N.Korea Poses ‘Growing’ Threat to US: Pentagon

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Photo Credit: AFP Photo/Jung Yeon-JeNorth Korea poses a mounting threat to the United States due to its pursuit of long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, the Pentagon said Tuesday in its latest strategy document.

Describing the regime in Pyongyang as “closed and authoritarian,” the Defense Department said the US military would maintain a major presence in the region and keep up investments in missile defense.

The North represents “a significant threat to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and is a growing, direct threat to the United States,” said the Quadrennial Defense Review, an update of the military’s global strategic outlook.

US forces would continue to collaborate closely with South Korea’s military “to deter and defend against North Korean provocations,” it said.

The release of the Pentagon’s strategic review came as North Korea flexed its military might three times over the past week, firing short-range Scud missiles and rockets into the sea. The test launches were timed to coincide with joint US-South Korean drills that Pyongyang opposes.

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Obama Budget Proposal Won’t Tame Debt, Interest Would Soon Exceed Military Spending

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Photo Credit: AP

President Obama’s latest budget proposal paints a troubling picture of America’s fiscal future.

Here’s a startling snapshot:

— By 2024, the total national debt would rise from $17.4 trillion to nearly $25 trillion.

— By 2020, U.S. taxpayers would be paying more in interest on the debt than they would on the entire Defense budget.

— By 2017, those interest payments would be bigger than the budget for Medicaid.

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/APObama budget: 4 things to know

By By Mark Trumbull.

President Obama’s proposed budget for 2015 seeks to nudge Congress to spend more money to improve the nation’s roads and rails, more on early childhood education, and more on job skills for adult workers.

To pay for it while also holding down federal deficits, Mr. Obama proposes further tax hikes on high-income Americans – in the form of closing “loopholes” rather than raising tax rates.

From poverty reduction to helping manufacturers improve productivity, the president’s clear priority is to use the government as a lever boost the economic well-being of ordinary Americans. Although the budget also offers proposals aimed at fiscal sustainability, it does little to reduce a public debt load that stands at a historically high level.

The four themes below summarize the budget proposal and Washington’s fiscal state of play.

Taxes would rise (again) on the rich. In an era of chronic deficits, the Obama budget calls for raising new tax revenue by making it harder for high-earning Americans to shield income from taxes. Reducing various deductions and tax breaks, and imposing a “Buffett rule” that ensures millionaires couldn’t have below-average tax rates, would raise some $651 billion between 2015 and 2024.

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Obama: Dems Paid ‘Dear Price’ in 2010 Midterms

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Photo Credit: ReutersPresident Barack Obama says Democrats paid a “dear price” for not paying enough attention to the 2010 midterm elections and urged donors to not repeat the same mistakes this year.

Democrats lost control of the House and gave up seats in the Senate in the 2010 midterms. Speaking at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Obama says Democrats may be good at presidential elections, but “get a little sleepy” in the midterms.

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Planned Parenthood: Religious Liberty/Hobby Lobby Suit is About ‘Taking Away Birth Control’

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Photo Credit: AP/Ron EdmondsIn a Feb. 27 commentary in the liberal Huffington Post, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards claims that states’ efforts to protect the religious rights of citizens is really about “taking away birth control.”

Richards cited the Arizona legislation (SB 1062) recently vetoed by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer that would have allowed individuals to not provide products or services if their provision required them to violate their religious belief in marriage between one man and one woman.

“With the debate over the Arizona bill during the last few days, folks across the country have gotten a preview of this extreme agenda, and they don’t like what they see,” Richards wrote. “It’s clear that this isn’t about religious liberties.”

“It’s about corporations who want a license to discriminate against people by denying services, taking away birth control coverage, and blocking access to health care,” said Richards, who presides over the largest abortion provider in the United States.

Richards also linked the Arizona legislation to the Sebilius v. Hobby Lobby case, currently being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS). Hobby Lobby is suing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over an Obamacare regulation that requires individuals and business to carry health insurance that offers contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs without co-payments.

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Let’s Move: 1.6M Paying Students Drop School Lunch — ‘Challenges With Palatability’

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Photo Credit: APDespite an increase in the number of students who receive free meals as a part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, 1.6 million students have dropped out of the school lunch program, according to a Government Accountability Office Report (GAO), which noted that part of the decline was due to the palatability of the lunch offerings, and “plate waste” – students throwing away some of the food.

“All eight SFAs [school food authorities] we visited also noted that students expressed dislike for certain foods that were served to comply with the new requirements, such as whole grain-rich products and vegetables in the beans and peas (legumes) and red-orange sub-groups, and this may have affected participation,” said the GAO in its report, “Implementing Nutrition Changes Was Challenging and Clarification of Oversight Requirements Is Needed.”

“Further, some SFAs we visited noted that negative student reactions to lunches that complied with the new meat and grain portion size limits directly affected program participation in their districts,” said the GAO. The school food authorities noted that changes made to sandwiches led “to a middle and high school boycott of school lunch by students that lasted for 3 weeks and, at the same time, “participation in school lunch significantly declined in those schools.”

The report also said, “Nationwide, participation in the National School Lunch Program declined in recent years after having increased steadily for more than a decade. According to our analysis of USDA’s data, total student participation—the total number of students who ate school lunches—dropped from school years 2010-2011 through 2012-2013 for a cumulative decline of 1.2 million students (or 3.7 percent), with the majority of the decrease occurring during school year 2012-2013.”

The decrease in the total number of students eating school lunches during the last two school years was driven primarily by a decrease of 1.6 million students paying full price for meals, despite increases in the number of students eating school lunches who receive free meals,” said the report.

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President Obama’s Budget Sends $286,479,000 to Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsPresident Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood have been bosom buddies since his election — and the president has kept flow of taxpayer funds on ever since entering the White House in 2009. This year’s budget proposal is no exception.

Obama wanted God to bless Planned Parenthood and, this year, he wants them blessed with hundreds of millions.

As Tom Minnery of March for Life explains:

The good news in President Obama’s budget is that Title X funds (p. 434) that generally give money to entities like Planned Parenthood have gone down from $297,400,000 to $286,479,000. (That is still higher than the figure in 2007 ($283,146,000.))

Also it appears that $5,000,000 is set aside for true abstinence education (p. 490) while almost six times that amount is reserved for “comprehensive” abstinence education that does everything from encouraging young kids to shower together to helping fund online “How to BDSM” videos for teens.

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Under Threat, Syria’s Christians Sign Accord with Islamists

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Photo Credit: ReutersThe city of Raqqa in northern Syria was once the residence of Harun al-Rashid, the famed fifth caliph of the Abbasid empire. That was the golden age of Islam, which produced the poetry, scientific thought and philosophy in which the moderate Hanafi stream flourished. The city subsequently went through centuries of ups and downs, through times of ruin and of prosperity, until last week it seemed to return to days of old, to the era of the great Islamic conquests, when a radical Islamist organization seized control of it.

For the first time in many generations, a dhimma (protection agreement) was signed between the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) – an Islamist branch of Al-Qaida – and leaders of Raqqa’s several thousand Christians. Members of ISIS gave the latter three options: accepting the agreement, converting to Islam, or risking death.

According to the 12 clauses in the accord, the Christians will commit to pay a twice-yearly poll tax of “four gold dinars” – which at today’s rate, comes to about $500 per person – with the exception that members of the middle class will pay half this amount, and the poor will pay a quarter of it, on condition they do not conceal their true financial situation.

The agreement permits the Christians to follow their religious practices, but they are prohibited from building new churches or rebuilding destroyed ones.

Furthermore, the accord states that Christians may not prevent members of their community from embracing Islam if they so desire. They are forbidden from bearing arms, from engaging in commerce involving pork with Muslims, and from acting against Muslim interests – for example, by giving shelter to spies or persons wanted by ISIS. Moreover, if Christians learn of a plot against the Islamic State, they must report it.

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Harry Reid: Republicans Are Addicted to Koch (+video)

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Photo Credit: APDoing his part to ensure that devotion towards Big Brother is continuous, the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid took to the floor to contribute his two minutes of hate towards Charles and David Koch.

Reid lambasted Republicans for “defending” the right of the two libertarian billionaires to participate in our democracy. It should be noted that the Koch brothers rank #59 in political donations (behind the left-wing Act Blue and a whole bunch of unions.)

“Republican Senators have come to the floor to defend the Koch brothers’ attempt to buy our democracy,” Dingy Harry wheezed reading from his script. “Not only have Senate Republicans come to the floor to defend the Koch brothers personally, they have again and again defended the Koch brother’s radical agenda.”

Dingy emphasized that the Koch brothers are radical, “from a middle class perspective” but neglected to name the radical, anti-middle class actions they were engaging in.

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DHS Will Not Deport German Christian Homeschoolers, The Romeike Family

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Photo Credit: APThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has verbally informed the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) that the Romeike family, German homeschoolers who sought legal asylum in the United States, has been granted indefinite deferred action status, which means that the order for their removal from the United States will not be acted upon.

As Breitbart News reported Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court had denied the Romeike family’s petition for certiorari, or review. According to a press release Tuesday by HSLDA, however, news of the Supreme Court’s denial sparked “an immediate and unprecedented reaction.” Fox News informed HSLDA that it recorded one million page views of the story about the Romeike family within 24 hours – an all-time high.

“We are happy to have indefinite status even though we won’t be able to get American citizenship any time soon,” said Uwe Romeike. “As long as we can live at peace here, we are happy. We have always been ready to go wherever the Lord would lead us – and I know my citizenship isn’t really on earth.”

“This has always been about our children,” Romeike continued. “I wouldn’t have minded staying in Germany if the mistreatment targeted only me – but our whole family was targeted when German authorities would not tolerate our decision to teach our children. That is what brought us here.”

HSLDA Director of International Affairs Michael Donnelly observed that the only reason the Romeike family had to come to America was because of Germany’s repressive policy towards homeschoolers.

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Oscars Pizza Delivery Man Recounts His 15 Minutes of Fame

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Photo Credit: Brittany LevineEdgar Martirosyan, the pizza delivery man who dished out slices to Hollywood’s A-List stars on-air at the Academy Awards on Sunday night, was stunned when host Ellen DeGeneres asked him to follow her out into the audience.

“I was shocked. At that point I didn’t understand,” the Glendale resident told the City Council at a meeting Tuesday night.

Martirosyan showed up to the City Hall meeting because his friend, Artur Soghomonyan, is a driver for the City of Glendale’s meal delivery program for seniors, which the council was recognizing with a special proclamation.

Martirosyan said representatives for the Oscars called his business, Big Mama’s & Papa’s Pizzeria in Hollywood, to see if he wanted to interview for the opportunity to deliver pizzas during the show. Out of a handful of pizzerias, his was selected, he said, but he thought the delivery of cheese, gluten-free, mushroom and olive and peperoni pizza was for Academy Awards staff. He had no clue he’d be hand-delivering to movie stars such as Meryl Streep.

“It was a good surprise for me,” he told the council.

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