I just wanted to take a moment to say that I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. Also, a word of warning. My brother has become a QVC watcher, he sits in the evenings and watches that channel like most men watch sports. He even calls me on occasion and says you have got to turn on qvc. One night he called and said that he bet me $20, I couldn’t watch QVC that night for 1 hour without buying something. I turned it on and they were selling gourmet chocolate. At first I was like uh oh, then I realized it was truffles and I don’t like them. Anyways, I digress. He was watching one night and they were advertising Kansas City Hams on the easy pay plan. He decides that we need one of those for thanksgiving dinner. Well, the ham was supposed to be a sliced ham, only half the ham was sliced, and there was a big ole bone in the middle of it that they failed to mention. Well, we ended up having to pull the ham half apart to get it off the bone.
So basically what I want you to get out of this, don’t buy into the hype. Just because they tell you it will be the best ham you ever tasted and that it will make dinner so much easier, don’t you believe it. :) That’s twice now my brother has succumbed to QVC’s hype and got burned. His first purchase was a pineapple cutter thing. All it did was smush the pineapple and when he contacted QVC about it not working, they wouldn’t do anything about it.
I just received this and thought I would pass it along. I fully intend to give them a try. 
Tips for Handling Telemarketers
Three Little Words That Work!!
(1) The three little words are: ‘Hold On, Please…’
Saying this, while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately) would make each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales would grind to a halt.
Then when you eventually hear the phone company’s ‘beep-beep-beep’ tone, you know it’s time to go back and hang up your handset, which has efficiently completed its task.
These three little words will help eliminate telephone soliciting.
(2) Do you ever get those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end?
This is a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone.
This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a ‘real’ sales person to call back and get someone at home.
What you can do after answering, if you notice there is no one there, is to immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times, as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call and it kicks your number out of their system. Gosh, what a shame not to have your name in their system any longer!
(3) Junk Mail Help:
When you get ‘ads’ enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these ‘ads’ with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away.
When you get those ‘pre-approved’ letters in the mail for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages and similar type junk, do not throw away the return envelope.
Most of these come with postage-paid return envelopes, right? It costs them more than the regular 51 cents postage ‘IF’ and when they receive them back.
It costs them nothing if you throw them away! The postage was around 50 cents before the last increase and it is according to the weight. In that case, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.
One of Andy Rooney’s (60 minutes) ideas.
Send an ad for your local chimney cleaner to American Express. Send a pizza coupon to Citibank. If you didn’t get anything else that day, then just send them their blank application back! If you want to remain anonymous, just make sure your name isn’t on anything you send them.
You can even send the envelope back empty if you want to just to keep them guessing! It still costs them 51 cents.
The banks and credit card companies are currently getting a lot of their own junk back in the mail, but folks, we need to OVERWHELM them. Let’s let them know what it’s like to get lots of junk mail, and best of all they’re paying for it…twice!
Let’s help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that’s why they need to increase postage costs again. You get the idea!
If enough people follow these tips, it will work —- I have been doing this for years, and I get very little junk mail anymore.
Now don’t get me wrong, if someone wants to come to the United States to live and they are willing to do it legally and they are willing to become an American, I have no problem with that. I’ll be right there to welcome them. It’s the ones who sneak in, live here illegally, take jobs away from Americans, take benefits from Americans, and send their money back home. Now that isn’t right. This email was sent to me earlier today and I knew the problem was bad, but I didn’t realize it was this bad.
Subject: Fwd: FW: What costs more per year than the Iraq war?
WHY WON ‘ T THEY TALK ABOUT THIS???? ARE THEY REALLY THAT STUPID? This should be sent on!!!!
Read this!!! it will open your eyes for sure!!!
Don ‘ t miss the Total at the bottom.
WONDER WHY YOU DON ‘ T HEAR MUCH ABOUT THIS IN THE DEBATES. NONE OF THE PEOPLE THAT RUN THE DEBATES (TV NEWORKS), WHO ASK THEQUESTIONS WILL ALLOW THIS TYPE INFORMATION TO GET OUT TO THE PUBLIC.
THE DEMOCRATS AND THE REPUBLICANS GO HIDE WHEN THESE QUESTIONS ARE ASKED, WHY? WHAT COSTS MORE PER YEAR THAN THE IRAQ WAR?
Answer: Illegal Aliens Cause Massive Cuts For US Seniors
I hope the following 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again until they are read so many times that the reader gets sick of reading them. I have included the URL ‘ s for verification of the following facts:
1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/f\iscalexec.html
http://www.cis.org/art icles/2004/f/iscal exec..html>
3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRA! NSCRIPT S/0604/01/ldt.0.html
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare and Social Services by the American taxpayers.
http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html
9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
http://transcripts! cnn.co m/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html < BR>10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime ratethat ‘ s
two-and-a-half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US .
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into th e U. S from the Southern border. Homeland Security Report.
http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
12. The National Policy Institute estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually! over a five year period. ‘
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf
13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin..
http:/ /www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm
14. ‘ The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One Million Sex
Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States ‘
http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
Total cost is a whooping.. $338..3 BILLION A YEAR!!!
If this doesn ‘ t bother you then just delete the message, but on the other hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, then forward it. Snopes is provided for doubters:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/bankofamerica.asp
SEND THIS TO ALL YOU KNOW. THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES NEEDS TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION, UNLESS THEY DON ‘ T MIND SHARING THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS WHO DIDN ‘ T PAY A DIME.
LET US SHOW OUR LEADERS IN WASHINGTON ‘ PEOPLE POWER ‘ AND THE POWER OF THE INTERNET. IT DOESN ‘ T MATTER IF YOU ARE REPUBLICAN, DEMOCRAT OR INDEPENDENT! KEEP IT GOING.
Feel free to send this link to everyone you know, send it to your senators, your congressmen, and your governor. You can also copy/paste the text and pass it along. It’s time our government stepped up and done something.
I found out a couple of days ago that my niece is having some trouble in geometry. I was quit to say count me out. Math was not and still isn’t my subject. So I did some checking and I called her this evening and I told her that one option would be to talk to my brother. He’s always been good at math. I said I don’t think he ever took geometry but take your book to him and I bet if he looks at it a few minutes he can figure it out. She said “I don’t have a book”. My brain sort of locked up and couldn’t grasp that concept. I said what do you mean you don’t have a book. She said she didn’t have very many books at all, only three. I said how do you function without a book. She said she had her notes. She said it’s been this way for several years. I remember many many hours spent flipping from the math problem back through the book to figure out how to work the problem. Now all they have are notes?
No wonder education is slipping. We are obviously not giving children today the tools they need to learn. We seem to be pushing out thousands of children who can’t function if they don’t have a cell phone or a computer. What happened to books, paper and pencils? Even now sitting here my brain still can’t seem to grasp this.
Well, Mr. Gates you said that you were worried about kid’s education these days. How about giving them some books???