What all sociopaths need to succeed, one government whines about awesome riots and Soulja Boy channles his inner Hemmingway

- Every good psychopath/sociopath needs two main things: a manifesto and an insane cause to fight for. James J. Lee, the gunman who held three employees of Discovery Communications hostage before he was shot and killed by police Wednesday, had both of those things in abundance. Not to speak ill of the deceased, but anyone who runs a Web site called savetheplanetprotest.com and wrote letters to the Discovery Channel railing against it for airing programs that encouraged “human growth and procreation,” has the insane cause down pat. Lee also had a manifesto posted on his site; a rambling diatribe against shadowy, ever-moving foes who were working toward the demise of the world as we know it. Among other demands, the manifesto (fun to say or write) called on Discovery to “stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.” Seriously, bro? I don’t know if Lee was aware of this or not, but procreation is how the human race stays alive. If people don’t have kids, then the human race dies. Now, I realize that the world is becoming overpopulated and resources are beginning to evaporate as a result, but I don’t think you can pin all of the blame for that on the Discovery Channel and its family of networks. Sure, Discovery Communications produces Jon and Kate Plus 8 (now Kate Plus 8), 19 Kids and Counting, Table for 12, Quints By Surprise, the upcoming Sextuplets Take New York (premieres on Sept. 14) and a seven-part series about polygamists called Sister Wives that drops on Sept. 26. However, those are moronic reality shows that are as unrealistic as anything on television and to say that people use them as guideposts for their own lives….sorry, I can't make that leap. It did not surprise me to learn that Lee was arrested in 2008 for disorderly conduct for protesting outside of Discovery and was well-known for his hatred of the company. That much was apparent in the portion of his manifesto in which he demanded that Discovery “MUST KNOW the human population is behind all the pollution and problems in the world, and YET you encourage the exact opposite instead of discouraging human growth and procreation.” So while I never root for anyone’s death (just the death of American Karaoke on Fox), I can't say that the planet has suffered a massive loss now that James J. Lee is gone………

- What a day in court for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who once again had to endure the dirty laundry of their dueling, soon-to-be-divorced owners Frank and Jamie McCourt being aired in open court, in front of a packed courtroom. There was Frank McCourt testifying that he always intended for run the team with reductions to player payroll, higher ticket prices, and a much smaller baseball operations department. He said that to explain away his team company - which owns the Dodgers, the Stadium and real estate surrounding the ballpark -- has nearly $620 million in outstanding debt. That debt is dragging the team down, but it wasn’t until the trial began that the public learned about Frank’s financial woes in earnest. Despite his company’s bleak financial outlook, he insists that a signed agreement between he and his wife makes him the team’s sole owner. Jamie McCourt likewise has not moved off her position that she never consented to giving up her stake in the franchise. Her attorneys have asked Judge Scott Gordon to invalidate the agreement because the couple signed two conflicting versions of the document. Maybe you’re asking how anyone even accumulates $620 million in debts and if so, here’s your answer - in part. See, the McCourts reportedly took out two loans to finalize the McCourts’ purchase of the Dodgers. These mystery loans never appeared on documents submitted by Frank McCourt to Major League Baseball and also have not been paid back. The problem now is that the parties making those loans - Franklin Weigold, a long-time electronic-equipment executive, and Paul and Linda Carter, friends of the McCourts from Massachusetts - are entitled to convert their loans into ownership stakes in the Dodgers if McCourt's holding company misses payments or defaults on the loans. The debts are indeed outstanding (even more than they used to be) and other investors are owed millions of dollars by the McCourts as well. Lawyers for the Dodgers maintain that the Weigold-Carter loans are not yet due and that Frank McCourt has not missed any payments on those loans over the past six years. Either way, some America’s highest-paid legal minds are at work in this circus, er, trial, including David Boies, one of Jamie McCourt's attorneys and a man who represented Al Gore in his Supreme Court case against George W. Bush over the 2000 presidential election. It was Boies who argued that someone on Frank McCourt’s legal team a critical section of the MPA just hours before Jamie signed it on March 31, 2004. The issue isn’t clarified in the least by the fact that the McCourts never signed the same copy of the agreement at the same time and in the same place. But these are just the first in what should be a salacious, embarrassing trial for one and all involved………

- Prepare for a takeover by no less a literary mastermind than Soulja Boy Tell'em, publishing industry. With musical luminaries like Justin Bieber and his 12 years of life experience already set to write their memoirs, the man who is making the "Pretty Boy Swag" famous clearly feels that he can hack it in the world of Faulkner and Twain as well. He plans to release a book called "Teenage Millionaire," which not-so-coincidentally will be tied to his next album, The DeAndre Way, scheduled for release next month. It’s amazing how that timing always works out, right? Artists miraculously have one project - a book, movie, etc. - coming out at the exact same time as their album. Soulja Boy dropped news of his sure-to-be-stellar book during a recent MTV interview and laid out what his book will be about. "I talk about how my life changed. It talks about the music industry, everything I learned about the music industry — how I got into the music industry with my mind set, all the ins and outs that I go through. All the chapters break down my beliefs and what steps and methods I took to get in this position. I just go and break [them] down into detail. I just want all my fans to read it when my album drops and have a good read and feel where I'm coming from," he explained. "It talks about me making my first million dollars at 17 years old.” Great, because what’s not inspiring and informative about some bubble-gum wrapper who rode a wave of recycled, overproduced beats to a small fortune and is currently rocking the No. 12 song on Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart? But wait, there’s more. Soulja Boy (real name: Overrated Hack) is also in Los Angeles this week to shoot the video for one of his next singles, "Blowing Kisses” and predicts that his next release is “another hit." Well, just as long as it’s about air plays, album sales and not good music, then at least the focus is in the right direction……….

- Boo freaking hoo, government of Mozambique! You can whine and cry about how your nation’s economy has lost more than $3 million because of deadly riots over the rising prices of food and other goods, but the reality is that riots uplift, inspire and at their core, make a nation all kinds of awesome. Protests were breaking out in two additional towns even as the government made its whiny announcement, showing that the people just don’t care and are going to make their voice heard no matter what. I’m not necessarily disputing the government’s claims of damaged property and lost production, which were laid out in a new government report. If computers, chairs and other equipment were looted from bank branches during riots, and loads of corn and cement were taken from railway cars, then so be it. There is a price that must be paid in any revolution and a few busted chairs and some stolen corn are very small costs in this case. Maybe the price to pay for a 25-percent rise in the price of a loaf of bread rise 25 in the past year, along with rising fuel and water costs, are the fault of the government presiding over this mess - the same government the rioters want to overthrow. You simply cannot expect a nation where more than half the population lives in poverty to sit idly by and live in misery. And oh by the way, I don’t believe that the government actually gives a crap about the thousands of hawkers who make their living on the streets of the capital, the workers Antonio Fernando, the minister of trade and industry, cited in his criticism of the protestors. “These kinds of things can drive away foreign investors," Fernando said of the deadly riots. The riots only got better this week as demonstrators threw stones, burned tires and looted shops, and police opened fire on them. Supporting the government in its battle against the protestors is the Mozambique Workers Organization, the country's largest trade union federation, which has called for workers to be allowed to get back to their factories and offices. One last note…..it is the government that sets the price of bread, fuel and water and insisted that it will remain firm on the higher prices. You want to pull that kind of garbage, government of Mozambique, then expect to reap the whirlwind………

- Because nearly everyone with ten bucks and an Internet connection has a Web site to spit their opinion on these days, it’s safe to say a lot of false claims and information are out there. Usually that false information is relatively harmless, but occasionally it crosses the line to where something needs to be done, legal-wise. Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones found herself in just such a situation recently, suing the creators of thedirty.com and winning an $11 million judgment against them after they falsely claimed that she had contracted a venereal disease after reportedly having sex with several Bengals players. Perhaps the site felt it had avoided crossing any lines by using only Jones’ first name and middle initial, but they posted a picture with the story and that was enough in the mind of the court. Still, the site could have avoided the major financial hit if it had only removed the story when Jones’ lawyers requested that they do so. Or, they might have had more success by actually bothering to show up in court to defend themselves or respond to the lawsuit in any way, shape or form. The operator of the Arizona-based website, Hooman Karamian, has not commented on anything relating to the suit and may feel that the disclaimer on thedirty.com that reads, “Postings may contain erroneous or inaccurate information. All images are credited to their original location. The owner of this site does not ensure the accuracy of any content presented on TheDirty.com,” is enough. In spite of that disclaimer, I would agree with the plaintiff in this case because disclaimer or not, those words and claims could absolutely have caused major harm to Jones’ reputation. Next time, be more responsible with your VD allegations, thedirty.com………