The Business Section asked readers for ideas on “How Would You Fix the economy?”
Quite a few people think this guy nailed it!

Dear Mr. President,

Please find below my suggestion for fixing America’s economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan.

You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan: There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force. – Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations:

1) They MUST retire. Forty million job openings – Unemployment fixed.

2) They MUST buy a new American CAR. Forty million cars ordered – Auto Industry fixed.

3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage – Housing Crisis fixed.
It can’t get any easier than that!

P.S. If more money is needed, have all members in Congress and their constituents pay their taxes…

Charlie,

My wife and I took a vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota for our 34th anniversary. We could not find a CT bobble head so we took a substitute.

To all my friends who sent me “Best Wishes”, “Chain Letters”, “Angel Letters” or other
“Promises of Good Luck” if I forwarded something, “”NONE OF THAT WORKED !!!”

From now on, could you please just send “Money”, “Vodka”, “Chocolate”, “Movie tickets” or “Gasoline Vouchers” and “Airline Tickets “instead?
Thank you

Forward this to at least 10 of your friends or you will turn into a toad.

Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday. Maybe we should all take some of his advice! A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company:

1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put ‘PHOTO ID REQUIRED.

2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the ‘For’ line. Instead, just put the last four numbers. The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won’t have access to it.

3. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks. You can add it if it is necessary. But if you have It printed, anyone can get it.

4. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine. Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel.. Keep the photocopy in a safe place.
I also carry a photocopy of my passport when I travel either here or abroad. We’ve all heard horror stories about fraud that’s committed on us in stealing a Name, address, Social Security number, credit cards.

Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have first hand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieves ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Gateway computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here’s some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know:

5. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.

6.. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation (if there ever is one).

But here’s what is perhaps most important of all: (I never even thought to do this.)

7. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and also call the Social Security fraud line number.. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name.

The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit.

By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves’ purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, if it has been stolen:
1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742
3.) Trans Union : 1-800-680 7289
4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line):
1-800-269-0271

“The court of appeals is where policy is made,” Sotomayor said during a 2005 Duke University panel discussion.

The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily so they can meet their quota of getting free food donated everyday to abused and neglected animals. It takes less than a minute (about 15 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box ‘fund food for animals for free’. This doesn’t cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising. Here’s the web site! Please pass it along to people you know.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=3

http://www.brookegriffin.com/

Don’t believe the rumors: Patrick Swayze is “alive and well.” The Internet exploded Tuesday with rumors that the Dirty Dancing star had lost his public battle with pancreatic cancer, but the actor’s rep has quickly corrected the record.

“This is to confirm that Patrick Swayze did not pass away this morning, contrary to severely reckless reports stemming from a radio station in Jacksonville, Florida,” his publicist, Annett Wolf, says in a statement.

“Patrick is alive, well and is enjoying his life, and he continues to respond to treatment.”

The rep also released a new photo (pictured above) of Swazye and his wife, Lisa Niemi , taken last week at their New Mexico ranch.

The 56-year-old Beast star has been dogged by rumors of failing health since he made public his diagnosis last year

Natalie Cole, the Grammy-winning singer, who has been undergoing dialysis since last fall, successfully underwent kidney transplant surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center Tuesday and is currently “resting comfortably,” her publicist, Maureen O’Connor, said.

The kidney was procured from a deceased organ donor and made its way to the 59-year-old Cole with help from One Legacy, a transplant donor network in Southern California.

“Ms. Cole’s physicians have advised her to postpone her summer tour dates as she recuperates for the next three to four months,” her rep said.

CLICK ON THIS LINK BELOW FOR THE HD VIDEO VERSION OF ELLEN!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYbMY13THH0

Alec Baldwin probably won’t be traveling to the Philippines any time soon if he values his life. The 51-year-old actor joked about getting a Filipino or Russian mail-order bride on Letterman and it provoked a sharp response in the Philippines.

Senator Ramon Revilla said that if the “30 Rock” star came to his country he would face violence. He added that Baldwin’s comment were “insensitive and uncalled for” and an insult to millions of Filipinos. “Let him try to come here in the Philippines and he’ll see mayhem,” Revilla said, using a local idiom that implies the speaker will personally administer a beating.

Revilla called Baldwin “arrogant” and said he is apparently unaware that the country has a law against mail-order brides.

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO WATCH AN UNEASY BRAD PITT AT THE END!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6YNXGhBjhk

The story on the internet is circulating that this is a nineteen-year-old ex-cheerleader (now an Air Force Security Forces Sniper), who was watching a road that led to a NATO military base when she observed a man digging by the road. She engaged the target (i.e., she shot him). Turned out he was a bomb maker for the Taliban and he was burying an IED that was to be detonated when a US patrol walked by 30 minutes later. It would have certainly killed and wounded several soldiers.

Makes for a great story someone dreamed up, but none of this is true, except for the Air Force picture itself. She is Senior Airman Polly-Jan Bobseine, assigned as a Security Forces Journeyman to the 823rd Security Forces Squadron Fire Team at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. You can read more about her and this “story” at http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/cheerleader.asp

I only mention this because, frankly there is so much crap circulating on the internet, that people read and pass on as the gospel truth, including recent urban legends about the top 16 things you can do to prevent cancer from John Hopkins University, to schemes for grabbing your automatic car lock code, and plastic water bottle dangers. All these are pure fiction made up by some warped mind and circulated via email to anyone who’ll believe it and pass it on.

If you’re ever in doubt about something, just check it our on the link above, Snopes.com.

A lady was telling her neighbor that she saw a man driving a pick-up truck down the interstate, and a dog was hanging onto the tail gate for dear life!

She said if the pick-up truck driver hadn’t been going so fast in the other direction, she would have tried to stop him. A few weeks later, her neighbor saw this truck at the Bass Pro Shop

The pick-up truck driver is a local taxidermist with a great sense of humor! And it is not a dog, it is a coyote.

Can you imagine how many people try and stop this guy?????

http://www.act-today.org/golftourney/

http://www.procreo.jp/labo/flower_garden.swf

Tyra Banks is always telling the girls to smile with their eyes. But Teyona Anderson proved that smiling with your teeth can work, too.

The wide-grinning, Beverly Peele-resembling 20-year-old from New Jersey was named the winner of the 12th cycle of America’s Next Top Model Wednesday after the judges deemed her the most promising member of the pack.

“I come from the little country streets of Woodstown, New Jersey, growing up in the cornfields, playing in the woods with boys, to being America’s Next Top Model!” the gleeful winner exclaimed. “I’ve wanted to do this so long, I just wanted to model…That’s what I want to do, it’s my passion…To win, and my hard work actually paid off…It’s amazing…

“I’m so proud of myself, it’s ridiculous…like, is this for real?!

Friday night is NBC’s Farrah’s Story. Among the images is a scene watching Farrah Fawcett shave her signature blonde locks. The Charlie’s Angels star shot the two-hour documentary of her nearly three-year battle with cancer using her own camcorder and provides the wrenching narration.

“Of all the things I’ve ever hoped for in my life, finding a doctor to surgically remove my anal cancer did not even make the top 1 million on my list,” she says in the special.

“But now it was No. 1—No. 1 as in, primary cancer—meaning it was the first in and, for that reason, it needed to be the first out. Because it was this peanut-sized tumor that had sent its army of mutant cells into my liver. And it would continue to send reinforcements into any organ into my body unless someone did something to stop it.”

The very next day, that little “miscommunication” problem between Miss California codirector Shanna Moakler and crown-holder Carrie Prejean was clearly not as done a deal as Donald Trump would have liked us to believe.

Just one day after the Donald dismissed Moakler’s urgings to strip Prejean of her Miss California title and announced that the controversial beauty queen would remain the face of the Golden State, Moakler has resigned as the organization’s co-executive director.

“Since the press conference yesterday, I had a chance to think about what has taken place, and I feel that at this time it is in my best interest to resign from the Miss California USA organization,” Moakler said in a statement this morning.

“I cannot with a clear conscious [sic] move forward supporting and promoting the Miss Universe Organization when I no longer believe in it, or the contracts I signed committing myself as a youth.”

Those would be the same contracts, Moakler has long asserted, that Prejean violated.

“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” –Abe Lincoln

“God could not be everywhere and therefore he made mothers.” –John Smith

“Mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have time off. They are the great vacationless class.” –Ann Morrow Lindbergh

“Youth fades. Love droops. The leaves of friendship fall. A mother’s secret hope outlives them all.” –Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Nobody knows of the work it takes to keep the home together. Nobody knows of the steps it takes, nobody knows but mother.” –Anonymous

“My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.” –George Washington

“Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.” –Zora Neale Hurston

“The best academy, a mother’s knee.” –James Russel Lowell

“Is my mother my friend? I would have to say, first of all she is my Mother, with a capital ‘M.’ She’s someone sacred to me. I love her dearly. Yes, she is also a good friend, someone I can talk openly with if I want to.” –Sophia Loren

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” –Washington Irving

WANDA SYKES ROCKED THE HOUSE WITH HER OWN TAKE ON THE PRESIDENT!

Paramount’s Star Trek reboot opened to $7 million at the North American box office in Thursday evening showings that began at 7pm at most of its 3800+ venues, according to Variety.com.

Star Trek then soared to a history-making $26M on its official opening day, double the previous-best opening day for any movie in the franchise. That means in the first 29 hours of general release, the re-imagined sci-fi blockbuster has delivered an estimated $33M.

ALL-TIME TOP 5 OPENING DAYS FOR STAR TREK MOVIES
1. Star Trek (2009) – $26M [$33M in its first 29 hours]
2. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) – $13M
3. Star Trek: Generations (1994) – $9.7M
4. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) – $9.5M
5. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) – $7.7M

Last weekend, Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine grossed just under $5 in showings that began at Friday midnight, on its way to an $85.1m opening weekend.

Star Trek’s performance also outpaced last May’s Iron Man, which took in over $4m in showings that began Thursday evening, and earned $102.1 million by the close of business Sunday.

Despite the parallels between Iron Man and Star Trek – with Trek even outpacing the Marvel property in some metrics like critical reception and ticket sales % on online sites like Fandango, Paramount and rival studios are still saying tracking suggests Star Trek will not approach Iron Man’s weekend figures, or even Wolverine’s, though the Hollywood trade reports a number of films have outperformed their tracking indicators in recent months.

An Oprah Winfrey-sponsored chicken run—which proved more popular, in these recessionary times, than either the talk queen or KFC could have imagined—has left the fast-food giant issuing rainchecks.

Four days after Winfrey partnered with the chicken chain and made available to the nation a coupon redeemable for a two-piece grilled meal at the fast-food joint, KFC has cut short the promotion, saying it would no longer be honoring the coupon.

The free meal deal was originally slated to run through May 19. Millions of viewers downloaded the coupon after Tuesday’s show, with even more joining in after word of the deal hit the Internet.

KFC President Roger Eaton cited the excessive lines at restaurants around the country and the fact that extreme demand had, at many locations, far exceeded supply of the product for the company’s early pull-out.

What he neglected to name, however, was the massive PR nightmare that resulted when the tried employees and hungry, wallet-weary customers clashed. “We are so sorry, but due to the overwhelming response to our free Kentucky Grilled Chicken meal coupon, we can no longer redeem the free coupon at this time,” Eaton said in a statement posted to Winfrey’s official website.

Instead, Eaton advises coupon holders to take their voucher to KFC, where they will be given a form to fill and mail out in exchange for a rain check of the same promotion.

Having learned from their free-for-all mistake, this time around, Eaton says the redemption times for the rain checks will be staggered. To further sweeten the pot, KFC will also throw in a free Pepsi, something not originally included in the coupon. “Thank you for your understanding,” he wrote. Complete instructions on how to obtain a rain check are available on Oprah.com.

In the meantime, El Pollo Loco says fans can redeem their KFC coupon at the rival chain this Sunday.

Michelle Obama is not only sweeping the clouds away, she’s attempting to do the same with one of the nation’s more weighty issues.

Just in case the first lady’s recent spate of biceps-baring wasn’t enough of a walking advertisement for fitness, Obama made her inaugural appearance on Sesame Street this week, doing her best to promote physical exercise and healthy eating among the country’s youth.

She stopped by the fabled PBS set on Tuesday and filmed a PSA alongside Elmo as part of the Sesame Workshop’s Healthy Habits for Life initiative. The country’s most famous home gardener was careful not to put the entire get-fit onus on kids, however. She also encouraged adults to stay healthy in order to better serve as positive role models.

A financial survey estimates mothers are worth over half a million dollars a year. The typical mom conducts the same daily business of seventeen occupations combined. Using salary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics, a multi-tasking mother’s annual salary is calculated to be $508,700.

Raise children (Child care worker) $13,000
Plan vacation and play (Recreation worker) $15,500
Cook meals (Executive chef) $40,000
Serve meals (Food service worker) $20,000
Plan meals (Dietitians/nutritionists) $41,600
Keep house (Property manager) $22,600
Clean house (Housekeeper) $9,000
Care for pets (Animal caretaker) $17,500
Dispense medication (Registered nurse) $35,000
Attend functions (Management analyst) $41,000
Manage family finances (Computer system analyst) $44,000
Manage investments (Financial manager) $39,000
Carpool (Bus driver) $32,400
Homework & discipline (School principal) $58,600
Resolve family issues (Psychologist) $29,000
Keep family schedule (General office clerk) $19,000
Maintain family harmony (Social worker) $30,000

In a recent survey, iVillage asked, “What was the best advice your mom ever gave you?”

“You aren’t getting anything done just sitting there. You’ve got to get up and go get it — a job, success, a glass of soda, whatever — take charge and just do it!”
“Appreciate all the blessings that you receive in life, and don’t bemoan the things you can’t have.”
“Get an education, once you have it, no one can take it away from you.”
“If a guy really wants to talk to you, he’ll call.”
“You can’t change someone who doesn’t want to change.”
“Never count on a man being around forever.”
“If you settle for less that’s all you’re going to get.”
“Don’t marry the man you can live with – marry the man you can’t live without.”
“Stay out of the sun!”

When it was introduced in the early 1980s, voice mail was hailed as a miracle invention — a boon to office productivity and a godsend to busy households. But in an age of instant information gratification, the burden of having to hit the playback button — or worse, dial in to a mailbox and enter a pass code — and sit through “ums” and “ahs” can seem too much to bear.

Many dread the process, raising the question: is voice mail on its way to becoming obsolete? According to some calculations, it takes 7 to 10 steps to check a voice mail message versus zero to 3 for an e-mail. Scott Taylor, 41, a senior manager at an e-commerce company in Phoenix, said voice mail was “just totally an ineffective communication method, almost ancient now.”

Research shows that people take longer to reply to voice messages than other types of communication. Data from uReach Technologies, which operates the voice messaging systems of Verizon Wireless and other cellphone carriers, shows that over 30 percent of voice messages linger unheard for three days or longer and that more than 20 percent of people with messages in their mailboxes “rarely even dial in” to check them.

By contrast, 91 percent of people under 30 respond to text messages within an hour, and they are four times more likely to respond to texts than to voice messages within minutes, according to a 2008 study for Sprint conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation. Even adults 30 and older are twice as likely to respond within minutes to a text than to a voice message, the study found.

There are no definitive studies of how many voice mail messages American leave compared with earlier periods, but if the technology is heading toward obsolescence — as many communication experts suspect — the trend is being driven by young people. Again and again, people under 25 recount returning calls from older colleagues and family members without bothering to listen to messages first. Thanks to cellphone technology, they can see who called and hit the Send button to reply without calling their voice mail box. “Didn’t you get my message?” parents ask. “No,” their children reply, “but I saw that you called.”

To cater to those with no patience for voice mail, wireless providers are busy rolling out a new generation of text-based alternatives that promise to make communication faster and more efficient. The most popular is Visual Voicemail, which comes standard on the iPhone and is available on other smart phones, including the Samsung Instinct and the BlackBerry Storm. The application displays messages in a visual in-box, just like e-mail, and allows users to listen to messages one by one, in any order, so important calls can be returned first and others saved. Other companies have taken a bolder approach, eliminating the need to listen to messages altogether.

Services like PhoneTag are about to be jolted by Google, which plans to introduce a competing free service, Google Voice, in a matter of weeks. The service will ring each phone a person uses at once — cell, home, office — and centralize all the messages received. Most important for the voice-mail-averse, Google Voice will also transcribe voice mails at no cost. “Voice mail feels like it was a technology that was created to fill a gap — until something better came along,” Piers Fawkes, 34, a trend tracker, wrote on his company’s popular trend-tracking site, PSFK.com. “And now it has.”

Those in the industry expect voice-to-text messaging service to be standard in as little as a year or two down the line. “Text is the future of voice mail,” Mr. Fawkes said. Text messaging has increased more than tenfold over the last three years, according to CTIA — the Wireless Association, the trade group representing the industry. Young people have overwhelmingly been the most enthusiastic adopters. According to Nielsen Mobile, users 13 to 17 now send or receive an average of 1,742 text messages a month, versus 231 cellphone calls, and they spend nearly the same amount of time on their phones texting as talking.

Dom DeLuise, the big, boistrous comic actor who seemed perpetually on the verge of the giggles as Burt Reynolds’ caped crony in the Cannonball Run movies, died in a Los Angeles-area hospital about 6 p.m. on Monday. He was 75, and had been been ill for a while, a son, Michael DeLuise, told local media outlets.

In a statement, Reynolds said he was “dreading” this news. “Dom always made everyone feel better when he was around,” Reynolds said. “I never heard him say an unkind word about anyone. I will miss him very much.”

A clear favorite of Reynolds, with whom he worked in several films and TV shows, DeLuise also was something of a good-luck charm for Mel Brooks, appearing in the director’s Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs and more.

Outside of film, DeLuise wrote cookbooks, lent his voice to several cartoon shows and, with his longtime wife, headed an acting clan, which includes sons David DeLuise (Wizards of Waverly Place) and Peter DeLuise (21 Jump Street).

“It’s easy to mourn his death,” the DeLuise family said in a statement, “but easier to remember a time when he made you laugh.”

X-Men Origins: Wolverine rose above everything from swine flu to play-off basketball to gross $87 million at the weekend box office, its studio estimated. The debut was the year’s biggest, and the fourth-biggest ever for a summer-season opener.

“We’ve had a lot of hurdles to overcome with this movie,” 20th Century Fox’s Chris Aronson said today. “At the end of the day, audiences have a huge appetite for Hugh.” And was that appetite whetted by Jackman’s appearance as Oscar host? “What other explanation is there?” Aronson asked. “That turn just made him that much more appealing.” Especially among women. More than the previous three X-Men films, Aronson said, Wolverine’s audience split almost evenly along gender lines: 53 percent of moviegoers were men; 47 percent were women.

1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine, $87 million
2. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, $15.3 million
3. Obsessed, $12.2 million
4. 17 Again, $6.4 million
5. Monsters vs. Aliens, $5.8 million
6. The Soloist, $5.6 million
7. Earth, $4.18 million
8. Fighting, $4.17 million
9. Hannah Montana: The Movie, $4.1 million
10. State of Play, $3.7 million

Sin City star Danny Gans—relatively unknown outside of Las Vegas, but a megastar on the Strip—died in his sleep early Friday morning at the age of 52. His cause of death was not immediately known.

Henderson Police Department spokesman Todd Ramussen said that they were called to Gans’ home at 3:45 a.m. by a family member who said he was “having difficulty breathing.”

“We dispatched police and paramedics. They both arrived at about the same time. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene. We are conducting a death investigation.”

BE SURE TO WATCH BONNIE HUNT WITH DANNY. CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEm7cmqWvPI

Charlie:

Try listening to the Murmaids “Popsicles & Icicles” from 1963 and the I think you’ll see where Ray Stevens got the idea for his 1969 “Gitarzan.”