For the record, I am glad that people are donating money to Haiti. My heart goes out to everyone there who was/is affected by the recent quake. My point was, if people started posting status updates on Facebook asking people to text $10 to displaced Americans, I don’t think they’d get half the responders that the Haiti folks are getting. And I find that odd.

’specially since patriotism is so gosh-darned important, you betcha.

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(as Chuck Woolery) Building off the letter “h” in “Pat Robertson’s religious hate speech,” this is a four-letter word on the front page of today’s Post.

HELL

Half-million feared dead in Haiti quake

For the first time since the early days of the Tiger Woods scandal, the Post has six pages of follow-up (6-11) for their cover story. The photos are heartbreaking (accompanying headlines like SHANTYTOWN’S A CITY OF THE DEAD and Aftershocks turn songs to screams really help drive the point home, thanks).

The things that Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh have been saying about Haiti are extremely hate-y, but what do you expect from those demagogues? Compassion?

I was going to make a joke about how I hope the next wave of MLB prospects weren’t hurt by the quake, but it’s too soon.

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Fun fact: Legal immigrants make up 43% of NYC’s total work force and account for 32% of the city’s economic activity (or $200,000,000,000). They also make up 87% of cabbies/chauffeurs, 83% of maids/housekeepers, 79% of food-preparation workers, 77% of cooks, and 68% of dry cleaners/nail salons.

My guess is that the rest of those positions are filled by illegal immigrants.

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Brooklyn federal judge Nicholas Garaufis has ruled that the FDNY has — for decades — discriminated against “blacks and other minorities.”

That means that the “thousands of minority FDNY applicants who did not get hired” will now have a good shot at winning monetary damages from the city. Which is already billions in debt.

Thanks, your honor.

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Remember when Dominic Carter got all those handled-with-kid-gloves stories in the Post about how he’s on the road to being a better person? NY1 axes wife-beat reporter signals the end of that love affair (and the end of Carter’s tenure at NY1 — he had been “on leave” since October).

Godspeed, Dom.

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The top-earning celebrity couple (from June 2008 to June 2009) was… Jay-Z and Beyoncé with $122,000,000. And the runners-up? This surprised even me — Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart ($69,000,000). Brangelina made $55,000,000 and the (Pinkett) Smiths made $48,000,000.

Whither TomKat? #8 ($33,500,000) between Jim Carrey/Jenny McCarthy ($34,000,000) and Chris Martin/Gwyneth Paltrow ($33,000,000).

The horse and her gay husband ranked #10 with $29,000,000.

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Proving that he has eyes that work, Andrew Cuomo has discovered “extensive evidence” of “wrongdoing” and “graft” in his investigation of Senator Pedro Espada, Jr.

Little things like how, in 2007, Espada took a $270,000/year janitorial contract (for his “not-for-profit” health-care clinic) and switched it to Espada Management Company — for $396,000/year. And how he then used a big chunk of that money to pay his campaign expenses.

Espada is refusing to comply with subpoenas. Please, Andy, put this scumbag in prison and I will personally see to it that you are our next governor.

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Oh, Albany. You so shameful.

“Legislators who hold lucrative posts with law firms would be exempt from disclosing their clients under an ethics-reform proposal announced yesterday by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Democratic Leader John Sampson — both of whom are lawyers. The loophole was cited by civic groups and other critics as a fatal flaw in legislation that would otherwise amount to Albany’s most sweeping ethics overhaul in two decades.”

Do as I say, not as I do.

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Hey, Heidi Montag! Do you think your new album will “prove to be as timeless as Michael Jackson’s Thriller?”

“I definitely do.”

Good luck with that, Heidi.

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Federal prosecutors say they will not retry John “Junior” Gotti a fifth time.

Congratulations, Junior! I guess the fourth time was the charm!

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Mandrea!

We know how she feels about Letterman (she hates him a whole lot), but what of Conan? She lets us know with the economically-worded Conan doesn’t rate our pity.

“Stop whining! Conan O’Brien is a fabulously wealthy, incredibly lucky (and unfunny) man who’s carrying on as if the world owes him TV time at 11:35 p.m. It’s about the ratings, stupid. If Conan can’t deliver, move to midnight. Or, don’t let the door hit your butt on the way out.”

The world? No, the world owes him nothing. His contract with NBC, however, does owe him “TV time at 11:35.”

She talks about a lot of other things (in an equally absurd fashion), but out of deference to all of my friends being affected by NBC’s total incompetence/Leno-humping, I’ll just bid Mandrea a horrible day and move on.

Bitch.

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Jay Leno’s rep scoffed at the suggestion that Jay is taking all of his recent criticism personally.

“It’s entertainment value. Jay’s job is to make fun of the news. When he’s the subject of the news, wouldn’t it be hypocritical . . . to complain about people making fun of him? All he asks is that it be funny.”

Yet another example of “do as I say, not as I do.”

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Why didn’t I think of that (open circle with a dot in the middle)?

A firm in Mount Clemens, Michigan has released software that includes a new punctuation sign: the sarcmarc.

It’s “an open circle with a dot in the middle” which lets readers know that the author is being sarcastic.

No word yet as to whether or not the creator of plans on suing.

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Gilbert Arenas is looking for a plea deal that would allow him to avoid prison.

If the negotiations fall through, he faces up to 20 years in prison.

I don’t think he deserves jail time. So long as he never gets another penny to play professional basketball.

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Poor Jason Barry.

The 17-year-old thought it would be funny to write a letter on one of the computers at the Apple Store in the Staten Island Mall on Monday. The letter, which he credited to his friend’s father, discussed the author’s desire to inflict “bloody death” by detonating a bomb in the store.

After he was arrested, Barry claimed that he meant to erase the letter but forgot to.

Poor Jason Barry.

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The bodyguard for the No. 3 leader of al Qaeda was killed recently in a US drone attack along the Afghan-Pakistan border last Saturday.

So, whoever had Mahmoud Mahdi Zeidan in the dead pool, you just won $207.

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There are seven letters in today’s reader mail section, all in reference to Kyle Smith’s Sunday article FAT CHANCE.

Most of them are angry (“[the article] is full of such vitriol that it absolutely crosses the line from opinion to hate-mongering” and “Shame on you, Smith, for your mean-spirited small-mindedness”), but there’s one that praises Smith’s courage.

“Smith’s extremely well-written commentary, ‘Fat Chance,’ is excellent. Congratulations on such a fine job telling it as it is. ‘Suffering from obesity’? Indeed.” The author of this letter? Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan, President of the American Council on Science and Health in Manhattan.

I was thinking that maybe Liz meant to include a sarcmarc, but then I looked into who the ACSH is.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Council_on_Science_and_Health

Indeed indeed.

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Michael Barone writes one of the most asinine editorials I’ve seen in months (Obama Lovers vs. the Tea-Party Crew), which states “The Obama enthusiasts who dominated so much of the 2008 campaign cycle were motivated by style. The tea-party protesters who dominated so much of 2009 were motivated by substance.”

He continues, snarking that Obama Lovers “swooned at Barack Obama’s rhetoric” and “seem to have been motivated by a yearning for a rapturous, nuanced leader. Send that terrible tyrant with his tortured sentences and moral certitude back to Texas and install The One in the White House, and all would be well. The Obama enthusiasts have achieved that goal — and perhaps it’s not surprising that, as polls show, they’re not much engaged in the details of the health-care bills or cap-and-trade legislation or looming tax increases and the like. They, or at least most of them, were never much interested in those things anyway.”

Whereas the tea-party protestors “are interested in substantive political issues.”

And, to be fair, sending that Communist Socialist Nazi Obama bin Laden back to Kenya.

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The richest sports franchise in the world? Manchester United (worth $1,870,000,000). Next up, the Dallas Cowboys ($1,650,000,000) followed by the Washington Redskins ($1,550,000,000).

The Yankees are in fourth place ($1,500,000,000). Which means that if A-Rod died today, his unpaid salary would go back to the franchise and they’d be ranked third (or would it be second?).

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Remember that week after Jason Bay signed on that Mets fans were optimistic?

Well, that was fun. Carlos Beltran has decided (against the wishes of the Mets) to have surgery on his right knee. Will Beltran be able to play in 2010?

Possibly!

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The Nets lost again (111-87).

3-35.

Dear Lord, that’s just awful.

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Lou Dobbs has promised that he won’t be running for office.

I can only hope that that promise is legally binding.

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That’ll do for today. Tip your waitstaff.