All week long all I have heard about is Miley Cyrus and her Vanity Fair photoshoot. From everything I have heard, Disney is not happy at all about her posing for that one particular pose. They have made it very clear that the star of “Hannah Montana” did something terribly wrong. Just about every pundit in the industry has barked about her parents, or “handlers”, or Annie Leibovitz, and Miley Cyrus has begun backpedaling because of Disney’s disapproval.

I miss Walt Disney. Not the company. The man. I bet he is turning somersaults in his grave knowing what the company is up to these days. The Walt Disney Company and the executives who run it are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites with no respect for the youth of the world. In fact, in my opinion they aren’t much better than child pornographers.

Why would I think such a thing? How could I compare them to child pornographers? It’s pretty simple when you look at the photos that accompany this article on TMZ.

Apparently Disney uses underaged models clad only in lacy, sexy lingerie to market their products in China. So why is it okay for them to support such racy ad campaigns but act completely “shocked” and “surprised” by the photo of Miley Cyrus?

The answer is simple. It’s easy to exploit cute, attractive, underage models that no one knows. It’s not so nice to see your major cash cow doing the same thing is it? Especially when you know parents nationwide will be phoning, faxing, and emailing in complaints the moment they see Miley in the satin bed sheet.

Disney makes a boatload of money from the Hannah Montana brand, and that is the only reason they have feigned shock at the actions of Miley Cyrus, her parents, her handlers, and Annie Leibovitz.

Shame on you Disney.

– Powered By Stuffr! –

This whole story is a complete waste of time.

Miley Cyrus took part in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair. At the time of the shoot, she said the photo looked artsy and she loved it. Miley’s family (or her “handlers”) were with her on the shoot and everyone involved loved the results.

Now, parents are complaining to Disney and because of this, Miley is backpedaling on the whole issue. Only now is she “embarassed” by the photoshoot.

Miley Cyrus is taking issue with a photo of herself that’s going around, and it’s not another amateur, truth-or-dare Internet snapshot — it’s the handiwork of Annie Leibovitz.

“I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed,” Cyrus said Sunday in a statement through her publicist. “I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.”

The photos, appearing in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, were taken by Leibovitz, a renowned celebrity photographer whose edgy, silver-toned portraits have included subjects such as Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson and a naked, pregnant Demi Moore.

This is ridiculous.

First of all, it was ridiculous for Vanity Fair and Annie Leibovitz to conduct a photoshoot of a 15 year old clad only in a silk sheet.

Secondly, it was ridiculous for Miley Cyrus, and her parents (or “handlers”) to agree to participate in a photoshoot of a 15 year old clad only in a silk sheet.

Everyone involved knew this photoshoot was going to have an adverse effect on her “G-rated” image. If they didn’t, then they are all a bunch of morons.

On a sidenote, every article I have seen about this issue claims it is a topless photo. While I admit it appears she is not wearing a top, you can hardly call it a “topless” photo.

Miley Cyrus knew exactly what she was doing. So did her parents (or “handlers”). She can’t be Hannah Montana forever, and she doesn’t want to get stuck in the “child actor” genre for the rest of her life, so it only makes sense that she would eventually want to be seen as a little more “grown up”.

Again, the matter is ridiculous and a total waste of everyone’s time. Anyone with a good pair of eyeglasses can see that.

– Powered By Stuffr! –

Former President Jimmy Carter met with an ex-minister in the Hamas “government” today while visiting the West Bank. I know, big surprise right? It seems he’s pretty cozy with all those Hamas guys anyway. He still plans to meet with Hamas’ top leader in Syria and Lord knows who else he will visit while he’s there. I hear he might even have time in his schedule to share a drink with Yasser Arafat.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter met an ex-minister in Hamas’s government on Tuesday, defying Israeli leaders who shunned the Nobel Peace Prize laureate over his contacts with the Islamist movement.

Carter said he had sought to visit the Gaza Strip, which Hamas seized in June after routing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah faction. He said the request was turned down, but he did not point the finger at Israel.

There’s no need to point the finger at Israel. Everyone knows that Israel controls the border crossings, so everyone knows who turned him down. Why mince words and refuse to “point fingers”? In his book, meeting with terrorists is okay, but pointing fingers must be a bad thing. I don’t think Israel is going to stop him though. He sounds pretty determined.

“I haven’t been able to get permission to go into Gaza. I would like to. I asked for permission. But I was turned down. But maybe we can find a way to circumvent that. I don’t know yet,” Carter said.

This man has defied current U.S. Policy about meeting with terrorists, and now he is planning to circumvent Israeli security to meet with those terrorists. He’s nothing if not consistent, eh? Mr. Carter says he is there acting as a “communicator”, yet he never seems to listen to anyone. A good communicator listens to those involved in the conversation. If he was listening he wouldn’t be there in the first place.

Carter says he is not there as a negotiator, nor is he a mediator, but he fully expects to be able to “relay” the message from Hamas to leaders of the United States. Say what? Why would he expect them to listen to him? The United States has a policy against talking to terrorists. The United States made it clear they did not want him to go. Why should they listen to him?

Mr. Carter also said, “I’m just trying to understand different opinions and communicate … between people who won’t communicate with each other”. Think about it people. He is meeting with Hamas. They have no intention to keep peace. Their own founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel. The United States knows this. Israel knows this. He obviously thinks he knows more than everyone else involved with Mid-East affairs. So, exactly who’s not communicating?

When he travels abroad he may think he’s a private citizen, but to the world he is Former President Jimmy Carter. His image and his words have a lasting impact on the people they reach. Whether he likes it or not, everytime he opens his mouth people around the world think he is speaking for the United States. He needs to stop. Immediately. Before he causes damage that cannot be repaired.

Former President Jimmy Carter is a very dangerous man. He claims to be a man of peace, but under the guise of peace he has bolstered evil dictators around the world, defied the foreign policies of several U.S. Presidents, and insulted the people of Israel time and time again.

He might as well lay around all day on some teak outdoor furniture, because I don’t think he’s going to be remembered as a great peacemaker afterall.

– Powered By Stuffr! –

Earlier today, I was following an exchange between two people on Twitter. One person was giving something away, and the other joked that he was giving something away too. Their comments afterward were subtle and to the point. It wasn’t a memorable conversation, nor did it involve anything of importance. The conversation ended as quickly as it began.

A bit later, one of them mentioned something and I clicked over to view their page in Twitter. While I was there, I noticed something wasn’t right. One of the messages sent in the earlier conversation was no longer appearing on their page. In fact, it was gone completely. Thank goodness for Stuffr, I was able to scroll back and make sure it had been there, and grab a screen shot. Normally, that’s not really a big deal. People delete their messages on Twitter from time to time, that is their perogative. But why delete that one comment?

The deleted message was in context to the conversation that took place. but because of it’s deletion, the Twitter timeline has been altered in a way to make it look like there was no message exchange at all from the person involved. History (in print) has been changed. In fact, it makes it look like no conversation even took place. Why would someone feel the need to do that?

There were no spelling or grammatical errors in the message. There was really no reason to delete the message, unless of course there was some underlying desire to make the other person look bad (and make it look like you did nothing to provoke the response from the second person).

In the interest of disclosure, one person involved is a very good friend, the other was an acquaintance I have never had an issue with, except the fact that he lied to me recently. Neither of these people are “innocent” by any means, but I hardly think it’s necessary to try to change history to make yourself look better.

In this day of social media, you have to understand that some things you say cannot (and should not) be deleted. If you aren’t honest (with yourself) enough to stand behind your own words, what kind of person are you? There’s a word for people that do that sort of thing, but lucky for us, time remembers none of them.

– Powered By Stuffr! –

In a shocking development today, former first lady Nancy Reagan finally made her choice on who to endorse for President in 2008.

John McCain will receive the endorsement of former first lady Nancy Reagan Tuesday evening in Los Angeles.

The support of Reagan, widow of the late President Ronald Reagan, was highly coveted during the Republican primary, when most of the candidates running tried regularly to cloak themselves in the Reagan mantle.

It’s nice to know that once she was given all the information on the republican candidates remaining in the race, that she was able to make an informed decision on who to endorse.

Of course, this endorsement might have meant something, anything, if she had actually done it back when there were more people left in the race. You know, back when there WAS a choice to be made in the first place.

– Powered By Stuffr! –

In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, officials in China are working hard to prove they are no longer the same country they were, say, yesterday. Yeah, uh huh. Okay, so that’s not quite entirely true.

Chinese officials are going to learn, albeit the hard way, that while you can restrict what people see, you cannot restrict what people feel.

It’s just a matter of time before the proverbial shit hits the fan and we as free people should be doing everything we can to make sure the Chinese people get the information they are looking for.

Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Sunday after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular U.S. video Web site.

The blocking added to the communist government’s efforts to control what the public saw and heard about protests that erupted Friday in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, against Chinese rule.

Access to YouTube.com, usually readily available in China, was blocked after videos appeared on the site Saturday showing foreign news reports about the Lhasa demonstrations, montages of photos and scenes from Tibet-related protests abroad.

It amazes me that more people do not speak out against what’s happening in and around China.

We hear a constant stream of noise about the crisis in Darfur, yet there’s hardly a peep when it comes to the protests in Tibet and the violent reaction by the Chinese against those protesting.

We place strong restrictions on imports of food products from countries where specific issues are prevalent (ie: Mad Cow) yet we allow millions of Chinese products to reach our shelves even though they could be tainted with lead, melamine, or God knows what else because we just aren’t checking.

We condemn Cuba to an eternal embargo because of the oppressive regime controlling the small island nation, yet we turn a blind eye to China’s constant human rights violations.

Why are we constantly sticking our heads in the sand when it comes to China? Do we think if we ignore all of these issues long enough they will go away? We should know better. In the past we have tried to ignore Iran, Iraq, South Africa, Sudan, Cuba, and many others, and see where that’s gotten us?

Wake up people. When it gets hot you have to roll down the window, ventshades just won’t cut it.

It sucks when people die.

Even if someone has been sick for a while and you have expected that their death was imminent, it is never easy when that time comes.

When a death comes unexpectedly we search for answers, we all do. We mourn those we have lost, but we look for an explanation as to why it happened. Our brains use reason every day so it only makes sense that our brains try to use reason to search for a logical, reasonable answer.

In most cases the reason is crystal clear, leaving no doubt why (or how) someone died. Sometimes, however, we are left wondering. We are left searching for answers. It’s not fair that our loved one was taken so soon, so we need to find that answer.

That answer is not always the one we set out looking for.

The family of John Ritter has lost its $67-million wrongful death lawsuit against a cardiologist and a radiologist, after a California jury on Friday cleared the doctors of negligence in the diagnosis and treatment of the late actor.

The jurors found that Ritter failed to follow radiologist Dr. Matthew Lotysch’s advice to see a physician once Lotysch had done a body scan on him in 2001, the Associated Press and L.A. City News Service report.

Ritter died of a torn aorta in 2003.

The other defendant in the case was Dr. Joseph Lee, who treated Ritter the night he died.

John Ritter was advised to see a physician after having a full body scan in 2001. He did not. I’m sure his family misses him very much, but trying to “compensate” for that loss by suing two doctors who clearly did everything they could to save him just doesn’t make sense.

Doctors, and radiologists, make good money, but everyone on this planet knows they do not have $67 million between them. Hell, I bet they don’t even have $6.7 million between them.

From everything I have heard, John Ritter was a good man. Why would you want to bring down the reputation and livelihood of two other good men, just to compensate for Mr. Ritter’s “potential earning power”?

If there was obvious negligence, I could see the reason for making things right, but John Ritter should have followed up with a physician in 2001 and he didn’t. Because he didn’t he showed up at the emergency room presenting with symptoms of a heart attack and the staff did everything they could to save him.

Losing a loved one is hard, but sometimes we just have to let go. Being heartbroken because your loved one didn’t tell you about their medical problem doesn’t give you the right to destroy the lives of those who dedicated their lives to saving him.

This is absolutely appalling. The doctors, the nurses, the staff, and everyone else involved with that clinic should have the book thrown at them. What the hell were they thinking? It’s not like procedures done at a clinic like this don’t make money.

It just proves that you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars on an education and still be the stupidest person to live on the planet.

Nearly 40,000 people learned this week that a trip to the doctor may have made them sick. In a type of scandal more often associated with Third World countries, a Las Vegas clinic was found to be reusing syringes and vials of medication for nearly four years. The shoddy practices may have led to an outbreak of the potentially fatal hepatitis C virus and exposed patients to HIV, too.

The discovery led to the biggest public health notification operation in U.S. history, brought demands for investigations and caused scores of lawyers to seek out patients at risk for infections.

Thousands of patients are being urged to be tested for the viruses. Six acute cases of hepatitis C have been confirmed. The surgical center and five affiliated clinics have been closed.

“I find it baffling, frankly, that in this day and age anyone would think it was safe to reuse a syringe,” said Michael Bell, associate director for infection control at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One of the infected patients is retired airplane mechanic Michael Washington, 67, who was the first to report his infection. On the advice of his doctor, he received a routine colon exam in July at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.

While many people wonder how many of the 40,000 people were actually infected, I can’t help but wonder about the untold thousands they came into contact with after the fact. How do you track them? This is much bigger than people think it is.

– Powered By Stuffr! –

When I was a kid, I never got one of those cool electronic kits from Radio Shack. I got lots of other cool stuff, but never the coveted electronic kit. Over the weekend we decided to stop at our local Radio Shack, just to browse. Yeah, I know it’s sad, but I’m a geek. Always have been, always will be.

While we were there, we picked up one of the the advanced electronic kits for our oldest son and we noticed a “snap together” type kit which would be perfect for our middle son. We spent a few minutes looking at the items and decided to get the kit that was an award winner.

In fact, it was named one of the 100 best children’s products by Dr. Toy! Wow, huh? I was impressed. It seemed that purchasing this item would be the best buy we could make. If Dr. Toy says this is one of the 100 best products for children, we just couldn’t go wrong. Or could we?

After we got home our son immediately started working with his new kit. While he was sitting there building a project, he was reading the box.

“This product contains chemicals, including lead, known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash hands after handling.”

WTF?

Now granted, I am not so stupid as to think that my kids won’t come into contact with lead and other things that could cause harm at various times throughout their lives but that risk should not come in the form of the toys and educational items we bring into our home.

I know there has been a rash of items coming over from China that are contaminated with lead, I have blogged about them, but this is different. This wasn’t the result of some mistake on the part of a manufacturer, this wasn’t the result of some shady backroom deal between a manufacturer and a supplier. Apparently the lead contained in this product is supposed to be there, or else they wouldn’t announce it on the side of the box. (I really wish I would have read that corner of the box at the store).

I would think that the level of lead contained in the kit is minimal, but how do I know? Before we noticed the corner of the box we had no reason to believe there was any lead in it at all. It’s a snap together kit so every single piece could contain lead. Do they all contain lead, or is it just one small piece, and if so, which one is it?

Without knowing what parts contain lead, we are hesitant to keep it. Why would we take that risk? We don’t know if the lead is contained to one part which can be removed from the kit or if it’s in every snap on every part throughout the kit. So the kit is going back. We’ve already voiced our displeasure with Radio Shack, but what about “Dr. Toy”?

Dr. Toy’s real name Stevanne Auerback, PhD. She’s pretty smart and accomplished too. She is well educated, trained in child psychology, and she approved the first grant for the Children’s Television Workshop, “Sesame Street” when she worked for the Commissoner of Education. Wow. From reading her website, it seems she really knows kids and she’s made a career out of helping parents know which toys are “smart” for their kids.

But what does she define as “smart” for our kids? Is a smart toy one that stimulates their brain? Is a smart toy something that helps children learn motor skills? Or is a smart toy one that exposes children to a substance that could cause constipation, diarrhea, poor appetite, weight loss, insomnia, brain damage, central nervous system damage, kidney damage, or reproductive problems? I sure would like to know, but Dr. Toy won’t tell me. While she considers safety when she reviews a toy, she does not include any representation of that safety into her review, at least that’s what her mumbo jumbo disclaimer tells me.

Our review of toys does not include any representation as to the safety of the toys we review.

Although we consider safety as one of the many criteria used in evaluating the toys we review, we make no representation as to whether a toy has any issues regarding its safety.

The manufacturers of the items we review are responsible for the safety of their products and it is their respective responsibilities to see to it that the items they manufacture and submit to us for review meet all safety standards.

We are always concerned with the safety and well being of children and recommend that parents select products that are clearly labeled and appropriate for their child’s age and ability.

We are in no way responsible for the use and results of any product included on our site.

Seriously, I know the exposure to lead is most likely very low, but why risk any exposure at all? How many parents, like us, purchased this item after seeing the “100 Best” award on the top of the box? How many parents, like us, did so without knowing about the product containing lead? How many parents, like us, trusted the good doctors recommendation even though she has a big disclaimer on her website?

Of course, you can’t read that disclaimer when you are standing in the store deciding if you are going to buy the item that clearly states it is one of the 100 best products for your children.

– Powered By Stuffr! –

Wow. Rather than going through the trouble to start enforcing civility in their community, Mexico City’s transportation system has decided to start segregating buses by the sexes, all in the name of ’safety’.

The first three cars on the subway are already reserved for women and children and it’s working so well that they are now trying the whole segregation idea on buses, because you know it’s easier to fix a problem if you eliminate the conditions that may have caused it, by sticking your head in the sand.

Mexico City has started a women-only bus service to protect female passengers from groping and verbal abuse common on the city’s packed public transportation system.

Millions of people cram into subway trains and buses in the Mexican capital, one of the world’s largest cities, and women have long complained of abuse from men taking advantage of overcrowding to sneak in an inappropriate grab.

While there are a lot of men who are pigs, are they saying that men are the only ones capable of inappropriate behavior? Seriously? I doubt it. Even the article I am referencing has a comment from a woman who says there are aggressive women too.

How far will they take the whole segregation of the sexes thing anyway? First trains, then buses, then what? Are we going to see guys selling a used Rolex or something in a trenchcoat? Will women cross the street on one sidewalk and men on the other? God forbid they share a drinking fountain.

What’s next?

How flawed is a society that it resorts to forced segregation rather than enforced socialization to solve it’s problems?