I can't get over Podesta saying "it's been debunked" in that interview. Either the story is so batshit crazy that it doesn't even need debunking or addressing, or there is something to it. And if there is something to it, then it's true. He is not defensive because he is being falsely accused, he is defensive because he has something to defend.
I understand how people who aren't in PR view this, but for people who are accused of heinous crimes there is no good way to address it that can't be spun any which way.
If you address the allegations, people ask why they're addressing the allegations if they are so clearly false.
If you don't address the allegations, people ask why they aren't addressing the allegations if they're so clearly false.
If you say no comment, people ask why they aren't addressing the allegations if they're so clearly false.
A loaded question is a loaded question is a loaded question. May seem easy to some but it can be spun any which way by journalists. The phrase 'no comment' has a connotation of guilt.
It's not this interview alone that is convincing me. It is such a ridiculous charge in the first place, that any rational human has taken months and months to really bring themselves to a place where they are even starting to believe some of this stuff could be true. And though some on these PG forums just seem young and a little bit unknowledgeable about the world (as they would be, being young), quick to jump on any coincidence (which I think also bears fruit that would not otherwise be borne, to be fair), many people on these forums seem like rational people not at all on a witch hunt.
For me, it is really the background - all these linked organizations with pedo symbols, plus the connections to known pedophiles, plus the human traffickers running the child protection agencies - these types of things that really ring the alarm bells for me. It simply makes no sense that a party that is supposedly about humanitarian values and good things would not at least look into some of these things, with all the time they spend on 'Donald Trump was racially insensitive 40 years ago,' if there were not something awry. If this scandal were just about disturbing art and things - well a lot of people I have known over the years could be suspected of horrific crimes, including, at it's most basic, I guess anyone who has ever listened to heavy metal, etc.
If there is a non-crazy way to present the case for this conspiracy, it hasn't quite been available to a wide enough group of people.
The idea that it's a no brainer to look into allegations of your own party isn't how politicos think. Just as a super recent example I can recall off the top of my head, Rand Paul said 'I just don't think it's useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,' speaking of Trump's alleged Russian connections.
Regardless of your thoughts on that issue or this issue, people don't want to focus on their own party's problems. Clinton wouldn't have been impeached without R's holding the House and Nixon wouldn't if the D's didn't control the House in the 70's.
People should be pissing off Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy who are both Republicans in the House who have done investigations. Go to town halls and tell them about it.
So what do you think John Podesta meant by 'Do you think i'll do better in dominos on cheese' and 'map-related handkerchief' etc? And also what do you make of the e-mails from Tamara Luzzato about having her kids in the pool for entertainment? And also what about the 'Evie's Crib' website?
I think they're the inarticulate ways of talking that old people use on email. Remember that Podesta supposedly fell for a phishing email (something few millenials would ever fall for) and his password was supposedly 'password'.
I email with my Dad who is a card-carrying member of AARP and he writes basically the same. The hunts and pecks the keyboard without looking up and many of his sentences don't make sense unless you say it out loud.
I don't claim to say all those emails are not confusing because a lot of them are. But I can say that the 'dominos on cheese or pasta' to me at least seems like a classic stupid dad joke. Basically saying 'do you think eating cheese will make me play dominos better than when i eat pasta?" aka food is a performance enhancer for his domino-playing skills. That's the type of joke my dad has made before.But that's how I view most of these emails. Inarticulate wordings due to old people not being good at typing and using email. Seems plausible to me.
Clinton Foundation stuff is way more believable and justifiable in my view.
You know what, that was my exact impression the first couple times I read them. Educated quirky/clever people with a dry sense of humor. For sure. But again, as part of a greater picture, especially since (correct me if I'm wrong) the pizza/walnut/etc language comes up in a handful of e-mails, and with all the real-world apparent connections to trafficking, and considering just the entirety of everything that has come out...
What about the Evie's Crib website? What do you make of that? And the e-mail where Luzzato says she will have kids in the pool for entertainment?
I've never personally been sold on the code to be honest. The pedo symbols are from a legitimate leaked FBI email and 'cheese pizza' has been known for a while as an online code for child porn. Incidentally, 'cheese pizza' is a phrase that doesn't show up at all in the Podesta emails. Unless I'm wrong, the code came from 4chan or alternatively 'the deep web' which is so anonymous as to be meaningless for me.
Yeah those are weird. I just try and use Occam's razor and think about how bad old people are at using the internet. My mom regularly texts in all caps, uses internet slang wrong (LOL for lots of love, which I can assure you was hilarious haha) and uses weirdly worded phrases constantly on group text. My dad is even worse! I can't tell you how many times he's been talking about golf and said 'I was really stroking the ball' and I have to text my brother to laugh at how ridiculous our parents are.
I guess I'm more forgiving for these types of communications because the internet makes the intentions of the OP completely unknown and basically a Rorschach test of the person who reads it. But that's just my opinion about the whole thing and I'm clearly in the minority on here.
No, I totally understand what you are saying, and when I originally looked at the PG stuff, I of course basically dismissed it because I was just looking at the emails. 'Kids in the pool for your entertainment' could be tongue-in-cheek or awkwardly worded but innocent, in several different ways. When I started to see the entirety of what people had discovered (some convincing, some not), that is when I started to believe a little more. What about that actual website itself, Evie's Crib? If I saw it on its own, I might think someone had stolen this lady's pictures of her and her babies and was using them for devious purposes. But it's really entirety of everything that has come out that makes me think that something is going on, and I don't even know exactly what that is, since each detail by itself can basically be dismissed. I am still not 100% on board, but I am far from a total skeptic at this point.
Yeah I've seen that website. Again, it looks like a weirdly worded missive from a retiree and I'm fairly sure that Luzzatto is in her 50/60's. I don't know man but I know I'm not convinced. The whole argument of 'but theres so much evidence' , doesn't really hold water for me because you can poke holes in a lot of the various pieces of evidence or connections which makes the foundation shaky at best. It makes me at least question the entirety of the conclusions drawn from assumptions that aren't completely beyond questioning, like the code in the first place. Makes for a gish gallop, 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' kind of argument. The emails are real, but the code has yet to my knowledge been linked to the FBI or authenticated. People here simply work of the assumption that all the previous connections and conclusions that people have made are completely inherently beyond question. So somehow you end up looking at the instagram of a friend of a friend who liked another 'pedoy' post who makes weird art. I just kind of scratch my head after looking at some of these things. And then there's just random shit people fine like the Catherine Agnew tweets which don't have any connection other than that in a small fraction of the tweets that are coherent, 'she' names names like Podesta, Clinton, Biden and Obama.
I don't think the hive-mind is always that great at doing investigations. I was there first hand when Reddit ruined a kids life during the Boston Bombing 'investigation' so I'm way more skeptical of these things than others, but that's me.
Think about how often that spiral triangle thing shows up. I mean...it has to be purposeful, at some point. And if any one of these things is true, it cracks the whole thing open. It would be different if we were talking about some minor crime. Once you accept that any piece of evidence might confirm that a Clinton associate like Peter Giustra or Luzzato is involved with trafficking children, every other piece of evidence becomes about 60% more valid. That's how I see it. I was there for the BB thing too. I feel this is different. I am in no way validating every piece of 'evidence', but if 10% of them are legit, then you have a huge story. Did you see Giustra's 'Elpída House'?
Agreed that the symbols are definitely something because they are confirmed by the FBI. But the way that they find orgs that use the symbols are where it starts to become fuzzy.
First they look into CPP and don't find the symbols. So they look at a pizza shop down the street and find Besta Pizza. And as far as I know, that's where that connection ends. I can't think of anything anyone has accused Besta Pizza of doing besides having a symbol on their window and then changing it when people complained that said symbol was associated with pedophilia. It strains my credulity to think that they aren't pedophiles, but just signaling for CPP which are pedophiles and are across the street. It just doesn't make sense, but if you can send me info on how Besta is implicated that I missed, please.
The symbols I'm definitely more likely to follow the spiral triangle thing and not just any random spiral like some people on here. Those should be forwarded to the FBI for actual investigation, not for producing more memes.
And the whole 'if 10% are legit' is, as i've said before, not a good argument. It's basically saying 'I've accused a bunch of different people of a bunch of different things with varying degrees of certainty and evidence so you should investigate them all in case I'm right about some of them." That doesn't sound like a good argument, legally or otherwise.
Just as an example, left wingers are saying the same thing about Trump's alleged ties to Russia. "If only 10% of the allegations are true, and they are involved in colluding with a foreign enemy then they should investigate everyone allegedly implicated because that would be a big story." See how bullshit it sounds in that context? Both stories are bullshit stories based on speculation and tenuous connections at best. As of yet, both stories have no smoking gun.
No, I actually disagree with you. My okayness with Trump as president is predicated on the idea that he is not in any way in collusion with the Russians. That doesn't mean he couldn't advocate for policies that would help Russia, it means that if he were doing that for personal clear personal gain, like a share in Rosneft, then I would not support him anymore. So if you take ten of the various rather lofty claims about Trump and Russia, and nine of them are murky, but one turns out to be true, I think the other nine instantly become more worthy of examination, because the leap to believe any of these unthinkable things could actually be true has just gotten smaller. If you know a person who people keep telling you is a serial rapist, but it has never been proven, so you keep dismissing it, then you find out for a fact he did commit several rapes, it makes the claim about him being a serial rapist a lot more credible. Most people do not rape, so if you find someone has committed rape several times in a short period of time, it is much more likely that he is a serial rapist, if not fully proven. If the allegation is that your town mayor is corrupt, you assume he is honest, but if you find out for a fact that he stole $10K on several occasions from the town coffers, it really opens up the possibilities as far as what this guy is capable of doing and willing to do.
Likewise, if I found out that the guy who used to run child trafficking at DHS or whatever it is, and who now owns Besta Pizza, which has the spiral triangle logo, was involved in trafficking himself, then the fact that he was a close associate of Alefantis who has strange pictures of children on his Instagram and had business relationships with charities that had the spiral logo as their emblem - all these things would become much more worthy of examination than they would otherwise. And it seems like just this kind of thing is what we are finding out - the connections between things, none of which seems that convincing in isolation, but altogether which paint a picture.
Both of your examples are examples of evidence, not connections or anything else. If you find out your mayor has stolen 10k, then he is corrupt. If you find out a person has committed several rapes in the past, then he is a serial rapist.
A more apt analogy would be if you found out your mayor said he was broke but had a summer home in the Bahamas. Or the serial rapists had a criminal history that was sealed by the courts. Neither are explicit proof that they did what they said. Do you see the difference? If you find out a guy has a summer home vs finding out he embezzled 10k previously? Or finding out a guy has a criminal record vs him being proven to have raped? Your last paragraph, to me, is directly opposite of your examples in the first paragraph.
Also, the Besa Pizza guy was involved in trafficking himself? I've never heard that. Got a link to that info?
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formatist ago
I can't get over Podesta saying "it's been debunked" in that interview. Either the story is so batshit crazy that it doesn't even need debunking or addressing, or there is something to it. And if there is something to it, then it's true. He is not defensive because he is being falsely accused, he is defensive because he has something to defend.
listentoreason2017 ago
I understand how people who aren't in PR view this, but for people who are accused of heinous crimes there is no good way to address it that can't be spun any which way.
If you address the allegations, people ask why they're addressing the allegations if they are so clearly false. If you don't address the allegations, people ask why they aren't addressing the allegations if they're so clearly false. If you say no comment, people ask why they aren't addressing the allegations if they're so clearly false.
A loaded question is a loaded question is a loaded question. May seem easy to some but it can be spun any which way by journalists. The phrase 'no comment' has a connotation of guilt.
formatist ago
It's not this interview alone that is convincing me. It is such a ridiculous charge in the first place, that any rational human has taken months and months to really bring themselves to a place where they are even starting to believe some of this stuff could be true. And though some on these PG forums just seem young and a little bit unknowledgeable about the world (as they would be, being young), quick to jump on any coincidence (which I think also bears fruit that would not otherwise be borne, to be fair), many people on these forums seem like rational people not at all on a witch hunt.
For me, it is really the background - all these linked organizations with pedo symbols, plus the connections to known pedophiles, plus the human traffickers running the child protection agencies - these types of things that really ring the alarm bells for me. It simply makes no sense that a party that is supposedly about humanitarian values and good things would not at least look into some of these things, with all the time they spend on 'Donald Trump was racially insensitive 40 years ago,' if there were not something awry. If this scandal were just about disturbing art and things - well a lot of people I have known over the years could be suspected of horrific crimes, including, at it's most basic, I guess anyone who has ever listened to heavy metal, etc.
listentoreason2017 ago
If there is a non-crazy way to present the case for this conspiracy, it hasn't quite been available to a wide enough group of people.
The idea that it's a no brainer to look into allegations of your own party isn't how politicos think. Just as a super recent example I can recall off the top of my head, Rand Paul said 'I just don't think it's useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,' speaking of Trump's alleged Russian connections.
Regardless of your thoughts on that issue or this issue, people don't want to focus on their own party's problems. Clinton wouldn't have been impeached without R's holding the House and Nixon wouldn't if the D's didn't control the House in the 70's.
People should be pissing off Jason Chaffetz and Trey Gowdy who are both Republicans in the House who have done investigations. Go to town halls and tell them about it.
formatist ago
So what do you think John Podesta meant by 'Do you think i'll do better in dominos on cheese' and 'map-related handkerchief' etc? And also what do you make of the e-mails from Tamara Luzzato about having her kids in the pool for entertainment? And also what about the 'Evie's Crib' website?
listentoreason2017 ago
I think they're the inarticulate ways of talking that old people use on email. Remember that Podesta supposedly fell for a phishing email (something few millenials would ever fall for) and his password was supposedly 'password'.
I email with my Dad who is a card-carrying member of AARP and he writes basically the same. The hunts and pecks the keyboard without looking up and many of his sentences don't make sense unless you say it out loud.
I don't claim to say all those emails are not confusing because a lot of them are. But I can say that the 'dominos on cheese or pasta' to me at least seems like a classic stupid dad joke. Basically saying 'do you think eating cheese will make me play dominos better than when i eat pasta?" aka food is a performance enhancer for his domino-playing skills. That's the type of joke my dad has made before.But that's how I view most of these emails. Inarticulate wordings due to old people not being good at typing and using email. Seems plausible to me.
Clinton Foundation stuff is way more believable and justifiable in my view.
formatist ago
You know what, that was my exact impression the first couple times I read them. Educated quirky/clever people with a dry sense of humor. For sure. But again, as part of a greater picture, especially since (correct me if I'm wrong) the pizza/walnut/etc language comes up in a handful of e-mails, and with all the real-world apparent connections to trafficking, and considering just the entirety of everything that has come out...
What about the Evie's Crib website? What do you make of that? And the e-mail where Luzzato says she will have kids in the pool for entertainment?
listentoreason2017 ago
I've never personally been sold on the code to be honest. The pedo symbols are from a legitimate leaked FBI email and 'cheese pizza' has been known for a while as an online code for child porn. Incidentally, 'cheese pizza' is a phrase that doesn't show up at all in the Podesta emails. Unless I'm wrong, the code came from 4chan or alternatively 'the deep web' which is so anonymous as to be meaningless for me.
Yeah those are weird. I just try and use Occam's razor and think about how bad old people are at using the internet. My mom regularly texts in all caps, uses internet slang wrong (LOL for lots of love, which I can assure you was hilarious haha) and uses weirdly worded phrases constantly on group text. My dad is even worse! I can't tell you how many times he's been talking about golf and said 'I was really stroking the ball' and I have to text my brother to laugh at how ridiculous our parents are.
I guess I'm more forgiving for these types of communications because the internet makes the intentions of the OP completely unknown and basically a Rorschach test of the person who reads it. But that's just my opinion about the whole thing and I'm clearly in the minority on here.
formatist ago
No, I totally understand what you are saying, and when I originally looked at the PG stuff, I of course basically dismissed it because I was just looking at the emails. 'Kids in the pool for your entertainment' could be tongue-in-cheek or awkwardly worded but innocent, in several different ways. When I started to see the entirety of what people had discovered (some convincing, some not), that is when I started to believe a little more. What about that actual website itself, Evie's Crib? If I saw it on its own, I might think someone had stolen this lady's pictures of her and her babies and was using them for devious purposes. But it's really entirety of everything that has come out that makes me think that something is going on, and I don't even know exactly what that is, since each detail by itself can basically be dismissed. I am still not 100% on board, but I am far from a total skeptic at this point.
listentoreason2017 ago
Yeah I've seen that website. Again, it looks like a weirdly worded missive from a retiree and I'm fairly sure that Luzzatto is in her 50/60's. I don't know man but I know I'm not convinced. The whole argument of 'but theres so much evidence' , doesn't really hold water for me because you can poke holes in a lot of the various pieces of evidence or connections which makes the foundation shaky at best. It makes me at least question the entirety of the conclusions drawn from assumptions that aren't completely beyond questioning, like the code in the first place. Makes for a gish gallop, 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' kind of argument. The emails are real, but the code has yet to my knowledge been linked to the FBI or authenticated. People here simply work of the assumption that all the previous connections and conclusions that people have made are completely inherently beyond question. So somehow you end up looking at the instagram of a friend of a friend who liked another 'pedoy' post who makes weird art. I just kind of scratch my head after looking at some of these things. And then there's just random shit people fine like the Catherine Agnew tweets which don't have any connection other than that in a small fraction of the tweets that are coherent, 'she' names names like Podesta, Clinton, Biden and Obama.
I don't think the hive-mind is always that great at doing investigations. I was there first hand when Reddit ruined a kids life during the Boston Bombing 'investigation' so I'm way more skeptical of these things than others, but that's me.
formatist ago
Think about how often that spiral triangle thing shows up. I mean...it has to be purposeful, at some point. And if any one of these things is true, it cracks the whole thing open. It would be different if we were talking about some minor crime. Once you accept that any piece of evidence might confirm that a Clinton associate like Peter Giustra or Luzzato is involved with trafficking children, every other piece of evidence becomes about 60% more valid. That's how I see it. I was there for the BB thing too. I feel this is different. I am in no way validating every piece of 'evidence', but if 10% of them are legit, then you have a huge story. Did you see Giustra's 'Elpída House'?
listentoreason2017 ago
Agreed that the symbols are definitely something because they are confirmed by the FBI. But the way that they find orgs that use the symbols are where it starts to become fuzzy.
First they look into CPP and don't find the symbols. So they look at a pizza shop down the street and find Besta Pizza. And as far as I know, that's where that connection ends. I can't think of anything anyone has accused Besta Pizza of doing besides having a symbol on their window and then changing it when people complained that said symbol was associated with pedophilia. It strains my credulity to think that they aren't pedophiles, but just signaling for CPP which are pedophiles and are across the street. It just doesn't make sense, but if you can send me info on how Besta is implicated that I missed, please.
The symbols I'm definitely more likely to follow the spiral triangle thing and not just any random spiral like some people on here. Those should be forwarded to the FBI for actual investigation, not for producing more memes.
And the whole 'if 10% are legit' is, as i've said before, not a good argument. It's basically saying 'I've accused a bunch of different people of a bunch of different things with varying degrees of certainty and evidence so you should investigate them all in case I'm right about some of them." That doesn't sound like a good argument, legally or otherwise.
Just as an example, left wingers are saying the same thing about Trump's alleged ties to Russia. "If only 10% of the allegations are true, and they are involved in colluding with a foreign enemy then they should investigate everyone allegedly implicated because that would be a big story." See how bullshit it sounds in that context? Both stories are bullshit stories based on speculation and tenuous connections at best. As of yet, both stories have no smoking gun.
formatist ago
No, I actually disagree with you. My okayness with Trump as president is predicated on the idea that he is not in any way in collusion with the Russians. That doesn't mean he couldn't advocate for policies that would help Russia, it means that if he were doing that for personal clear personal gain, like a share in Rosneft, then I would not support him anymore. So if you take ten of the various rather lofty claims about Trump and Russia, and nine of them are murky, but one turns out to be true, I think the other nine instantly become more worthy of examination, because the leap to believe any of these unthinkable things could actually be true has just gotten smaller. If you know a person who people keep telling you is a serial rapist, but it has never been proven, so you keep dismissing it, then you find out for a fact he did commit several rapes, it makes the claim about him being a serial rapist a lot more credible. Most people do not rape, so if you find someone has committed rape several times in a short period of time, it is much more likely that he is a serial rapist, if not fully proven. If the allegation is that your town mayor is corrupt, you assume he is honest, but if you find out for a fact that he stole $10K on several occasions from the town coffers, it really opens up the possibilities as far as what this guy is capable of doing and willing to do.
Likewise, if I found out that the guy who used to run child trafficking at DHS or whatever it is, and who now owns Besta Pizza, which has the spiral triangle logo, was involved in trafficking himself, then the fact that he was a close associate of Alefantis who has strange pictures of children on his Instagram and had business relationships with charities that had the spiral logo as their emblem - all these things would become much more worthy of examination than they would otherwise. And it seems like just this kind of thing is what we are finding out - the connections between things, none of which seems that convincing in isolation, but altogether which paint a picture.
listentoreason2017 ago
Both of your examples are examples of evidence, not connections or anything else. If you find out your mayor has stolen 10k, then he is corrupt. If you find out a person has committed several rapes in the past, then he is a serial rapist.
A more apt analogy would be if you found out your mayor said he was broke but had a summer home in the Bahamas. Or the serial rapists had a criminal history that was sealed by the courts. Neither are explicit proof that they did what they said. Do you see the difference? If you find out a guy has a summer home vs finding out he embezzled 10k previously? Or finding out a guy has a criminal record vs him being proven to have raped? Your last paragraph, to me, is directly opposite of your examples in the first paragraph.
Also, the Besa Pizza guy was involved in trafficking himself? I've never heard that. Got a link to that info?