Howdy, folks! Welcome back to the weekend dog and pony show we like to call The Snake Oil Bulletin! Here we report on the latest in swindlers and scam artists just dying to sell you whatever poppycock your feverish heart desires. Let's hop right in with a trip into the wacky world of bleach enemas! I'm sorry, did we say wacky? We meant utterly horrifying.

Everyone gets a GoFundMe, even child abusers!

Has your child ever been diagnosed with autism? Have you ever had the inkling that the key to "fixing" your kiddie's inborn neurological wiring was to bathe him in bleach, feed him bleach, or shoot bleach up his butt? Of course not, because you are not a FUCKING MANIAC. But not all parents are so enlightened as you, dear reader.

Enter the Miracle Mineral Solution people (or MMS as they call it, to get Johnny Law off their asses). They're the jackasses who think squirting industrial strength bleach up their children's buttholes will "cure" them of anything from autism to ebola to intestinal parasites. The fact that the bleachers can't tell the difference between parasites and burned off intestinal lining should trouble you (warning: pretty sick fucking images because these are some pretty fucking sick fuckers; thanks to Stop Bleaching Me for keeping up on these people).

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But did you know that these brave Munchausen munchkins face discrimination in this country? They're held IN JAIL by their government just because they've made the "illegal" decision to burn their kids from the inside and encourage other parents to do the same! This stuff is hocked by a church, so it's covered by the Constitution, right? Religious discrimination! Where's their GoFundMe page? Oh wait, it's right here. The moral crusaders at Miracle Mineral Solution have set up what they charmingly call the MMS Defense Fund in order to pay off their followers' legal expenses, when they inevitably go to jail. Think of them as Memories Pizza for kiddie abusers.

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The greatest martyr of this jackbooted effort to stop parents from murdering their kids is Louis Daniel Smith, who was arrested in 2013 for the simple crime of smuggling industrial solvents into the country and trying to sell them to people as a cure-all:

According to the indictment, Smith and Delong arranged the manufacture and sale of the “Miracle Mineral Supplement” (MMS), a mixture of Sodium Chlorite and water. Sodium chlorite is not meant for human consumption. Suppliers of the chemical include a warning sheet with the chemical that states that it is harmful if swallowed.

Feh, a warning label is just a piece of paper, like a summons or a tax audit.

According to the indictment, [“Project GreenLife”] provided consumers directions to combine MMS with citric acid to create Chlorine Dioxide, and the instructions told consumers to drink this mixture to cure numerous illnesses. Chlorine Dioxide is a potent agent used to bleach textiles, among other industrial applications. In humans, Chlorine Dioxide is a severe respiratory and eye irritant that can cause nausea, diarrhea and dehydration.

Ooh, a textile bleacher. Sure, the kiddies' insides will be burned to a crisp, but they'll be as sparkling white as his laundry.

As part of the scheme to manufacture MMS, the indictment alleges that Smith, Delong, and others smuggled sodium chlorite into the United States from Canada using fraudulent invoices to hide the true end use of the product. In these invoices, according to the indictment, they falsely claimed that the ingredients they were purchasing for MMS were to be used in wastewater treatment facilities.

So they smuggled the industrial chemicals into the country by declaring them to be "industrial chemicals," and never thought maybe these things are actually INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS and not medicine? No one ever said you had to be smart to be a charlatan. Also note that for people who seem so convinced of the righteousness of their panacea, they have no problem lying about the stuff in legal documents. If you're so sure it works, then advertise it proudly. It'll make it so much easier for the cops to pick you up.

Daniel is currently awaiting trial in May, and his supporters have responded by putting all the resources of their Go Fund Me campaign into his legal fees. They've also set up a lovely Change.org petition to sway all us nice bleeding heart types into pushing back against the government corruption that has kept him in jail for so long, though they conveniently omit the fact that Daniel was selling a textile cleanser as children's cough medicine. Instead they take the much more rational route of just alleging that the entire Department of Justice and Food and Drug Administration are engaged in a massive conspiiiiiracy against him.

When word got out that these sterling folk were trying to funnel their money into defending a serial child abuser, the internet struck back ... with another petition. Yay! The second Change.org petition seeks to get MMS Defense Fund removed from GoFundMe for violating their terms of service, which forbid the selling or production of ingestibles not regulated by the FDA. The second petition has only garnered about a tenth of the signatures the pro-MMS petition has, which is just depressing. It also seems that, as of a week ago, GoFundMe has stopped responding to complaint emails about the Defense Fund, so that's comforting. They gotta skim their 5% off the top somehow, and if they earn that through facilitating child abuse on an unprecedented scale, then so be it. It's all about patient's rights to make their own health choices and also too maybe kill their children. We could see how that would be a moral gray area.

Earthing brings the magic of dirt right into your home

Okay, now for some woo that doesn't kill kids, and is just damn hilarious. For the second half of our Bulletin, Yr Wonkette would like to introduce you to Earthing, the latest comically bullshit scam to fleece well-meaning hippies out of their hard-earned, free-range, grass-fed whore diamonds.

Earthing, also known as grounding, is based on the idea that the earth provides "energy" to our bodies through skin-to-dirt contact, and that the reason our fast-paced go-go world seems so soul crushing is because we don't walk on the dirt like we used to before shoes. Y'know, like some 40,000 years ago. Exactly what kind of "energy" the earth provides is never explained. Is it kinetic or potential? Neither, because energy is just the modern woo woo word for magic. The earth is chock full of magic, which it could gift to you if you just walked around in some more worm poop.

Encouraging people to go outside isn't a bad thing, even if it's for a hokey reason. But you, dear reader, are far too smart to think that the earthing craze ends there. Of course it doesn't! We got some gullible rubes to scam! Watch how you too can turn a profit by convincing people that they need a $200 electric blanket magic earthing pad to bring nature's bounty right to their feet even when they're indoors:

To review: the Earth magic is smart enough to travel through the complex web of electrical circuitry in your modern, not-very-natural house all the way to your hundred dollar rug, but too stupid to travel through a stone foundation or the thin rubber sole of your shoe. Make sense? Of course not. MOVING ON.

The earthing website offers a variety of options for you to throw your money right out the window. How about the handy Earthing Starter Kit? So called because it only STARTS you down the path to horrible financial decisions. It's up to you to go the rest of the way! Or how about the deluxe Earthing Recovery Bag Kit, for those "folks at home who enjoy the sleeping bag effect." Wrap yourself in the comfort of your $260 sleeping bag when you could have just as easily slept in a pile of dirt. And then, perhaps most spectacular of all, is the Auto Seat Pad. Just read this description of a $40 car seat cover and let the chakric woo flow over you like a golden shower:

Scientific evidence now confirms, road vibration and related body motion on vehicle seats generate micro-electrical charges on the body.

Road vibrations, ladies and gentleman! Simulate the earth without any of that pesky "earth" stuff! Get all your magic from the vibrating giant metal carriage you rocket to work every day, just like nature intended.

What a perfect scam! Jack up the price of your plastic foot pad, add in words like "scientific evidence" (but provide no evidence, obvi), and voila! You have a scam only a carnival barker could love. And if you're really bold, why not try and sell a $100 pillow case made of 99.9% silver? You too can wake up with a fresh bluish-grey tint to your skin. So vibrant, so healthy. Hallelujah! Praise Earthing!

Flotsam, Jetsam, and Hokum

We end our bulletin this week with a sampling of nonsense and assorted grossness from this, your most meshugge mommyblog, your Wonkette!

• Meet the pastor who discovered this ONE WEIRD TIP for systematically oppressing half the human population! Spoiler: It's a P-E-N-I-S.
• Are you running low on red meat for your base so close to election? Meet the Kansas legislature who discovered that all you have to do is make up a horrible-sounding abortion thing and then ban it for instant street cred! Will the rubes catch on? Probably not!
• You've got to FIGHT for your RIGHT to give your children easily preventable infectious diseases!
• You know what this abortion debate needs? Some take-backsies! Sure they're not strictly "possible" in any sense of the word, but everyone loves a good redemption story.
• Pregnancy is a beautiful, sparkly clean, and never gross testament to a mother's love for her babbies. Right up until the part where your butthole falls out. But fear not -- that's not a hemorrhoid! It's just your Inner Goddess greeting the world! Behold nature's splendor!

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[Stop Bleaching Me / Genesis II Church / Go Fund Me / US Department of Justice / Change.org MMS Petition / Change.org Anti-MMS Petition / Earthing / National Geographic]