Signin' Your Rights Away: Not-My-President Trump's poison pen

It has been a busy week for Cheeto Jesus, notes Mother Jones:

Friday marks the end of President Donald Trump's first week in office. In just that short time, the new commander in chief and his administration have managed to produce an extraordinary amount of alarm in the United States and abroad. Concerns have ranged from a series of executive actions and efforts to gag federal agencies to Trump's penchant for promoting bewildering falsehoods and his obsession with his own popularity. It's been a lot to take in...

Now, I realize that Herr Drumpf's loyal fan base -- to whom he continues to cater, and damn the rest of us -- will dismiss the above as leftist partisan spin. The "truth," in their eyes, is that Trump is simply keeping his campaign promises, and has accomplished more in less than a week than his predecessor accomplished in eight years. Never mind that his spate of executive orders are ill thought out, ill advised, and perhaps even illegal or unenforceable -- and that many of them are reportedly the products of inexperienced bigots who have been writing the orders without any input from the agencies they would affect.
 
While it's true that to an extent all of our brains are functioning, or failing to function as the case may be, under the influence of politix, it seems that the brains of the Trump loyalists are having to work overtime to rationalize for their lunatic hero.

Be that as it may, a song had been going on in my head since Trump first sat down, to great fanfare, at that hallowed desk in the Oval Office, so I finally sat down and hammered out some lyrics. Below is a slightly modified version of the lyrics I posted on Facebook a few days ago. Granted, the meter and the rhyme patterns aren't identical to the 1980 country hit song that inspired my efforts, but I think the message gets across. 

For those of you who are not familiar with the inspiration, here it is.



So now you can sing along.

Signin' Your Rights Away
~ Cosmic Connie

With a big glare and lotsa flair it's "So long, healthcare!"
Killin’ reproductive rights, pickin’ fights, wastin’ no time,
And I got to keep signin’
My press hacks, pro flacks slappin’ out those alt-facts,
Keepin’ perfect rhythm with the lies that are comin’ from my yap,
But I keep signin’
Ooh, I'm signin’ your rights away
Killin’ freedoms day by day for you
Ooh, I'm signin’ your rights away
Tearin' down the USA!

Got Steve Bannon, he's a loose cannon
Constantly fannin' the flames that are burnin' down the State
And Kellyanne's so grating
Then there's Spicer, he's a little nicer
May have to fire him 'cause he looks weak on TV
Bringin' down my ratings
Ooh, I'm signin' your rights away
Killin’ freedoms day by day for you
Ooh, I'm signin’ your rights away
Tearin' down the USA!

I saved those pipelines, screw the Sioux they’ll be fine,
Tried to gag some agencies too but they're all goin' rogue now,
Science is a menace!
Hail law and order, seal off the border,
Build the Wall, build me up, beat the press, gonna do it my way,
I don’t care what you say
Ooh, I'm signin' your rights away
Killin’ freedoms day by day for you
Ooh, I'm signin’ your rights away
Tearin' down the USA!

Killin’ regulations, pissin’ off some nations
Trade wars up ahead, I don’t care, wastin' no time,
And I got to keep signin’
Fightin’ over crowd size, stickin’ to my big lies,
Keepin’ just enough of the promises I made to the rubes,
And I got to keep signin’
But ooh, I'm signin' your rights away
Killin’ freedoms day by day for you
Ooh, I'm signin’ your rights away
Tearin' down  the USA!
Ooh, I'm signin' your rights away
Overhaul the USA for me
Ooh, I'm signin’ your rights away
Killin’ freedoms day by day

 © Connie L. Schmidt 2017PS ~ For the growing number of people who are now regretting that they voted for Trump, here's a spot of cheer: I have another song. Y'all really should have listened to me back in November.

* * * * *

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Vive la Résistance

I did not and will not watch any of the inauguration and post-inaug hoopla. I most certainly did not listen to Herr Drumpf's "American carnage" inauguration speech, which was apparently little more than a rehash of the same old pseudo-populist wrath that helped push the world's nakedest emperor into power. Maybe I'm being a bit of a hear-no-evil see-no-evil monkey, which is quite unlike me, but I just haven't been able to stomach the spectacle. (And speaking of American carnage, there's evidence of it right now on the WhiteHouse.gov web site.)

That said, there were actually good reasons for anti-Drumpfs to watch it all if they were in a position to do so, as Kathryn VanArendonk explained in a piece that originally appeared in Vulture and was posted on Salon.com earlier today.

You should watch it because watching the whole of it, rather than clips filtered through other media, will give you a stronger, more visceral, more immediate sense of the reality of what’s going on. You should watch it actively, skeptically, thoughtfully, critically, and as just one part of a bigger plan of action and resistance. You should watch it because it’s really happening, and we need to learn how to look directly at the thing we don’t like or don’t understand. Refusing to watch Trump will not make him less the president. We need to learn to watch the president we have, and use that knowledge so that we never let this kind of presidency happen again.

I get that, but I still didn't watch. Which doesn't mean that I'm going to continue not watching Drumpf on TV and other media, moving forward. It's just that I really, really needed a bit of a break.

Let the record show...
Except for the parts relating to being a person of faith -- since I'm not, really -- I could have written this post, which was actually written by North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz. And so, I think, could at least 65 million other Americans.

Let the record show that I did not consent to this.

Let it show that I did not vote for this man, that he did not represent me, that I did not believe he was deserving of being here, that I grieved his ascension....

...And if I prove to be wrong, it will be one of the most joyful errors of my life. I will own these words and if necessary, willingly and gladly admit my misjudgment because it will mean that America is a better and stronger nation, and the world a more peaceful place.

But right now I don’t see that happening.

Right now I am worried for my country, concerned for our planet, scared for the future of my children, and greatly saddened that 62 million Americans seem okay with all of this.

Let the record show that I was not okay with it.

Not at all.

U.S. voters who protest Trump's ascendancy to the throne are not alone. Our friends across the pond are expressing their views as well; for instance, a banner reading "Build bridges not walls" was draped across London's Tower Bridge earlier today. And that's just one of many protests planned across Britain. My friend Tammy Samede, whose thoughts on activism and unity I shared here shortly after the election, is right in the thick of it.

And the protests are and will be going on around the globe. Most heartening of all, the Women's March on Washington, taking place in D.C. on January 21, has gone global, with even Antarctica getting in on the act, meaning that the movement now covers all seven continents. You can find a map of the planned protests, as well as additional information about demonstrations in various cities around the world, in this CommonDreams.org piece.

Let the record show that millions and millions and millions of people across the globe are not happy with the profoundly narcissistic, thin-skinned, grievously unqualified and egregiously unprepared man-child who has just become the most powerful man in the world. And he'll have a historically unqualified Cabinet to help him try to wreck the republic.

"I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet..."
Damn, I miss Leonard Cohen, from whose song, "Democracy," the above sub-head was snatched, and I grabbed it because, despite all of the above, there may be reasons even now for hope. And like comic relief, I will take reasons for hope where I can find them. Tech company founder, author and speaker Peter Leyden speculates that Drumpf's rise to power heralds not the beginning of a new era of hatred and retrogressive policies, but the end.

It’s easy for politicians to whip up public fears against [progressive] changes and rally people to go back to the old ways, to make America great again. This is the standard playbook for right-wing nationalism. In the 1930s... that era’s right wing took those fears and drove a good chunk of the world into fascism and a world war. Today Trump is heading down that path — but he won’t get far.

I think Trump ultimately is going to do America and the world a service by becoming the vehicle that will finally take down right-wing conservative politics for a generation or two. He is getting the entire Republican conservative establishment to buy into his regime. He is creating an administration that is blatantly all about rule by — and for — billionaires, sold out to the oil and carbon industries, and celebrating an out-of-control corporate capitalism. It will be a caricature of conservative policies. In short order he will completely and irrevocably alienate all the growing political constituencies of the 21st century: the Millennial Generation, people of color, educated professionals, women. He’ll eventually do the same for a significant number of more moderate Republicans. And does anyone out there really think Trump will do anything for the white working class that got him elected? Watch as repealing Obamacare blows up in his face.

I hope to Goddess that Leyden is correct. Pablo Picasso famously said that "every act of creation is first an act of destruction." I hope that in the process of creation, the most precious parts of the American experiment are not completely destroyed.

Vive la Résistance.


More than one way to skin a dragon 
The really, REALLY good news -- and now I can say it publicly -- is that Jason Michael Jones, aka Salty Droid, is a fully licensed lawyer once again (he'd voluntarily dropped out of the legal profession about ten years ago). Jason was one of the first to document the Scamworld creds of our new Scammer-in-Chief. And he has already gone to work battling some of the other scum of Scamworld.

...why can’t I be a lawyer and a SaltyDroid? Because it may cause “a certain amount of emotional distress” among Scientologists and their attorneys?

I’m pretty sure I just answered my own question.

I’m fuckin’ doin’ it.

And he seems to have hit the ground running.

Where should we start? {#alreadystarted}

How about maybe multi-billion dollar snake-oil hydra head Herbalife?

Carl Icahn :: President Trump’s new special advisor on regulatory reform … owns the biggest chunk of cult-Herbalife. Edith Ramirez :: who is not not a foe of the company :: is stepping down as chairwoman of the FTC … leaving three of the five commissioner slots open for The Donald to fill. I’m sure HotCarl will have some super duper great ideas about how to ‘reform’ the agency.

Go, Jason and Salty. We're going to need both of you, now more than ever.

NNATE: Katie beats a (legal) dead horse, while Loony Lenny rants on

I've modified some of the text in this post to clarify some points about the Court of Appeals decision.
~ CC, 18 January 2017
 
As you may know if you've been following this blog for a few years, one of my favorite slogans, and a constant theme that runs throughout many of the posts, is: "No neat and tidy endings," or NNaTE, as my friend Julie Daniel abbreviates it. In Scamworld, as in most of real life, there are very rarely neat endings to any story, or to any scam as the case may be. Some stories and scams just go on and on and on.

So perhaps a group of three appellate court judges were being a tad optimistic when they began their December 29, 2016 opinion, regarding some business interests of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau (aka KT, aka Katie) with the suggestion that their decision marked the close of a very long chapter. As the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this month:

Even getting sent to prison for a decade in 2014 by a Chicago judge for lying didn't shut the smooth-talking pitchman up, or put an end to his seemingly inexhaustible legal battles.

But now — 18 years after he was first pursued by the Federal Trade Commission for his fraudulent claims — Trudeau's case is finally toast, U.S. Court of Appeals judges are praying.

"This decision marks the end of litigation about Kevin Trudeau's frauds — or so we hope," Seventh Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote in an opinion published last week.

The decision wasn't whether or not to keep Katie in prison, where he is serving ten years on charges of criminal contempt related to deceptive claims in infomercials for his diet book, Weight Loss Secrets They Don't Want You to Know About. That conviction and sentence have already been appealed, and he lost the appeal last year around the time of his birthday, as reported on this blog.

Never a quitter, Katie took his fight all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States -- or, rather, he tried to. That was a wash too. As far as I know, SCOTUS didn't even bother with an explanation as to why they didn't care to hear his case; they just issued this:

But the December 29 decision concerned one of Katie's dozens of companies, Website Solutions, which along with his other assets whose existence was known to the court, was put under receivership in 2013. At some point Website Solutions hired their own law firms to represent it in responding to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) demands to turn over business records, and those firms later demanded that they be paid from the receivership funds. The district court determined that because Website Solutions was, as the business records revealed, indeed part of Trudeau's assets and therefore subject to receivership, any and all profits from that business must be used for restitution to the customers who'd been scammed by the weight-loss book.
 
After the receiver had collected about $8 million it submitted a plan to the district court to distribute the funds to victims. The court approved the distribution plan, and also determined that Website Solution's law firms -- Hogan Marren Babbo & Rose, Ltd.; and Faruki Ireland & Cox, P.L.L. -- were not entitled to compensation from the receivership estate. All that money was slated to go to victims, not lawyers. The law firms appealed the denial, and their appeal was in turn denied on December 29.

I found it amusing that the appellate judges also suggested a couple of strategies that Website Solutions' law firms might have used to at least give themselves and their client a fighting chance. From Bloomberg BNA's January 5 article on the matter:

The court noted that neither the firms nor Website Solutions sought court approval for the firms’ engagement or their “proposed course of conduct,” and that ultimately their actions were more obstructive than helpful to the receiver’s efforts.

The court also pointed out that the firms may have sought recovery of fees related to complying with the receiver’s discovery requests under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Rule 45(d)(3)(C)(ii). That section permits a court under certain circumstances to order reasonable fees for complying with a subpoena request.

Some folks sure waste a lot of money on lawyerly incompetence; have you noticed? When it happens to good people that's an outrage, but when it's a scammer whose money is squandered, it's really kind of funny..

From the Caselaw site, here is a link to the text of the December 29 decision.

And if you'd like a PDF, here's a link to that.

You can of course find links to many earlier Katie legal documents on this very Whirled -- docs related to his civil, criminal, appeals, and bankruptcy cases -- but if you don't feel like wading through old blog posts, try this link to find previous documents related to Trudeau's appeals. Just search for "Kevin Trudeau" and you'll find a few decisions that in their own way helped pave Katie's road to Federal sleepaway camp.

I should note, as I have on previous posts, that whether it has finally come to a close or not, the entire 18-plus years of legal actions by the FTC (and, later, the U.S. Attorney) against Kevin Trudeau were for various and sundry frauducts and flopportunities, but not for the biggest scam of all, the Global Information Network, or GIN. As I've written before, thousands of people were bilked out of millions of dollars during GIN's heyday, and although a reading of some of the many court documents makes it pretty obvious that Trudeau's actions regarding GIN had some influence on the judges' decisions, the court actions that sent Trudeau to prison were not directly related to GIN at all. People who were scammed by GIN and unable to get a refund a few years ago, but are still expecting some sort of compensation, will probably have a long, long wait.

Of course this doesn't mean that there won't be any lawsuits about Katie's mega-scam, so for that and other reasons those circuit judges were justified in adding, "or so we hope," to their speculation that their decision marked an end to Trudeau-related litigation. For if there's one thing you learn on this beat, it's that you just can't keep a good scammer down, and indeed the Chicago Trib article I linked to above noted as much:

On Facebook last week, Trudeau's backers continued to solicit donations to his legal defense fund from his 29,000 followers, promising them they could "DOUBLE YOUR MONEY."

And in a pre-Christmas message presumably relayed through supporters from his cell at the Montgomery, Alabama federal prison camp, Trudeau told his fans he would "share 2 secrets that will give you success in every area of your life."

If they followed his advice, the convicted fraudster, formerly of Oak Brook, wrote, they would "vibrate frequencies that will allow you to create the life you want."

The article also mentioned Trudeau's boasts about predicting Donald Trump's victory, a matter that I wrote about last July (back when there still seemed to be a chance that Trump might lose). The Trib writer duly noted that Trudeau had written that he was confident about a Trump victory because "the overwhelming energy of the people is consistent with Trump's vibration."

Not this people, I hasten to add, and not tens of millions of other people, but I quibble. Not surprisingly many of Trudeau's fans are also Trump fans, and some have expressed hopes that Trump will pardon Trudeau once he gets in office. The Trib writer noted that one of the folks on the short list for Trump's Supreme Court pick is none other than Diane Sykes, one of the judges who signed off on the December 29 decision. Of course that doesn't rule out a presidential pardon. Turds of a feather, you know...

And speaking of not being able to keep a good scammer down, you can't keep an incompetent one down either. On a January 4, 2017 post on Katie's Facebook page, one of Katie's surrogates wrote:

Kevin has a legal right to a defense fund. The Law firm that has been defending him is Winston and Strawn LLP. Proceeds from the fund go directly to the LAW FIRM.

As you can see either by following the link above or looking at the screen grabs below, a few folks responded, mostly with words of support, on the day the post was published, or shortly thereafter.



But early today (January 16), little Lenny Coldwell, cancer quack, fraudster and bigot extraordinaire, jumped in (under one of his phony names, "Eyn Rand") to slam Katie and promote himself, repeatedly and semi-literately.


FYI, Lenny can't write under his main Facebook profile at the moment because once again he has been suspended for hate speech. But as he often does, here he demonstrates the old saying about pots and kettles. And once again... NNaTE.

With liberty and justice for all

This short post is blatantly political, and has very little to do with Scamworld, except to the extent that Not-My-President-Elect Donald J. Trump is the Scammer-in-Chief. Politix is still not my normal beat, but then again, these are not normal times.

Very simply, if you are in the US and want to be part of the Resistance, download this guide to activism, Indivisible. You can do it here. Indivisible was written by former congressional staffers who have learned, from years of experience, the most (and least) effective ways to make Congress listen.

Stay peaceful, stay safe, and maybe I'll see you on the barricades.

Snopes "scandal" has fake-news and conspiracy mongers foaming at the mouth

So 2016 has come and gone, and what a trail of wreckage it left. Today started out stormy in my neck of the woods -- there's a 30-foot-long tree limb, knocked down by the wind, in our backyard -- but it turned into a brilliant and lovely day, as if to proclaim, "Hey, it's the very first Monday of a brand new year, and the world should look fresh and new and bright and happy!" But in reality there is no such thing as a clean slate just because the calendar turns over to a new year. It doesn't work that way. In reality Leonard Cohen is still dead (as are Princess Leia and her mom and a host of others). And even worse, Donald J. Trump is still the not-my-president-elect.

Granted, more rational heads have pointed out that 2016 was not a record year for celebrity deaths, and that despite the horrors of 2016, lots of good stuff happened too (and hopefully Drumpf and his wrecking crew won't be able to reverse all of it). Even so, Leonard Cohen is... well, you know. And Drumpf... well, you know. Not to belabor a point or anything.

But let's get down to business. 2016 also stands out as the year that fake news finally came into its own (which arguably played a part propelling the Orange Blowfish to electoral victory). And the mention of fake news brings us to the point of this post.

On several occasions on past blog posts and on Facebook, I have cited the fact-checking/mythbusting site Snopes.com, and have defended it against its many critical-thinking-impaired detractors who proudly and defiantly proclaim that (1) they never trust anything they read on Snopes; and (2) anyone who does believe or cite Snopes is a gullible sheeple or an idiot. I have written that although I don't consider Snopes infallible, even as I don't consider any source infallible, I believe it to be a reliable source and a good starting point for doing one's own research about silly social media memes and too-bad-to-be-true Internet rumors.

Accordingly some folks might be wondering if some recent Snopes buzz -- regarding founders David and Barbara Mikkelson's highly contentious divorce, David Mikkelson's remarriage to a former sex worker, and a couple of Snopes fact checkers' political affiliations, kinky proclivities and (oh, the horror!) pot smoking -- constitutes an elephant-in-the-room situation for my Whirled.

Indeed, there's a whole lot of what I see as completely unjustified schadenfreude bubbling up in the fever swamps of the alt-right and the conspiracy industry, some of whose true believers have jeered at me and called me an idiot (or a paid shill of George Soros/Hillary Clinton/the New World Order) for being a Snopes fan. It's not a stretch to imagine some of them snickering at me -- and at other Snopes supporters -- right about now.

I'm sorry to disappoint any detractors, but I welcome that elephant and am more than happy to discuss it. The reason I haven't addressed the issue before now is that I was preoccupied with the holidaze, work deadlines and other stuff related to my real life. Now that I have a bit of a breather, let's talk about the Snopes "scandal" that has so many right-wing haters and conspiracy nutcakes foaming at the mouth (and perhaps secretly masturbating -- admit it, Lenny).

The big story was "broken" by the notorious right-wing UK tabloid The Daily Mail, aka The Daily Fail (here's that link again). This, I feel compelled to point out, is the same tabloid whose online tentacle is a co-defendant in a $150 million lawsuit by incoming First Lady Melania Trump. The suit concerns a story about suggestions (mere suggestions, mind you, not accusations) that Melania might have once been a sex worker herself, as in "paid escort." (Here's a link to that September 2016 complaint.) The Mail retracted and apologized (or apologised, as the case may be), but the suit has gone forward. Melania made her first appearance in court on December 12, 2016.

Anyway. The headline on the Snopes story is as lurid as one might expect from The Fail:

EXCLUSIVE: Facebook 'fact checker' who will arbitrate on 'fake news' is accused of defrauding website to pay for prostitutes - and its staff includes an escort-porn star and 'Vice Vixen domme'

As per its usual practice, The Fail precedes the actual article with a bulleted list, for the benefit, I suppose, of people who are in too much of a hurry, or too reading-challenged, to wade through the typo-ridden main article:

Facebook has announced plans to check for 'fake news' using a series of organizations to assess whether stories are true 

One of them is a website called Snopes.com which claims to be one of the web's 'essential resources' and 'painstaking, scholarly and reliable' 

It was founded by husband-and-wife Barbara and David Mikkelson, who used a letterhead claiming they were a non-existent society to start their research 

Now they are divorced - with Barbara claiming in legal documents he embezzled $98,000 of company money and spent it on 'himself and prostitutes' 

In a lengthy and bitter legal dispute he is claiming to be underpaid and demanding 'industry standard' or at least $360,000 a year

The two also dispute what are basic facts of their case - despite Snopes.com saying its 'ownership' is committed to 'accuracy and impartiality' 

Snopes.com founder David Mikkelson's new wife Elyssa Young is employed by the website as an administrator 

She has worked as an escort and porn actress and despite claims website is non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a 'Dump Bush' platform 

Its main 'fact checker' is Kimberly LaCapria, whose blog 'ViceVixen' says she is in touch with her 'domme side' and has posted on Snopes.com while smoking pot

Now let me say right off that I am not suggesting at all that The Fail made this up from whole cloth. I'd been wondering for some time whatever happened to Barbara Mikkelson, whose work from past years still appears on Snopes but who is no longer named as one of the founders. I have no problem believing that there was an acrimonious divorce between David and Barbara (I'd heard some vague buzz about it some time ago), nor am I particularly shocked that David Mikkelson took up with a former sex worker who is now a website admin at Snopes. As for one of the fact checkers being in touch with her "domme side" and insinuating that she has smoked pot while posting on Snopes.com... yawn. Would anyone be scandalized by a blogger or journalist posting while enjoying a glass of wine?

The embezzlement accusations are more serious, but that's between the Mikkelsons and their lawyers. And frankly I don't know enough about the details of the case to make a comment. I'm not trying to let Dave Mikkelson off the hook for anything, and if I were going to take sides I'd be inclined to take sides with Barbara at this point. But if you read The Fail's report you will notice that they did not provide a link to the actual legal documents that were cited in the piece, although they did display what presumably are screen shots of snippets of said documents. So I can't really address the documents or the conflicts they supposedly describe with any authority. And neither can you, and neither can the writers on any of the alt-right hate sites that picked up the story, unless any of you have actually read all of the documents.

And the alt-right/conspiracy nutter sites did indeed take this story and run, and run, and run with it.

The alt-right blog Zero Hedge was even less subtle than The Fail with its headline:

Snopes Co-Founder Embezzles $98,000, Drops Weight, Leaves Fat Wife And Marries Actual Whore

And this piece, which appears on racist, hatemonger and conspiracy nut Jeff Rense's site (though not authored by Rense himself), is downright pornographic. You can almost see the writer, "journalist" Yoichi Shimatsu, salivating. Shimatsu is a yuuuge believer in the idiotic Pizzagate fake scandal, and so apparently is Rense. Here are the two of them blathering on video.

The stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld, Not-Doktor Leonard Coldwell, who is a passionate Snopes hater (and Trump lover), curated a piece from the right-wing Daily Caller for his "blog."

And not surprisingly, the self-proclaimed king of the (fact)free press, Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams, bubbled over with righteous glee about the Snopes dramas, with this headline:

Prostitutes for the Presstitutes: SNOPES fact-checkers revealed to be actual whores, fraudsters and deviant left-wing fetish bloggers

Naturally, Mikey inserted himself into the drama.

Facebook recently announced it would rely on SNOPES to “fact-check” news articles to make sure Facebook operated with high integrity standards and full transparency. In reality, the announcement was a thinly-veiled attempt to censor independent journalism by labeling real news “fake news” with the help of all the left-wing (actual) whores and fraudsters at SNOPES.

Now, Mikey's sites are prime examples of fake news, pseudo-science, conspiracy lunacy, dirty SEO tricks and right-wing propaganda (regarding the latter, so much for political neutrality, which so many of the Snopesophobes, including Adams, claim is missing from Snopes). His Natural News site was once described by a blogger on the Rational Wiki site as being the Daily Mail of Alternative Medicine. So it stands to reason that he might feel threatened by Facebook's attempts to crack down on the phonies. But hey, Mikey, you want "deviant?" You want "fraudster?" Have you taken a look at your pudgy little pal Lenny? For that matter, have you delved into the personal lives and private and public failings of the "independent journalists" whom you claim to be the real guardians of truth and morality? No, I didn't think so.
 
But I digress. Where Natural News is concerned, it seems that Snopes can give as good as it gets. So it's perfectly understandable that Mikey would hate them so much.

Perspective
Let's look at this a little more closely. First off, the disagreements between two people involved in a rancorous divorce do not necessarily invalidate those people's efforts in other aspects of their lives. So The Fail's snarky bullet point (i.e., "The [Mikkelsons] also dispute what are basic facts of their case - despite Snopes.com saying its 'ownership' is committed to 'accuracy and impartiality'") is irrelevant. Even if it is true that Barbara and David Mikkelson can't agree on the "basic facts" about their personal affairs, this does not invalidate the fact-checking and mythbusting work done over the years by the Mikkelsons, Kim LaCapria, or any other Snopes "staffer."

And the "whore" that the right-wingers are jeering about -- David Mikkelson's new wife, Elyssa Young -- is not a fact-checker on Snopes; she is just an administrative assistant. Not that being a sex worker would render someone incapable of being a fact checker, but I think the haters are making much too big a deal out of Young's position (ahem) at Snopes.

In fact The Fail seems to be making much too big a deal out of a lot of things about Mikkelson's new bride. Take this bullet point (please): "She has worked as an escort and porn actress and despite claims website is non-political ran as a Libertarian for Congress on a 'Dump Bush' platform."

Elyssa Young was an unsuccessful Libertarian candidate in 2004 -- nearly 13 years ago. But again, she was not then and is not now (to my knowledge) a Snopes fact-checker. And even if she had been, and assuming that she allowed her Libertarian tendencies to influence her work, that would have actually made the common allegation that Snopes has a "liberal bias" even sillier. Libertarians may skew liberal on certain social issues, but they're pretty much in sync with the right wing and the Tea Party on everything else.

Then there's the much-criticized Kim LaCapria, who is often described as the top fact-checker on Snopes. The alt-right haters have long accused her of leftist tendencies, though quite a few of her stories have debunked left-wing memes and have effectively defended people such as Donald Trump. Now the haters are drooling over the fact that she has some sexy web sites and that she claimed to have posted on Snopes after smoking pot. Meh. LaCapria clearly has a life apart from Snopes, and if that offends you, hey, don't visit her web sites. If you think her work is affected by her pot smoking and you don't trust her because of that, keep in mind that her pieces on Snopes, like all the articles on the site, provide links to other sources, so you can do further research on your own. So c'mon, put down that bottle of bourbon, Lenny, and learn to use the Internet for something besides reinforcing your own biases.

The big but
I did find one critical piece about the Snopes "scandal" that made a few valid points about Snopes and its fact-checking methods. This article by Kalev Leetaru on Forbes.com is worth reading, although I think that Leetaru, like other critics, made too big a deal out of Elyssa Young's past political activities. I think he also reacted too strongly to David Mikkelson's reluctance to divulge details of his personal legal troubles.

But at least Leetaru made an effort to reach out to Mikkelson, and he made some excellent suggestions about how Snopes could improve by being more forthcoming about its assessment process. So while I don't expect either Barbara or David Mikkelson to air all of their personal dirty laundry to the world, I do think that there's room for improvement on Snopes.com.


Separating real fake news from fake fake news
I don't want to veer too far off-track from the main point of this post, but since fake news has become such a force, and fighting fake news has now become a thing as well, and Snopes has been front and center in that fight since long before "fake news" became a trending topic, here's another piece that bears sharing. It's partly about how the fake-news perps and believers have gone all Pee-Wee Herman ("I know you are, but what am I?") on their accusers in the mainstream media.

Some supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump have also taken up the call. As reporters were walking out of a Trump rally this month in Orlando, Fla., a man heckled them with shouts of “Fake news!”

Until now, that term had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online. But conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda.

In defining “fake news” so broadly and seeking to dilute its meaning, they are capitalizing on the declining credibility of all purveyors of information, one product of the country’s increasing political polarization. And conservatives, seeing an opening to undermine the mainstream media, a longtime foe, are more than happy to dig the hole deeper.

And that's a pretty dangerous trend. I only hope that Snopes can survive this latest round of attacks so it can continue to be a force in the fight against fakery. We need you now more than ever, Snopes.


Carry it on
Snopes.com started out as a hobby on the old-school newsgroup circuit -- in those ancient days before social media and really, even before blogs -- and over the years it grew from there. It is possible that at some level its founders may have always considered it a hobby, albeit a lucrative hobby. But at some point along the way Snopes managed to also become a legitimate and much-cited source of information about misinformation, perhaps surprising its founders more than anyone else. Yet to my knowledge neither Barbara nor David Mikkelson ever pretended to be infallible or to be experts in anything.

This October 19, 2016 piece on the Webby Awards site gives a more balanced perspective about Snopes' history.

And here's a December 25, 2016 piece in the New York Times about Snopes and David Mikkelson.

You might also be interested in this December 2015 Washington Post interview with David Mikkelson, in which he discusses, among other things, Snopes' role as a political reporter and fact-checker. (Keep in mind that even though the vast majority of the right-wing bitching and whining and griping about Snopes is based on its political content, Snopes did not start out as a political site, and it still reports on many topics besides politics.)
 
As far as I'm concerned, Snopes remains a legitimate source of information, despite the allegations about hookers and pot smoking and yes, even despite the allegations of David Mikkelson's embezzlement. I hope the Mikkelsons get that latter bit worked out soon and that they can get on with their lives.

Is Snopes a perfect source? Of course not. Is there room for improvement? You bet (see Forbes.com article linked to above). But let's separate the salacious from the serious, the voyeur fodder from the valid criticism about Snopes' methods. Even though in his private life David Mikkelson may be a complete sleazeball, and although some of the Snopes "staff" may be involved in kinky activities on their own time, Snopes, with all of its imperfections and juicy non-scandals, still beats the pants off of the army of alt-right wingnutters and misinformation mongers such as Natural News, Breitbart, Alex Jones, WorldNut Daily, The Daily Caller, Pamela Geller, Stormfront, Jeff Rense and, of course, anything by Leonard Coldwell.

And one more point: I find it utterly astounding that many of the same people who are so scandalized by David Mikkelson's private life, and those of some of the Snopes staffers, apparently aren't scandalized at all by the garish, lurid spectacle that is Donald John Trump. Just saying.

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