He also clearly has no idea how vaccines actually work. If he did, his main argument against them goes *poof*.

That is what puzzles me you have a guy whom continually says that denying climate change your denying science. Well your doing the same thing with the Flu shot. Vacines he never says do not work but says long term science doesnt prove anything. Well yes it does we eradicated measles in North America now there back cause we dont vaccinate

Hey folks,

Tonight's show did not air north of the border, and HBO Canada did not say why.

If any of my Canuck friends has any info on this, please share it here. The main theory on social media is that the CRTC has/had a problem with the Scientology guest/interview.

I was wondering what happened had my glass of wine ready all settled in and a fxxning repeat

I emailed HBO Canada

Response

I love this series, and never miss an episode....but good God, this week's episode was stuck in the mud from the monologue to the panel to Sean Penn....every five minutes, I zoned out and thought, "God, hurry up and get to New Rules!"

I don't want to be an Internet A****** who only complains, so let me repeat that I love this series.

Yeah, that happens often when Arianna is on. She's alright but I've never heard an original idea from her ever

agreed. I feel asleep during some of it. Sean Penn really did live up to his billing though. What a pompous bore.

yes but he walks the walk and you think about the Spicoli days

se cupp is the worst

bill was surprisingly soft to huckabee

It's a testament to Huckabee's skills as a politician that he can seem downright reasonable on Real Time or the Daily Show, but is crazy as hell when dealing with the base.

I'm not a fan of SE Cupp either but she's far from the worst guest he's had.

Yes... measles are back and not killing anyone! Everyone panic!

There is a lot more to measles than mortality rate. For instance, the leading cause of blindness in the third world (where vaccinations are horrendously low) is complications due to measles. As the number of people without immunity grows in the us, we will start to see greater numbers of post measles blindness in children and seniors.

We will also see an increase in the mortality rate. This obviously won't be an overnight thing. Vaccine denial is still a fairly new phenomenon, but as the numbers of non-immune increase, there will be significantly greater risk to those unable to be vaccinated, and those with auto - immune deficiencies. It would be a pretty cruel joke for us to get so good at being able to handle the AIDS epidemic to the point that it is no longer an auto death sentence to have a re-emergence of measles kick start a rash of death or serious injury amongst those with the disease.

Billy Crystal was awesome. Seriously lol'ed after he finished a ten minute monologue and Bill goes, "Billy, my second question..."

That was priceless. Agreed Bills' line was also. Could have just had him and be entertained

Pretty good ep.

Left guy on the panel was really great.

I'm souring on bill more these days after the flu vaccine/clear misunderstanding of gender/sex, although some of his ignorance there was for laughs.

The bit about the phony war on religion was excellent. I've always wondered where the right comes up with stuff like that aside from cherrypicking stories about atheism groups trying to push for people to say Happy Holidays or whatever but he's completely right. No prominent members of the leftist media push an anti-Christian agenda, nor do any congressional members. The persecution complex over this is a political bonding tool and nothing more.

Meanwhile many of the same people demonize poors and minorities for having a victim mentality and not pulling themselves by their bootstraps. Completely out of touch with reality.

I thought he nailed that

Why does he keep having Ann Coulter on? Giving a platform to a professional troll and I can't imagine anyone watching is buying her books.

I agree that he shouldn't have her on, but I doubt they book guests to help them sell books.

i agree, it's dumb to give her a stage just because bill is probably sleeping with her. i loved bernie and the dad magazine bit, new rules was aight, but the main conversation of this episode was awful. ann sucked and that dude on the left was insufferable, constantly shouting over everyone. ann obviously had him on tilt.

i saw one or two people on reddit say this was the best episode since the affleck meltdown, but it seems like a dumb comparison.

I thought it was a great episode, start to finish, one of the best ever.

And of COURSE they book guests to help them sell books! They don't mention every guest's "new book!" to just to put a feather in the guest's cap. The guest's entire reason for appearing is to promote his new book/movie/whatever.

Heh, my girlfriend is a staunch conservative, we disagree on almost everything political. She once expressed frustration with me, that I would often disagree with her just to start a fight. IOW, she thought I was trolling her. I had to assure her that was not the case.

I think Ann Coulter believes everything that she says. I don't think she's going "out there" to troll you. People have different thoughts when it comes to politics, it doesn't make them trolls.

(The rest of this post is the story of why my gf thought I was trolling her. It has nothing to do with this tv show, you can safely skip it.)

I NEVER bring up politics with my gf, because like most people, she can't discuss it with someone from "the other side" without getting upset. Whenever she brings up a political topic, I just smile and nod and let the pitch go by without engaging her.

But the Baltimore riots REALLY had her riled. She works in law enforcement, so she's particularly sensitive when someone killed by police makes national headlines. I'm with Maher on the whole "do the cops need to look/act like soldiers?" thing, but I dare not say so out loud, unless I want to needlessly piss off my gf.

While scrolling through her Facebook, which of course was dominated by this story, she made a remark about the morons who were burning down their own neighborhood. I took the pitch looking. Oh-and-one, the count.

She went on to sympathize with the business owners who had done nothing wrong, but saw their stores looted and burned. On the outside corner, called strike two.

Well ahead in the count and emboldened by my passivity, she sent a meatball right down the middle. Since she clearly was not going to stop until I joined in, join in I did:

"Actually, I read an interesting article this morning, saying that violent protests WORK. The writer said non-violent protests only work when people outside of the struggle will stand with those who are inside of it, like Dr King's famous marches, which led to real change. But in a case like this, non-violent protests have *not* led to meaningful change. Unarmed blacks are still being killed by police at a staggering rate, a rate that would be entirely unacceptable to America if 1/10th as many unarmed whites were being killed by black police officers.

"The writer went on to say that the Watts riots, the Detroit riots, the Rodney King riots, the Ferguson MO riots, they ALL led to meaningful change."

(girlfriend is looking at me like I just confessed a murder.)

"Now, I'm not saying I *agree* with that; I'm not sure that I do. I'd have to give it a lot more thought. I mention it because it was an interesting position I had not considered; it's a ballsy thing to print; and because it's such a tough call to decide how I feel about it."

(girlfriend questions aloud whether she can be involved with anyone who thinks such things; realizes she is way too upset to make such a decision right now and will allow herself time to cool down before addressing that question; comes back the next day with, "I hate when you troll me like that. You always do that." I have to explain that it's possible for people to think the opposite of you. We've been hanging on by a thread ever since.)

The guests come on to sell books. The show doesn't give a ****, that was my point.

Ann is a troll in the sense that she knows what she's doing with her rhetoric, and she's doing it intentionally to get attention and to piss liberals off. I'm sure she probably believes the underlying principles.