Gas Price Fallout: People Trading in Hybrids for SUVs

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Photo Credit: CNN Money

Photo Credit: CNN Money

With gas prices low, more people are trading in their hybrid and electric cars for purely gasoline-powered vehicles, including SUVs.

So far this year, only 45% of people that traded in an environmentally-friendly hybrid car purchased another, according statisticians at Edmunds.com. In 2012, that figure was over 60% and this is the first time it has ever fallen below 50%.

“For better or worse, it looks like many hybrid and EV owners are driven more by financial motives rather than a responsibility to the environment,” Edmunds.com Director of Industry Analysis Jessica Caldwell said in a statement . . .

Back in 2012, gas prices peaked at $4.67 a gallon. At that price, it would take five years for owners of a hybrid-powered Toyota (TM) Camry to make up for the $3,770 price differential with the brand’s gasoline-powered model. But with today’s gas prices at $2.27 a gallon, it would take about 11 years . . .

Besides the lack of economic incentives, there’s not much social incentive to purchase a hybrid car anymore, Caldwell said. The technology has become more mainstream, and a hybrid badge on the trunklid doesn’t make a statement anymore. (Read more from ” Gas Price Fallout: People Trading in Hybrids for SUVs” HERE)

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Mainstreaming Infanticide: Ivy League Professor Calls for Killing Disabled Infants Under Obamacare

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Photo Credit: Examiner

Photo Credit: Examiner

[A] Princeton University professor has suggested that severely disabled infants be killed to cut health care costs and for moral reasons. In a radio interview Sunday with Aaron Klein, broadcast on New York’s AM 970 The Answer and Philadelphia’s NewsTalk 990 AM, Princeton University ethics professor Peter Singer argued it is “reasonable” for government or private insurance companies to deny treatment to severely disabled babies.

Several times during the interview Singer argued the health-care system under Obamacare should openly acknowledge health-care rationing and that the country should acknowledge the necessity of “intentionally ending the lives of severely disabled infants.” Singer also repeatedly referred to a disabled infant as “it” during the interview. . .

Singer told Klein rationing is already happening, saying doctors and hospitals routinely make decisions based on costs. Klein is the host of “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio,” a syndicated radio program that airs in several markets across the US. Klein is also a columnist at WND. . . .

During the interview Klein quoted from a section of Singer’s 1993 treatise “Practical Ethics,” titled “Taking Life: Humans.” In the section, Singer argued for the morality of “non-voluntary euthanasia” for human beings not capable of understanding the choice between life and death, including “severely disabled infants, and people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently lost the capacity to understand the issue involved.”

Singer contends that the wrongness of killing a human being is not based on the fact that the individual is alive and human. Instead, Singer argues it is “characteristics like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness that make a difference.” When asked by Klein whether he envisions denying treatment to disabled infants to become more common in the US under the new health-care law, Singer replied: “It does happen. Not necessarily because of costs.” (Read more from “Ivy League Professor Calls for Killing Disabled Infants Under Obamacare” HERE)

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Scott Walker Lays Out Pro American Worker Stance on Immigration

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scoot walkerWisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a likely 2016 GOP presidential candidate, pledged to protect American workers from the economic effects, not only of illegal immigration but also of a massive increase in legal immigration.

During an interview with Glenn Beck, Walker became the first declared or potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate to stake out a position on immigration fully in line with that of Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). He also noted that he has been working with Chairman Sessions on the issue to learn more about it.

Walker is now the only potential or declared GOP presidential candidate to discuss the negative effects of a massive increase in legal immigration on American workers:

I knew there were people traveling, coming across the border, but really what you have is much greater than that. What you have is international criminal organizations, the drug cartels aren’t just smuggling drugs—they’re smuggling firearms and smuggling not only humans but trafficking and horrific situations. It’s an issue that’s not just about safety or about national security, it’s about sovereignty. If we had this kind of assault along our water based ports, the federal government would be sending in the navy. And yet there is a very minimal force along our land-based borders, be it New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, or California, and so to me it was clearly far bigger than immigration.

We need to have a much bigger investment from the federal government to secure the border, through not only infrastructure but personnel and certainly technology to do that and to make a major shift. If you don’t do that, there’s much greater issues than just immigration. Folks coming in from potentially ISIS-related elements and others around the world, there’s safety issues from the drugs and drug trafficking and gun trafficking and gun things with regard—but to get to immigration you have got to secure the border, because nothing you do on immigration fundamentally works if you don’t secure that border.

(Read more from “Scott Walker Lays Out Pro American Worker Stance on Immigration” HERE)

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Expert: Obama’s Amnesty ‘Profoundly Unfair’ to 4 Million Legal Immigrants, a New High

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AAWhile the administration struggles to move forward with its plan to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, the list of foreigners trying to get into the United States legally has surged to 4.4 million, over 100,000 more than last year, according to the State Department.

Those on the list either have a family member who is a U.S. citizen or green card holder, sponsoring their entry, or an employer wants them . . .

According to a blog post written on the list by policy expert Jessica Vaughan, of the Center for Immigration Studies, unlike illegals slipping over the border, many of those on the wait list have been there for up to 13 years or more as they go through the proper process to enter the country.

Unlike with illegals, the government regulates who can come into the country legally.

“The waiting lists are needed because of annual limits on the number of immigrants that can be admitted in certain family and employment categories, and because of caps on the number who can come from each country,” she wrote. (Read more from “Expert: Obama’s Amnesty ‘Profoundly Unfair’ to 4 Million Legal Immigrants, a New High” HERE)

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Ominous: Troops Referred to Ferguson Protesters as ‘Enemy Forces,’ Emails Show

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guard-ferguson-600x400 (1)As the Missouri national guard prepared to deploy to the streets of Ferguson last year during protests sparked by the shooting death of Michael Brown, the troops used highly militarized language such as “enemy forces” and “adversaries” to refer to citizen demonstrators.

Documents detailing the military mission divided the crowds that national guards would be likely to encounter into “friendly forces” and “enemy forces” – the latter apparently including “general protesters”.

A briefing for commanders included details of the troops’ intelligence capabilities so that they could “deny adversaries the ability to identify Missouri national guard vulnerabilities”, which the “adversaries” might exploit, “causing embarrassment or harm” to the military force, according to documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request by CNN.

And in an ominous-sounding operations security briefing, the national guard warned: “Adversaries are most likely to possess human intelligence (HUMINT), open source intelligence (OSINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), technical intelligence (TECHINT), and counterintelligence capabilities.”

In less military-style language, the briefing then goes on to detail how protesters might obtain this intelligence – a list of sources no more technical than public records, social media and listening to conversations “being carried out in public” by civic officials or law enforcement, according to the report. (Read more from “Troops Referred to Ferguson Protesters as ‘Enemy Forces,’ Emails Show” HERE)

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Obama Demands Welcoming for Illegals [+video]

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

President Obama’s White House Task Force on New Americans unveiled its recommendations Friday for a national strategy to “integrate” millions of immigrants and refugees into “welcoming communities” across the U.S.

The co-chair of the task force, Obama’s domestic policy adviser Cecilia Muñoz, said her focus is on making sure Obama’s historic immigration policies get “institutionalized” so they will live on long after she and her boss are gone from the White House.

[Editor’s note: Listen to this shocking interview with Susan Payne who infiltrated the White House Task Force on New Americans]

Obama created the task force Nov. 21 when he announced his plan to unilaterally grant amnesty to more than 5 million illegal immigrants and child migrants. His administration is also bringing in 70,000 foreign refugees per year from places like Iraq, Somalia, Bhutan, Burma and Syria.

Friday’s conference was titled “The New National Integration Plan: Making the Most of a Historic Opportunity.”

Muñoz, a former executive with the National Council of La Raza, said it was her job “to make sure we build this really into the DNA across the federal bureaucracy, at a leadership level, but much more importantly to make sure that when political appointees like me are no longer here this (immigration strategy) is built into what those agencies do and think about every day.”

Muñoz said it was important for the federal government to standardize, set benchmarks and “measure successes,” ensuring states and localities create the desired “welcoming communities” for immigrants and refugees. (Read more from “Obama Demands Welcoming for Illegals” HERE)

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Reagan Shooter Finds Rejection, Indifference in Future Home

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Photo Credit: Military

Photo Credit: Military

By Military.com. The last man to shoot an American president now spends most of the year in a house overlooking the 13th hole of a golf course in a gated community.

He takes long walks along tree-lined paths, plays guitar and paints, grabs fast food at Wendy’s. He drives around town in a silver Toyota Avalon, a car that wouldn’t attract a second glance. Often, as if to avoid detection, he puts on a hat or visor before going out.

These days, John Hinckley Jr. lives much of the year like any average Joe: shopping, eating out, watching movies at a local Regal Cinemas.

Hinckley was just 25 when he shot President Ronald Reagan and three others in 1981, and when jurors found him not guilty by reason of insanity they said he needed treatment, not a lifetime in confinement. The verdict left open the possibility that he would one day live outside a mental hospital.

For the past year, under a judge’s order, Hinckley has spent 17 days a month at his mother’s home in Williamsburg, a small southeastern Virginia city known for its colonial roots. Freedom has come in stages and with strict requirements: meeting regularly while in town with both a psychiatrist and a therapist, getting a volunteer job. It has all been part of a lengthy process meant to reintegrate Hinckley, now nearing 60, back into society. (Read more from “Reagan Shooter Finds Rejection, Indifference in Future Home” HERE)

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Hinckley not Charged with Murder for Brady’s Recent Death

By Travis Reilly. Medical examiners attributed the former Press Secretary’s August death to gunshot wounds incurred during the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, but prosecutors will not charge Hinckley with the homicide since the courts have previously deemed him insane.

“Hinckley would be entitled to a directed verdict that he was not guilty of the murder of Mr. Brady by reason of insanity,” wrote Ronald C. Machen, U.S. District Attorney for Washington D.C., in a statement. “Furthermore, a homicide prosecution would be precluded by the common law ‘year-and-a-day rule,’ in effect at the time. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Rubio Blasts Obama-Clinton Era as ‘Disaster for America’: Benghazi, Russia and ‘Everything in Between’

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rubioBy Joe Saunders. Sen. Marco Rubio on Sunday aimed a combined blast at President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by simply stating the ugly, unavoidable truth about the Obama-Clinton legacy on the world.

“Today, our allies trust us less,” the Florida Republican said on “Face the Nation.” “Our enemies fear us less. And America has less influence in the world than it did four to six years ago.”

While much of the interview focused on Rubio’s relationship with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, his one-time mentor and now likely competitor fo the GOP nomination, his Obama-Clinton criticisms were key. Rubio is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. More than the other contenders for the Republican nomination – announced or potential – he has emphasized the foreign policy fault of the Obama administration.

On Sunday, he very much included the Democrat frontrunner in that criticism too. (Read more from “Rubio Blasts Obama-Clinton Era as ‘Disaster for America’: Benghazi, Russia and ‘Everything in Between'” HERE)

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Pro-Amnesty Rubio Swings at Common Core: If I Was President I Could Cut Department of Education

By Carmine Sabia. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio made waves on his first official day on the 2016 campaign trail, tearing into the Common Core education standards and saying he would consider dumping the Department of Education if he is elected president.

Rubio told Manchester Community College students Friday that he is “very cautious about the federal government’s role in establishing curriculum standards.”

“If I was president of the United States, I would not have a Department of Education, perhaps at all,” Rubio told reporters at a party after the speech. “We don’t need a national school board.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Report: Eagles Signing Tim Tebow

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tebowTim Tebow is back in the NFL. And Chip Kelly’s offseason just got juicier.

The Philadelphia Eagles plan to bring in quarterback Tim Tebow and sign him Monday as they begin their offseason program, FOX Sports NFL insider Jay Glazer reports. Multiple outlets later confirmed the report.

The Eagles are looking for a fourth quarterback for their offseason program. After spending time with Tebow’s quarterbacks coach Tom House, the Eagles are convinced he’s improved a lot, Glazer reports.

Tebow, who hasn’t played in an NFL regular season game since 2012, was brought in for a workout for the Eagles last month.

“I’ve always been a fan of Tim,” Kelly told NFL Network last month. “We bring in a lot of players for private workouts, it’s just he’s the one that everyone keeps talking about. We brought in Terrelle Pryor for a workout and Thad Lewis in for a workout. When players are available for you to work them out, it’s the same thing of going to the veteran combine or going to the super regional combine. (Read more from “Report: Eagles Signing Tim Tebow” HERE)

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Shocking Images From Cameras on Southern Border Capture Steady Stream of Illegals Sneaking Into US with Drugs and Guns

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Cameras placed along Texas’ 1,200-mile border with Mexico have captured the stream of illegal immigrants sneaking into the country on a daily basis.

The network of more than 1,000 motion detectors, similar to those used to film wildlife, have been placed strategically in areas that have not been secured – where Mexican citizens can cross and evade capture with ease.

They helped border guards apprehend nearly 30,000 suspects and led to 88,400 pounds of drugs being seized in 2014 as part of Operation Drawbridge.

Photo Credit: Daily Mail

Photo Credit: Daily Mail

The system has also had a significant impact on Mexican cartels and their ability to smuggle narcotics, people and stolen vehicles between the two countries.

The startling images have been revealed as President Obama continues to fight to push through an executive order to shield illegal immigrants from deportation. (Read more from “Shocking Images From Cameras on Texas-Mexico Border Capture Steady Stream of Illegal Immigrants Sneaking Into the United States With Packages of Drugs and Guns” HERE)

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