I was so hoping this would become a big deal. Thacker walked away, saying that the controversy was manufactured from quotations taken out of context: "the term 'gay plague' was in vogue in the mid 80's as this disease first took its toll on that population. Obviously, this disease is now found in people of all races, colors, creeds, and sexual orientations, so I do not use the term except in describing the historical context." Likewise, I have to assume, "deathstyle" and "sin of homosexuality" have perfect valid historical contexts.

In the past few days, Daschle, Feinstein, Kerry, et al have come down hard on Bush's saber-rattling on Iraq. Good for them. Where was all this rhetoric when they voted for the Congressional authorization? None of these born-again peaceniks demanded that Bush's war powers be contingent on a UN resolution, so I don't know where the get the chutzpah to demand it now. They want it both ways, and it's disgusting.

WaPo now weighs in on Mr. "Gay Plague." The highlights: the bios on his website have been cleansed of the more radical language we discussed yesterday. I can't say I blame him, they were embarrassing. The piece brings up an interesting objection to Thacker's appointment, via Carl Schmid who is gay, Republican, and worked for Bush 2000:

"We need to have a scientific-based approach to the problems of HIV-AIDS and not this radical agenda he's pushing," Schmid said. Aside from the harshly anti-gay tone of Thacker's rhetoric, Schmid said, his major objection to Thacker is his aggressive lobbying for abstinence-until-marriage education."Abstinence-until-marriage does not help anyone in the gay community, because we can't get married," he said. "If you are a gay youth, who is addressing your concerns?"

The punchline: Carl Schmid graduated from Bob Jones University. Compassionate! Conservative!

I'm doing research today. Ha'aretz runs a piece about how a bunch of Americans hate Jews, consider them in control of Wall Street, think a Jewish President would have split loyalties with regard to Israel, etc. What's remarkable, though, is not the numbers. It's the fact that the article doesn't say who ran the poll, margins of error -- nothing analytically useful is given. It's just the message that the US hates Jews. So now I'm pissed off because I have to find out where this study came from. The Ha'aretz article defers to the SF Chronicle, which attributes the "academic" survey to the San Francisco Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Halfway through the Chronicle piece, we find it was conducted in May of 2002 -- that's a little annoying. It took nine months to read a little more than 1000 responses? At the very end of the article:

The survey, which has a margin of error of 3.1 percent, was analyzed by the San Francisco institute, but administered by International Communications Research in Media, Pa.

OK, now I'm annoyed that I have to find out how credible this survey is. Read on...

NAM is taking issue with a Bush appointment to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Jerry Thacker is a fundamentalist Christian, which is fine, and HIV+ from a 1986 blood transfusion, also fine. Calling homosexuality a "deathstyle" seems counter-productive, though. So do references to the "Gay Plague." There were other, more common-sense appointments to the Council, so it's not the end of the world. But still. It's hard to interpret it as anything other than a big "fuck you" to AIDS activists. Kinda like appointing David Duke to the Civil Rights Commission, for the sake of "balance."

Bush is now considering closing a "loophole" in the tax code which forbids me from taking a meaningful deduction on large SUVs like Hummers, Lincoln Navigators, etc. For the Prius, I get $2k. For the Hummer, I could get $33,000. That's right. With the super-generous 7% fuel efficiency target mandated by 2005, Bush feels comfortable asking you to buy Hummers for doctors, lawyers and accountants.

I'll admit to putting a coat on my dog, but I have to draw the line somewhere. http://www.k9topcoat.com/info.asp?what=lycra

My girlfriend says you can tell what kind of day you're having by which Wilson brother you think is the cutest. For me, it's a Luke Wilson kind of day.

So New York City Mayor Bloomberg is well on his way to launching the 311 service for non-emergency city functions. I build stuff like this for a living, and I'm wondering how on earth it's going to work. Citizens can call in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and get whatever service or referral they need. It's supposed to improve the signal-noise ratio on 911, and there are vague promises of "making government efficient". The price tag is $25M, but they admit that there are a lot of variables, including the number of users and the resulting staff requirements. My gut says that a system like this is going to be a hardened crust over the spaghetti mess of city services. I expect the 311 service to be slow to respond to changes in the bureaucracies it represents, and become just another useless appendage to the Mayor's office. On the other hand, designing and training for this system could bring to light redundancies and inadequacies in the various agencies, which would be a good thing. It requires, though, that the Mayor pay attention to the implementation and be willing to make the reforms it demands.

As if on cue, a woman was mistakenly given a double mastectomy and sues her hospital just days after Bush says such a screwup is worth $250k in punitive damages. I'll get to my rant on this idiotic reform later. The woman had her pathology work mixed up with another woman's, which means there are two victims. The mastectomy patient suffers a final insult: the hospital only reformed their procedures 7 months later, once she sued. Who designed the new pathology procedures? The pathologist who made the mistake in the first place.