Obama tells illegal aliens to vote?

[Starlight]

Yes they did and here's the method that the media used:

If the statement comes from anyone with a D after their name it's absolute truth, but if it comes from anyone with a R after their name it's a lie.

You've got it backward as usual, and Bill Maher rightly called it out this week:

(Bad Language Warning: Occasional naughty word in vid)

[lilpixieofterror]

You've got it backward as usual, and Bill Maher rightly called it out this week:

Yes dimbulb, whenever I want information, I go and find a comedian because we all know they can be trusted to always speak with accuracy. Sorry, but anyone who takes Bill Maher seriously, should just have a laugh track playing whenever their mouth opens.

[rogue06]

Yeah, it's almost as if the media have done their own fact checking and know that one is true and the other is bogus. Amazing, huh?

Or simply assumed the one is true and the other isn't without bothering to investigate because it suits their agenda.

[Starlight]

Or simply assumed the one is true and the other isn't without bothering to investigate because it suits their agenda.

Funny cos I've read plenty of articles that did investigate the subject, and watched plenty of video clips analyzing their investigations. It's almost like they do investigate and you're full of it.

[rogue06]

You've got it backward as usual, and Bill Maher rightly called it out this week:

(Bad Language Warning: Occasional naughty word in vid)

Maher? Seriously?

Maher has gone on record as a germ theory denialist, expressly saying "I don't believe in vaccinaiton either" and claiming on his show Real Time with Bill Maher on March 4, 2005 that Pasteur recanted germ theory on his deathbed

I don't believe in vaccinaiton either. That's a... well, that's a... what? That's another theory that I think is flawed, that we go by the Louis Pasteur theory, even though Louis Pasteur renounced it on his own deathbed and said that Beauchamp(s) was right: it's not the invading germs, it's the terrain. It's not the mosquitoes, it's the swamp that they are breeding in.

Pasteur's recanting germ theory has as much basis in fact as does Darwin's supposed death bed denouncement of evolution.

On Larry King Live from December 15, 2005 we were treated to this bit of woo

MAHER: I'm not into western medicine. That to me is a complete scare tactic. It just shows you, you can...

KING: You mean you don't get a -- you don't get a flu shot?

MAHER: A flu shot is the worst thing you can do.

KING: Why?

MAHER: Because it's got -- it's got mercury.

KING: It prevents flu.

MAHER: It doesn't prevent. First of all, that's...

KING: I haven't had the flu in 25 years since I've been taking a flu shot.

MAHER: Well, I hate to tell you, Larry, but if you have a flu shot for more than five years in a row, there's ten times the likelihood that you'll get Alzheimer's disease. I would stop getting your...

KING: What did you say?

MAHER: That went better in rehearsal but it was still good. Absolutely, no the defense against disease is to have a strong immune system. A flu shot just compromises your immune system.

So where did Maher get his information for the very specific claim that getting flu shots more than five years in a row will increase your likelihood of getting Alzheimer's disease by ten-fold? I turns out that this information came from whale.to -- a source that Rationalwiki accurately described as "contains every (and we do mean every) half-baked pseudoscientific theory ever concocted."

The fact is the claim that Maher was promulgating is pure unadulterated poppycock. Typical anti-vax propaganda.

Worse, this idiocy was blathered by Maher only a month after CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta smacked down his nonsense when he was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher when he started his mantra about how vaccines are a waste of time and that you can defeat a virus by eating right.

In the King interview Maher also credited the elimination of diseases not because of vaccines but rather because of improved sanitations

KING: Polio was eliminated.

MAHER: Yes but, you know, there are many books out that will -- that will -- and I'm not well enough versed on it to talk about it that will indicate that there are other reasons why it was.

And a lot of diseases that have been they say, whoa, this was eliminated because of a vaccine, they find out well no actually the country got toilets and that's what happened.

Quackwatch terminally rebuts this claim: http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPr...mu/immu01.html

In 2009 when Bill Maher was set to receive the Richard Dawkins award from the Atheist Alliance for his contributions to an increased scientific knowledge^[1] the blowback was tremendous causing him to issue "clarifications" on his previous statements. But one week after getting the award he returned to his anti-vaccine balderdash in a conversation with former Senate Majority Leader and heart surgeon Bill Frist. You can see the whole thing for yourself at Bill Maher gets schooled on vaccines by Bill Frist.

For my money the best part is the look at Maher's face after he said to Frist, “You say that as though I’m a crazy person,” and Frist replied, “Well, here you are.”

For a more detailed take down on the encounter I suggest starting with this^[2], and anything by the science blogger "Orac" at ScienceBlogs™ who wrote the following after the last incident:

He’s an anti-vaccine, quackery-supporting font of flaming moronicity every bit as bad as Ken Ham, Michael Behe, or any flak from the Discovery Institute. His views on medicine are every bit as much ideology driven as any view on evolution from a creationist. Indeed, the vitalism from which Maher’s germ theory denialism derives is every bit as much a mystical, religious viewpoint as that of the worst hard core young earth creationist. And he’s the 2009 recipient of the Richard Dawkins Award.

And this is merely one area where Maher has been a disseminator of scientific nonsense.













1. It appears that the only thing that counts as contributing to an increased scientific knowledge to these clowns is if you mock religion no matter how much woo you push.

2. Another more generalized takedown is Michael Shermer's open letter to Maher. From the letter:

Vaccination is one of science's greatest discoveries. It is with considerable irony, then, that as a full-throated opponent of the nonsense that calls itself Intelligent Design, your anti-vaccination stance makes you something of an anti-evolutionist. Since you have been so vocal in your defense of the theory of evolution, I implore you to be consistent in your support of the theory across all domains and to please reconsider your position on vaccinations. It was not unreasonable to be a vaccination skeptic in the 1880s, which the co-discovered of natural selection--Alfred Russel Wallace--was, but we've learned a lot over the past century. Evolution explains why vaccinations work. Please stop denying evolution in this special case.

As well, Bill, your comments about not wanting to "trust the government" to inject us with a potentially deadly virus, along with many comments you have made about "big pharma" being in cahoots with the AMA and the CDC to keep us sick in the name of corporate profits is, in every way that matters, indistinguishable from 9/11 conspiracy mongering. Your brilliant line about how we know that the Bush administration did not orchestrate 9/11 ("because it worked"), applies here: the idea that dozens or hundreds pharmaceutical executives, AMA directors, CDC doctors, and corporate CEOs could pull off a conspiracy to keep us all sick in the name of money and power makes about as much sense as believing that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their bureaucratic apparatchiks planted explosive devices in the World Trade Center and flew remote controlled planes into the buildings.

[Starlight]

Maher? Seriously?

Maher is generally a thoughtful, logical and interesting person. While I don't always agree with him (there is rarely anyone I always agree with), he is among the best voices commenting on US politics.

Your whole anti-vax ramble is beside the point and an absurd attempt at poisoning the well. Just because Maher has views you or I don't agree with on one topic, doesn't stop him being an often-insightful commentator in other areas.

[rogue06]

Funny cos I've read plenty of articles that did investigate the subject, and watched plenty of video clips analyzing their investigations. It's almost like they do investigate and you're full of it.

citations please because all I ever see are blanket pronouncements and hand waving.

[Mountain Man]

You've got it backward as usual, and Bill Maher rightly called it out this week...

Bill Maher... Saturday Night Live... what's your next source going to be, The Simpsons?