At seventeen: another Whirled blogaversary

Janis Ian learned the truth at seventeen. Abba's dancing queen was young and sweet, only seventeen. When Frank Sinatra was seventeen, it was a very good year for small-town girls and soft summer nights and apparently all kinds of hanky-panky that required hiding away from city lights. The girl whom John Lennon saw standing there, who made his heart go boom and caused him to vow never to dance with another, was just seventeen, you know what I mean. Lady Godiva, according to Peter & Gordon, was seventeen when she made a ride that caused a scene. And that barely scratches the surface of songs about being seventeen years old.

Those, of course, are all songs about people being seventeen years old. But blogs can have birthdays too, and today happens to be the seventeenth birthday of Whirled Musings, which was launched on July 27, 2006.

Seventeen trips around the sun is a long, long time in Internet years. That I continue, month after month, year after year, to post new content to a blog that almost nobody reads is, if nothing else and (as I may have mentioned a few times), a tribute to my own obsessiveness.

Nevertheless I've marked the birthday/anniversary/blogaversary every year here, sometimes with a brief mention and other times offering a more extended rumination about the history and purpose of this endeavor. Regarding said history and purpose, I have said pretty much everything that I think needs to be said, and don't feel compelled to say it all again, but for anyone who's curious, this page tells it all.

In my rare moments of introspection specifically about Whirled Musings, and the wisdom or lack thereof of continuing to indulge in this hobby, I inevitably return to the years-old debate about whether people even still read blogs at all. (Apparently they do. Just not this one, if my blog stats are any indication.)

Some of the debate about the relevance of blogs and blogging focuses on Blogger, aka blogspot, of which this blog is but one of zillions. For years, various people urged me to ditch Blogger and go to Wordpress. And these days, it seems, everyone is hanging out on Substack. But I'm just going to stay here for now, coasting along in perpetual obscurity.

Which means that I'll continue to write my posts, even though both Blogger's owner Google and Google's closest rival, Bing, ignore my content for the most part.

I'll also continue creating tawdry graphics for most of my posts, even though image search has become an exercise in frustration for me, where this blog is concerned. F'rinstance, type in "Trump is the New Moses" in either Google or Bing images and even if you add Whirled Musings to the search field, you won't get this graphic, which I created for my July 22 post about Sound Of Freedom star and Q true believer Jim Caviezel shamelessly kissing up to the Cantaloupe Caligula. This despite the fact that the title of that graphic is Trump-is-the-New-Moses.jpg.

Clearly, my prodigious lack of SEO skills cannot keep up with changing algorithms.

And there's no doubt that those algorithms have indeed changed, which is to be expected. For a few years running, I would mark the Whirled blogaversary with a graphic created from a screen shot of Google image search results for Whirled Musings. But the last time that worked was two years ago, when the Whirled turned fifteen. Now an image search doesn't present a panoply of images that I labored diligently to create, and that I posted to Whirled Musings. Most of the images are completely irrelevant or at best only marginally relevant to this blog, no matter how I tweak the search parameters.

If I sound a bit whiny, there's a good reason for that: I am whining. Over the years I've snarked plenty about whiners, both in Scamworld and in politix, but in all of that time I've never claimed not to be a whiner myself. Takes one to know one.

In any case, I want to thank my three or four, or possibly even five, regular readers for your continued reading over the years, even when I got redundant and obsessive and boring, which, as I noted on my last two anniversary posts, is probably more often than even I am willing to admit. I especially want to thank everyone who posted comments over the years, even the ones blasting me for various offenses.

And as always, I am very grateful to those of you who have made monetary donations to this blog. They're always appreciated, even more so now. If you'd like to help Whirled Musings celebrate its seventeenth birthday, here's a handy link to do just that. There's also a "Donate" graphic/link on the upper right-hand column of the Web version of this blog. Whether you donate or not, thank you for visiting.

Blog Mitzvah? Whirled Musings turns thirteen

Today, Whirled Musings is thirteen years old. As I wrote a couple of years ago on the Whirled's eleventh blogaversary, and have mentioned numerous other times, this all began as a humor blog about New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health culture and scams and scammers. But it grew more serious as the darker side of this culture became more glaringly apparent; the James Arthur Ray "sweat lodge" deaths in 2009 marked a turning point. And in later years, Whirled Musings grew more political as well. I still try to be funny once in a while, and I am sure there are times I'm unintentionally humorous, but there are some serious messages as well in these hundreds and hundreds of pages.

And as I wrote on a New Year's post at the beginning of 2016, I never dreamed when I first began blogging that I would even keep it up for so many years. I simply decided to start writing and see how things went. Over the years I've gained a modest following, with the emphasis on "modest" rather than "following." And I've received my share of feedback over the years -- lots of criticism to be sure, but also lots of messages from people who have thanked me for either validating their own experiences or for helping to keep them from wasting money, time, or emotional energy on some scam or scammer. That's one of the factors that keeps me going.

For the most part, my blog posts (even the more serious ones) have been on the superficial side, but there's still almost always a deeper message or larger theme. Like me, my posts may be shallow, but they're shallow in a profound way. I've rarely broken any journalistic ground here, and haven't pretended to, although mainstream journalists have contacted me for help with major stories and features over the years.

And I have also covered a few topics that haven't been critically written about in many other places, such as the partially-Scientology-inspired sex-and-money cult Access Consciousness... and the cult of Anastasia (not the late tsar's daughter but the imaginary babe in the woods)... and alt-health quack/conspiranoid/fascist Leonard Coldwell (who unsuccessfully sued me a few years ago)... and a predatory poser performance artist in Maui who calls himself Dreaming Bear... and more. I've also written about some scams and scammers that several others have criticized, but are worth a mention here, such as the Abraham-Hicks racket. I covered the civil and criminal cases of now-imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau extensively. And, oh, yes, I recently broke the news about Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale's divorce, which he apparently isn't talking about yet in public.

On last year's Blogaversary post I described my blog as a fool's errand, which in a sense it is, because I'm just one little barking, snarking dog watching an endless caravan of scammers who will scam on no matter what. But I intend to keep on blogging anyway, and eventually I may even finally update my template, as I've been promising to do for the past eleven or twelve years.

For now, if you're looking at the Web version, there's a Donate button on the left-hand side, right under the blog description. (If you can't find it, just Paypal to scrivener66@hotmail.com or cosmic.connie@juno.com, or use the shameless beg blurb below.)

In other words, please feel free to feed the Snark! But even if you can't donate, thank you for stopping by, and thank you again for your support over the years.

Onward!

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

Whirled Musings: nine years and counting

Today, believe it or not, is the ninth (9th) blogaversary of Whirled Musings. I imagine that some are either surprised or disappointed that this little outpost of the blogopshere is still whirling. Indeed, its failure to die is not from lack of effort on the part of some of the forces of evil in Scamworld. Most notably: the stupid, evil, psychopathic little prick who unsuccessfully sued me earlier this year.

But I'm still blogging. The orbit of my Whirled has been a little wobbly of late but it's still spinning. (And the above image was brought to you courtesy of a Google Images search result for Whirled Musings.)

I will have more Kevin Trudeau court docs to share soon, as well as other news about other scammers. And I'll get to that, slowly but surely, as I work to address some of the other Matters of Consequence with which I have been concerned for the past several months.

For now, I thank you once again for your support of this blog over its nine years (and counting!) of existence. And if you're wondering what to give a nine-year-old who has everything but money, there's always that "Donate" button at the upper left hand side of the Web version of this Whirled. Every little bit helps. Thanks!

The Whirled turns 11

Today is the eleventh blogaversary of Whirled Musings, which began life in July 2006 as a humor blog targeting New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health scams and scammers. I didn't have any particular expectations for the blog and figured I would continue writing it as long as it continued to be at least marginally entertaining for me and for a few other folks. And for quite a long time it was enormously entertaining, at least for me, and for the most part I kept things on the light side. Then things took a rather serious turn in the latter part of 2009 with the James Arthur Ray "sweat lodge" deaths, which brought home the point that Scamworld has its dark side too.

Still I continued my attempts at humor in between the serious stuff, and even managed to work in a little bit of journalistic reporting regarding matters such as the ongoing saga of serial scammer Kevin Trudeau and the civil and criminal cases against him. Real journalists even contacted me while working on their own Trudeau stories, not that I ever received any public credit as a source, but that's just the way things go.

In 2012 my Whirled began colliding with one of Trudeau's former boyfriends, cancer quack and faux-doctor Leonard Coldwell, who tried for years to silence me by posting lies and doxing me, and eventually suing me (unsuccessfully). But the Whirled kept spinning.

And it spins even today, although not everyone likes the spin, particularly as I've become more frequently political, despite the fact that Whirled Musings is not a political blog, except when it has to be. Some former pals who were disillusioned with the likes of Trudeau and Coldwell were, as it happened, fans of the Scammer-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump, and didn't like my expressions of disdain for the #NotMyPresident.

Trump famously said in a private meeting back in 2013 that he was going to "suck all the oxygen out of the room" once he really decided to run for president. And he did, and he continues to do so, as well as continuing just to suck in general. I fear that he has sucked a lot of oxygen out of this blog as well, for since last year I've been spending far less time blogging my normal beat and more time with political posts on social media.

But I still haven't forgotten or abandoned my original beat, and I have plenty more to write. Thank you again for your support over the years, and if you feel so inclined, blogaversary gifts in the form of donations are always welcome.

Whirled blogaversary: six of fun, half a dozen of serious

Today, July 27, Whirled Musings turns six years old.

I am honored, humbled, and beyond thrilled that the world has chosen to host a more-than-two-weeks-long party in London in honor of this little blog's sixth birthday. I understand that some athletes are going to be performing to celebrate this occasion, and there will be torches and fireworks and stuff. (The angry villagers have tried to come after me with torches in the past, but all is forgiven.) It's too bad that I can't be in London for the festivities, but perhaps my good pal HHH can pop in on my behalf.

As a matter of fact, it was HHH who suggested to me that the dearth of comments here recently may have something to do with the fact that I have been focusing more on mundane scammers and con artists than on the more esoteric and endlessly amusing loons and wackadoodles whom I used to snark about on a regular basis.

It's true that the more "out-there" crazies were, once upon a time, my main stock in trade, and it's also true that I originally created this Whirled half a dozen years ago mainly as a humor and entertainment blog. And there's been humor aplenty; well, at least I have kept myself pretty well entertained. Then again, I am easily amused, so there's that to consider.

In the earlier years, though, I really did visit the wackos more frequently than I have lately. And oh, there were so many from which to choose. I found out about many of them from a New-Wage marketing service called StarDoves. I was on StarDoves' email list for several years -- not of my own choosing; it just happened. It was their doing, apparently. But I took full advantage of my membership until I was unceremoniously removed. Maybe they were tired of getting complaints from their clients about how I was making fun of them; I don't know.

In any case, StarDoves and their clients provided me with endless hours of easy-snarkin' delight. Who can forget, for example, a guy named Bryan who, along with his very own Indigo Children, Mother Mary, and a few other luminaries, was involved in a project to empty Hell and bring its inhabitants into the Light? A lot of those posts, along with some other random nuttiness, can be found under the "What Lies Beneath" label on my Whirled.

That's just the tip of the loony pile, and StarDoves were far from the only source of snark chum. I have, for example, gotten a lot of mileage out of the wacky, cultish, sex-and-money organization, Access Consciousness -- for instance, see this post -- though not all of my posts about Access have been humorous. Here's a link to the Google results, since the interior search engine on Blogger still seems to be kind of sucky.

I've also derived tons of amusement from what I call the Imaginary Friends segment of the New-Wage/McSpirituality/selfish-help industry. Let's see... there's Abraham-Hicks (aka Abrascam-Hicks)... there's Vladimir Megre and his nekkid blonde babe-in-the-woods, Anastasia...there's Gary Renard and the hot disembodied couple he found in his living room...there's Penny Torres/Mafu (the "Swami Blonde" on my Whirled, and a JZ Knight/Ramtha wannabe...and of course Access Consciousness Gary Douglas and the disembodied entities who originally "revealed" Access to him. Here are a few more Whirled-ish Google results for Imaginary Friends.

The world's most successful New-Wage moviemercial, The Secret, has also been a big inspiration to me, both for blog posts and graphics. In fact, many of us "haters" got a wealth of inspiration from The Secret, so much so that one of my favorite snargets' lap dogs once told his Twitter followers that we critics are just a bunch of losers who got our panties in a wad over The Secret and never got over it. (That has been a typical ploy used by snargets to dismiss the growing body of very legitimate criticism that is, in fact, not just limited to The Secret.) In any case, here are the Google search results for Whirled Musings Secret-related graphics, which in turn will lead to many Whirled posts about The Secret.

Those are just a few random examples. I've also concentrated on individual con artists, such as Kevin Trudeau and his scammy Global Information Network (GIN). Here's the link to the Google results for that. I've never been a GIN member and have known about Trudeau's cons since the 1990s, but am glad to say that GIN members are finally waking up to something that I've known was a scam since its inception in 2009. I can't take any credit for that, though; they apparently had to find out the hard way. But the important thing is that they found out, and I'm lending my moral support to them now.

In any case, in more recent years this blog has acquired a seriousness of purpose that wasn't really there in the beginning. A lot of that had to do with two factors: (1) The James Arthur "Death" Ray sweat lodge case in Sedona in October 2009 (which really woke me up to the more serious side of the stuff I'd been snarking about for years); and (2) my acquaintance with, and growing respect and admiration for, the work that Salty Droid is doing on his blog.

So while I still think humor and ridicule are great ways to fight the scammers, I also think that more serious education and editorializing are equally valid tools. (Not that Salty's blog is lacking in humor; even a superficial glance at the blog will prove that's not the case.) I'm still in this for the entertainment and easy snarks, but I think there is also a larger purpose, if you will. I've even joined in a nascent project Salty Droid has started, and you can too (if you are not a current or recent scammer).

I've truly enjoyed the six years I've been "snarking lividly," as one of my critics (in fact, the same snarget lap dog I mentioned above) described my activities on this Whirled. I appreciate everyone's support, and I hope to be lividly snarking for many more years, at least until I finally get bored with it, or until there is no more need. And by the way, if you want to lend a little monetary support to this effort, there's a "Donation" button up there on the left. (I even wrote a poem about it a couple of years ago.) There's also a donation link below.

Donation or not, I'm very glad you're here. And keep those comments coming.

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
scrivener66@hotmail.com
or to cosmic.connie@juno.com
If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

Eight misbehavin': Whirled Musings 8th Blogaversary

My posts have been less frequent
But don't be broken-hearted
My Whirled's not winding down
It's only getting started.
~CC

Put another way... Flip that "figure 8" 90 degrees, and you have something that pretty much looks like the infinity sign. Matter of fact, I'm thinking that theme needs to work its way into the sub-title of my book-in-progress...

No Neat and Tidy Endings:
The Infinite Loop of Scamworld
by Connie L. Schmidt

I sort of like the sound of that. And it has, after all, been a theme on this blog for a long time: No Neat and Tidy Endings, Or NNaTE, as some of my dear friends, such as Julie Daniel (who has been pushing and pushing me to get this book done) like to say.

Nothing lasts forever, of course -- except maybe scams, unfortunately, in one form or another -- but I'm going to continue to keep this Whirled turning for as long as I can, despite a few recent bumps in the road (most notably, a truly deranged snarget who recently accused me of poisoning his pit bull dog).

Maybe at some point soon I'll also finally switch over to Wordpress, as I've been nattering on about for years, or at least I'll update this raggedy old ugly Blogger template. It has outlived its usefulness. Maybe I'll even put another profile pic up, although I have to say that I am currently getting a kick out of the comment that the aforementioned deranged snarget made about how the pic makes me look like a druggy transvestite. While his attempt to dehumanize me by calling me "that thing" is disturbing, the rest of his comment is just typical silly Lenny stuff.

Lenny apparently performs his "professional diagnoses" just from looking at people's pictures. If he had truly been able to read pictures and people, he might have discerned that I chose that profile pic because... well... I like it. I like it because it was taken on a glorious day that seems longer ago than it really was. There was sun on my skin and saltwater in my hair and the sound and smell of the sea all around me. The only "drug" I was on (corny as it will probably sound) was love -- Ron was very much a part of that day, of course -- and possibly a Red Bull or two (straight up, no alcohol, since unlike some of my besotted snargets, I haven't had an alcoholic drink in decades). Life was good for Ron and me. It is still good, but back in those days we had lost less; people and four-legged kids who have since passed were still with us: my mother, Ron's "second mom" and "second dad," some clients who became dear friends (Ed, Margaret, Sterling, Jess, we miss you....), an old love of mine who had remained a friend in the years since, and died of cancer earlier this year... and in the fur-baby department, Rex and Layla and Bruce and Sabrina and Coca and Grace and Noelle... and neither Ron nor I had ever even heard of the most sinister snarget to ever inhabit my Whirled, nor had most of the rest of the planet... and even though I wasn't particularly young or naive, I was still mostly ignorant, in those days, of how evil the type of evil I now write about can be.

I should stop now, lest I sink to the same level of histrionics employed by some of my more noteworthy snargets. It really has been fun for the most part -- slinging words, making pretty pictures (or just pretty silly pictures... the graphic above incorporates today's Google Image results for Whirled Musings). All I want to add is this: Thank you to all of you for your continuing support. Feel free to take advantage of the Donation button on the upper left. And whether you donate or not, I appreciate you -- all of you (well, most of you, anyway) --- more than you will ever know.

The Whirled turns 18 today

Today, July 27, 2024, this Whirled turns eighteen.

That's a very long time to maintain a hobby blog that almost nobody reads, but it's become a habit over the years. And though the search engines, especially Google, aren't all that generous to Whirled Musings, at least Bing's AI bot has a passing familiarity with Cosmic Connie, as the graphic above indicates, although it got the name of the blog as well as my business location wrong. (There's an inherent contradiction in that brief blurb; Houston, where I used to live, is hardly "the edge of nowhere.")

But jeez... eighteen years. I feel compelled to point out that if this blog were an eligible United States citizen, it would be old enough to register to vote for the first time. And although there's no way that I could have planned it back in 2006, the blog's landmark birthday happens to fall on the very year when it is more important than ever for every eligible U.S. citizen to vote -- whether for the first time or not -- to save American democracy from the reich-wing/fascist peril that threatens its very foundations.

As you probably know if you've been even a marginal follower of this work, I have marked the Whirled birthday/anniversary/blogaversary every year here, sometimes with a brief mention and other times offering a more extended rumination about the history and purpose of this endeavor. Regarding said history and purpose, I have said pretty much everything that I think needs to be said, and don't feel compelled to say it all again, but for anyone who's curious, this page tells it all.

Through the years this blog and I have been through our ups and downs, and for me, 2024 has, to put it mildly, been mostly a year of downs, beginning with the unexpected death of my only sister in March. I'm still coming to grips with that. And now I am facing yet another deeply personal crisis, not of my own making, that is ongoing and devastating and sometimes nightmarish. I am not prepared to write about it publicly yet, but suffice it to say that I am navigating scary new territory in which there is no light at the end of the tunnel. It is a story that will have no happy ending; rather, with effort and proper resources and a little bit of luck, it will have a less awful one.

So preoccupied have I been with personal chaos that I even neglected to post a piece on July 25, the 15th anniversary of the death of Colleen Conaway, a follower of the sociopathic huckster James Arthur Ray, who has become quite the reich-wing/Trumpian apologist himself in recent times (see here and here). Ray, as you probably know, is also a convicted killer, even though it wasn't Ms. Conaway's death for which he was convicted and for which he served a far-too-short prison sentence.

Despite the ongoing crises and my slim readership, I intend to keep on blogging. And as I say every year, I am very grateful to those of you who have made monetary donations to this blog. They're always appreciated, even more so now, because money is a resource that would very much help ease at least some of those personal crises I alluded to above. If you'd like to help Whirled Musings celebrate its eighteenth birthday, and help its mom in the process, here's a handy link to do just that. There's also a "Donate" graphic/link on the upper right-hand column of the Web version of this blog. Whether you donate or not, thank you for visiting.

And if you're eligible and registered to vote in the 2024 US general election, please, please, please Vote Blue. At this point, it is the only way to save American democracy.

Another blogaversary!

Time flies when you're making fun...
of hustledorks and SNAGs and New-Wage scams.

A little over two years ago, I barely even knew what a blog was, and cared even less. Then one day in June of 2006, I was surfing around on the Internet and came across Steve Salerno's SHAMblog (which, incidentally, had its third blogaversary July 17 of this year. Yes, Steve, I keep track.) To make a short story even shorter, reading Steve's blog inspired me, not too long afterward, to start a blog of my own, building upon my longtime hobby of firing potshots at the Aquarian age.

And today – 27 July, 2008 – Whirled Musings is two years old.

Given my short attention span, I never thought it would last this long.

But then again, given my tendency to be obsessive about some things, I guess it's not all that surprising.

Anyway, it's been a fun two years, and I plan to keep it going till I get bored with it.

And I want to extend a big Cosmic Connie thank you to everyone for your participation!

PS ~ Even though I set the blog up and wrote a two-sentence post on July 27, the first real post came the next day. It was kind of an explanation of Whirled Musings' reason for being. In case you haven't already read it, here's the link.

Sweet 16? Well, maybe not so sweet, but 16, anyway

Today is the 16th blogaversary of Whirled Musings, which first saw the blight of day on July 27, 2006. I want to thank my small group of regular readers for your continued reading over the years, even when I got redundant and obsessive and boring, which, as I noted on last year's blogaversary post, is is probably more often than even I am willing to admit. I especially want to thank everyone who posted comments over the years, even the ones blasting me for any number of real or imaginary sins.

I most especially want to thank those of you who have made monetary donations to this blog. They're always appreciated, even more so now. If you'd like to help Whirled Musings celebrate its 16th birthday, here's a handy link to do just that. Whether you donate or not, thank you for visiting. I'll have more soon.

Whirled Musings turns 5 today!

Yes, Dear Ones, today (besides being the kick-off for the summer gathering of the Training Liars Club... I mean Transformational Leadership Council... in Tucson, Arizona) is Whirled Musings' fifth blogaversary.

A whole half-decade is a long time in blog years. What began as a lark and grew to a snark has lasted longer than I ever thought it would back when I wrote that ever-so-brief initial blog post on July 27, 2006. The next day I wrote a slightly longer post, presenting a brief story of how I became so totally not-Cosmic... and then it just grew from there. (Note that some of the links on that second post are to my old Cosmic Relief site, which by the grace of SWBell.net has finally been relegated to Web Purgatory. Naturally, I have saved all the files, and the site will be reborn, though probably not immediately redesigned, under my own domain name as soon as I can get some time to do it.)

People ask me all the time why I continue to blog about the stuff I blog about when I could be spending my time on more "productive" pursuits. Some express grave concern that I am wasting my incredible talents. Others point out that I am just giving my snargets (snark targets) more "power" and certainly more publicity, and after all, according to the Hustledork Playbook, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Curiously, I've noticed that almost all of the people who ask me why I blog, or who spill crock-odile tears for my tragically squandered gifts, or who claim that I am only empowering my snargets, are those who apparently have financial and/or emotional ties to the people and/or ideas I snark about. It's amazing that they can be so open-minded and caring. I guess they really are as full of Love and Light as they often claim to be, even those who occasionally send me obscenity-laden comments and death threats.

Anyway, I want to extend a great big thank you, especially to those of you who do understand why I blog, but also to those who pretend not to. I deeply appreciate your participation on my wacky Whirled.

And if you're sentimental...

5th Anniversary Gifts

Traditional: Wood (stop snickering, Ron.)
Modern: Silverware (I already got some.)
Blogospherian: Donations in U$D (a little old-fashioned, but always appreciated. Here's a little poem to inspire you.)

Two whole decades: Whirled Musings turns 20

Today, July 27, 2026, this Whirled turns twenty. Two full decades. That's right: I've been hobby-blogging on this platform for twenty years, spewing out many hundreds of thousands of words, as well as a huge gallery of tawdry graphics to accompany those words. As I noted on last year's blogaversay post, it's been fun for the most part. At the very least, I'm keeping myself entertained with it.

I like to think I've been keeping a few other folks entertained over the years as well. I know I've angered some, which has earned me quite a few ungrammatical, marginally literate, and highly amusing verbal assaults, the occasional death threat, lawsuit threats, and even an actual failed lawsuit (or "flawsuit" as I like to call it). But for the most part these days, the larger world ignores the Whirled. And that's fine with me.

It's worth mentioning how much my little corner of the Internet has shifted since 2006 -- transitioning from the early days of lampooning the ludicrous pseudoscience and crassly materialistic McSpirituality of The Secret, to tracking real-world tragedies like those caused by the late and not-lamented James Arthur Ray, to extensive reporting on serial scammers like Kevin Trudeau (aka K.T., aka Katie on this blog), to navigating the exhausting, air-sucking era of modern politics, i.e., the Error of Trump.

It might even be said that this modest little blog encompasses a massive chunk of Internet history. If I really wanted to wallow in self-importance I would go so far as to say that I haven't just been hobby-blogging; I have also witnessed and archived a major cultural evolution. Or maybe "evolution" isn't the proper word. Maybe "devolution" or "regression" would fit better.

In any case, I have observed the Whirled birthday/anniversary/blogaversary every year, sometimes with a brief mention and other times offering a more extended rumination about the history and purpose of this endeavor. Regarding said history and purpose, the latter of which has, as noted above, evolved over the years, I have said pretty much everything that I think needs to be said, and don't feel compelled to say it all again. But for anyone who's curious, this page tells it all.

If this were a 20th wedding anniversary, the traditional gift would be china, symbolizing the delicate yet resilient beauty of a marriage that has lasted two decades, while the modern gift is platinum for ultimate endurance. The traditional gemstone for the 20th wedding anny is the emerald, and the flower is the aster. But I don't need fine dinnerware, precious metals, gemstones, or flowers, and besides, this is a blogaversary we're celebrating.

The one gift that is appropriate any time for any occasion or non-occasion is money, and after the year I've had (major move, major medical crisis) it is needed now more than ever. Here are some ways to give it:

• Venmo: username @Connie-Schmidt-42. Here is a direct link to the Venmo page.
• PayPal: -- Here is a direct link to my PayPal page.
• Old but still good: You can click on the "Donate" icon that currently appears on the right-hand side of every page of this blog on the Web version. There's also a donation link at the end of many of my older blog posts. In the case of both the icon and the links on the older posts, as well as the link in this sentence, this is also a PayPal link, but it references the email account RevRon -- which is cool, because it all ultimately goes to the same place.

NOTE: If you are donating by PayPal, please specify that your contribution is for "friends and family," which will waive PayPal's substantial transaction fee.

Whether you can donate or not, thank you for visiting this Whirled. I can't promise (or threaten) another twenty years, but I'm gonna keep it going as long as I can.

Whirled Musings is four today!*

Four years ago today, inspired largely by having participated in Steve Salerno's SHAMblog, I decided to create a Whirled of my own in the blogosphere. And so it was that I sat down and typed out a tentative blog post. And on the second day, I created a less tentative post. And then I was off and snarking.

It has been a fun four years, and I'm shooting for a few more.

To celebrate this momentous anniversary, the Universe has blessed the oceans of my Whirled with more snark chum than all of us together could possibly consume in one sitting, so I'll just share a couple of tasty bits with you here before I go off to celebrate my Fourth Blogaversary (actually, to concentrate on my real work for a while...but I can celebrate for a few moments, anyway!).

To begin with, Mr. Fire published a blog post today about the five biggest Law of Attraction mistakes. He wrote:

Truth is, there are many mistakes when it comes to using the Law of Attraction. It’s usually because most people don’t have a complete understanding of it. They saw the movie The Secret and thought they got it, when all they got was an introduction to it.

Oh, dear. Mr. Fire has apparently forgotten that when The Secret first came out, it was widely promoted, on the official site and elsewhere, as containing the ultimate answer and having all of the information you need to get whatever you want. Of course we couldn't realistically have expected that claim to last, not when there were so many derivative products and frauducts to be sold.

So what's the biggest Law of Attraction mistake a body can make? As might be expected, Mr. Fire did not say, "Believing in that whole Secret scam in the first place." According to Joe, Mistake Number 1 is believing that all you have to do is imagine what you want, and you'll get it. Not so, says Mr. Fire. Here's the truth:

Imagining what you want is a great way to program your unconscious but it’s only a first step. You still have work to do. That’s where the Law of Right Action comes into play. Do something to assist the attraction of what you want. Rhonda Byrne created the movie The Secret with more than the Law of Attraction;** she didn’t just sit and dream about it. She took action.*** (She’s taken more action recently, as her next book, The Power, will be out in August.****)

This from the man who, in The Secret, famously likened the Universe to a mail order catalog:

“This is really fun. It’s like having the Universe as your catalog. You flip through it and say, ‘I’d like to have this experience and I’d like to have that product and I’d like to have a person like that. It’s your placing your order with the Universe. It’s really that easy.”

And he even put that snippet on his own video blog, so he must have been seriously promoting that point of view.

LOA Mistake Number 2, according to Joe, is using the Law of Attraction to try to attract a specific person. Don't do it, warns Mr. Fire, explaining, "Trying to attract a specific person is a violation of free will." This is from the guy who also sells products that claim to teach you how to put all of your prospects into a "buying trance" so they will do your bidding (he even wrote a book about it). I guess it's okay to violate someone's free will when you have a frauduct to sell.

I found Mr. Fire's choice for Mistake Number 3 – focusing solely on the material – interesting as well:

Focusing on the material, in attracting new cars [and here he provides a link to his ubiquitous Attract A New Car gimmick] and more cash, is fine, as long as you know it’s a temp high and a mask for the real juice of life: the Divine. Don’t focus on the car, but on the feeling behind the car. That is Divine.

Lesson assimilated, Mr. Fire. Maybe you'll learn it one day yourself. Meanwhile, it's hard not to notice how desperately many of the New-Wage hustledorks seem to need those new cars and more cash and so on in order to capture that "juice of life." And it's hard to overlook the whole vision-board thing that has been so popular with LOA true believers. Seems that little exercise is all about the material, not to mention being really kind of juvenile. Or, as Salty Droid put it recently on his blog:

...because poster boards with magazine cut-outs aren’t just for 6th grade science projects and serial killers anymore {yes they are!! f--k sake …}.

So enough about that. The really, really BIG piece of snark chum is that NBC has chosen Whirled Musings' birthday to debut yet another "reality" show. This one is from the world's all-time most successful hustledork, Tony Robbins. Even TV Guide is rolling its eyes:

Cheers & Jeers: Tony Robbins? Gimme a Break!

Jeers to NBC for turning over an hour of primetime to a glorified infomercial.

The Peacock has flirted with the equivalent of self-help ads (The Biggest Loser, Losing It With Jillian), but the net has truly crossed the line with Breakthrough with Tony Robbins, an hourlong series debuting July 27 at 8/7c. That's right, "author, strategist and coach" Robbins—who was mocked as a charlatan nearly 20 years ago on The Ben Stiller Show ("I hypnotize you with my teeth, and you pay me money!")—is now a network-TV star.

In the series' premiere, Robbins helps Ron and Marie Stegner back from the brink of bankruptcy and divorce by presenting them with "challenges" like flying a Russian MIG fighter ("I don't know any other housewife doing a flip in a jet," says Marie) and living on L.A.'s skid row for a week. Of course, viewers can't perform these kinds of stunts, but they might buy Robbins' books, DVDs or CDs to gobble up more of his banalities ("Own Your Breakthrough!"). As Marie puts it when she's sleeping on the street (with a camera crew in tow, natch), "This is reality." No, this is reality TV—there's a big difference.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

That's it for now. I promise you I'm continuing to sort through the swirling chum and will serve up some more very soon. Meanwhile I want to thank every one of you – even those of you who don't like me so much – for your part in making this blog what it is. Here's to at least four more fun-filled years.

* I know it's my Blogaversary and all, but really, you don't have to get me a gift. But if you insist... the "Donate" button is conveniently located up there at the top of the page.
** That's right, Mr. Fire! Rhonda didn't just use LOA to create The Secret. She used the partially unpaid labor of creative and talented people as well.
*** Rhonda took action, all right: legal action, mostly, against the people who had actually done the real creative and marketing work and just wanted their fair share of what she'd promised them.
**** Well, after all, she does have those legal bills to pay.

I blogged for 12 years and all I got was this stupid Blood Moon

Three-fifths of a score of years ago, one writer brought forth on this Internet, a new blog, conceived in Boredom, and dedicated to the proposition that New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality/alt-health scams and scammers were eminently snarkworthy, but mostly harmless, and largely irrelevant to the larger world.

A dozen years later, the writer is long disabused of the notion that all of the above are either mostly harmless or largely irrelevant. For she has seen that people have had their lives ruined and have even died at the hands of scammers (and yet the scammers scam on); and that Scamworld and politics are entwined in an unholy union...

Well, enough of that. Suffice to say that I have been on this fool's errand for twelve long years now: just another little dog barking at the caravan as it moves steadily on its way. (If you need a recap, last year's anniversary post offers a condensed version of Whirled history.)

And while I am deeply honored that there will be a Blood Moon held tonight in honor of Whirled Musings' 12th Blogaversary -- and not just any Blood Moon, but the Longest Lunar Eclipse Of This Century! -- what would really make my heart swell with gratitude would be a monetary tribute. Because there is still a Snark here, and it still must be fed.

Regardless of your willingness or ability to donate, thank you for stopping by, and thank you for your support over the years. I think I'm going to keep writing, because I think it is more important now than ever.

* * * * *

Now more than ever, your donation is needed
to help keep this Whirled spinning.
Click here to donate via PayPal or debit/credit card.
If that link doesn't work, send PayPal payment directly to
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If PayPal, be sure to specify that your contribution is a gift. Thank you!

Three at last, three at last, I thank Goddess I'm three at last!

Whirled Musings was born on the 27th of July, 2006, although the first "real" post appeared the following day. As you may know, I was originally inspired to begin this blog after a couple of months of following Steve Salerno's SHAMblog (which, incidentally, celebrated its fourth anniversary on the 17th of this month). (Yes, Steve, I'm still a savant when it comes to remembering those details.)

As I said on last year's blogaversary post, time flies when you're making fun. You'd think I could make up something new for this year, or at least come up with another brilliant Photoshop comp, but I am kind of busy today. Nevertheless I want to thank all of you for sticking it out with me for another year. I appreciate everyone's participation, even those who tell me I'm a rage-filled loser who can only hope to be half as brilliant and successful as those I snark about. (One fairly recent critic comes to mind...)

So...keep those comments, suggestions, and anonymous tips (oh, yes, especially those anonymous tips!) coming.

Blue dies, Coldwell lies, crazy minions terrorize

I so wanted to start the month of September fresh and free of toxic debris, and I almost made it. I love September, because rather than feeling like the beginning of the end of something, it always feels to me like the beginning of something new and exciting, even though in my neck of the woods it's not really fall-ish yet. We generally don't get the burst of sudden cool air in early September that some places do, and we don't get the glorious fall colors that some of you lucky folks in the high country are already experiencing... but something changes, subtly, even here: there's a small excitement that whispers of relief from the oppressive summer.

But I am sorry to say that I am beginning September with one more (and I hope it's only one more) post about the stupidest man in Scamworld: cancer quack and alt-health fraudster Leonard Coldwell, the lowlife of the Lowcountry, ex-b.f.f. of another Whirled favorite snarget, Kevin Trudeau. Believe me, I was totally ready to get back to Kevin, aka KT, aka Katie, since I have quite a few tidbits for you, including nearly 900 pages of trial and sentencing transcripts that I was finally able to get from PACER. Actually they've been available for a while but I have been busy. I also have updates on some of the Global Information Network (GIN) ripoff clubs, as well as blogworthy stuff about other scams and scammers.

And I am painfully aware that for the past six weeks I have spent far too much time and space on Coldwell, including a five-part deconstruction of his current and past lies and lunacies (links to individual posts are below), as well as a lengthy piece on his crowning lunatic achievement where I am concerned: his recent accusation that I poisoned his pit bull dog Blue. So I thought I had things pretty well covered and that I had finally said everything that needed saying on this blog about that little skeev for the time being.

But darn it all... LoonyC keeps looming, casting his fat little shadow over my Whirled.

In a surprise plot twist, Coldwell's dog dies.
In late August, despite previous reports that Blue was almost all better, the poor dog died, according to Coldwell's garbled laments on Facebook. Accordingly he has redoubled his attacks on me.

Bernie at GINtruth wrote about it here. Frankly, he said most of what needed to be said, and in much more forceful and direct language than I use, but I want to put in my two-cents' too, and elaborate on a few points.

Please understand that I am not making light of a dog's death, assuming that the death actually occurred. (With Coldwell you can never be certain.) I have been through that heartache myself too many times to make light of it (here is but one example). My dogs and cats are my children. But I hope you can understand why it is immensely difficult for me to work up any sympathy whatsoever for Coldwell at this point. I can't see past the evil he continues to perpetrate against me, crassly and cynically using whatever it was that happened to his dog in order to incite people to commit violence against me.

I had honestly thought the dog situation was resolved, at least on Lenny's end, to the point that I decided to stop fretting about it and go quietly on about my business. I even gave up on trying to get Facebook to take down the worst of Coldwell's screeds accusing me of poisoning his dog. They had taken down the first two after receiving complaints from other people (I wasn't one of the complainers), but they refused to take down the third one, which was so bad that even I complained about it. It was worse than the first two but they refused to remove it, saying it didn't "violate their community standards" regarding potential threats of violence.

So although my full name and home address were and are all over Facebook -- they appear on several of Coldwell's pages, and have been shared numerous times, complete with Coldwell's invitations to his lunatic fans to "get in touch with me"-- I had, as noted, decided to let things slide for now, at least on this Whirled. I did add a few updates in the couple of weeks after I published my blog post about Coldwell's dog being poisoned. For instance, on July 26, 2014 I noted that on July 22, eight days after the dog poisoning saga began, Coldwell published two noteworthy threads to his Facebook page:

1. An announcement that Blue was almost fully recovered, thanks to love and help from friends.
2. A list, apparently taken from the ASPCA site (though either drunk-typed, typed on a malfunctioning keyboard, or (more likely) the results of bad OCR), of plants that are toxic to dogs, with the note that he had learned about this list while trying to save Blue's life. (The picture to which I link is only the first panel of several, he actually published a long list of poisonous plants.)

Oddly enough, it appears that none of Coldwell's minions responded to the toxic plant list by asking him if accidental toxic plant ingestion had been the real cause of Blue's illness after all, rather than a deliberate poisoning by a "revengeful Women in Texas." That's right: not one person asked the obvious question -- at least that I know of. Maybe someone did, but perhaps Coldwell chose to wipe the comment -- and the issue -- from his thread. That's certainly a possibility because he is scared nutless of tough questions that will expose his inconsistencies and lies.

Even so, it's difficult not to read between the lines when you look at the comments that are still on the thread. One of the first commenters asked if animals would eat those poisonous plants on their own. Coldwell simply answered, "Some do." So... maybe a certain pit bull, left unsupervised, scarfed down a plant that he shouldn't have at the Coldwell rented McMansion or apartment? (By the way, you'll need to click on the screen shots for an enlarged and undistorted view. I'm not sure why some of them came out distorted on the smaller views, but they're fine when you click on them.)
 

Notice that great cancer-curing advice from a guy named Kai, who seems to be saying that it's okay to give your dogs apple seeds and apricot kernels, which, claims Kai, are not poisonous to dogs and can cure doggy cancer. Jeez.

Actually there had been another discussion among the natural "cures" experts a few days before the announcement that Blue was almost all better. There's a revealing thread about the natural remedies with which Blue was presumably being treated. It seems good ol' Blue had alt-health support from all over the place.

In any case, I figured that the dog situation was more or less over for the most part. People who watch out for me reported no more ramblings about the dog on Coldwell's Facebook page. As awful and unforgivable as Coldwell's accusations against me were, I was relieved that the dog was okay, because as you know if you've been following this blog at all, I dearly love dogs and know that they are all innocent beings, no matter how monstrous their humans might be.

Then on or about August 30, 2014 the rants began again. This took me totally by surprise. Since Coldwell has me so thoroughly blocked on Facebook, I didn't see this when it first happened, but some of my "eyes" let me know that Coldwell had announced his dog had just died. And once again he went on a rampage against me, redoubling his attacks, this time publishing not only my home address but also my private cell phone number, which I have never published nor shared publicly. In case you can't get to the screen shot I linked to (it's from Bernie's post about the matter), here is what Coldwell posted on Facebook on August 30, 2014:

My Heart has been broken today! They murdered our believed [sic] dog BLUE! At 6pm EST Blue died! This is the very last picture of Blue ever, hours before he died! The pain is overwhelming my tears make it impossible to see clearly. I hear myself crying with all my pain in my inside to deal with the pain! FB will as usual take this post off because Connie Schmidt has some kind of contacts to get this done and websites will be taken down, blocked etc (Her cell phone number is #-###-###-#### in case you want to ask her yourself, if she was responsible. (All information is Public information don't take my post down FB dirt!) Please repost this post asap because it will be taken down. The website for Justice for Blue with all the info videos and facts and proof is in the making since 11am this morning.) All info will be soon on my main website. Because they will as usual delete my post. Please re-post it!

Today is one of the worst and painful days of my life and I and many people believe we know who caused his death and ordered directly or indirectly his murder! Blue was poisoned directly after, Horny Connie, as many call her know [sic] inquired about my physical living location. As I just heard: She called my brother after that and stated that she will hurt me hard and will never stop. She called employees and friends of mine telling them it was just the beginning. And all of this just because I did not want to have sex with this disgusting women [sic]. She harassed me and my employees and family members to make them to make me meet with her for a sexual weekend. (Since all of this started we got countless information about her alleged drug use -- jut look at her picture and make up your own mind.) Witness Testimonies will be provided...

The rest of the long rant contained some tear-jerking prose about Blue's last day (and again, I'm not making light of his death, if he really died, but you have to understand the context here). Following that was a copy-and-paste of the long screed he wrote on July 17, 2014, which contained my name and home address, and that was shared on several of his Facebook pages. That's the rant that I had tried to get Facebook to remove and which they refused to remove because it conforms with their "community standards."
 
The picture of me that Lenny mentioned -- the one that allegedly proves my drug use -- is my Blogger profile pic that you see on the upper left hand side of this page if you're looking at the Web version of Whirled Musings. If you're looking at the mobile app the pic is somewhere down there at the end of the post. I wrote about that pic and what it means to me on my 8th Blogaversary post on July 27.

The "Horny Connie" nonsense refers to a painfully immature but thankfully dead-in-the-water defamation project that Coldwell or some of his twisted buddies initiated early in August; it has come to naught. For deets, see this post, under the bright red subhead, "Honk if you're horny." 

As for the rest of the garbage in Coldwell's post -- the claims that I've posted under dozens of hundreds of fake names and have created fake web sites in order to smear him; the claims that I "found" two known child molesters and a "fake wannabe lawyer" to help me destroy him -- well, we've been through that already (see links at the end of this post), and anyone with any cognitive abilities whatsoever knows by now that it is just absolute bull.

I will say that the claim that I have "contacts" at Facebook is bitterly funny, in light of Facebook's steadfast refusal to take down the very posts that endanger me. Not only has Facebook left the July 17 post up there intact, but they've also left several subsequent rants in which Coldwell shared my home address and spewed his disgusting sexual fantasies about me. For instance, there's the semi-pornographic nonsense in the shot below, which I've shared before in part.
 

Notice that in the conversation that follows that post, Coldwell claims that I was a co-worker of one of his business partners, and he says that I have spoken to Coldwell and his family and friends on the phone numerous times over the years. Lies, lies, lies. Actually the claim that I am a former co-worker of one of Coldwell's business partners is a brand-new lie; I'd never heard it before. Being self-employed for decades, I haven't been anyone's co-worker since long before Coldwell moved to the U.S., so I seriously doubt that any of his "business partners" has ever even met me, much less worked with me. And I have never called any of Coldwell's numbers and have no intention of doing so. 

Coldwell, surely you -- or your vigilant family, friends, and employees -- would have recorded at least one of those numerous "horny" communications from me, which supposedly took place either over a period of three years, or four months, or three months... depending upon your lie du jour. Lacking that, surely someone from your top-notch legal team would be on the ball and would have made the recordings. But they couldn't because those phone calls never happened. You have no evidence and no proof, because you are completely making all of it up. Moreover, I've never heard a peep from any one of your lawyers, so your claim that they have been "dealing with me" for years is total hogwash (no offense to hogs). And I can't wait to see all of those "Witness Testimonies" about my "alleged drug use."

As stupid as that August 30 death announcement was, however, quite a few people shared it on their own Facebook timelines -- 24, at the last count [as of 15 September, 2014 ~CC]. There are 68 "likes," including Coldwell's b.f.f. bidness partner and my former frenemy Peter Wink, and Coldwell's first U.S. wife, Wendy Elayne Witchner, a fellow animal lover with whom I have tried to communicate privately to no avail. Wendy Elayne Witchner seems to "like" every scurrilous lie her ex-hubby has told about me, even though I have a very strong sense that she knows he is lying. Shame on you, Wendy. And shame on you, Peter Wink. You know better.

At any rate, the disturbing responses from Coldwell's most loyal and unthinking fans resumed on Facebook. There had been dozens of similar responses to the first rash of accusations, and after the doggy death announcement the cretins just took up where they'd left off. One man named Michael Arnold wrote, "I'm so sorry Dr. C... I hope some justice will be served... like revenge very coldly." Another person going by the name Ashley Alkalise-Energise Gilbert (I'm sure that was her birth name; maybe her parents were batteries), wrote... well, let me just share the screen shot of her post.

 
A lawyer friend of mine said that although it's profoundly stupid for Coldwell to insinuate that I could poison a dog remotely, the comments from some of Coldwell's imbecile followers made it clear that it is possible to poison minds remotely.

Here are snippets from a private Facebook conversation with a person in Belgium whose mind has clearly been poisoned by Coldwell. He had actually initiated the conversation on August 22, a little more than a week before the dog's alleged death. Out of respect for the guy's privacy I won't tell you that his name is Florian de Waele. Oops.

Conversation started August 22
8/22, 4:33pm Florian De Waele
Dear zionist whore, I wonder how much is big pharma paying you to destroy Dr Coldwell's business?

8/26, 8:11pm Connie Schmidt
Dear Aryan idiot: Nobody pays me anything to attempt to tell the truth. Oh, wait... this is a joke, right? Ha, ha, good one!

8/27, 7:44am Florian De Waele
The truth? Jewish lies! I prefer listening to a true man of God instead of a filthy frustrated prostitute. I'm warning you Connie Schmidt, you and your neo-Zionist pharma sponsors might have started this fight but Dr Coldwell will finish it!

8/27, 10:12am Connie Schmidt
You are joking, right? If not, where do you get the idea that I am Jewish or a Zionist? Not that there is anything wrong with either -- and not that it is any of your business -- but I am neither Jewish nor Zionist. Even Coldwell has not lied that I am Jewish/Zionist -- well, not that I know of anyway. He is such a sniveling coward that he has blocked me from reading his social media rants, so no telling what the little liar has said about me lately.
Coldwell HAS told many despicable lies about me, though. He has lied that I am a prostitute (or former prostitute), and he has lied that I have awful diseases, and he has lied that I made sexual passes at him (a big laugh because I am happily married and he disgusts me), and he even lied that I poisoned his dog last month. And he has lied that Big Pharma is paying me (or that anyone is paying any other blogger who has written about him).
And he DID start this fight with me when he made the choice to start telling filthy despicable lies about me, simply because I raised legitimate questions about him -- questions he is afraid to answer. He lied about other bloggers too, falsely calling them child rapists (among numerous other lies).
And he lied about all of us "hacking" his web sites and radio show. Even his webmaster and social media admin knows that those are all lies but she dare not speak up against him, apparently for fear of losing his business and/or his friendship.

Flo, you need to open your eyes and stop parroting that ridiculous little man. Learn to think for yourself. When you do, come back and apologize and I may accept it.

[NOTE: Between the time of that comment and his next response, the dog died. ~CC]

9/2, 10:46pm Florian De Waele
Do you think you're fooling me with your Jewish nose and surname? Go tell to the children being murdered by your Zionist buddies there's nothing wrong with Zionism. Now you've killed an innocent dog you perhaps can go join those Israeli murderers https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=287058068169551

Dr. Colwell is fighting for YOUR rights and YOUR health as well and what is your gratitude? Attacking this brave man who follows the Lord with all his heart! Let us ask the age-old question "Cui bono?" "Who benefits?"
How on earth could Dr. C benefit from making up lies about you? On the other hand you and your pharma sponsors have immense profits to lose when Dr. C's message becomes mainsteam [sic].

You probably mean the "Bernie O'Mahony" guy? That guy IS a child rapist, there was a picture to prove it on Coldwell's site. People should be made aware he's dangerous. If big pharma has the resources to hire you to murder his innocent dog it is not hard for me to believe they're hacking his sites too.
Dr C. is a ridiculous little man? OK, that's your opinion, let me give you a quote "Multiple awards winning Radio host of Coast to Coast George Noory stated in his new TV show with Dr. Coldwell: "I know and have interviewed most experts worldwide, Dr Leonard Coldwell is simply the best of the best!"

9/3, 5:48am Connie Schmidt
You cannot even keep Coldwell's lies straight, can you? He claims I killed his dog because I was angry about his sexual rejection of me. He didn't say Big Pharma hired me to kill the dog.

Granted, his original lie (which he started telling in October 2012) was that Big Pharma hired me to destroy his reputation by writing about him on my blog. But when he couldn't get anyone except possibly the stupidest of the stupid to believe that whopper, he switched to the "woman scorned" lie.
In any case everything he has written about me is a lie. It is your choice to continue to believe those lies.

And everything Coldwell has written about Bernie is a lie too. You obviously do not know that originally Coldwell and Bernie were friends and allies. Coldwell was at one time very supportive of Bernie's blog GINtruth, back when Bernie was only writing about Kevin Trudeau and GIN. Coldwell called Bernie "brother" and said he loved him. Bernie in turn was supportive of Coldwell and even had a link on GINtruth to Coldwell's main web site.

Eventually Bernie came to realize that Coldwell had been as much a part of Trudeau's huge scam as Trudeau was and that Coldwell would have continued to happily push that scam, knowing it was a scam, if Trudeau had not fired Coldwell. Coldwell only became anti-Trudeau because he was angry that he had lost an easy income source.

Bernie also found out some more unsavory info about Coldwell (on his own -- not because of me or Big Pharma or the Zionists), and he ultimately decided that Coldwell was not someone he wanted to continue to support. So he began writing critical information about him on GINtruth. Coldwell started threatening Bernie and telling him to choose sides or else Coldwell would sue/destroy him. Bernie, in my opinion, chose the side of truth.
So contrary to what Coldwell has said in different lies, Bernie is not someone that I "found" to help me destroy "Dr" C, nor is he someone recruited by Big Pharma.

I won't even address your stupid statements that I support any murder of innocents, whether done in the name of Zionism or patriotism, Islam or Christianity. Clearly you will continue to believe whatever you want to believe. You are one of those for whom "the facts don't matter if the story is good."

9/3, 7:01am Connie Schmidt
It occurs to me that I did not answer your question, "Who benefits?" Coldwell is trying to benefit from his lies about me because he is afraid of the truths I tell about him. He is scared of the legitimate questions I raise about him on my blog. Same deal with Bernie and with all of the other people who have written critically about Coldwell. Coldwell would obviously benefit if he could silence all of his critics. Truth is a scary thing to people such as he. Since he cannot silence us he is doing the next best thing and using outrageous lies to appeal to idiots. And clearly, some idiots are swallowing every piece of crap he throws out to them.

I went on to tell Florian the truth about the "child rapist" lies about Bernie, giving him links to Bernie's GINtruth blog post about the matter, as well as the direct link to Bernie's original Facebook post that he wrote just after he was beaten up by the Japanese thugs who gave him that black eye. I also sent Florian a few screen shots of Coldwell's praise and thanks to Bernie back in the old days, when Bernie was just writing about Kevin Trudeau and GIN on GINtruth. I've yet to hear back from him.

The same day Loony announced his dog's death, an anonymous commenter, apparently quoting from lyrics in Les Miserables, wrote to my blog.

It is possible that the Anon commenter was just being ironic, perhaps making fun of the idiots who really are supporting Coldwell's histrionics. But I don't know for sure. I'm erring on the side of caution these days. So as always, I've recorded and reported everything.

Over the next couple of days following the death announcement, Coldwell continued to use his Facebook page as a wailing wall, milking that old sympathy cow for all it was worth, portraying his dog as the embodiment of pure love and innocence, and me as evil personified.
 
 But he wasn't finished yet.
 
Coldwell brings Mommy into the mix
I figured that with the dog dead, Coldwell's beloved mama had to be next on the list of pawns in his deranged little game, particularly since he had previously used Mommy to threaten me, pretending to be his brother and using the totally fake name "Rudi Kauder." I've shared that story and these screen shots before, of course, but here they are again. This message was sent on November 4, 2012. What spooked me when I first saw the threat (I didn't actually see it till January 2013) was Coldwell's threat to share my private information with his rabid fans. Ultimately he did make good on that threat, of course, although not until more than a year and a half later.





For someone who "isn't a public figure," Mommy sure appears on public posts a lot, as well as in Coldwell's books. He parades her around in public like a prize-winning heifer. As you probably know if you've been following this blog (or him) at all, Coldwell's "health expert" shtick is based in large part on his tall tales of curing Mommy of liver cancer ("in a terminal state"), liver cirrhosis and hepatitis C 43 years ago (never mind that Hep C wasn't identified by medical science until 1989 -- a mere 25 years ago).

In any case I was of course correct in my prediction that Coldwell would bring Mommy into the mix in the wake of the dog "poisoning" saga. But I don't deserve too much credit for my prescience because he is such a predictable little nutjob. In the shot below you'll see how he threw Momma into the narrative. Also notice that our favorite caps-lock terrorist, Haiah Victoria Kingsley, is back with her threats of violence against me.


In truth, I've never shared Mommy's current name anywhere, nor her address, so chalk that up to just another one of Lenny's lies. I shared her MAIDEN NAME once on my first blog post about Bernd/Lenny, which I initially published in May 2012. I got that name from a publicly available document concerning Coldwell's legal name change, which took place in Fauquier County, Virginia on June 25, 1998. But in a subsequent post about the name change -- the one where I celebrated the Quinceanera (fifteenth birthday party) of Lenny's new name -- I even redacted her maiden name.

As for her address, which presumably is somewhere in Germany, I don't know it, don't want to, and wouldn't share it if I had it. I don't think Mommy is totally innocent -- after all, Lenny has publicly boasted online and in interviews and in books that she manages his "businesses" in Germany (which I can only imagine has something to do with money-funneling) -- but nevertheless I do think she is being used and perhaps to some extent duped by her wicked son. And I always leave family members of scammers alone unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise.

So, Coldwell, show us some place where I published Mommy's name and address. Show us some concrete proof or even credible evidence that Mommy was "hurt" by anyone as a result of anything I wrote, ever. You claimed in a recent rant that she was "instantly" hurt after I published her name and address. When and where did this happen? If it happened immediately after I published her maiden name on May 31, 2012 -- which is the only time I ever published it -- why are you only just now saying that she got hurt as a result of something I published? Why didn't you start hollering about her Cosmic-Connie-induced injuries more than two years ago?

For that matter, show us proof that I went online and obtained your home address, which is the foundation of your ridiculous lie that I poisoned your dog or that I was responsible for poisoning him. As noted before on this blog, I have only ever availed myself of free data that pops up when your name is entered into a search engine. I have never paid for a search for your address or your dodgy background. With the exception of mentioning the street where your mailbox is (an address that you have published on all of your web sites), I have never published your address, not only because I don't know it but because I simply don't do things like that -- unlike you, who published my address and private phone number with the clear intent not merely to discredit me -- something you've not been able to do with your nearly two years of lying about me -- but to incite violence against me. You are such a coward, Lenny. If one of your stupid fans comes after me it will, I promise you, not end well for them, and that will be on your shiny little head.

I suppose the next thing Coldwell will do is make up another story about getting his car bombed (again) or about some other brand new threat to his own life or property. He might even post a picture of a bombed-out car, or even a pic of himself with a fake black eye to make people feel sorry for him. He has often claimed that there have been numerous attempts on his life -- four, eleven or twelve, depending upon the conversation. He claims he has been shot at and hit, and that he has a bullet in his body. If all of that is true, it seems that Big Pharma sure is hiring some incompetent hit men.
 
Or maybe Coldwell is not through with using Mommy to incite fans' wrath against me. Perhaps she will get ill or take a fall, as older folks unfortunately often do. And of course he will blame me and get the imbeciles all fired up yet again. You just never know.

Somebody knows what really happened to Coldwell's dog(s).
According to Lenny's lament on August 30, Blue was to be cremated and his ashes scattered "in the country." There was no mention that I could see of a necropsy (which is what they generally call an animal autopsy, for some reason) to confirm cause of death, so I suspect there is a dearth of forensic evidence. Not that his idiot followers are going to even question his story, though.

Nevertheless, many people besides me have questioned his story all along. Some outside speculators have gone so far as to suggest that the dog did not actually die or never was ill in the first place and that Lenny made the whole thing up as an excuse to get people to attack me. That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through, even for Lenny, and besides, Blue was supposedly an attraction at some of his seminars, and I can't see him giving up any edge he might have had, since his seminars have had so little to recommend them ever since Kevin Trudeau divorced him. Some folks even suggested at the very beginning of the dog saga that Lenny or someone else close to Blue did something to the dog to create the drama -- kind of a Munchhausen syndrome by proxy thing. I think that is far-fetched, but then again, with Coldwell, you never know. He is pretty much bat-sh-t crazy.

Some people thought it possible that Blue had some chronic or acute disease process going on, perhaps contributed to by owners who fed him too much people food, or the wrong kind of people food. (Oysters, for instance, really are not good for dogs in excess. Raw oysters can give people hepatitis A, and it's possible that dogs can get some form of hepatitis or other serious illness from eating raw oysters too (though canine hepatitis is usually spread in other ways). Left untreated, hepatitis can eventually kill. Even cooked oysters can have toxic algae that can make dogs sick. Just saying, in light of the fact that Coldwell has shared this 2011 pic.)


It's even possible that all of those "natural remedies" that Lenny claimed to be stuffing down the dog had something to do with hastening his demise. Food grade hydrogen peroxide, colloidal silver, benzonite clay, sodium thiosulfate, and all kinds of homeopathic stuff... good Goddess!

I've even heard theories from some folks who have looked at all of the still pics and videos Coldwell has shared of the dog, and have suggested that there might be more than one dog involved. In some pics the dog Lenny calls Blue has a lot more white on his head and body than in other pics. A trick of the light... or a trick of a lunatic who will stop at nothing to silence a critic? Lenny has said that he has several pit bulls. One friend of mine said he either can't tell his dogs apart or he is being untruthful about what happened to one or more of those dogs... and my friend is banking on the latter. As farfetched as the "different dogs" theory may be, it's still not as farfetched as his lie that I had anything to do with harming any dog.

All I know is that there are lots of holes in Lenny's dog story, apart from the big lie that I had anything to do with whatever happened. And the longer you look the more holes you can see. It's like a sky full of stars, except ugly.
 
In any case, assuming that the dog(s) really did get sick -- from whatever cause -- I have no doubt that somebody, somewhere outside of Lenny's tight little circle of insanity knows much more about what really happened to Blue than has been told so far. Whether it's somebody who worked on the dog(s) at the Charleston or Mt. Pleasant area animal emergency clinic when he first took ill around July 14, 2014, or someone who subsequently tended him/them at his regular vet, or cared for him/them along the way or even before the alleged poisoning... somebody knows something and has some information that can help me.

Maybe it's one of Lenny's neighbors or a property manager or landlord, wherever in Mt. Pleasant or Charleston that he may be squatting at the moment. (As noted before, I don't know his address and don't want to, but there are indications that he moves around a lot -- more than the average person, even in our highly mobile society.) 

Somebody knows what happened to that dog, and I am not going to give up until I find out or until Coldwell retracts his horrible accusations. And this isn't any sort of invasion of Coldwell's privacy. As I said in my previous post (under the sub-head, "Why I have spent so much time writing about Leonard Coldwell"), he invited me to the party by falsely accusing me of a specific crime and by sharing my private information. He gave up his right to privacy where the situation with his dog is concerned. And no matter how obsessive it makes me appear, I am going to keep on this until I get to the bottom of the mystery or until he retracts and apologizes. I suspect you might do the same if you or someone you love were similarly accused.

If you are reading this and you happen to be someone who knows what really happened to Coldwell's dog, you know he is lying about me and deliberately putting me in danger. You know that it is wrong to just sit on this information. Sharing the information with me is the right thing to do. If you work at one of the vet clinics and are afraid you will lose your job, I understand and I will keep you anonymous to the extent that it is possible.


For the possible benefit of those who might be familiar with some of the veterinary clinics in Charleston, here are links to a couple of videos Coldwell posted on Facebook about his dog's suffering. They reveal a little bit of the hospital environment but I don't know if there's enough to make it distinctly recognizable.

• https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=264353350440023&set=vb.262828947259130&type=3&permPage=1
• https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=287058068169551&set=vb.262828947259130&type=2&theater

Below is a still photo of a dog that was posted on Coldwell's Facebook page on July 19, 2014, five days after the first rash of accusations and presumably 5 to 6 days after Blue took ill. (Don't believe the claim that the post was written by someone named "Katie" -- that is Coldwell's writing style. And a friend of mine has had private convos with "Katie," who wrote a LOT like Coldwell and even referred to Coldwell in the first person.)

The point is that I need your help. Again, it's the right thing to do. Allowing Coldwell to continue his lies about me will not bring his dog back and will only be enabling a psychopath. I can't offer you a $10,000 reward like Coldwell did back on July 15 for information linking me to the dog poisoning incident -- in fact I can't offer you any reward other than the satisfaction of knowing you did the right thing. But please, help me if you can. Or Coldwell could just save us all the trouble and tell us where his dog was treated, and share the complete veterinary records. But I don't see that happening.
 
As for the rest of you, I will try not to bore you any more than absolutely necessary with any more Coldwell nonsense on this blog. But count on this: I am not going to go away.

UPDATE, 17 January 2015:  
Coldwell fanboy Florian De Waele, who hurled his potshots from Belgium and whose toxic conversation I shared above, may or may not be the author of this new blog, which purports to "expose" me as a Big Pharma Whore and was launched yesterday, 16 January. (Florian's Facebook page seems to be missing in action, though it's possible that he has simply blocked me...but Yahoo's error handler indicates that it cannot be found. If it were a mere blocking, then I would get a "content not available" message from Facebook, not from Yahoo.) At any rate, the blogger's arguments to the comments some of us have made to his blog sound a lot like those that Florian made during that August/September 2014 conversation, and besides, several of the lame Photoshop efforts have the word Schermafbeelding in the file name, which happens to be Dutch for "screenshot." And Dutch is, of course, one of the official languages of Belgium. Coincidence? Maybe. Surely I have more than one hater, and possibly some of them speak Dutch, and possibly some besides Florian just happen to be in the Central European Time Zone reflected on this new blog. But maybe it is Florian. Anyway, hurry and read the blog post and ensuing conversation while it's still up there; it may not be long for this world.

The back story to this post (complete with disturbing screen shots of comments from crazed Lenny fans):
Leonard Coldwell goes too far: lies about me poisoning his dog (originally published 16 July, 2014, with several updates)

Deconstructing Lenny in five not-so-easy pieces:

• Part 1 -- Coldwell rolls out hilarious new bio site, tightens rope around his own neck (published 30 June 2014)
• Part 2 -- Leonard Coldwell's medical lackground and other hilarities from his new Bio website (published 4 August 2014)
• Part 3 -- Sound and fury, Sturm und Drang: Leonard Coldwell's meaningless bluster (published 7 August 2014)
• Part 4 -- Leonard Coldwell: The facts don't matter if the story is good (published 16 August 2014)
• Part 5 -- Leonard Coldwell: stupid and dangerous, or simply stupid? (published 19 August 2014)