Indisputable Failure by Newt Gingrich - American Solutions "Before I get to the primary focus of this week's newsletter--the Obama administration's dismal failure on jobs and on maintaining the confidence of the American people--I want to update you on last week's topic, an all-out effort to prevent the Democrats from using a lame duck session to pass all the radical left-wing bills on their agenda before a new, much more conservative Congress takes over in January. Yesterday, Congress voted on a resolution offered by Tom Price that would have prevented a lame duck session of Congress after this election. It was defeated by a vote of 236 to 163. Six Democrats voted for the resolution. One Republican voted against. However, this is not the end of the fight. It is the beginning. In just one week, over 85,000 Americans have signed letters to their representatives telling them to take the No Lame Duck Pledge. By continuing to pile on the pressure, and make this a big issue in the fall, we can still box in the Democrats so that they are unable to justify holding a lame duck session after the election. Please visit AmericanSolutions (http://www.americansolutions.com/lameduck/) to sign up for this important effort. A jobs failure What do 9.5% and 71% have in common? They are both proof of the failure of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid secular-socialist machine. 9.5% was the unemployment rate in June. The Obama administration warned that unless its big government stimulus bill was passed, that unemployment would rise above 8%. The bill was passed (in a panic, without being read) and nevertheless, unemployment rocketed past 8% to settle at 9.5%. What's more, the 9.5% unemployment rate is likely too rosy a picture of the American economy. The real unemployment rate -- which includes those who are underemployed and those who have given up looking for a job and left the workforce--may be as high as 22% according to some analyses (http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/19556146/). The stimulus has clearly failed to create jobs as promised. Furthermore, the radicalism of the administration and Congress' domestic policies has hampered the natural resiliency of the American economy, artificially extending the recession. See the failure to believe the failure Several charts illustrate the gravity of the left's failure economically. The first, produced by American Solutions (http://www.americansolutions.com/press/2010/08/obama-jobs-gap-surpasses-1-million-in-july.php), shows the Obama Jobs Gap. That's the difference between the rate of job creation needed to return the U.S. to 5% unemployment by 2015 and the actual track record of this administration. The Obama Jobs Gap surpassed 1 million in July. Another chart, produced by the Heritage Foundation (http://blog.heritage.org/2010/08/06/what-recovery-summer/), shows the Obama Jobs Deficit. That's the difference between the 3.5 million jobs President Obama promised to create by December 2010 during the 2008 campaign and the 4.1 million lost during his administration. That's an Obama Jobs Deficit of 7.6 million jobs. Another, from Calculated Risk (http://calculatedriskimages.blogspot.com/2010/08/employment-recessions-aligned-at-bottom.html), shows just how long it is taking our economy to recover compared to past recessions, and that with last month's loss of 131,000 jobs, the trend lines are heading in the wrong direction. Despite the indisputable data, last week in the New York Times, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner boldly declared, "Welcome to the Recovery." At 9.5% unemployment, most Americans don't feel welcomed to a recovery. They might welcome, however, a return to reality at the White House. Choosing Unemployment over a Job An article in the Wall Street Journal Monday painted a frustrating picture of the joblessness situation, showing that, despite our high unemployment, many firms are having trouble filling job openings. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, if job openings were getting filled at a normal rate, the unemployment rate would be 6.8% instead of 9.5%. So there are actually many jobs out there that need to be filled. Yet, in the worst recession since the Great Depression, many employers can't make hires. The article cites several reasons for this phenomenon, a few of which are long term trends such as our education system not producing enough qualified engineers. But others factors fall squarely on the backs of this administration and Congress. For instance, the extension of unemployment benefits has given people a perverse incentive to stay on unemployment rather than accept a job. The part-owner of a machine parts company, Mechanical Devices, is looking for as many as 40 new engineers, but is quoted in the article as saying many applicants at job fairs were "just going through the motions so they could collect their unemployment checks." The article also quotes an engineer who admits he turned down more than a dozen offers because the salary would have been less than he made on welfare. This story encapsulates the problem of the long-term unemployed. The depth and length of this recession is at risk of creating a permanent pool of unemployed Americans, who get so used to being unproductive that they are willing to accept welfare indefinitely instead of taking a job. Uncertainty Also Prevents Job Creation As I travel to different cities across the country with American Solutions hosting Real Jobs Summits, I always try to hold meetings with the local members of our Jobs and Prosperity Task Force. Comprised solely of small business owners, these meetings always offer a useful perspective about the real world consequences of the administration and Congress' radical agenda. The most common theme I hear at these meetings is uncertainty. Small business owners are so paralyzed by the radicalism of the Democrats' agenda that they are afraid to hire new workers or otherwise invest in their businesses because they are unable to predict with any degree of confidence anything from how much they will owe in taxes in the future to the price of energy if an energy tax is passed. A major source of uncertainty is the new health care bill, the details of which Speaker Pelosi proudly boasted ignorance of by saying "We have to pass the bill in order to know what's in it." With so much uncertainty surrounding how the bill will affect Americans, employers don't know how to project the future costs of health care. So they simply don't hire. The second election repudiating Obamacare The other number that indicates the failure of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid secular socialist machine is 71%. 71% is the percentage of voters in Missouri -- a swing state -- who in a vote last week rejected a federally imposed individual health insurance mandate, a key provision in Obamacare that requires all Americans to buy health insurance. This is actually the second time an election has repudiated the Democrats' big government health care plan. The special election to replace Ted Kennedy became a referendum on Obamacare and the results there were equally stunning. Republican Scott Brown -- an ardent opponent of the health care bill -- was elected to replace a man who called government-provided health care for every American the "cause of his life." The latest national polls show that a majority of Americans favor repealing the health care bill. Even more Americans believe the bill will cause health care costs to go up. This series of repudiations means that the President and Congress's signature achievement - centralized health care -- is being firmly rejected by the American people. Indisputable Failure President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Reid are clearly failures at delivering the results they promised. They promised jobs and an economic turnaround. What they've delivered instead is economic stagnation. They're also clearly failures at maintaining the support of the American people for their policies. Their most significant victory -- the big government health care bill -- is so unpopular that most Americans want it completely repealed. 9.5% unemployment. 71% repudiation at the polls. This is what failure looks like. And it is indisputable. Your friend, Newt"
Let's Play 'Spot the Democrat'! by Ann Coulter "In the greatest party-affiliation cover-up since the media tried to portray Gary Condit as a Republican, the media are refusing to mention the party affiliation of the thieving government officials in Bell, Calif. There have been hundreds of news stories about Bell city officials' jaw-dropping salaries. In this poor city on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where the per capita annual income is $24,800 a year, the city manager, Robert Rizzo, had a salary of $787,637. That's about twice what the president of the United States makes. (To be fair, Rizzo was doing a better job.) Rizzo was the highest-paid government employee in the entire country, not counting Maxine Waters' husband -- pending further revelations. With benefits, his total annual compensation, according to the Los Angeles Times, came to $1.5 million a year. Alerted to the Bell situation, the White House quickly added the Bell city manager to the list of jobs saved by its stimulus plan. Not only that, but Rizzo was entitled to 28 weeks off a year for vacation and sick leave. To put that in perspective, that's almost as much vacation time as public school teachers get! Reached in Spain, even Michelle Obama was outraged. Rizzo responded to the anger over his preposterous salary by saying: "If that's a number people choke on, maybe I'm in the wrong business. I could go into private business and make that money." (If he wants to grab one of those private-sector jobs that pays $1.5 million for 24 weeks of work, may I suggest the entertainment industry?) Good luck to him. After leaving Bell, Rizzo will be lucky to land a job at Taco Bell. Before being anointed the King Tut of Bell, Rizzo was the city manager of Hesperia, Calif., where he was overpaid only to the tune of $78,000 a year. The police chief, Randy Adams, was making $457,000 -- $770,046 including benefits. The assistant city manager, Angela Spaccia, had a $376,288 salary, with a total compensation package of $845,960. Being just an assistant city manager, Angela had to pay for her own yacht. After the Los Angeles Times reported the stratospheric government salaries in little Bell, and the people of the town revolted, the millionaire government employees all resigned. That'll show 'em! Oops, except upon their resignations, they qualified for lifetime pensions worth, by some estimates, more than $50 million. These insane salary packages were granted by the mayor and four city council members -- who also set their own salaries. As a result, all but one was making $100,000 a year for these part-time jobs. After the council members' salaries came to light, the four looters cut their salaries by 90 percent. According to Nexis, there have been more than 300 news stories reporting on the Bell scandal. Guess how many mentioned the party affiliation of the corrupt government bureaucrats? One. Yes, just one. Now guess if the government officials were Democrats or Republicans? Yes, that is correct. Congratulations -- you've qualified for our bonus round! The one newspaper to cough up party affiliations, The Orange County Register, admitted that the corrupt officials were all Democrats only in response to reader complaints about the peculiar omission. Lots of news stories on the scandal in Bell used the word "Democrat" or "Democratic." But that was only to say that the DEMOCRATIC attorney general of California, Jerry Brown, who is running on the DEMOCRATIC ticket for governor, is investigating the Bell officials' salaries. So we know the media are aware of party affiliations. They just chose not to mention it when it would require them to identify shockingly corrupt government officials as Democrats. Any day now, the media will start describing Maxine Waters as "the light-skinned congresswoman from California." (But you might want to vote for that DEMOCRATIC attorney general who is apparently a great crusader against corruption ... despite his years of ignoring the public employee salary and pension looting that has driven the state into insolvency.) Maybe Obama's Czar of City Managers' Salaries could investigate this. Unlike political corruption involving sex or bribery, the outrage in Bell isn't a scandal that hits both parties from time to time -- it's how the Democrats govern. Elected Democratic officials bestow ludicrous salaries and benefits packages on government employees, and, in return, public employee unions make sure the Democrats keep getting re-elected. The scandal in Bell isn't a scandal at all for the Democrats. Au contraire! This is the governing strategy of the Democratic Party."
The densest element in the known Universe has been found: Pelosium! A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named Pelosium. Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. The symbol of Pelosium is PU. Pelosium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within the Pelosium molecule, leading to the formation of isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientist to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass. When catalyzed with money, Pelosium activates CNNadnausium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons as Pelosium. THIS IS THE REASON THIS "LADY" HAS GOT TO BE KICKED OUT OF CONGRESS!
DEADLY NEW DISEASE This is good Information about Gonorrhea Lectim: "The Center for Disease Control has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of this old disease. The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim. It's pronounced "Gonna re-elect 'em," and it is a terrible obamanation. The disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior involving putting your cranium up your rectum. Many victims contracted it in 2008...but now most people, after having been infected for the past 1-2 years, are starting to realize how destructive this sickness is. It's sad because Gonorrhea Lectim is easily cured with a new drug just coming on the market called Votemout. You take the first dose in 2010 and the second dose in 2012 and simply don't engage in such behavior again; otherwise, it could become permanent and eventually wipe out all life as we know it. Several states are already on top of this, like Virginia and New Jersey, and apparently now Massachusetts, with many more seeing the writing on the wall."