Stupid Russia, tricks are for kids.

So apparently Russia was not content with just being able to see Sarah Palin's Alaskan home, they wanted to know more of the U.S. Federal officials have charged eleven people with being secret agents of Russia... and I thought the Cold War was over...

The FBI stated that the alleged spies supposed to become "sufficiently 'Americanized'" to gain access to the U.S. government's planning and policy apparatus. The FBI decrypted a 2009 message that was sent to 2 of the alleged spies... it went something like this.

"You were sent to USA for long-term service trip," the intercepted message read. "Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc. — all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in U.S. and send intels [intelligence reports] to C [intelligence headquarters in Moscow]." - L.A. Times.

But what really and truly blows my mind about all of this, is that Russia seems to think it can gloss over the event merely by saying "BUT EVERYTHING ELSE HAS BEEN GOING SO WELL!" Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated today that he hoped that the spy scandal would not damage "improving relations" between Russia and the U.S. Really? Really? Have you been drinking the same water as Sarah Palin? What is with you people, we discover you've had spies in the country since the early 1990s and you hope it won't damage "improving relations."

The Russian ministry released a statment defending the alleged spies stating that "They [the alleged spies] have not committed any kind of actions directed against the interests of the United States." Hmmm, so we're just supposed to wait around until they do?

An FBI Agent, Amit Kachhia-Patel, said the spy operation was a "deep cover" assignment filled with "false identities, secret rendezvous, such old-school spy craft techniques" as "invisible writing" and a "cover profession" to blend into American society. - L.A. Times

And Oleg Gordievsky, a former deputy head of the KGB (who defected in 1985 and is now living in the United Kingdom) confirmed that Russia probably has around 50 undercover couples living and spying inside the U.S. He told the Associated Press today that the Russian President would know the number of illegal operatives in each target country, but wouldn't be given their names.

Now, I'm not saying that I don't think we're guilty of the same thing... I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist myself. I'm betting that our government and the CIA probably have a number of spies in Russia. Difference is, we haven't gotten caught. We're just that good. (Don't make me eat my words in a few months CIA, stay classy)

I don't know how you're going to get yourself out of this one Russia, but please try harder than "BUT EVERYTHING ELSE WAS GOING SO WELL!"

Sarah Palin has to give the money back!

In addition to the stupidity of writing talking points on her hand and selectively choosing to become offended in regards to the word "retard" ... Sarah Palin is quite possibly guilty of any number of ethics violations.

While governor she was charged with over 20 ethics violation, which she claimed left her with over 1/2 million in legal fees. And then some idiots (who for whatever reason work for her) raised a fund to pay for her defense.

Problem is... she was still governor. This week a ruling from last year was upheld, specifying that the fund was illegal because it used her official position as governor to raise money for her personal gain. However, the independent counsel dispensing the ruling, gave Palin the benefit of the doubt, saying that she relied on bad advice from out-of-state lawyers. WHAT? WHAT?!?!?! Come on Sarah, I may not be brilliant, but I do know that it's bad to use public persona for personal gain. I mean you all but pulled a Rob Blagojevich here.

Now what is really and truly disgusting here, is that though she has to give back $386,000 plus, she gets to KEEP anything made after she resigned. AND she has gone and set up a new fund. Seriously lady? You've made millions off your public stupidity, and now you want other people to pay for your bad behaviour as governor? Her lawyer told reporters she ran up the debts in public service, so a fund was justified. WHAT? WHAT!?!?! You ran up the debts, breaking the law, and committing ethics violations, that was not serving the public, that was dis-servicing the public!

Seriously, why hasn't someone bought this woman a muzzle?

This week in stupid lawsuits.

So although I still don't think anything trumps Lindsay Lohan's suit, I do find these two particularly amusing.

Hulk Hogan is apparently suing Post Cereal because Bam-Bam beat up a cartoon parody of him in a Fruity Pebbles commercial. His complaint, filed under his real name (Terry Bollea) no less, boasts that he is a "well recognized wrestling champion with long blond hair and a blond Fu Manchu mustache." He argues that Post Cereal used his likeness without permission and he has "been harmed by the false endorsement, including the failure to be compensated for the false endorsement and diminishment of his endorsement value by the unauthorized and degrading depiction in the COCOA SMASHDOWN advertisements."

First and foremost - props to the attorney, Joseph Bain. (his e-mail is in the complaint if you feel the need to e-mail him and congratulate him) Mr. Bain managed to
A) ensure that Fu Manchu was capitalized,
B) look Hulk Hogan in the face and take this complaint seriously
C) managed to insinuate that this commercial devalues Hulk's endorsement value, even though Hulk willingly participated in productions such as: Mr. Nanny, Santa With Muscles and Shadow Warriors 2 ... a sequel to a really bad movie no one has ever heard of. And look at that photo... I mean REALLY! Good job Mr. Bain

But all in all, I think Hulk's in it for the money. Cause frankly, I think getting his butt kicked by Bam-Bam takes his reputation UP a notch.


Also remarkably stupid this week, is the lawsuit from a stripper, a STRIPPER mind you, that a professional football player abandoned her.

Silvia Mena accuses the Washington Redskin's Albert Haynesworth of allegedly impregnating her and then abandoning her. She's asking for $10 million. First of all lady, you're a stripper, he met you at a strip club, what on God's green earth would make you think that he wanted to have a baby with you? Much less acknowledge you in public. She claims he promised to support her and take care of her and blah, blah, blah... how do women never learn that men will say just about anything as long as you take your pants off?

Second of all $10 million? How is does your standard of living merit that? How does raising a kid COST that? Granted, Haynesworth makes a lot of money, but managing to get yourself knocked up by him doesn't mean you should be able to take a windfall.

Mena’s laywer, Salvatore Strazzullo, says, “This man is worth millions. (Mena) has had to apply for Medicaid to take care of her pregnancy.” Yes sir, but this is because she is a pregnant stripper. And last I checked, not that many people were into that. Also, there's birth control AND condoms available, really this is as much her fault as his.

I say Haynesworth should go, get a paternity test and then sue for custody.

Facebook security woes...

... so due to Facebook's recent security breaches, a recent British poll posits that 1/2 of facebook users are likely to quit. I say "horse-do-do!" Facebook currently boasts over 400 million users and if it goes down to 200 million, I will eat something hat-like in nature.

The poll gave 5 options
30% are "highly likely" to quit Facebook due to privacy concerns
30% said it was "possible"
12% of respondents said that won't leave the site
12% said it's "not likely"
And 16% have already stopped using facebook.

Quite frankly, I'd love to know just WHO was polled, because if these stats didn't include high school students, then they're majorly skewed. I mean granted, all stats are skewed, but still.

The world has come too addicted to facebook to quit. Sure you might change your privacy pictures ... or take down / un-tag those photos of you upside down on a keg in a short dress (not me though, I love those photos), but I say the likelihood of quitting facebook is SLIM.

I think the pole should have had more realisitc options.
1 - I quit and I'm not going back ever, regardless of any new privacy procedures
2 - I quit till it's safer
3 - I am quitting UNLESS there are new saftey procedures enacted
4 - I'm not quitting, but I'm taking down those photos of last weekend, and that note my opinion of the CIA's usefulness to this country.
5 - I'm only likely to quit if there are more safety breaches in the future.
6 - I'm not quitting, ever, facebook is my crack... and I'm never going to rehab.

I feel like you would have gotten more honest results.

Seriously, I'm one of those people who facebook is one of my drugs. I'm out to disprove Dunbar's Number.

What is wrong with people?

In case you haven't heard... a Malawi court today sentenced a gay couple to 14 years in jail for practicing homosexuality. 14 years! Really? REALLY? The court cites reasons such “gross indecency” and “unnatural acts” under a British-colonial era law.

This blows my mind. There's also various quotes from citizens of Malawi saying that homosexuality goes against their "culture" and their "religion." Well you're religion is your own business, but I've got news for you folks, there is no wholly straight culture on the face of the earth. Homosexuality has been around since the dawn of time, and if you think your culture is free of it, it's just because you didn't notice it before.

I was pretty disgusted when a school in Mississippi told Constance McMillen that she couldn't bring her female date to the prom. And then cancelled the whole prom instead of being forced to honor her equality. And while devastating to a high school student, a prom is a small thing in the grand scope of life, and the regonition she brought the cause, not to mention the cash and job offers she got herself, seem to have worked the whole situation out in her favor.

But JAIL TIME? For merely being human? And refusing to forego love when you find it? That's disgusting! DISGUSTING! And this is not American prison. This is a hard labor camp. These gentlemen will more than likely DIE than survive a 14 year sentence. So now it's a death sentence for being gay.

Seriously third world countries, if you want to start being recognized by the rest of the world, start acting like it. Minus parts of the South of course.

What not to do in a bad economy...

So it comes to light recently, that Bristol Palin, hypocrite daughter on one-time VP candidate Sarah Palin, will be commanding $15,000 - $30,000 per speaking engagement. These prices are set by Single Source Speakers, a group that boasts Drew Brees among its speakers, but really no one else of note.

Palin's available speaking topics include: "Abstinence, Conference, Fundraiser, Pro-Life, Special Event/Holiday, Women's, Youth." ABSTINENCE? You want to pay Bristol Palin, a girl who couldn't keep it in her pants at 16 $30,000 to speak about abstinence? That amount of money is someone's ANNUAL salary! If she's such a good kid and a good Christian and the whole 9, she should take every penny she makes from these speaking events and donate it to those who need it.

I recently commented that I would rather go see Snooki, from MTV's Jersey Shore speak than Bristol Palin. Little did I know that Snooki is currently commanding $10,000 just to SHOW UP somewhere, and probably get drunk there as well. Yep, that's right folks, 10 large for just showing up and acting like Jersey trash. Awesome.

I wonder why I got a law degree. I mean really, going out and making an ass our of yourself in public seems like a much lazier and easier way of making a living. And it looks like it pays better too.

And back in 2007, at an all time high, apparently before having to take yet another stint in rehab, Lindsay Lohan was offered $350,000 to have her 21st birthday party at a nightclub. This of course was before her more recently plummet toward ridiculousness.

Come on people! Are we really shelling out this kind of money for this kind of stupidity? You don't get to complain about what a horrible state the economy is in if you keep fostering this kind of nonsense.

Boycott morons, that is all.

Spare Change Charities part Deux

Alright friends, I am not giving up on this idea, just putting it on hold while I sort some things out with it. But a lot more goes into it than I hoped. I need to do several things.

1 - find two other directors to start this thing up with me
2 - write articles of incorporation
3 - hold an organizational meeting
4 - create by laws
5 - file with the state
6 - apply for tax exempt status
7 - figure out the money part
8 - start a records book
9 - open an account with a bank
10 - open an account with paypal

I think I will get started on the Articles of Incorporation after I'm complete the resource of whether a charity that raise money for other charities will meet all of the federal and state rules.

Spare Change Charities

So oftentimes in my life, I feel like I am not doing enough good. And I really would like to set up something called Spare Change Charities... but my legal skills are not good enough to know how to go about setting up a not-for-profit. Basically all I want is a paypal account, where people can send spare change, and then I can cut a month check from that account to the specified Charity.

Basically, I was thinking that it would work with people just donating their spare change at the end of each day/week/month/year ... whatever they wanted to commit to. And each month we would pick a different charity to which the grand total would go to.

Say your bank account has $1000.46 cents in it at the end of the day. You could donate your spare change each day, or at the end of each week, each month what have you.

But I'm thinking if I wanted to try this, I could dig myself a big whole if I went about it wrong. And I really don't want the IRS chasing me down for crimes committed on good intentions ... so if anyone has any suggestions as to how to go about this endeavour, that would be AWESOME!

Bullied to Death

I'm sure everyone has seen on the news at this point, the suicide of that poor girl in South Hadley, MA. 9 teens have been charged with crimes relating to her death.

Phoebe was a pretty Irish girl who had started school this year as a freshman at South Hadley High. She had a fling with a senior football player, which apparently made some other girls jealous, because when it ended, the rentlentless bullying began. This girl had her books pushed out of her hands, cans chucked at her head, was continually called a slut, often times following her up and down hallways to do so, etc. etc. etc. A lot of this happened in front of teachers. Who apparently did a whole lot of nothing. Her mother called school administrators twice to complain about what was happening to her daughter, again, no result.

Proof positive that America has just become numb to how horrible high school students can be to one another. I remember high school, and I remember how mean kids can be to one another. And it is much easier in that environment to agree with other students that so-and-so is a slut, rather than stand up for her. Because standing up for someone may cause bullies to dump you and land you in the bullied group instead.

And maybe I have rose coloured hindsight, but in all four years of my high school, I don't think anyone was as awful to anyone as these kids were to Phoebe. Yeah we may have called people sluts, but it usually wasn't to their faces, and screaming it at a girl in front of a teacher would have ended someone with detention and some counselling sessions. And while there were fights, I don't recall a lot of one way, never ending assaults, and again, pushing someone's books out of their hands or throwing a can at them would have gotten you punished. Yet everyone seems to have looked the other way with these 9 nasty children.

I think social media has a lot to do with bullying getting worse. When I was in high school, there was no myspace, no facebook, no twitter. If you wanted to call someone a slut, you had to actually say it to someone. And it was sure as shit going to get back to that person that you had done so. Then came myspace, and the ability to belittle people without ever having to face them. They say at 42% of kids have been cyber bullied these days. All you had to do was create a fake page, with some easily grabbed fake pictures from the internet and start harassing whomever you felt like behind the shield of anonymity. It went so far that there was that crazy mother who helped her daughter trick another school girl into thinking that she had an internet boyfriend and then pretending that the boy suddenly hated her. This cause Megan Meier, also 14 at the time to hang herself in her closet as well.

It became so easy to bully someone online, that everyone became desensitized to it, and bullying in real life just gets worse and worse. And while some people say that these 9 teens did not cause Phoebe's death, it was a suicide, I say horseshit. Yeah, Phoebe has to take some of the blame, because she made a choice. But she was a 15 year old, in a new country at a fragile age, tormented by children so hateful and unfeeling that they continued to mock her on a facebook page set up in her memorial AFTER HER DEATH! They then proceeded to brag on their own facebook pages that they had "fooled" the cops when questioned. What are parents, and we as a culture, doing these days that kids have come to this?

While I don't think that these kids are guilty of manslaughter or anything similar. I do think that there need to be serious consequences to what they did and a serious amount of counselling as well, otherwise we could be looking at tomorrow's sociopaths.

Legalize it!

In an effort not to write about the health care legislation, which I feel has been overdone, and really, if I hear one more opinion about it, I may just scream, I choose another topic...

It looks like California may be voting on legalizing pot. And not just in the medical sense (excuse for a minute here while I stop my siblings from packing their bags and loading up the caravan).

Today, Los Angeles County elections officials must turn in their count of valid signatures collected on a statewide legalization initiative. The Los Angeles Times reports that the number is virtually certain to be enough to qualify the initiative for placement on the November ballot.

Now, I'm not a pot smoker, but I say go for it, California. I'm not a pot smoker, but I am for the legalization of marijuana (and across the board, not just medically). Because I think it has the capability to take a chunk out of our defecit, create new jobs and generally boost moral. Because honestly, who's happier than stoners who aren't worried about being caught? And I think it has the benefit of making sure that all the pot sold would JUST be pot, you wouldn't have to worry about your kid accidentally smoking some sort of laced pot and getting addicted to crack/rocks/speed/whathaveyou.

Now, I think there should be serious limits and regulations put upon it. I think you should have to be 21, same as beer. I don't think you should be permitted to drive high, go to work high, or do any of the things you should not be doing drunk, while high.

Plus, can you imagine the jobs that would be created while scientists discover what the legal limit of being high is? Previously, unproductive, pothead members of society could be employed to just smoke pot all day while scientists poke and prod at them like monkeys. (Because I honestly don't think you could get a monkey to smoke pot, and therefore, humans would have to be used.)

And, instead of paying cops to head out and destroy marijuana farms and pot gardens, (which can be a deadly form of employment if the pot farmers are heavily armed) we can pay those same police to just inspect whether or not pot farms have licenses, and if they don't impose a big old fee, which will also help us out of the national deficit.

And I don't think we have to worry about our kids starting on coke or speed, because suddenly pot is legal. If properly restricted to age groups, it will still be as "cool" as booze is to teenagers. And kids are smart these days, they just want to be in an altered state, they don't want to be dead.

And it's not just California (although they are definitely getting the most buzz) Nevada has measure for 2012 which would allow state licensed pot stores. And a campaign in Washington State hopes to put a legalization measure onto the fall ballot as well. And I say go for it. Let's use drugs to dig this country out of its deficit.