released this week, was conducted online in July and considered the views of more than 1,000 college students and high school seniors.

The YouGov findings are in line with a recent study released by SallieMae financial services company that found that parents now pay for about 27 percent of college costs, compared with 37 percent in 2010.

Read more from this story HERE.

Critics Question IRS Initiative Targeting Small Businesses

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsSmall business owners across the country are receiving letters from the IRS questioning if they are reporting all of their cash income, in a new push by the agency some are saying could unnecessarily create fear in the small business community.

The Wall Street Journal reports the initiative is an attempt to respond to what the agency feels is a widespread failure by small businesses to report all their cash sales.

The agency says the letters are not the same as an audit, and it is simply seeking more tax information from the businesses. However, some lawmakers and business owners who received the letters say the initiative is alarming.

“There’s an emotional thing when you get a pretty ominous-looking letter from the IRS, [saying] you might have done some bad things,” small business owner Tom Reese tells the Wall Street Journal. “I really work hard with my accountant to make sure that I not only follow the law, but follow the letter of the law.”

One letter the IRS sent is headlined, “Notification of Possible Income Underreporting.” It notifies the business owner “your gross receipts may be underreported” and says they must complete a form “to explain why the portion of your gross receipts from non-card payments appears unusually low.”

Read more from this story HERE.