B12, Obamacare, Judge Dread and the Medicare Scare

Sometimes you read things on someone's feed that just makes you cringe. After all, you've been on road trips with them. You've fallen asleep in the passenger seat while they were driving. You even trusted the short cut they knew about that wasn't on Google Maps.  And yet here they are reposting a story they read on WingnutPotstirrers.com as if they had expereinced it themselves. It's as if their ability to reason went out the window once they found out {insert current unpopular public figure here} was involved.

But We've All Done It

I remember when I posted "See Ya Later Little Buddy" and that Bob Denver had died.  Less than 30 seconds later a friend of mine simply posted "Again? What is he? A cat?".  I knew immediately what he meant. As a proponent of fact checking, I had failed miserably.

What's This Got To Do With Obamacare?

I have a friend who is a politician. He's also a Democrat. But he doesn't like Obama at all, which is probably why we're friends. His feed is in my stream.  The other day a post came through on his stream about an elderly man's doctor's inability to get his B12 shot cleared through Medicare. I read the story, and thought it sounded a bit unrealistic. So I checked it out. Sure enough, it wasn't true. His dislike of Obama had blinded his reasoning.  He doesn't know how to delete it. When he asked me to delete it, I told him there would be a charge for it. In true Politician form, he's trying to find someone else to pay for it.  In the meanwhile, he looks like an idiot on his own page. For all my Google+ friends, I'll point out that it's a Facebook post. Imagine that.
So I thought I might share how to reduce your chances of being caught in this situation yourself.

Three Ways To Check The Facts

1. Drag your mouse over the keywords, right click and choose 'Search Google For".  This will bring up plenty of responses. Without clicking on them, put your mouse in the search field and type in 'hoax' or 'scam' and hit enter.  This will bring up the results you want. Just make sure you check the credibility of the resource.  "BobsPoliticalPathos.com" isn't a good source. 
2. Go to Snopes.com and search for keywords.  "Obama, B12, Medicare" for example. 
3. Ask someone who you know keeps up with current events, but doesn't spend all day on the Internet.  The chances are good that if they don't know about it, it's probably not true. Even if they watch or listen to biased broadcasters. Most popular news media agencies do a good job of at least getting rid of the stupid stuff before they report it. 

So No 76 Year Old Fat Guy Is Losing His B12 Shot?

Yeah. That's pretty much the crux of it.  Here's a link to Snopes debunking of this story.  

In the words of Sargeant Friday "Just The Facts Ma'am"

---