The Cure For All Diseases! A World Without Parasites!

Now, within our grasp! I heard it on the Internets! It’s gotta be true! Order your zapper today and be rid of all disease-causing parasites through the miracle of, well, some principle they’re not exactly clear on. But you should definitely get one. It’s got magnets in it, and we all know how magic magnets are.

On the other hand, they might well be kooks.

Oh, brother.

Bush named Jerry Thacker, an HIV-positive evangelical who has referred to AIDS as a “gay plague” and homosexuality as a “deathstyle,” to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS. Thacker is also an advocate of strict abstinence-only education, and is among many on the hard right convinced that homosexuality is a choice that can be abandoned (a view not supported by the APA, among others).

Dept. of Bush Administration Hypocrisy , part . . . hell, I lost count.

It’s clearly not enough that they’re on some sort of religious-right anti-condom crusade — a crusade the pushes abstinence-only education as the sole approved way to talk about STDs and HIV, and ignores clinical data on what protection condoms offer. Now they’ve decided that state’s rights only means something if it’s a way to promulgate segregation.

Bush’s DEA is pushing for a federal conviction for an Oakland, California medical marijuana maven who worked within California’s medical use laws. Yup; the voters in California said what he did was okay, but the Feds don’t care. Gotta love the New Federalism.

UpdateThey’ve actually gone to trial; I’ve just read that the defense team have been forbidden from mentioning (1) what he was growing pot for (i.e., medical use) or (2) that he was operating with the blessing of the state of California.

Commercials I Don’t Skip

If you’re like me – and who wouldn’t like to be? – you love the Sprint commercials hinging on linguistically improbable misunderstandings attributed to spotty cellular connections. I love the “monkey with a cold” one, and “soap opera star” sends Erin and I into giggles with astonishing regularity, but this one may be their finest work yet.

Free Money from Music Weasels

No, really. There’s a class action settlement about price fixing, and if you bought a CD between 1995 and 2000 — a set of people that probably includes everyone reading this — you could get between $5 and $20 just by registering here.If too many people register, they’ll just give the money to charity. Seriously.