Dear Mr. Todd,

I need your help.

I’m desperately trying to understand why you, The Head Political Analyst at NBC News, could consistently confuse the term “anti-ILLEGAL immigration” with  the term “anti-IMMIGRATION.”

Sure, on the surface they may seem similar. After all it’s just that one word, that pesky “illegal”, that separates them. But the two terms describe very different points of view.

It’s pretty simple.

“Anti-ILLEGAL immigration” describes any of the majority of Americans who are fed up with the Federal Immigration Laws being blatantly flouted by unscrupulous businesses, and concurrently ignored by our Government.

“Anti-IMMIGRANT” describes people who, quite simply, don’t like immigrants for some reason.

One does not automatically equal the other. Their meanings are very different. They are not the same thing.

And one would think that you, a highly educated man, a veteran of the punditry, and head political poobah at a vaunted network news outfit, of all people, would know the difference.

So, why do you keep making this mistake?

Is it just a simple slip-up? The result of verbal laziness? Not having the mental energy to include that all-important “ILLEGAL” when describing those hundreds of millions of Americans who simply want their Country’s laws enforced?

Or do you really think that the majority of Americans are, well, jerks?

Well, in case you really are confused, I’ll explain again.

The vast majority of Americans, represented by poll-after-national-poll, simply want our laws enforced fairly, and without prejudice.

These people are “anti ILLEGAL immigrantion”.

They take issue with the upwards of 20 million people who are currently breaking our laws by blatantly ignoring our country’s immigration laws. Laws that are extremely important to our National Security, and our economy.

These people also take major issue with our Government not doing anything about this obvious, massive violation, especially after the ’86 Amnesty, and then of course, 911.

They also have a big problem with the cheating, profit-at-any-cost businesses who brazenly employ these illegal aliens with impunity, creating job scarcity and depressing wages. And they wonder why their Government could be so inept, or corrupt, as to not see such a blatant money grab, and flouting of our laws and not do a darn thing about it.

And, perhaps just as importantly, they wonder why you, the Media, refuse to take them seriously. When you’re not outright ignoring them.

These millions, and millions of proud, and law abiding citizens are not, as you refer to them, “anti-IMMIGRANT”.

These people are not haters.

They love America. And they absolutely appreciate the contribution that legal, controlled immigration, gives her.

They are not racists or xenophobes.

These people are, simply, Americans. Millions, and millions of regular citizens, of all ages, races, creeds, and colors, who are beyond frustrated their Government, and you, their Media… because they can’t trust either to do their jobs anymore.

Their Government turns a blind eye while greedy businesses import waves of neo-indentured servants.

While you call them names like hicks, protectionists, or worse.

Anti-IMMIGRANT?

You should be ashamed.

Oh yes, there are certainly jerks on all ends of this. Just like there are on most other emotional, and politically charged issues.

For every “Skinhead” there’s at least one “La Raza” (The Race) member. And you know it.

But the funny thing is we’ve never heard you, or anyone in the Media, refer to the Pro-Amnesty crowd as “LaRaza”… or, come to think of it, even as the “pro amnesty crowd”.

No. You’ve anointed them “PRO-immigrant”. You know, instead of “pro-ILLEGAL immigrant”.

How nice.

Chuck. You’re a college graduate, right? And judging from your resume, you’ve been in the thick of the political fray for many years.

So how could you make such an egregious error?

Or… well, the only other explanation there is, and I hate to ask this… are you doing this on purpose?

Because if you are, for whatever reason, you don’t deserve to be the Political Director for a High School Newspaper, much less a respected television network.

So, why?

Please. I must know.

Sincerely,

Your Audience.

(Ad Age)

Oh goody.

As someone who works in advertising, and has worked in advertising for well over a decade, this is simply very, very funny.

Ever since I can remember the award shows have been dominated… well, not “dominated”, but something darn close… by ads that were not quite “real”.

Frequently establishing very successful careers for their unscrupulous submitters.

And I’ve certainly had that opportunity, too.

You see, in the “ad world”, our clients routinely kill good work. Sometimes even insanely great work. Work that is not only way, way better than most of the crap you see on TV, and in magazines, but ads that would win us awards, and actually make our client’s product/or/service fly off the proverbial shelves.

Stupid clients.

So why didn’t I do it? Because I don’t cheat, that’s why. And neither do the vast majority of people in the ad industry.

But, alas, some do.

And so now these numbnutz at Saatchi NY and Epoch Films have gotten caught with their greedy little paws in the liquor cabinet, and it’s all the talk of the Ad World.

Now can we please stop giving out awards to FAKE ads already?

There are way too many of us who work in the real world. We actually have these things called “briefs” and “strategies”, and after we work our asses off we have to have our concepts approved by these people called “clients” before they run. Oh yeah, and then they have to actually RUN. And with the client’s permission.

And once, in Sheboygan, in the middle of the night doesn’t count.

Getting work through THAT spanking machine, and emerging on the other side w/something great is worth awards. And, more importantly, it’s worth our respect. But this kind of concept-in-a-vacuum, ad-school fakery should deserve nothing but our scorn. Shame on these charlatan creatives, and shame on the judges. Because we all know full well that they knew exactly what they were giving an award to, and why.

It’s high time this blatant brand of award grabbling be recognized for what it is: cheating.

New York:

Congressman Anthony Weiner held a grand press conference this weekend, complete with charts and graphs, calling on Government to double funding for the Workforce Investment Act: a federal initiative that pays for summer jobs and “job training” for teenagers.

He cited the recent reports showing that there aren’t enough summer jobs for teenagers these days.

But here’s the rub. If you simply take a gander at any one of the small business in the New York Metro area that would *normally* employ these scrappy, acne-prone young workers: construction sites, restaurants, retail counters, etc… you’d quickly realize that they’re mostly staffed with, you guessed it, illegal immigrants.

I’d call it New York’s “dirty little secret” only it’s so out in the open, so brazen that it’s neither a “secret”, or anywhere near “little”.

The sad truth is New York is so endorsing of this insidious brand of quasi-slave labor that all the “usual” summer jobs that teenagers used to flock to between school years are no longer an option.

And of course, due to the socialist-lite society we find ourselves living in these days, instead of saying “um, excuse me… but you’re not technically supposed to be here… and you’re taking jobs that our citizens would like to do… would you mind waiting in line like everyone else?”… we instead call on the GOVERNMENT to pump BILLIONS OF DOLLARS into some hair-brained PROGRAM paid for with MY tax dollars.

Really?

Please, wake me up when this nightmare is over.

e

In Defense Of Common Sense

Dear Senators and Representatives,

This is an open letter regarding the “Housing Bill” you are currently considering in the Senate. And I have a message from your constituents:

DON’T DO IT!

Sure, there are a lot of people who are “upside down” in their mortgages, dealing with rising monthly payments, facing foreclosure, and some are even walking away from their homes…

But there are a lot more of us who aren’t.

It may surprise you, being politicians and all, but the majority of us out here actually passed second-grade math class.

And we know that buying a house is a big deal. A very big deal.

We know for instance that borrowing multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars requires more than a passing glance at a multiple-page contract. And, crazy as it sounds, might even require a lawyer.

We know that if a mortgage payment surpasses, say, the 50% mark of your monthly take-home income, then it *might* not be such a good idea.

A heck of a lot of us out here heard the term “adjustable rate mortgage” and thought, maybe, just maybe, that it might actually “adjust” at some point down the road.

Our supernatural spidey sense also told us that people with 5 maxed-out credit cards, 2 past bankruptcies, and make 40K a year *probably* shouldn’t be buying a 500K home. In fact, they probably shouldn’t be buying a home at all.

Some of us were actually alive, and paying attention when the dreaded “Tech Bubble” burst, way, way back in 2001.

Some of us lost money.

So, naturally, some of us had a sneaking suspicion, too, that “No Money Down!” might just not be the brightest of ideas when it comes to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Especially hundreds of thousands of dollars that aren’t yours.

And we raised an eyebrow when “Flip This House!”, the reality show, debuted across the country in 2005.

We raised another one when “Flip That House!” appeared on a competing network in 2005.

However, we were fresh out of eyebrows by the time “Flipping Out!” debuted, on yet another network, in 2007.

You get the point.

You see, a whole bunch of us saw this whole thing coming from a mile away.

And we did something crazy.

We DIDN’T jump on yet another get-rich-quick bandwagon.
We DIDN’T over-extend ourselves and buy more house than we could afford.
We DIDN’T sign multiple-page contracts without reading them.

Most important of all, we DIDN’T take on unnecessary risk and expect the Government, via our fellow citizen’s hard-earned tax dollars, to bail us out.

We continued to rent.

We did what some would call “the right thing”. Even though that was merely being fiscally responsible. And just barely, at that.

Call it what you will, we did it.

And you know what? We vote

Look. Don’t bail out these selfish idiots. Especially the banks.

And unless someone was absolutely, and provably defrauded, you must resist the urge to come swooping in like some super hero savior. Simply let the market do what it does best: work.

America can’t afford foreclosure relief.

No matter how many sob stories make it into our glorious 24-hour news cycle. Resist the urge with every pandering, political bone in your body.

Sure, it may temporarily “depress” housing prices, including some of those who weren’t directly involved in this whole mess. But remember, when we see a 30% drop in price of a house that was twice as expensive as it should be, is still 40% too expensive.

The truth is, despite all the whining, the market is still over-priced. Everywhere.

But perhaps the real reason for your concern is that you’re seeing your property tax coffers shrink across the country? Well, much like the infamous home owners and their home equity lines of credit, buying boats and plasma TVs with phantom equity, perhaps you politicians shouldn’t’ve have budgeted on a bubble either. Eh?

So please, if you can, suck your crocodile tears back into your reptilian tear ducts, and stop this bill. Stop this insanity.

DON’T DO IT.

Because if you DO bail these people out, even a little teeny, tiny bit, you will have not only done the wrong thing. You will have made doing the right thing no longer necessary.

e

I’m writing this post in the brand-new-ish Microsoft Word 2008. But just barely.

The good news is Microsoft really kicked some ass with Office 2008, and made it better (mostly), sleeker, and “Mac”-ier. And most of the reviews out there say essentially that.

The only problem is that Word (the only program of the bunch I use every day) doesn’t work with Mac’s “Spaces” (a feature I use every minute).

It’s so bad it essentially renders Word 2008 unusable.

When you switch Spaces, you “take” a part of Word with you into the other Spaces; be it the main window, the formatting palette, or the menu bar. And when you click on any of these, you get zoomed back to another space, with another piece. And try-as-you-might, you can’t seem to get them back together again.

Like Humpty-Dumpty.

This is too bad, because almost everything else about Office 2008 is hat’s-off to M$oft. And 6th sense about these things tells me that the ball is in their court on this one.

Achem?

And they’re taking the case!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the situation (long-winded spew here), I essentially asked my NYAG to see if the ‘ol Get-Out-of-Your-Cell-Contract “net legend” -where if you don’t have a WRITTEN contract, you’re only liable for ONE year-… was bullshit or not. Apparently not. Or maybe. Whatever.

Proof, here:

It just occurred to me that some of you might want to see the “legal forms” I filled out concerning my challenge of Tmobile, and their evil insistence.

Of course, some of you would rather see a snuff film than legal documents. And that’s okay. You don’t have to partake. However, it is just 2 simple pages… frankly, a surprise coming from Government. Enjoy.

e

I hate T-Mobile with every bone in my adonis-like body.

And I recently tested the technique detailed here (wikihow, among other places) which says, essentially, that if the Cell Provider CAN’T produce a SIGNED contract… then they can only hold you to 1 year, the maximum for a verbal, legal contract.

A quick back story:

In November ‘06 I switched to T-Mobile from AT&T (who I liked) because my company had a nice discount with them.

Last year, I started my own business, and for the first time in my entire life, I went over my allotted minutes. Way, way over.

Shocked and freightened at the prospect of paying several hundred dollars in overages, I called them to see if they could help me out at all.

And for all their hip jibber-jabber “Oh… TOTALLY… BUMMER… I would be upset too… WOW… yeah, that SUCKS… ” they apparently have “no process” for protecting their customers from overages. Even if it’s due to a life-change, or other “understandable” event.

And, of course, they charge, like, $2 per minute above your ceiling. Which is pretty nasty.

Now, it’s not like I expected them to excuse the charges. Not at all. After all, I did go over my minutes. But because it was such a sudden, and insane increase, I was frankly expecting them to do a *little* bit, to help a good, loyal customer ease the pain.

But no.

And everything I tried, begging, pleading, talking to supervisors, et all… still no.

So I asked them to set me up on a plan “where this would never happen again”. And, after some hemming and hawing, I did. And it worked for a few months… until last month. And then BAM!

Another $400+ overage.

WTF?!

Of course, I’m an idiot, I guess. Because I can’t rightly keep track of every due date and every level of minutes, and dollars of all my stuff. At a certain point I just need to be able to not worry about this stuff… past a certain level of involvement.

So I called them to see what went wrong. And apparently, my new big client wasn’t on T-Mobile (I pay extra each month for “free T-Mobile 2 T-Mobile” service), and I’d logged an un-Godly amount of minutes with him.

And once again, I asked if there was any way they could lesson the pain for a loyal, on-time-paying customer… and they said, simply, I was SOL.

So I asked them if there was any mechanism for them (or me) to notifiy me (myself) if I was approaching my minutes limit. And, not surprisingly, there is none (although Verizon actually gives you a courtesy call, and offers to switch your plan for that month… must be nice).

So, I said, you know what…? Enough is enough. I want out. And they said “fine, that will be $300+ for terminating your contract”… and I said “Oh snap! …I never SIGNED a contract!” (which is 10000% true, I did everything over the phone).

And here’s the crux of this post (finally): from all the “get out of your cell contract” info on teh internets, there’s always the passage that states “ask them to produce a copy of your signed contract… if they can’t, then you don’t have to pay an early termination fee.”

Sounds pretty simple.. and that’s why, in late January, I put in an ‘order’ for a copy of my signed contract. Just in case. And to this day, they have not found it. Although I did get a call from their legal department, stating they “were still looking for it”.

So I called back, and pointed out this fact to a supervisor, and while he neither confirmed nor denied that “rule” he said quite matter-of-factly “if you cancel your contract before November you owe us $300+ … if you feel you don’t have to pay it, you’ll need to get a lawyer.”

ARRGGHGHHH!!!

So I did the next best thing. I called my State Attorney General here in New York. And they sent me a form to fill out, and send in.
Essentially, I asked them for 2 things: 1) if this “can’t produce contract, can’t enforce contract” information is true or not, and 2) if it is… help me get the Hell out of this thing!

I’ve shared this information with one of my favorite consumer sites consumerist.com, which is one of the original sources of my “information”. So… we’ll see, I guess. There had to be a guinea pig for this little “trick”, and it just so happens to be me.

I mailed it yesterday (05/28/09) and when I get a response, I’ll update this post.

And for everyone out there who’s in the Hell I’m in… drink copious amounts of alcohol to numb the pain.

That’s all I can offer for now.

e

Instead of calling Apple Computer’s Technical support number:

1-800-275-2273

I mistakenly dialed:

1-800-278-2273

…and, apparently, there are “Hot and Horny Singles” just waiting to take my call. At first I thought it was a new Apple marketing campaign. But, fortunately (or, unfortunately?) that was not the case.

LOL.

e

“Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography”

Sparky felt unloved
“I’ll show them,” he said And did.
Big heads in white space

@ amazon.com