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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Snopes Uncovered

Snopes "uncovered" as a Gosip Monger.....

As we suspected, Snopes isn’t the unimpeachable source they would like you to believe … Tony Passaro

I have been telling people this for months now. I knew I had caught them in 2 outright political lies. I'm glad others are smarter about their slanted point of view and pontifications. A newsman who allows his personal point of view to sway his news stories is no longer a newsman. He is then a gossip monger and this husband and wife team are just that "Gosip Mongers".!

Maybe you better read this....then switch to w.TRUTHorFICTION.com like I have. Snopes is no longer my final arbiter of facts.

For the past few years http://www.snopes.com/ has positioned itself, or others have labeled it as the 'tell-all, final word' on any comment, claim and e-mail.

But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. Only recently did Wikipedia get to the bottom of it - kind of makes you wonder what they were hiding Well, finally we know. It is run by a husband and wife team - that's right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. It's just a mom-and-pop shop that began as a hobby.

David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago - and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research. After a few years it gained popularity believing it to be unbiased and neutral, but over the past couple of years people started asking questions who was behind it and did they have a selfish motivation?

The reason for the questions - or skepticisms - is a result of snopes.com Claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issues, when in fact, they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the 'true' bottom of various issues. Also that they were slanting their reporting to support their Liberal Agendas.

When I saw that Snopes had falsely claimed that Obama's Birth Certificate had been properly validated, I realized something was wrong with either their research and/or their credibility. It seems something is seriously wrong with both.

Then a few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the internet, supposedly the Mikkelson's claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ever took place.

I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this, and I gave him Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers. Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec's at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm. Yet snopes.com issued a statement as the 'final factual word' on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things. Not!

Then it has been learned the Mikkelson's are very Left Wing Radical IDEALOGS and extremely liberal.

As we all now know from this Presidential election, Liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson's liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock!

So, I say this now to everyone who goes to http://www.snopes.com/ to get what they think to be the bottom line facts: Proceed with caution. Take what it says with a grain of salt and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus, you can always google a subject and do the research yourself. It now seems apparent that's all the Mikkelson's do. After all, I can personally vouch from my own experience for their 'not' fully looking into things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Abraham Lincoln.

Another secret piece of OBAMA'S propganda system exposed to the light of day....

Tony Passaro
Bel Air Tea Party Coalition

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been aware of this for some time now. During the election, I saw some things on their site that were incorrect and showed Obama in a positive light and McCain negatively. I contacted them via email with evidence that they were incorrect and they refused to correct the record.
"Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see."
"Trust, but verify"

Anonymous said...

And this is the guy who is supporting Andy Harris? Set aside the Snopes thing for a minute (I agree that it hhas been given too much credence). This guy STILL thinks Obama is not a citizen and is paranoid about Obama's secret plans! Give me a break!

joealbero said...

anonymous 8:58, what's that got to do with Snopes?

Anonymous said...

What, just because they won't get on the Birther Bus means their whole outfit is worthless? No way. Snopes is great. AND just because it's a husband/wife team does not in any way mean that they can't work the phones and get to the bottom of things.nog

Anonymous said...

It's spelled "Gossip" not gosip. And I don't listen to anything that radical tea party group in Bel Air has to say- they've proven themselves to be complete morons in how they displayed their "patriotism" on July 4th.

duck around said...

So, Tony says "So when I found out snopes had falsely claimed that Obama's Birth Certificate had been properly validated..."

What, he's calling the Republican governor of Hawai'i a LIAR now? Because Gov. Linda Lingle says she's seen it and everything is legit.

Why do you hate Republican,s Tony?????

duck around said...

Joe: "what's that got to do with Snopes?"

1) Tony Passaro is a well-known Andy Harris advocate

2) He attacked the Snopes.com website for its lack of veracity.

3) He did so because Snopes debunked the Birther myth.

So, Anon is questioning the judgment of Andy Harris in accepting the help of an activist who refuses to even admit that the current POTUS is a natural-born American citizen and calls Snopes untrustworthy for daring to state an opinion oppposite that. An opinion which, by the way, happens to align with realityas, as evidenced by the statements of REPUBLICAN Gov. Linda Lingle.

That's what it has to do with Snopes, Joe.

Anonymous said...

"A newsman who allows his personal point of view to sway his news stories is no longer a newsman. He is then a gossip monger"

By this definition, we should all know now not to trust "news" or information from Rush, Hannity, Beck, Olberman, or any of the rest of the entertainment talking heads.

Anonymous said...

Are you aware that anyone and everyone can go to wikipedia and edit (or change) any and all information on the wikipedia website. Don't believe it than go to wikipedia and try it. For that reason I do not use wikipedia website for info.

gray haired granny

Unknown said...

Obama still not find vault birth certificate


He go back to Hawaii for 5 day but only have time to visit sick grandmother for hour
and still find no paper. Media too busy to help. They have important thing to do like
find out if Joe Plumber in union or lie about health care.

Therefore, I Igor produce Obama Birth Certificate at www.igormaro.org

Anonymous said...

If you prefer TruthOrFiction to snopes.com, perhaps you should read what they themselves say about snopes:

"Snopes.com is an excellent site that has become an authoritative source for information about urban legends and forwarded emails. We regard David and Barbara Mikkelson, the founders and operators of Snopes.com, as colleagues and professional researchers who have earned a good reputation for what they do."

"One of the versions of the eRumor mentions TruthOrFiction.com and recommends our site. We appreciate that, but we want to say for the record that we've had nothing to do with this eRumor about Snopes.com and we condemn it."

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/s/snopes.htm

Anonymous said...

My mother sent me this e-mail. This is my reply:

The Mikkelsons never claim they are the end all be all of knowledge. They even have a section entitled 'lost legends' to remind people that they cannot just take one source as the end all be all. The lost legends section claims such things as Mr. Ed is really a zebra.

I use snopes.com because it is verifiable source. The Mikkelsons are not investigative reporters, but they do a lot of research and every article they put on their website is backed up with citation of work.

I looked up Tony Passaro and found this:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/

Snopes.com is not unbiased and I do notice some opinions on there that I don't agree with, such as a statement that soldiers join the military more prepared to die in their job than fire fighters and police and that death is more likely. I don't agree with that. This was in an article discussing aid given to the NYC police and fire fighters that died in the World Trade Center Towers. But, eh, the facts of the article were correct, according to what the families got and how much that did not help and the like.

The Mikkelsons always have verifiable data. If they cannot verify the data, the legend is marked as 'undetermined' and the Mikkelsons state that they do not have all the information. An update is added when they do. Sometimes they post the latest chain letter or urban legend up with no information and simply state they are looking into it.

It seems Tony just has an axe to grind. His piece is purely opinion, with no facts to base his claims on. Were he as good as the Mikkelsons, he would at least have their polling cards that state that they are Democratic. For all we know, they are Republicans or Independents. Fact Check does have a copy of his voter registration that states Dave is not affiliated with a party, though Barbara's Canadian citizenship was not officially verified.

Ajierene

Anonymous said...

And he ends with a quote that Lincoln didn't even say!

Old Horsewoman said...

Ditto! Well said!

Anonymous said...

wondering if anonymous is really snopes itself?? Could be..