Facebook "censors" Leonard Coldwell again: somebody call the waaaahmbulance!

Not-Doctor Leonard Coldwell, he of the extravagant boasts and faux credentials, is once again complaining about being suspended -- or "banned" as he histrionically puts it -- from Facebook. This time around, on his Wednesday, May 25, 2016 entry, which is one of the few original "blog" posts he has ever published on his main site, he is claiming that the reason for the suspension is that he wrote posts supporting US presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Dr. Coldwell Banned from FB for Support of Trump – Lets [sic] Sue FB!

...screamed the big headline.


As usual, Coldwell's claims make no sense at all. Look at it logically, though to do so you have to overlook the fact that logic and Lenny don't even belong in the same blog post together. If people got suspended from Facebook merely for writing supportive posts about Trump, there would be no pro-Drumpf content on Facebook whatsoever. But my feeds are constantly cluttered with users' posts supporting The Donald's presidential run (I do have Facebook friends who are Trump supporters), as well as links to "news" and opinion pieces that are favorable to the orange blowfish. And there are scads of Facebook pages and communities devoted to supporting Trump's presidency.

Nevertheless Lenny is crying martyr again, and not surprisingly is once again waving the litigation banner, inviting his idiot followers to join him in a one-billion-dollar class action lawsuit.

Said he:

Dr. Coldwell Re-Posted on FB a post in regard to the fact that Trump is not a Muslim Hater.

He was shortly after banned for his actions despite the fact that we, as Americans, still have free speech under the second [sic] amendment.

It is time to start a Class A Lawsuit against Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg. He believes his corporate policies are binding for the Facebook user without any form of justice or way to question their unlawful actions. There is no method set up to defend a post and reverse their unlawful and criminal Actions.

Law is not a one-way street. Since Facebook profits from our posts and participation, we have the right to sue for a part of that money and as freelancers. Simply put, we have rights, possibly employee rights. We have the right to get our regular hourly rate if Facebook does not obey and adhere to their own policies and rules.

Let's take a closer look at this matter.

First...Second... one of those numbers... the point is, we love Trump!
To begin with, it is the First Amendment that addresses free speech, not the Second Amendment, and you would think that the guy who describes himself as "one of the leading authorities for Constitutional Law (Common Law ) Sovereignty and the fight for Liberty and Freedom" -- and who is co-author of the best book ever written about the subject would know his First from his Second Amendments. (By the way, as mentioned here a few times previously, Coldwell's co-author on that great law book, "Dr. Sam Kennedy," is currently serving prison time for tax evasion).

My husband Ron attempted to set little Lenny straight.

Nice try, Ron, but I doubt that your comment will ever see the light of day. Except here.

On a Facebook discussion about the matter, Ron added, "And BTW, Herr Genius, before you can claim to have rights as an employee or freelancer, you must first have an employment or work-for-hire contract. Feel free to post evidence that you have either. We'll wait."

I suspect we will have a long wait. I do have a feeling that eventually LoonyC or one of his admins [I originally speculated it would be Sarah, but she seems clueless or indifferent about it at the moment] will realize the mistake about the amendment, most likely as a result of reading Ron's comment, and will silently correct it, hoping no one else noticed. But look, I have a screen shot (as usual, click to enlarge).

And here's the rest of the little screed.

 

The amendment gaffe was proudly paraded on Facebook as well, also on May 25, on The Only Answer to Cancer page, which is one of numerous pages Coldwell maintains and from which he has not been suspended. (Which makes his whining seem all the more... whiny.) His favorite admin and "little sister" Sarah provided a supportive comment without making note of the First/Second confusion.

Now, I suppose this whole thing could be viewed as a Second Amendment issue if you stretched the definition a little and framed it as a case of Lenny being deprived of an opportunity to "shoot off" his mouth. But clearly this was an error on the part of Lenny and/or his admin(s), and it hasn't been corrected yet as of this writing.

For the benefit of Lenny and Sarah and anyone else who may be reading this: here is a very basic summary of both the First and the Second Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America. Be sure to take scrupulous notes so you can work the information into your presentations about sovereignty and freedom and Constitutional law at the next IBMS Masters Society (GIN ripoff club) meeting... or are you not having those in the USA any more? That club was doomed from the beginning, though the death knell really seemed to be ringing back in December 2014 when Peter Wink apparently left the party... but I digress.

Regarding amendments, your idol Donald Trump is indeed a supporter of Second Amendment rights, or at least he comes across that way, though your ignorance about amendments and numerous other subjects might endear you to the man who says that he "loves the poorly educated." But what about the First Amendment, which -- not to belabor the point -- is the relevant one in this instance? Donald Trump is clearly no friend to freedom of the press, at least when it comes to content that is critical of him. In that regard, he's much like... well, you know.

Not to belabor the point, of course.

Is Coldwell telling the truth (stop snickering) about the Facebook suspension?
Is there any truth to Lenny's claim? Did he really get suspended (not banned, but suspended) from Facebook simply for saying that Donald Trump is not anti-Muslim? In light of the fact that there are hundreds of much more passionately pro-Trump (and stupider, more toxic anti-Muslim rants) on Facebook -- and that all of these are allowed to remain unmolested by that criminal Zuckerberg -- I think we can safely assume that Lenny is not telling us the entire truth, to put it very kindly.

Here is a May 21, 2016 screen shot that appears to show a part of the story Lenny didn't tell on his blog post.



Although there is indeed a relatively innocuous (though comically misinformed) pro-Trump statement in this post, that statement appears to have been written by someone else, judging by the fact that everything is spelled, capitalized and punctuated by someone much more literate in written English than Lenny is. But look at the clearly anti-Semitic comment about that statement by "Dr. Leonard Coldwell" (the name he uses on his German-language Facebook page):

How the Jews run the world -- lets [sic] see is [sic] Zuckerass blocks me now too in that case.

On his German page on the same day, "Dr." Leonard Coldwell posted essentially the same complaint.



I simply do not have the ability to trace the entire history of the posts on both the English and German pages, but I think the above screen shots give enough of a clue. If Facebook did indeed remove a post of Coldwell's because "it doesn't follow the Facebook Community Standards," you can be pretty sure that there was some anti-Jewish or other hate-filled screed (possibly a toxic anti-Muslim screed that he's not showing us) attached to that non-Coldwellian #TRUMP2016 post. You can also be pretty sure that the removal happened because someone reported Loony for the hatement, not for being a Trump supporter.

Moreover, if you look at the screen shots that Coldwell shared on his May 25 "blog" post, it appears that all of the controversy centers around content on his German ("Dr. Coldwell") page, and as noted, he hasn't been suspended from that page. He's still posting, as anyone who has Facebook access can see by clicking on this very public page. But the tone of his challenge to "Zuckerass" ("Lets [sic] see is [sic] Zuckerass blocks me now too") makes it appear that he actually wanted to be blocked/suspended, just so he could have another opportunity to whine. Also worth noting is that if the offending post was originally published on his German page, this would make arguments about the First (and Second) Amendments all the more irrelevant. 

Now, if Lenny would be willing to share a screen shot of his complete original post-- and the entire message from Facebook about it for that matter -- perhaps it would tell us a different story. Otherwise we can just assume that he is lying as usual. I know, I am as shocked as you are.
 
Threatened ass-action flawsuits and Lenny's history of Facebook abuse
I seriously doubt that Zuck is quaking in his boots about the prospect of being fake-sued by Lenny, who has fashioned a third or fourth career as a vexatious -- and unsuccessful -- litigant.

I also question the Len-sinuation that Zuck and Facebook are making tons of money from Lenny's poorly spelled, semi-literate, conspiracy-meme-filled and often hateful rants on his numerous Facebook pages. 

Coldwell has often promoted himself as one of the few sources of valuable information that can't be found anywhere else; therefore, according to him, every time he gets blocked or banned or suspended, people who could benefit from his valuable info are being criminally deprived. Oh, the humanity!

But does anyone really benefit from (and does anyone in the sane world really miss) moronic posts such as this one (posted a few days before the Great Ban), in which Loony says that HAARP is killing us with volcanoes? 


 

Hey, I know another guy who had a great volcano tale too.

Incidentally, the article that Coldwell's post linked to said nothing about HAARP (which was shut down in 2013). That was Coldwell's spin. If you really want to know about the possible causes of increased volcanic activity worldwide, there is plenty of legitimate information and informed speculation on the Web.
 
Granted, the volcano post isn't hate speech; it's just stupid speech, and is merely one random example of the lunacy he likes to share when he isn't spewing hatred all over his Facebooks. But getting back to the subject of hate speech, I seriously doubt that many people (except for a few cretins) miss, or that Zuck is making millions off of, Lenny's unhealthy obsession with trans-genitals:

 

As many if not most of you know, Leonard Coldwell has a long history of writing abusive and hate-speechy posts on Facebook. Here's one of the abusive posts (personally abusive to me, that is) from October 2014. I reported this one to Facebook, even though I had not reported dozens of other abusive and defamatory posts he had written about me. Since this one had my home address and phone number I felt it endangered me. Facebook did remove this one and of course Coldwell complained about being censored, as usual. 

Here are another couple of posts, from the same time period, which he posted on his friend Abe Husein's page, but which Abe later removed after I brought them to his attention. I have mentioned, displayed and linked to these several times previously, of course, and ask those of you who have seen it all before to forgive the redundancy. But this is for the benefit of new readers. It's good to have all of the essential information in one place.

And if you want to complain about "aristocracy like kingdoms, declaring rules and cutting people off at the knees when opinions do not match up" (in the words of Sarah the Creative on the aforementioned May 25 Facebook post), what about Coldwell's refusal to allow dissent on his own forums, and his decision to completely block people like me from participating on all of his many Facebook pages (and blocking me completely from even seeing his main page) -- while he freely used Facebook to publish my home address and cell phone number along with foul false accusations that I had killed his dog and was sexually harassing him? 

I wasn't allowed to speak up in my own defense, and anyone else who tried was promptly blocked and accused of being me under a fake name. I had to fight Facebook to get the worst of the posts removed, but some remain up to this very day, searchable on Google. When LoonyC failed at his attempts to shut me up by discrediting me and encouraging some of his rabid followers to get in touch with me, he tried to sue me (and a few others who had criticized him) into silence. We saw how that worked out.
 
So don't bawl about "cutting people off at the knees when opinions do not match up." Leonard Coldwell is one of the worst offenders in that regard.

UK wag Longdog has written a few blog posts about some of Lenny's past Facebook suspensions, such as this one in January of this year. That time around, Lenny claimed he'd been locked out because of his posts about Obama. Longdog pointed out that the real reason was that Lenny was constantly posting "racist shite" like this.

The January suspension followed a long string of hateful posts, over the previous few weeks, some of which Longdog documented in this December 2015 post. Longdog posted several screenshots of Lenny's spittle about Muslims and the "Negro," President Obama -- shots that clearly displayed Lenny's racism, bigotry and xenophobia. Then for good measure Longdog posted a shot of one of the complaints about me that Lenny made in his failed 2015 lawsuit against Salty Droid, RationalWiki, me, and a few other parties and web sites. The main complaint against me was that I had written posts accusing Lenny of engaging in hate speech. No irony intended there, either.
 
By the time Lenny was allowed back on Facebook after that suspension, he'd changed his story about the reason for the suspension, as documented again by Longdog. This time (and not for the first time), Coldwell blamed Facebook for writing posts on his page and then blocking him for those posts that they had planted.

"My Staff and I will start making new Posts here for a while but we will eventually supporting FB. FB made Posts that I did not make and blocked me because of their on Posts on my Site here. I deleted some of my FB Pages already but they are still there. Since they will block me soon again please write to..."

Bernie at the GINtruth blog also wrote about this matter in January 2016, sharing some more of Lenny's hateful and racist Facebook posts. The entire GINtruth post is not about Coldwell but a substantial part of it is. And it is noteworthy that Bernie included a link to an article about Facebook's announcement in early 2016 that it was going to take extra steps to monitor hate speech among its European users -- of which Coldwell (as "Dr. Leonard Coldwell") is emphatically one.

More recently, in the wake of attention drawn to an insidious and potentially dangerous strategy whereby Jewish writers are targeted by vicious anti-Semites and Neo-Nazis on social media, Facebook, Google and Microsoft partnered with the European Union to crack down on online hate speech, making a pledge to delete offensive comments on their respective platforms in under 24 hours. (Note: As of June 3, Google has pulled the Chrome extension called "Coincidence Detector" that had been used to target Jewish people. So it looks as if the alt-right haters will have to come up with new code to do their dirty deeds.) In any case, if Leonard Coldwell continues to write posts about the nefarious Jews and the ways they rule the world -- or to make snide remarks about "the Negro" Obama or blacks in general or Muslims -- he can expect to be reported for those posts, and most likely to be suspended yet again.

I want to make it clear, as I have previously, that I have never reported Coldwell for hate speech on any social media platform. I have only reported him to Facebook for those posts that endangered me by posting my home address, and for writing posts accusing my friend Bernie O'Mahony of being a child rapist. And whether you agree or disagree with the policies or actions or the intent behind monitoring and removing hate speech -- and as I've said numerous times, for the most part I lean towards granting haters, including Coldwell, the right to spew -- this is not a matter of Facebook or the New World Order or the pro-Obama or anti-Trump forces or Big Pharma or anyone else targeting one little mustachioed madman. Rather it is a matter of Facebook policy, applied to everyone, in keeping with the platform's efforts to minimize hate speech.

Going back further in time: In a January 2015 blog post, Bernie wrote about Coldwell's social media and Internet martyrdom. And going even further back: In this February 2013 post Bernie wrote about the same issue, this time focusing on Coldwell's propensity for confusing spam with hacking.

Though Coldwell's claims about being "hacked" are for the most part bunk, he has been suspended from Facebook numerous times over the years -- thrown into "Facebook jail," as it's sometimes called. And every time it has happened he has made up some excuse about the reason: Facebook is censoring him for telling "the truth" about natural cures for cancer and other diseases; Facebook is trying to shut him up because they are part of some big criminal cartel that has it out for Lenny; Facebook doesn't like what he says about Obama; Facebook is banning him because he supports Trump. Or in some cases, Facebook is in cahoots with "criminal" bloggers who are being paid by Big Pharma to ruin "Dr." C's reputation.

But anyone with the ability to see Coldwell's actual Facebook posts, either on his pages or through some of those "criminal" blogs, knows better.

Lenny uncorks another bottle of whine
The day after publishing his fib about being banned from Facebook for supporting Trump, Lenny was back in curation mode, copying and pasting a lament from Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams' Natural News site about how Facebook has it out for conservatives and alt-health heroes. Here is the link to the original rant on the Natural News site; note that the article was not written by Adams himself, but clearly it is consistent with his line of propaganda.

The Natural News whine was apparently in response to a recent flap about allegations regarding Facebook's anti-conservative/pro-liberal bias, as reflected in the way Facebook determined "trending topics." But when I read about Facebook's response to the allegations, it appeared to me that Facebook didn't list something as "trending" until it was mentioned in one or more sites on a list of mainstream or major media -- and there were several conservative sites on that list. Accordingly it appears that if there was any bias, Facebook was simply more biased in favor of mainstream media over "alternative" media, rather than liberal over conservative. And that is not at all the same thing as an anti-conservative or pro-liberal bias.

In any case, in an extravagant effort to equalize the platform (or kowtow to conservative whiners with a persecution complex, as the case may be), Facebook announced changes in its policies in order to make sure that conservatives have their say. And following the initial allegations, Zuck himself had reached out to the cons.

But here's some perspective on the larger issue, written by Clay Calvert, the director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida.

Do we really want or need social networks telling us what is important and what is trending? The very notion of “trending” itself is troublesome, as it reflects much larger problems with news delivery in this country. It mirrors, albeit on much more rapid timetable, the short news attention span we have and the exceedingly quick news cycles cable channels provide in an effort to keep eyeballs. An issue arises, it garners attention and then it rapidly fades away…

Me? I rarely click on the "trending topics" either on Facebook or Twitter. But the gist of Calvert's message was this:

… We need to acknowledge that bias – be it by man or machine – is inherent in news and, finally, we must seek out as many different and diverse sources as possible to learn what’s going on in the world and to find out what truly matters to us, not to a news curator or an algorithm.

Exactly.

Of course if you don't like the new improved Facebook or any of the other "news" or information sources, you can always turn to Mike Adams' alternative and totally objective resources, mentioned in this recent Whirled post (see under, "Trying to conquer the Internet, one comical alt-site at a time"). Or you can just hold out for Adams' stale reruns on "Dr." C's "blog."

Zuck is the guy everyone loves to hate
Coldwell's constant whining about Facebook and his screeds against Mark Zuckerberg are so amusing because clearly, Facebook is very, very important to him. But he seems to be operating under the delusion that Facebook participation is an absolute birthright, not a privilege, and that the rules and guidelines and terms that are clearly spelled out for all participants simply do not apply to him. Instead of using Facebook merely to connect with others and promote his businesses, he continually does the online equivalent of accepting an invitation to a party and then spending the entire time trashing the host and being rude to many of the other guests. He is like the obnoxious drunk who just won't leave until he is kicked out. And he especially seems to enjoy the trashing-the-host part.


But everybody loves to hate on Mark Zuckerberg, I suppose. And many (me included) have a love-hate relationship with Facebook -- and for many reasons that's understandable. It's not just the conservatives, of course. Left-winger Peter Sunde, for instance, recently dubbed Zuck the dictator of Facebook Nation. Sunde did have a few valid points; for instance:

Sunde also decried the technology world's lack of perspective. He denounced Facebook's policy requiring people to use their real name, as in some countries, this can get people persecuted and makes it hard to organize political movements.

"Mark Zuckerberg is a rich white dude from a really privileged background," Sunde said, explaining why he thinks the Facebook boss doesn't understand cultural differences. 


"The reason for the real name policy is Mark Zuckerberg wants to make another dollar."

Yep. As I and others have said, Facebook users aren't its customers; they are its product. And in that regard Facebook does make money off of all of us. But we're also all willing participants who can't participate unless we agree to Facebook's Terms of Use. So Lenny's half-cocked (heh, heh) plan to sue Zuckerberg for a billion bucks is just more lunatic rambling.  

In any case Lenny Coldwell has little to worry about regarding Facebook's real-name policy, or regarding any suspensions, for that matter. He has lots of Facebook pages, even apart from the "Dr." Leonard Coldwell mostly-German page, and the Only Answer to Cancer page. He just created another on May 27, 2016, using the name "Eyn Rand" (he is a worshiper of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, although I seriously doubt that he has ever actually read that weighty tome. But clearly he loves what other people say is in it.).

In the screen grab below, notice the post from Amy King (real name Amy Lynn Chappell, Coldwell's current "wife"), whose account is one of the ones Lenny is apparently using at the moment to continue to have access to Facebook. You can tell it is Lenny writing because Amy is more literate than the writer of that post. I mean, c'mon... "Dr. C is feed up with F B." Amy can do better than that; she may have atrocious taste in men, but she seems reasonably literate. In reality she hasn't been actively participating on her own page in many months, leading some to wonder what actually happened to her. Maybe Lenny has her chained in the second kitchen at that big lake house he fake-bought in South Carolina, baking her Million Dollar Muffin. She had better finish her baking and they'd best skedaddle before the real owners of that house find out they're there, or the real renters get back from their vacation.

Anyway. When I first visited "Eyn Rand" it appeared that he didn't have any friends yet.

 


A subsequent visit, though, showed that he had managed to amass a mighty half dozen "friends," including the very "Leonard Coldwell" who is supposedly suspended at the moment. (How does that happen? To become friends with someone on Facebook, one person has to request and the other person has to accept, right? So how could "Leonard Coldwell" accept a friend request from one of his own fake accounts if he is locked out of one of the real account that he is whining about being locked out of?)

Anyway, clearly Eyn wants friends. So do him a favor, as the NOT-suspended "Dr. Leonard Coldwell" suggests to englisch (sic) speakers...

...and go friend him. Then maybe you can share your thoughts on his page. That is, if he allows others to participate.

And the "banned" preys on
Make no mistake about it: frequently being thrown into Facebook jail has been a marketing boon for Leonard Coldwell, who has placed himself at the center of a decades-long fake persecution drama that probably began long before Mark Zuckerberg was even born.

Every time Coldwell gets suspended from Facebook, or is even threatened with suspension, or every time one of his social media pages or web sites or email addresses gets hit by spamming or phishing or just some random technical glitch, he goes into full martyr mode. Hamhandedly employing fake-scarcity and forbidden-knowledge persuasion tactics (although I must say that his ex b.f.f. Kevin Trudeau was ever so much more refined and skillful at these), Coldwell whines that he is on the verge of being blocked and banned because of his truth-tellin', and that the only way you can possibly save yourself from being deprived of his life-saving information is to subscribe to his "newsletter." 


And voila! He gets a few more names to add to his sucker list. No doubt he has many thousands of names on his list by now, and this fact is most likely the basis of one of his recent boasts that his IBMS Masters Society, which costs money you'll never get back to actually join, has 26,000-plus "members" from 151 countries.

All that Coldwell's "newsletter" consists of are email notices about his "blog posts," nearly all of which are nothing more than curated content that mostly comes from conspiracy-monger sites like those of Mike Adams and Alex Jones. Coldwell truly has nothing original or ground-breaking or earth-shattering to offer. Ever.

But he does get new names from every Facebook suspension incident, and new opportunities to prey upon the desperate, vulnerable and truly stupid. The Facebook community, in the US and elsewhere, gets a brief reprieve from one consistent source of stupidity, comical misinformation, lies and virulent hate posts. And I get easy fodder for blog posts.

So I guess it's a win-win-win.

Update 30 May 2016: When I tried to follow the link to Coldwell's main site today, I was met with this message:

Warning: require(/homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-includes/category.php): failed to open stream: Permission denied in /homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-settings.php on line 150
Fatal error: require(): Failed opening required '/homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-includes/category.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php5.5') in /homepages/14/d375068991/htdocs/drleonardcoldwell/wp-settings.php on line 150

Either Lenny had one of his tech people block my IP address (perhaps my husband Ron's attempted comment to his "blog" post was the last straw, or maybe it was this Whirled post that really set his implants on edge)... or his site is down again. If the latter, I'm sure he'll blame the usual cartel of criminals who have it out for him. If the former, perhaps he is setting me up for some lame accusation that I "hacked" into his site even though I'm not allowed.

But I had been allowed, up until today anyway. And the screen shots and quotations from his web site, drleonardcoldwell dot com, were accurate at the time that Ron and I saw them. If any of y'all can get to his main site without receiving the above message, let me know, and then I'll know for sure that I am blocked from this very public site, one of the most popular sites on the Interwebz, according to him. Also let me know if he corrected that silly Second/First Amendment goof. I'm dying to know. 

Update 31 May 2016: Well, it wasn't all about me after all. Several of my friends whom I asked also said they received the same error message when trying to get to Coldwell's main web site. But today the site is up and running again, and the Amendment gaffe has yet to be corrected as of this posting.

Not surprisingly, on the Dr. Leonard Coldwell (German) Facebook page, Lenny hollered about hacking. Gee, I didn't see that one coming. He's a little off on his numbers, though, as usual. His threat to sue Facebook was first posted on his "blog" on May 25. I checked the link every day after that and it worked fine. It worked when I originally published this blog post. Only on May 30 (yesterday) did I receive the error message referred to above. So I would say that this is a little longer than "2 hours." Also, how did a one billion dollar lawsuit suddenly become five billion? Or is he counting on his German readers who don't read English to take his word for it, and not to bother with trying to read the original post? Or did something just get lost in translation? Anyway, once again Lenny is crying "wolf," but he has a few idiot followers who won't bother questioning his claims.

As mentioned numerous times before on this blog and Bernie's as well as Salty Droid's, Coldwell loves to whine that his sites and Facebook accounts have been hacked. He has  been whining about being hacked for years. If you need another example, in this August 2014 post I documented some of Lenny's hilarious false allegations about "criminal" bloggers, acting in concert with some "Jews in Israel," supposedly "hacking" a then-new website of his. (The entire piece isn't dedicated to this subject; the hacking-allegation story is at the beginning of the post.) 
 
I am not completely discounting the possibility that Coldwell's sites have been hacked on occasion, though I also suspect that some if not most of the problems have been due to bungling by an insufficiently competent "technical" team. But judging by the error message I received the other day when trying to get to his main site (see above), that site is powered by Wordpress. And Wordpress sites seem to be particularly vulnerable to hacking as well as technical glitches. It has something to do with the associated database and with various plugins. I don't really understand it. But I do know that Salty Droid learned this lesson the hard way, and with the help of a technically competent person he finally fixed the problem. So maybe Lenny just needs to get someone who knows what they're doing to fix his web problems. He also needs to quit blaming everyone else for his own manic stupidity and hatefulness.

Snopes versus dopes: the battle continues, and Snopes seems to be winning

For years I have been a fan of the urban legend and conspiracy theory debunking site, Snopes.com. And let's get one thing straight before you start lecturing me about being a Snopes worshiper: I don't consider Snopes infallible, any more than I consider any other information source, online or off, to be infallible. But it appears to me that the Snopes folks are generally diligent researchers, and certainly are a far more credible source than the "alternative" media sites that thrive on selling largely baseless fear and outrage to the conspiracy crowd. (I'm talking to y'all, Alex Jones, WorldTruth.TV, Before It's News, et al.)

At the very least Snopes is a reasonable place to embark upon your own path of inquiry whenever someone shares a meme on social media that seems too bizarre or funny or horrible to be true, or -- equally as important -- that fits too neatly into prevailing social and political biases (even and especially your own). Whenever this happens, which it frequently does, I first check the link in the meme to make sure it's not a satirical/fake news site like National Report. If it is truly being presented as serious news, then, yes, I will very often go to Snopes first, because more than likely they've covered it. But I generally don't stop at Snopes, although I may end up sharing the Snopes page on threads where the meme is being presented as real news.

Snopes, as many know, began as a hobby in the mid 1990s for a California couple named David and Barbara Mikkelson. As far as I know, the Mikkelsons have never pretended to be anything but what they are: a couple of hobbyists whose hobby grew into an obsession and a web presence with a huge following. Except for the "huge following" part, I can very well identify with the whole hobby-turned-obsession thing, because I've been hammering away at this Whirled for more than nine years now. The important point to stress is that despite the frequent claims of their detractors, the Mikkelsons have never pretended to be experts or authorities or the last word on anything.

But here's one thing they have accomplished: again and again Snopes.com has made fools of conspiracy fans and followers of the "alternative" (read: nutcase) media. And this, I suppose, is precisely why said fans and followers work so hard to counter and "expose" Snopes and paint Snopes fans as the fools. In doing so, however, the conspiracy fans invariably make themselves look even more foolish. But that doesn't stop them, and there remain large numbers of people who passionately hate Snopes and whose wrath often encompasses Snopes fans, whom the anti-Snopesers accuse of being stupid, gullible, uneducated or lazy.

Liberal, schmiberal
One of the frequent complaints about Snopes is that they have a "liberal bias," and the corollary to that claim is that Snopes is being secretly funded by one or more nefarious liberal organization(s) or some other special interest group. Back in March 2013, the Skeptoid blog published a credible post debunking the "liberal bias" accusation. (It was cross-posted on the Skeptical Libertarian blog the following month.)

That article, written by Eric Hall, was a response to the infamous (in some circles, anyway) "Snopes got snoped" article that is STILL going around the Internet and is frequently hauled out to discredit Snopes and try to make the conspiracy believers look smart and the people who consult Snopes look stupid. The original source of the article was the aforementioned conspiracy-fan site WorldTruth.TV. But the article appears to be gone now from the original site, although numerous other enthusiastic bloggers picked it up. You can read it here and on several other sites.

Eric Hall's cross-posted Snopes-defense piece makes a very good point that I too have attempted to make numerous times in discussions about Snopes' credibility as opposed to that of WorldTruth.TV:

A larger look at the site called WorldTruth.tv reveals something very hilarious. The claim that Snopes shouldn’t be trusted because it is only run by 2 people (the Mikkelsons) comes from a website run by 1 person who only identifies himself as Eddie. From WorldTruth.tv’s “about us” page:

My name is Eddie and WorldTruth.TV  is my way to share all the knowledge and information that I have acquired and been blessed with in the last 32 years of my journey on this planet.

WorldTruth.TV is a website dedicated to educating and informing people on regular basis with well-researched articles on powerful and concealed information. I’ve spent the last 32 years researching Theosophy, Freemasonry, Kabbalah, Rosicrucianism, the Bavarian Illuminati and Western Occultism. I remember when I first learned about the “Truth” and it wasn’t pretty. I remember learning about how the mass media lies to our faces consistently. About how the educational system only teaches the youth what they need to become obedient workers.
###

I have to rub my forehead every time I read it. The website making a claim Snopes cannot be accurate because they do not have a large team is supposed to be trustworthy when being run by one person. If someone can make sense of that logic, please feel free to comment!

A more recent (April 2014) effort to defend Snopes appeared in the Houston Press, courtesy of Jef Rouner. Take a few moments to read it if you will; it's worth it. I'll wait. Not that Jef's effort has had any effect whatsoever on the die-hard Snopes detractors, who still apparently imagine themselves to hold the factual, intellectual and in many cases the moral high ground.

Health Nut goes nuts over Snopes piece
Take "Health Nut News" blogger Erin Elizabeth (please). Last month she got all bent out of shape because, she says, Snopes misrepresented a couple of things she had written about the much-buzzed-about holistic doctors murder "conspiracy" (note: the link is to a blog post that takes a skeptical view of the "conspiracy"). Erin is, among other things, the personal and business partner of alt-health guru and osteopath Dr. Joseph Mercola. (Here are some skeptical links about Mercola, and I also wrote about him on a post last year (see under, "Joseph Mercola: sitting pretty at the top of the alt-doc heap").)

Given her partnership with Mercola and her role as a natural-health blogger, Erin clearly has a stake in fanning the flames of the dead-doc drama. Don't get me wrong; I'm not making light of anyone's death, nor am I discounting Erin's distress over the loss of anyone who may have been a friend or associate, but there seems to be something more going on here. It centers around Erin's insistence that she has been careful to avoid any mention of a conspiracy regarding the high numbers of "suspicious" deaths among alt-health doctors, practitioners and advocates. She's just calmly reporting, don't you know. But to me, reading even one of her posts about the ongoing saga makes it pretty clear that she is playing on the conspiracy theme. You don't have to use the word "conspiracy" to do that.

Here is the July 21, 2015 Snopes article with which Erin took issue. The article was not written by one of the Snopes principals, Barbara or David Mikkelson, but rather by a longtime Snopes board participant named Kim LaCapria.

And here, if you can access it, is the link to the Facebook thread on which Erin shared her video explaining how Snopes done her wrong. (I'm sorry that I can't seem to find a more universally accessible (e.g., YouTube) link.) In her video Erin seems a tad overwrought, declaring that the Snopes piece might just be the most irresponsible piece of journalism she has seen this year, or perhaps even in a whole decade. She is shocked, shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you! And shocked (in case you didn't get it the first three times).

Mostly Erin seems shocked about the Snopes article's insinuation that she is spreading "conspiracy" rumors, but she also spends an inordinate amount of time in the video quibbling about one of the missing doctors' home state: Montana or North Dakota? She even insinuates that the confusion over the doctor's residence, exacerbated by Snopes, might be a reason nobody can find him. As well, Erin seems to be royally pissed off because she has been misquoted and misrepresented by other journalists -- not Snopes, as it happens, but even so, she is laying most of her outrage on Snopes for this video.

That video wasn't the first time that Erin has dumped all over Snopes. She previously huffed that they are doing a disservice to the health world. Here's an August 2014 rant. The big headline is:

Many quote “Snopes” like they’re scientists or doctors, but they’re just 2 ole couch potatoes who may be coerced by special interest groups

To bolster her accusations, Erin posted a much-shared picture of the Mikkelsons sitting on a couch, with a clearly overweight orange tabby cat perched behind them.

Again I think it important to emphasize that as far as I have ever been able to see, the Mikkelsons have never claimed to be anything but what they are: two folks interested in researching various unbelievable claims. Unlike some of the pond scum (no offense to ponds or scum) that I have written about on this blog, they haven't masqueraded as doctors or scientists. And I doubt if most people who cite Snopes do so believing that either one of the Mikkelsons is a doctor or scientist. That headline seems to be a reflection of Erin's own defensiveness at work.

And as for the ad hominem accusation of being "ole couch potatoes," the Mikkelsons have never claimed to be health nuts either, as far as I know. The well-known picture of the Mikkelsons, which admittedly isn't very flattering, is frequently shared by people who seem hellbent on discrediting them. It appears to be a candid photo taken in a moment of levity. Maybe they now regret ever allowing it to be taken or shared; I don't know.

But I do know that as the "Health Nut," the youthful looking and attractive Erin Elizabeth has a very carefully crafted public persona, and my guess is that she is quite picky about the pictures of herself that she allows to be shared publicly. She seems to be unnecessarily rubbing it in that she's cute and the Mikkelsons... not so much.

Moreover, she describes herself as having "a passion for the healing arts for nearly 25 years" and as being "an author, public speaker, and advocate for healthy living." But when it comes right down to it, having a passion and taking that passion public really doesn't make her an expert of any type -- except, of course, the self-described and relentlessly self-aggrandizing sort of expert. The New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health world is full of those.

Not-Doktor Stoopid joins in on the Snopes sniping (again)
Recently Snopes came under fire yet again from the stuck-on-stupid contingent, and Leonard Coldwell, former b.f.f. of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, gleefully joined in. You've met Lenny on this blog previously, and are possibly still trying to rinse your eyes out and clear your mind. I'm sorry to stymie your cleansing campaign, but he has been such a vociferous detractor of Snopes that he belongs in this post.

Lenny is a proud follower of the tradition of Snopes detractors making themselves look stupid in an attempt to discredit Snopes. Recently, for instance, he shared links to a hoax article -- which was plainly labeled as such -- about the supposed arrest of Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson. Here is the original link, though Lenny shared a link from someone else who had picked up the article on their site. However, on the second site the piece was also clearly labeled as satire.

Not only was the article to which Lenny linked tagged as satirical, and not only was the photo of the "arrest" plainly a bad Photoshopping job (you'd think that the Snopes-haters would recognize Mikkelson's face from the standard Snopes-couch-potato shot), but there are also numerous silly cues within the text that it is not to be taken at all seriously. I mean, really: "attacking the messenger?" "Shooting the piano player?" (Actually it was a player piano, which makes the story even more blatantly silly.)

But Lenny, a long time Snopes loather, posted the announcement of David Mikkelson's arrest on Facebook as if it were real news, accompanied by his customary arrogant and semi-literate I-told-you-so message. He even aggregated the hoax article for the blog on his main web site, presenting it as actual truth. It stayed up on that site for several days, and during this time I tried twice to write a public comment to the post, explaining that the article was satirical. Here are the two comments I tried to post (as usual, click on pics to enlarge):

Neither of my comments was published, though as you'll see in the second screen grab, Coldwell did publish an apparently supportive comment from a reader (who was obviously using a fake name) who claimed not to be surprised by the "news." But the article now seems to be gone from Coldwell's site. Not a word of apology to his readers, though, and as of today, his "I told you so" post is still on his Facebook page:

As the old saying goes, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Here's Lenny from two years ago, blathering about the "trailer trash" that runs snoops [sic]:

So deeply does Lenny despise Snopes that he has been known to throw temper tantrums on his social media whenever anyone dares to cite a Snopes article. A couple of years ago he practically had a meltdown when my pal Julie Daniel, whom I have yet to meet in person but who has become someone I consider a close friend nonetheless, cited a Snopes article to counter Lenny's hysterical sharing on Facebook of the meme about Obamacare and compulsory RFID chips. At least I think that was the meme. It was one of those silly things that are constantly surfacing and resurfacing, anyway. Lenny quickly turned his Eye of Sauron upon Julie, writing, "I know who you are!" as well as publicly issuing what appeared to be several threats to her. She was actually concerned for her safety for a while.

As it turned out, Lenny apparently thought Julie was I, writing under one of numerous aliases (he has publicly and falsely accused me of using more than 70 fake names and accounts to defame and destroy him). But I am not Julie, and Julie is not I. We, do, however, share a contempt for Lenny as well as a respect for Snopes.com.

If, after reading all of the evidence that they are not evil incarnate, you're still prejudiced against Snopes yourself for whatever reason, below is a list of alternatives. For your own sake, always check out wild rumors before sharing them on or off the Internet. And for gosh sakes, don't rely on WorldTruth.TV or anything with the name "Leonard Coldwell" in it as your source.

TruthOrFiction.com

FactCheck.org (mostly focusing on U.S. politics)

Politifact (mostly focusing on U.S. politics)

The Straight Dope

The Skeptic's Dictionary

Update 24 May 2016: I just now discovered a wonderful blog, Just Bad For You, by novelist, screenwriter, children's book author and critical-thinking advocate Jeffrey E. Poehlmann, who is currently fighting cancer. On this April 2016 post he discusses, among several other topics, the dead-docs conspiracy tale and Erin Elizabeth's role in fanning the flames (see under "Murder, Black Ops and Cover Ups by Big Pharma").

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This looks like good news

So the great affair is over but whoever would have guessed
it would leave us all so vacant and so deeply unimpressed
It's like our visit to the moon or to that other star
I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.
~ Leonard Cohen ("Death of a Ladies' Man," from the album of the same title, 1977)

"I will not start the fight, but I will finish it!"
~ Leonard Coldwell, everywhere on the Interwebz, constantly


I published a very abbreviated version of this post -- just the above graphic, no text -- when I first received the news on May 19, via email and supporting PDF, that not-doctor Leonard Coldwell, ex-b.f.f. of imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, had, through his attorneys, voluntarily dismissed his civil defamation case against me (and several other defendants). [Case number 15-CVS-2791, filed in the General Court of Justice, Superior Court Division, Guilford County, North Carolina]

For more details about this suit, see this post (under "Cosmic Connie and the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad lawsuit").

On the following day I temporarily removed the present post for a couple of reasons, though not before receiving a comment suggesting that the picture of the dismissal was fake (see comments). I assure you it is real. Okay, so I did embellish it with a picture frame and Lady Justice, but the document itself is real. I have since received a print copy of said document in the mail, unframed and un-embellished, directly from the lawyer's office. But you don't have to take my word for it, Florian (and any of you other doubters). If you want to verify its reality for yourself, feel free to contact the attorney in question, William F. May of the Greensboro, North Carolina law firm Culbertson & Associates (also known on some Google sites as May & Culbertson Attorneys at Law), whose contact information is on the Notice of Voluntary Dismissal document. Or contact Mr. Coldwell himself, if he hasn't blocked you.

Make no mistake, though: I am not gloating about this. I do not feel that I have "won," mainly because, due to my inability to afford a lawyer and my reluctance to go forth without one, I never really got into the fray. All I did was file a couple of motions on a timely basis, pro se. I first filed a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Ignoring that motion, the Plaintiff's attorney apparently tried to plunge ahead into discovery -- evidently not giving a flip that discovery works both ways and that his client would have shriveled under real discovery. He even subpoenaed Google for my personal account information, and I was obliged to file a motion to stay discovery pending resolution of the motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. (That second motion did manage to get Google's legal department off my back -- not that they were ever really on my back, because Google doesn't even necessarily respond to subpoenas, of which it receives thousands per year. Here is more information about that subject.)

However, my motions were never calendared (by me), and consequently were never heard or ruled on (by the Court), and the Plaintiff's voluntary dismissal makes them moot. The attorney, when I asked him for a reason for the voluntary dismissal of Leonard Coldwell's defamation suit against Schmidt et al., simply responded that a "non-waivable conflict of interest" had "developed" between the Plaintiff and the law firm, and that the firm of Culbertson & Associates will not be representing Mr. Coldwell with regard to any matter going forward. Make of that what you will. I did not and will not ask Mr. May for details.

But I am not complacent. While it may seem like good news, the truth is that I won nothing. And "without prejudice" means, of course, that Coldwell is perfectly free to turn around and file another sham lawsuit, which I will also be obligated to deal with. On the other hand, neither did Coldwell win anything, except some more legal bills and, possibly, more fodder for lies or distortions, should he foolishly choose to exploit this case the way he did his sham suit last year against Jason Jones (Salty Droid) and Omri Shabat (Glancingweb), whom the suit mistakenly named as being one and the same person. (In fact, Coldwell was exploiting the failed Droid/Glancingweb case even in the service of bragging about this 2015 North Carolina case, falsely stating on Facebook that Jason had been hiding from service for well over a year. Nothing could be further from the truth.)

Early in this case, Coldwell boasted about it several times on Facebook. Most of the boasts were soon taken down; I speculate though do not know for sure that this was at the advice of his lawyers. But the bragging lives on, in screen shots. Here are two that were up briefly -- posted on February 6, 2015 -- but were soon taken down:

The first picture, which contains a mug of poor beat-up Bernie O'Mahony of GINtruth.com, is particularly disingenuous, not only because of the way that Coldwell had previously misappropriated and publicly lied about that picture in order to falsely and publicly portray Bernie as a child rapist, but also because Bernie was never part of this North Carolina case at all, as he explained in a recent post. In fact despite numerous threats against Bernie, Coldwell has never sued him and more than likely never will, due to a little thing called jurisdiction. When he's not setting Europe on fire with spurious "'Dr.' C. book tours", Coldwell is in the U.S. for the most part (hiding out in one or both of the Carolinas) -- while Bernie lives in Japan, happily, as he has been doing since 1999, contrary to Coldwell's claims that Bernie is "hiding out" in the Land of the Rising Sun. I am pretty certain, however, that if Bernie were in the U.S. he would find a way to sue Coldwell for those outrageous false claims about child rape.

The second picture, the one with the tiger and the threatening "RUN BITCH" watermark, was posted to Coldwell's buddy Abe Husein's page under Coldwell's former alias "Rudi Kauder." Coldwell has written other ridiculous public posts under that name and once he even sent me a personal threat via Facebook using the same alias. "Rudi's" account has since been deleted.

In addition to the general boasts about the lawsuit, Coldwell spewed several profoundly absurd posts specifically about Jason on Facebook, e.g., the usual nonsense about Jason being "in hiding," and other even wilder and crazier false claims about him. I'll leave it to Jason to share those if he wishes to do so.

While the above two Facebook posts are gone, this one, from March 13, 2015, still exists as of May 31, 2015. You can see how Lenny's little group of sycophants is cheering him on (as always, click on pic to enlarge):

 

And lest you have any doubt that Coldwell was talking about Jason and me in the above, there's this, also from the same day and purportedly written by Coldwell's half-brother Jens Wilhelm Anskohl, whose fake name Coldwell never can seem to spell the same way consistently (Nicholas? Nicolas? Nicky? Nicki?). (Jens, or Nicholas, or Nicky, or Nicki, or whatever you want to call him, is a good-looking ladies' man (reportedly) who, I think, lives in Germany and Las Vegas. Do you really believe he spends his time writing posts on Lenny's Facebook page? Me neither.) Anyway, this post also disappeared soon after its appearance; either Abe wiped it away or Lenny did so himself.
 



On a video posted on April 1 (an appropriate day to be sure), Coldwell can be heard telling conspiracy-fringe radio host Jeff Rense about arrest warrants against un-named perps who were supposedly defaming Lenny, and he mentions having spent... well, I can't quite understand him, but it sounds like he's either saying he spent $6,000.00 or $106,000.00 on legal fees last year in order to finally make these arrests happen. It starts at about 36:00, but if you have some time to waste you really should listen to the whole hilarious thing.

Anyway, to be clear: The case that has just been dismissed was a civil case, not a criminal case. Coldwell never filed any criminal case against Salty and me and the other defendants -- not now and not in the past (even though he has been boasting for years that civil and criminal actions against Salty, me, and various other bloggers are in process). So either Coldwell was flat-out lying about that criminal litigation and those arrest warrants, or, perhaps inspired by false hope imparted to him by his "legal team," he was counting his chickens before they hatched, or even before he had a hen to lay the eggs. Granted, there were indications -- things going on in the background that I'm not going to write about yet -- that Coldwell and his lawyers were trying to trump up some sort of wacky criminal case, but that never happened. And Coldwell's lawyer Mr. May assured me that new pleadings his firm had been working on were also rendered moot by the voluntary dismissal of Case Number 15-CVS-2791.

Although I did not discuss arrest warrants with Mr. May, I can assure you that there never were any arrest warrants for any of the defendants in the case that Mr. May was involved in and that Coldwell had been boasting about on Facebook -- so, again, that clearly seems like a deliberate lie from Coldwell. But maybe you are in Lenny's inner circle and you know something I don't. Fine. If you can present me with evidence that there is or ever was a warrant out for my arrest, or for Jason Michael Jones, or for anyone involved with Rational Wiki (the other main defendant), I will be glad to publish it. For now, I think it is safe to assume that once again Leonard Coldwell was lying about arrest warrants being issued for "defaming" him. Now, that's a big surprise.

Look, I know that many of you are probably tired of reading about this. And indeed, I have so many other things to write about on this blog besides Leonard Coldwell. Heck, even Google -- the search algorithms, not their legal department -- wants to steer me away from Leonard Coldwell and towards a much more popular, much more successful, and much more frequently Googled Leonard C, Leonard Cohen. Google is always trying to complete my search term for me when I'm typing, whether I'm signed in or not, and Google apparently likes Cohen a lot better than Coldwell. Me too.

But I stand by every word I've written about Leonard Coldwell and will continue to do so until and unless I receive credible information that will lead me to modify or retract any of the content. On my numerous posts about Coldwell (as on all of my posts), I have provided abundant screen shots and/or links that you can easily follow yourself and make up your own mind about the subject.

What I am trying to say is that I don't want to bore you any more than necessary -- or any more than I already have -- with this particular subject.


But I suspect this story isn't really over, and as I said, I am not complacent. None of us should ever be complacent where potential SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) actions are concerned. Equally as important, we should never be complacent about the continual abuse of our legal system by public figures such as Leonard Coldwell who file frivolous lawsuits to bully and try to intimidate writers... just because they can. Jason Jones said it quite well in last year's memorandum in support of his motion to sanction Coldwell and his then-lawyer, Dennis J. Kellogg of Chicago:

The legal system should not be a weapon wielded by wrongdoers in the face of well-meaning whistle-blowers, stifling important discussion about matters of public concern, though too often, that is exactly how our system is used. There can be few better examples of suits interposed for improper purposes than the present frivolous and unreasonable Complaint brought by Plaintiff...

...Much judicial ink is spilled opining about the possible "chilling effect" that a given piece of legislation, or legal precedent, might have on the marketplace of ideas. But as the speech function of the fourth estate has become increasingly diffuse, with modern technologies removing most of the traditional barriers to publishing and public participation, the vanguard in the fight for the free exchange of ideas has moved from the newsroom to the living room. It is the constant threat of frivolous, and prohibitively expensive, litigation that is of principal concern for the individual citizen journalist without access to media lawyer representation.

If you haven't read Jason's entire motion, I urge you to do so. It's worthwhile not only for the arguments, backed by case law, but also for the exhibits, which clearly display Coldwell's primary objective of using litigation as a bullying tool. (Coldwell even refers to me in some of those exhibits, e.g., as Jason's "playmate" or simply "the slut.") Despite Coldwell's crowing about the case, Leonard Coldwell's attorney Dennis J. Kellogg filed a motion to withdraw from the case ("for professional reasons") less than three weeks after it was filed, and that motion was granted on March 17, 2014. Coldwell spun that on social media as his having learned that the case was actually a Federal criminal case and therefore he was hiring new lawyers to prosecute it. He also lied that Jason was scared and hiding from him because of the lawsuits, making it impossible to properly serve Jason. And as indicated above, Coldwell continued his lie about Jason being a fugitive from justice when he (Coldwell) was spinning tales about the now-dismissed North Carolina case 15-CVS-2791. His attorney for the North Carolina case apparently even bought that lie for a while, or pretended he did, as Jason wrote about on his February 19, 2015 blog post.

To my knowledge Jason did not follow up on his 2014 motion to sanction Leonard Coldwell and attorney Dennis J. Kellogg, even though legally he could have. This is probably because Judge Lynn M. Egan's dismissal of the case "for want of prosecution" rendered it moot. "For want of prosecution" basically means that nobody -- neither Coldwell the Plaintiff, nor an attorney appearing on his behalf -- even bothered to show up for the hearing that had been scheduled by the Court. And Jason, having been a resident of Ohio for more than a year by that time, didn't want to have to keep going back to Chicago to attend hearings, which he would have had to do had he pursued the sanctions motion. He has a life, after all. But he did file the motion to sanction Leonard Coldwell and Dennis J. Kellogg in the Court, and it is on public record, so Coldwell's recent claim that Jason was lying about the sanction motion is inaccurate.

At any rate, I just thought I should let you know, in case you were wondering, that yet another lawsuit that Lenny was bragging about has ended -- as another Lenny might put it -- on a deeply unimpressive note. 

PS ~ You can view the original Complaint and the Notice of Voluntary Dismissal here.