Hardly. But the email gossip circuit insists they are, and that they favor Obama. The email - as always - is packed with falsehoods, and utterly untrue.

I'm confused here. The guy that put this sign up is a Democrat that favored Obama? My brain is rattled!

The guy who put the sign up is an anti-Obama Republican, and State Farm asked him to take it down, since they take no political positions.

Many on the right have been eager to discredit Snopes - one can only guess why - and this email circulated insisting that Snopes was pro-Democratic and - among other things - made up part of the story about State Farm.

I've found that with both FactCheck and Snopes, when I quote research that utterly disproves the conspiracy theory of the moment, my right-wing friends simply say, "Well, you can't trust those fact checking groups, you know." Conversation over. So, today I felt like making the pitch that these outfits are seriously reliable.