Blaming the Tea Party For Bush’s Mess

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A group aligned with Karl Rove’s super PAC believes it can rescue the Republican Party from itself. These self-appointed saviors of the GOP call themselves the Conservative Victory Project, but many Republicans suspect they’re out to prevent conservative primary victories.

This new outfit’s spokesman claims, “Our party has lost six Senate seats over the last two election cycles not because of our ideas but because of undisciplined candidates running weak campaigns.” There is more than a kernel of truth to this. Todd Akin and Christine O’Donnell were terrible candidates whose abysmal performance in turn highlighted gaffes by other slightly less ham-fisted GOP candidates, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

But Akin wasn’t necessarily the tea party favorite in the Missouri Republican primary. Democrats spent heavily to promote his candidacy for a reason. Moreover, in only two of those six races — Delaware and Indiana — was the establishment candidate a sure bet to win the race the conservative upstarts ultimately lost. Unless you believe, for example, that a candidate who blows a primary lead against Sharron Angle would have proved more adept against Harry Reid.

Moreover, Tommy Thompson, George Allen, Rick Berg, Denny Rehberg, Linda Lingle, and Heather Wilson were all establishment favorites in the primaries. They all won the Republican nomination. They all lost the general election.

It also seems likely that Senators Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul will do more to advance conservative principles than Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, David Dewhurst, and Trey Grayson would have.

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An Inconvenient Truth: More Polar Bears Alive Today Than 40 Years Ago

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Photo Credit: AP/Dan JolingAuthor Zac Unger was originally drawn to the arctic circle to write a “mournful elegy” about how Global Warming was decimating the polar bear populations. He was surprised to find that the polar bears were not in such dire straits after all.

“There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago,” Unger told NPR in an interview about his new book, “Never Look a Polar Bear in The Eye.” “There are about 25,000 polar bears alive today worldwide. In 1973, there was a global hunting ban. So once hunting was dramatically reduced, the population exploded.”

“This is not to say that global warming is not real or is not a problem for the polar bears,” Unger added. “But polar bear populations are large, and the truth is that we can’t look at it as a monolithic population that is all going one way or another.”

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide, living in Canada, Greenland, the northern Russian coast, islands of the Norwegian coast, and the northwest Alaskan coast.

Polar bears became a focal point for environmentalists after former Vice President Al Gore featured them in his 2006 global warming documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The bears were classified as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act to in May 2008 because their habitat was being threatened by global warming.

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CBO Forecast: 1.4% GDP, 8% Unemployment, 7 Million To Lose Health Insurance

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Photo Credit: APThe Congressional Budget Office’s just-released economic forecast for 2013 is dispiriting, to say the least. The GDP is expected to grow by only 1.4%, the unemployment rate will “stay near” 8%, the deficit will reach $845 billion, and ObamaCare will cost 7 million their health insurance.

The CBO says things will improve after that, but after three years of being told by the government and its media that “prosperity is just around the corner,” you’ll just have to pardon my cynicism. The media, however, will talk only about how much better the CBO says things will get, because that’s what Obama would want them to do.

What these numbers really mean is that millions of Americans are about to face yet another year of chronic joblessness and economic hardship — which just didn’t have to happen. Reagan inherited an economy in much worse shape than the one Obama inherited. But Reagan’s tax and regulatory policies got out of the way of the economy, and as a result, the engine of American ingenuity was unleashed and the economy exploded. Millions of jobs were created, millions were lifted out of poverty into the middle class, and poverty decreased.

Obama, however, decided he knew better than history and did the exact opposite of what Reagan did. New taxes, ObamaCare, untold numbers of regulations, and an overall Narrative that toxified success, individualism, and the pursuit of prosperity.

And just look at us now.

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Video: Bill Wittle Tells Us What Difference Last Week’s Benghazi Hearing Makes

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Whatever Mrs. Clinton thinks about the difference between good judgment and dead Americans, the American people do care whether their leaders are able to negotiate tough situations in a competent manner.

The Benghazi hearings last week, though not particularly productive, were revealing when it comes to the attitudes of this Administration toward ordinary Americans.

Wittle says the difference made is between the freedom to speak one’s mind, and that of being imprisoned for speaking out of turn. In short, the difference is what we make of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

For the unfortunate man who created the anti-Islamic video, Benghazi made a world of difference, since he now sees the world from behind bars.

The difference we make of the Benghazi debacle is either truth or error, liberty or tyranny.

See video:

Seven Million Will Lose Insurance Under Obama Health Law

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Photo Credit: Carolyn KasterPresident Obama’s health care law will push 7 million people out of their job-based insurance coverage — nearly twice the previous estimate, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

CBO said that this year’s tax cuts have changed the incentives for businesses and made it less attractive to pay for insurance, meaning fewer will decide to do so. Instead, they’ll choose to pay a penalty to the government, totaling $13 billion in higher fees over the next decade . . .

Overall, the new health provisions are expected to cost the government $1.165 trillion over the next decade — the same as last year’s projection

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Rand Paul: Audit the Fed

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreFollowing his father’s crusade, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has refiled legislation that would require an expansive audit of the Federal Reserve.

The proposed audit of the bank that oversees the nation’s monetary system has been a longtime crusade of Ron Paul and became a banner issue during his unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign. He argued that the Fed was responsible for manipulating currency and damaging the economy. Ron Paul was able to persuade Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich to also support an audit.

The audit has become a rallying cry for Ron Paul’s supporters and seen more public support since it was made a central part of his 2012 race.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) has filed the companion legislation in the House, replacing Ron Paul as the lead sponsor.

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Harvard, Yale Deny Connection To Controversial Democratic Donor Under Scrutiny

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Photo Credit: APA controversial donor with ties to prominent Democrats who is under investigation by the FBI may not have the qualifications he claims.

The resume of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida-based ophthalmologist and controversial Democratic donor, boasts medical education and experience at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Missouri.

But none of those schools says it can find any record of Melgen, who claims to be a Harvard alumnus, the former chief resident of the University of Missouri’s ophthalmology department, and a former Yale intern.

Melgen is at the center of a Senate panel probing potential ethics violations by Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), who may have used his official position to benefit Melgen, a major campaign contributor.

Menendez is also under scrutiny for failing to disclose his use of Melgen’s private jet to take trips to the Dominican Republic in 2010. Menendez denied wrongdoing but in January of this year wrote Melgen a personal check for $58,500 to cover the cost of the flights.

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Police Forensic Scientist At Newtown Hearing: ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Won’t Work

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Photo Credit: AP/Alex BrandonThe forensic scientist for the Bridgeport, Conn. Police Department sharply criticized proposed assault weapon and high-capacity magazine bans and pointed out the small number of crimes committed by high-capacity weapons in public hearing testimony last week.

Marshall K. Robinson, who said his area of expertise is “firearm and tool mark identification,” testified at the Gun Violence Prevention Working Group, which was convened at the Connecticut State Capitol in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

There he opposed statements from many of the other 1,300 speakers in attendance advocating for banning high-capacity AR-15 and AK-47 firearms.

Robinson pointed out that less than two percent of the firearms he has examined since 1996 that have been linked to violent crime in Bridgeport have been the caliber of AR-15 or AK-47 weapons.

“Since November 1996, I have examined approximately 2,370 firearms. Of that number 36 of them were either .223/5.56 mm or 7.62×39 mm,” Robinson said. “The percentage of those guns was about [1.5 percent].”

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‘Justice For Sale’ Allegation: Environmentalists Bribed Judge In Order To Secure Multi-Billion Dollar Judgment

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Photo Credit: APAttorneys representing environmentalist groups in a lawsuit against a major oil company bribed an Ecuadorian judge to issue a multi-billion dollar judgment against that oil company, according to sworn testimony by a judge involved in the scheme.

The testimony could derail efforts by the environmentalist groups to recover damages resulting from the Ecuadorian judgment.

An Ecuadorian court handed down an $18.2 billion judgment against Chevron in February 2011, holding the company responsible for ecological damage surrounding the Lago Agrio oil field in Nueva Loja, Ecuador.

Texaco drilled for crude during the 1970s and 1980s at the site, which became the focus of years of legal battles. Chevron inherited the company’s legal liabilities when it bought Texaco in 2001.

Chevron alleged malfeasance in the Ecuadorian court proceedings and in its judgment against the company. A sworn declaration from Albert Guerra, a former judge in the case, appears to corroborate the company’s allegations that the plaintiffs illegally conspired with the court in crafting the February 2011 judgment.

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Prophets and Losses: A Look at The Federal Reserve

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Now that the federal government is playing an ever-larger role in the economy, a look at Washington’s track record seems to be long overdue.

The recent release of the Federal Reserve Board’s transcripts of its deliberations back in 2007 shows that their economic prophecies were way off. How much faith should we put in their prophecies today — or the policies based on those prophecies?

Even after the housing market began its collapse in 2006, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said in 2007, “The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained.”

It turned out that financial disasters in the housing market were not “contained,” but spread out to affect the whole American economy and economies overseas. Then Chairman Bernanke said: “It is an interesting question why what looks like $100 billion or so of credit losses in the subprime market has been reflected in multiple trillions of dollars of losses in paper wealth.”

What is an even more interesting question is why we should put such faith and such power in the hands of a man and an institution that have been so wrong before.

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