At one point in the distant past of the Interwebs, Snopes.com was taken seriously as a leading de-bunker of urban myths.

As the years went by, its founders — a once-married couple named David and Barbara Mikkelson — decided to drift into political commentary. As their site grew, they hired an openly partisan, left-wing blogger named Kim Lacapria.

Lacapria had earlier declared herself “openly left-leaning” and very liberal. She has tarred conservatives as “teahadists” who “fear female agency”.

After joining Snopes, Lacapria quickly found herself and the site embroiled in controversy as her various posts read like Democrat op-eds and not any sort of fact-checking.

The Mikkelsons themselves are an interesting pair. They divorced in 2014, but appear to be engaged in a vicious battle over their assets. One court document accuses David of “raiding the corporate business Bardav bank account for his personal use… [which] he expended upon himself and the prostitutes he hired.”

Well, as you might expect from an organization this well-run…

…Snopes “is now in danger of closing its doors” and has been forced to hold a fundraising campaign (link intentionally omitted).

In the letter David Mikkelson wrote describing the reason for the campaign, he admits that the company has lost control of its own website and says it’s being held “hostage” by a vendor it outsourced various services to.

That’s a big deal. In fact, Mikkelson implies that the vendor could create, alter and delete any site contents it wants to. Thus far, he claims that hasn’t happened.

Snopes.com, which began as a small one-person effort in 1994 and has since become one of the Internet’s oldest and most popular fact-checking sites, is in danger of closing its doors. So, for the first time in our history, we are turning to you, our readership, for help.

Since our inception, we have always been a self-sustaining site that provides a free service to the online world: we’ve had no sponsors, no outside investors or funding, and no source of revenue other than that provided by online advertising. Unfortunately, we have been cut off from our historic source of advertising income.

We had previously contracted with an outside vendor to provide certain services for Snopes.com. That contractual relationship ended earlier this year, but the vendor will not acknowledge the change in contractual status and continues to essentially hold the Snopes.com web site hostage. Although we maintain editorial control (for now), the vendor will not relinquish the site’s hosting to our control, so we cannot modify the site, develop it, or — most crucially — place advertising on it. The vendor continues to insert their own ads and has been withholding the advertising revenue from us.

Our legal team is fighting hard for us, but, having been cut off from all revenue, we are facing the prospect of having no financial means to continue operating the site and paying our staff (not to mention covering our legal fees) in the meanwhile.

As misinformation has increasingly threatened democracies around the world (including our own), Snopes.com has stood in the forefront of fighting for truth and dispelling misinformation online…

The fact that Snopes says it has lost control of its site renders its already tenuous hold on the fact-checking business meaningless.

Snopes should be removed from any fact arbitration services from Facebook and Google until it can reclaim control of its site.

In the time period of 2007-2008, two journalists — Trevor Loudon, a blogger from New Zealand, and America’s Survival President Cliff Kincaid — tried to interest the public and the media in the story of their lifetimes. It was how a first-term largely unknown Senator from Illinois was a covert communist with backing from Russia who was poised to win the presidency of the United States. But the story of Obama’s Marxist revolution — the “fundamental transformation” of the United States — does not end there. Kincaid, Loudon and their co-authors, including a former Intelligence Community insider, also examine Obama’s on-going effort to organize “resistance” on a national and global level to President Donald J. Trump. This important book, available from Amazon.com, looks at Obama’s financial master George Soros, Obama’s Catholic training and links to the Vatican and Colombian narco-terrorists, and even how the Obama Administration has created a marijuana counter-culture within U.S. borders. One explosive chapter looks at Obama’s inspiration, South African President Nelson Mandela, who was exposed as a secret member of the South African Communist Party after his death. America’s intelligence community, Kincaid argues in the book, must be retrained in the art of detecting subversion and preventing communist-inspired and radical Islamist violence. He says they failed to warn America in 2008 that Obama was a Marxist who couldn’t pass a basic background security check.

This is the second in a three-part series.

In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the content and tone of the political rhetoric leftist propagandists use to criticize the proposed GOP health care plans vis-à-vis ObamaCare. In part 2, we will describe the propaganda efforts used by progressives to cite dubious statistics to tar and misrepresent the U.S. health care system.

A recent commentary illustrates this propaganda. An article in The British Medical Journal entitled, “Medical error — the third leading cause of death in the U.S,” compares our “broken system” to those of other industrialized nations that purportedly are cheaper and better.

The Journal article cited by the author, in fact, had a significant caveat. “Medical error is not included on death certificates or in rankings of cause of death,” the article stated. The statement about medical error is “only an estimate by two researchers,” and “better reporting” is needed. Indeed, let’s begin with the British themselves.

British officials are so proud of their National Health Service they are willing to concoct figures, not only to praise their system, but also to lie about the fact they ration health care by queues and waiting lists, restrictions to specialists and access to life-saving medical treatments, and even outright denial of medical care to the elderly.

The Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis has pointed out that although the NHS claims, “British patients deaths or serious injuries due to medical errors is 11,000 cases a year,” the reality is quite different. As early as 2009, the House of Commons Health Select Committee reported, “thousands of NHS mistakes are covered up and that a better estimate is that 72,000 patients die each year.”

So much for medical errors in the U.S., which indeed occur, but at least are more objectively and accurately reported. Hidden in the statistics is the fact not only are the poor and disabled properly and promptly treated in the U.S., but the elderly are aggressively treated. In the U.S., potentially life-saving treatments, which carry risks for complications, are administered to patients seeking them in consultation with their physicians. These increase the chances for untoward reactions that are then reported as “medical errors” by medical and eagerly critical public health researchers.

Truth be told, Americans want the best health care money can buy and that prolongs life as long as possible – sometimes to excess. This reached the point that some progressive academicians have even proposed to restrict access to medical care at a certain age — proposals that have not been acceptable to the general population.

When comparing U.S. health care to those of the social democracies of Western Europe and other industrialized nations, proponents of socialized medicine (i.e., single payer system) argue about lower costs and alleged better medical care “in other industrialized nations.” In a recent article, Dr. David Stolinsky succinctly encapsulates the argument:

“We are told that despite all the money we spend on health care, America does not rank with the best in regard to infant and maternal mortality or in life expectancy. In fact, the difference is minimal. Life expectancy at birth for the European Union is 78.67 years, while that for the U.S. is 78.11 years ? only six months shorter.”

Progressive academicians and other proponents of socialized medicine neglect to mention the our mortality statistics also are affected by dramatic increases in fatal drug abuse and epidemic proportions of black-on-black crime.

Dr. Stolinsky asks:  “So what is killing Americans before the age of 60? Americans are. The No.1 cause of death for African-American males from the ages of 15 to 34 is homicide. Faster ambulance response and more trauma centers may reduce this figure somewhat. But clearly, this is not a problem of health care.”

Another problem is illegal immigration and providing necessary care to those coming from across the southern border. Dr. Stolinsky writes: “If women come across the border eight months pregnant, never having seen a doctor, is the fetal and maternal mortality a problem of health care? If pregnant and nursing mothers drink alcohol or use illegal drugs, can doctors solve the problem?”

Europeans are just now experiencing legal and illegal immigration on a large scale. Let’s wait and see new data and projecting statistics from Germany and Italy — that is, if officials are honest and release authentic data.

Although we could have used data from Los Angeles or Chicago, the drug and crime capitals of the United States, Dr. Stolinsky chose to use data from the District of Columbia in Washington, DC, to illustrate the problems of the inner cities. (It should be noted these three metropolitan areas are located in states or districts with the strictest gun control laws in the United States.) After describing the toll that crime, life-threatening sexually transmitted diseases, such as hepatitis and AIDS, as well as drug abuse have taken in the inner cities, Dr. Stolinsky writes:

“If you doubt this, check out the life expectancy and the rates of infant and maternal mortality in the various states. Compare the best figures with those from the District of Columbia, which is similar to other inner cities. For example, the maternal mortality rate for DC is 34.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 2.7 in Massachusetts. The infant mortality rate in DC is 14.1 per 1,000 live births, compared with 4.5 in Utah. The life expectancy in DC is 72.0 years, compared with 80.0 years in Hawaii.”

In short, these statistics provide ample reason for why U.S. mortality rates do not surpass the Europeans.

Admittedly, as evinced by Dr. Stolinsky’s aforementioned statistics, the U.S. has its share of social problems because of our generosity in bestowing benefits, lenient immigration policy and permissive criminal justice system. But those are not problems with our medical care system.

If the U.S. health care system is so “broken,” as claimed by leftist propagandists, why do so many foreign dignitaries and private citizens still come to the U.S. seeking medical treatment? Why do Canadians, who have a fully socialized health care system, go south of the border to receive medical care in the U.S.? Why are an astounding 60 percent of Nobel Prizes in Medicine or Physiology won by American medical scientists? Why are cancer survival rates in the U.S. so much higher than in the rest of the world? Obviously, these questions answer themselves.

Certainly, there are problems in the U.S. health care system — for example, medical care delivery and prescription drugs are too expensive. The underlying cause of the problem is government involvement in health care. In a subsequent column, we will discuss how the free market has been perverted by government interference and further contravene other false claims promulgated by proponents of socialized medicine.

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Liberal television host and author Touré Neblett seized on a Politico article published Tuesday. The 2,500-word Politico article focused not on anything policy related, but instead centered entirely around President Donald Trump’s weight.

“Politico says Trumpy is the least athletic president in decades which is a nice & polite way of saying he’s a fat slob like Jabba the Hut,” Neblett tweeted Wednesday.

Yes, you read that right. Of all the issues facing the country right now, Ben Strauss, the author of the piece, elected to weigh in on Trump’s physical fitness to be president. What’s worse, Neblett used the story to basically fat shame the president, which liberals usually oppose.

The Left’s obsession with Trump’s “fitness” is nothing new, but usually it is his mental capability to carry out his constitutional duties that gets called into question.  In this particular Politico article, Strauss takes the mental fitness argument a step further.

“Is the President fit?” Strauss asked in the first part of the Politico headline. He doesn’t seek an objective answer. Instead, in the next sentence, Strauss unilaterally declares Trump as the “least athletic president in generations.” Straus goes on to explain “why it matters” — or at least why Strauss thinks it matters.

Strauss writes: “In the modern history of American presidents, no occupant of the Oval Office has evinced less interest in his own health. He does not smoke or drink, but his fast-food, red meat-heavy diet, his aversion to exercise and a tendency to gorge on television for hours at a time put him at odds with his predecessors.”

Forget for just a second that former President Barack Obama smoked cigarettes for the better part of his first term in office, despite former First Lady Michelle Obama constantly railing against the damaging effects that smoking can have on one’s body. Strauss instead went on to shame the octogenarian president for looking and acting like the majority of senior Americans.

“By any measure, America’s president is overweight, and medical experts say it could be affecting his health and his job,” Strauss wrote. Strauss doesn’t mention Trump is the oldest man ever to assume the nation’s highest office.

Strauss continued by pointing out how Trump “deviated” from his prepared remarks during a state visit to Saudi Arabia, which the White House said was because he was “exhausted.” Given his age and the timing and pace of the trip, this seems fair.

But not for Strauss, who insisted the White House official’s response was “not an excuse the Bull Moose would have made,” referring to former President Theodore Roosevelt, who was an avid outdoorsman.”Teddy Roosevelt went on legendary ‘rough, cross-country walks’ in D.C.’s Rock Creek Park and was once punched in the eye by a sparring partner half his age,” Strauss wrote. “John F. Kennedy projected an image of youthful vitality even as he secretly took painkillers for his bad back and other ailments”

“Gerald Ford was lampooned as a clumsy oaf on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ but he was a champion football player in college. George W. Bush, an avid mountain biker, ran 7-minute miles on his regular 5k workouts,” Strauss wrote. “Even Bill Clinton lumbered along on regular jogs to atone for his Big Mac habit.”

Strauss did acknowledge that Trump often hits the links at his golf properties, but he criticized the president for riding a golf cart. Never mind the security advantages of riding, as opposed to walking.

It also should be noted the criticism of Trump’s fitness habits comes from the same people who criticize him for golfing too much. Regardless of what one may say about the frequency of Trump’s golf outings, his swing is impressive for someone who is 71 years old.

Contrast that with the swing of Obama, who is two decades younger and also, in this clip, appears to be riding a card just as Trump does. Obama’s golf swing.

Like Republicans in general, the president is in a no-win situation. The media will grasp at anything to portray Trump as unfit to be president.

Criticizing a 71-year-old man who keeps his schedule for not being physically active and trying to fat-shame him because he likes hamburgers is petty, unconstructive and sadly indicative of a left wing media that still cannot accept that this particular 71-year-old came out of nowhere, thumbed his nose at conventional Washington and became the leader of the free world.