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atomheartbevo

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Posts posted by atomheartbevo

  1. 55 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    It's as if these guys don't realize they're playing with the horsie guy and the pointy-headed guy while their adversaries are playing chess....

    If Cohen held onto over a dozen devices going back years, he was planning on having to potentially cover his ass someday. 

  2. 1 hour ago, shnsajax said:

    He’s a hero for declaring Trump to be in perfect health despite the fact that he was running out of breath while talking today. 

    So when do we hear that Trump promised Ronny something (cabinet position?) in return for that good health exam?

  3. 5 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    I never got too deep into the JFK conspiracy theories but from a macro level, the Russian angle is impossible to ignore.

     It’s not like Oswald defected to the Soviet Union... oh wait, he did.

    It’s not like Oswald had any experience in assassination attempts...oh wait, he did.

    It’s not like Oswald had connections to people in the KGB...oh wait, he did.

    He defected to the Soviet Union on his own, which automatically put him into contact with KGB folks.  He went to a Soviet embassy in Mexico City on his own, knowing he would automatically be put into contact with the KGB.  There was nothing special there - any American who defected or who went to a Soviet embassy is going to automatically have contact with the KGB.

    As for "assassination attempts" and experience, he took a shot at Walker because he hated Walker's views, and Walker was a local.   There's nothing fancy or complex about that, and Walker was no threat to the Soviets.  If anything, this shows that Oswald was a lone-wolf psychopath.  Oswald would have succeeded had he picked up a cheap pistol and walked up to Walker's house and rang the bell and went into some spiel about how he admired Walker's views.  Walker was the type who would have invited him in.

    Quote

    The big questions for me are:  did the U.S. government try to cover something up and if so, what would possibly justify a cover up of this magnitude?  It must have been something pretty substantial that went beyond the mob or Cubans.

    I think what you ultimately saw was that the US government was afraid that the American public would think it was the Soviets behind it, which would mean that the American public would force the government to act, and that terrified the government, leading to cover-ups of things that we can rationally look at and explain 50 years on.

     I also think there was a fear in the government that if people or commissions looked too closely at things that were actually actively happening (anti-Castro activities, mob stuff, etc.) - things that had nothing to do with Oswald, but might fall into the scope of a commission investigating JFK, that it would blow a lot of operations and/or expose a lot of people.

    Quote

    I don’t know if Oswald was under any orders but if you study the history of Soviet active measures, Oswald is the poster child for how that form of warfare is supposed to work.

    The Soviets did not want a war (witness the Cuban Missile Crisis). The Soviets were control freaks.  In the Soviet Union of the 1960s, if there was going to be a war, they would have preferred to pick the time and place of where it started.  Being responsible for killing JFK would have led to a war where they didn't get to pick the time and place to start it.  Most importantly, the Soviets would not have any control over escalation and/or being able to deescalate.  

    • Like 1
  4. 16 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    The waters have been muddied too much over the years to have a legit discussion about this.

    I was very much info the JFK stuff in the 90s (aided by the explosion of interest and published material in the wake of Stone's movie a few years earlier).  I had a lot of free-time, had a few friends who were into it (who pulled me into it), went to a few gatherings/symposiums, etc. (helped by so much of those things happening in Texas/Dallas), and accumulated quite the collection of books and photocopied documents and papers of (basically a foot-locker's worth of stuff).    My internet access was very limited at the time (although I read the hell out of the JFK/conspiracy usenet groups).

    As I said, I kept coming back to a few things, namely that Oswald's dissatisfaction with his life led him to seek out/create the Soviet connections, it put him within the orbit of the Mob types, but it also meant that Oswald could have easily done it all on his own.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if the Soviets or Mob were truly going to kill JFK, they would have picked somebody who hadn't created all kinds of paper trails pointing to Moscow or that put him in proximity to the Mob.

    As far as muddied waters, I had this conversation with a friend from my conspiracy days a few weeks ago - in my experience with the JFK stuff, and by proxy, plenty of other conspiracies (a helluva lot of overlap), you can't trust many conspiracy theories for a couple of reasons.

    The biggest problem is the people pushing conspiracy theories.  They tend to fall into these groups:

    1. People who are pushing them for money/profit.  Book authors, website owners, etc.
    2. People who were "insiders" and have an axe to grind (perhaps fired employees, or turned down for a promotion, etc.) or who want to use their former positions to give them some kind of importance.
    3. People who are doing because it amuses them or they enjoy manipulating/muddying things (i.e. doing it for the lulz).
    4. People who feel personally attached to the subject matter and don't want to believe a simple explanation - a lot of JFK conspiracy types, particularly those who were young adults when JFK was killed, fell into this category. They didn't want to believe that Camelot collapsed all because of a lone nut who was unhappy with this life.
    5. People with mental health issues (paranoid, etc.).
    6. People who genuinely find it interesting.
    7. The true believers who don’t fall into 1-6. Few and far between at times, but they can keep a movement going. 

    Groups 1-3 are more than enough to muddy the waters individually, they can keep a conspiracy theory going long beyond its expiration date, and they actively take advantage of groups 4-5.  When you combine Groups 1-3, it's bad.  Really Bad.  

    Groups 1 and 2 are the worst - people who are looking to make a profit will churn out all kinds of shit to keep sales going, and Group #2 in particular is a problem, because if they were "insiders", they can toss out enough lingo and usually have some kind of tangible connection that can be used to manipulate others.  

    The UFO movement really suffered from Group #2, because far too many "I was an E-2 who was a cook at a base that occasionally had a pilot who passed through on his way to Nellis/Area 51" types were floating around, and they fed into/overlapped Group #1.    Then again, perhaps it was best that Groups 1-2 muddied the UFO waters, since that kept a lot of our top secret aircraft secret for a lot longer.

    This applies all the way up to the 2018 conspiracy theories such as the Trump/Deep State stuff.  Actually, it's worse these days, because it's even easier to muddy the water and create connections where there were none, and it's easier to tap into Groups 4-5.  There's a big difference between coming face-to-face with somebody at a conspiracy conference and somebody sitting in their parent's basement cranking out conspiracy connections after conspiracy connections.

    • Like 1
  5. 1 minute ago, trauma babe said:

    Last I remember seeing, they don't get all that many views. As I recall it was in the 1000's per video. I don't remember how long ago that was, however. I also have no idea how much money YouTube will give you for videos with a few k views. 

    They cumulatively have over 21 million views with all of their videos.  Between twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, they have about 2.5 million followers.  Not too shabby, given that they probably have a hard limit on how many will follow them.

    They probably pull down a few thousand a month for very little work just for YouTube ads (when you look at the body of their work), but they probably leverage that and their social media numbers into a lot more (they have some kind of speaking tour going on).

    In other words, they are making a living getting attention and spouting off nonsense.  It seems to match their personalities perfectly.

  6. 15 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    just too many coincidences.

    And many of those coincidences, the relevant ones, were created by Oswald himself.  His dissatisfaction with his life in America, his blaming it on the American government, etc. led to his journeys to Russia (and eventually Mexico City).

    Oswald wasn't some dude that was doing okay in the US, that all of the sudden was being blackmailed or bribed by the Russians.  He actively sought out contact with the Russians, thereby creating the very Russian connections that so many people point to.   And those Russian connections viewed him as either a useful idiot (and I don't mean a would-be assassin of JFK), or they viewed him as a plant by some three-letter American agency.  They clearly didn't afford him the kind of respect that he thought he deserved, or that you would think an assassin of an American President would command if he were controlled/aided by them.

    Now the Mob stuff, that is a much more interesting angle.  They actively wanted he and Bobby dead, because he was a threat to them.  Hell, JFK was useful to the hardline Soviets, who needed a bogeyman like JFK to get their pet projects approved (more weapons, more troops, etc.), and JFK's death could have brought about consequences the Soviets did not want.

  7. 51 minutes ago, Pancho Negro said:

    These two are nothing but a minstrel show to Republicans.

    I can’t decide if they are too dumb to know this are very smart for knowing this.

    They are YouTubers.   They have the market cornered on African-American women on YouTube who support Trump. The only thing they care about is views, because views equal money.  

  8. 4 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    So yer saying they want their kids to get the GI Joes with the Kung fu grip, and have a wife that wants to fuck 'em ?

    I would order counterfeit G I Joes for my kid.  New Joe figures are limited edition and running $50 or more. 

    Also, LEGO did win a major lawsuit in China against two Chinese companies back in December. 

    http://www.businessinsider.com/r-toymaker-lego-wins-chinese-copyright-case-against-brick-imitators-2017-12

  9. 8 hours ago, Grade of D as in David said:

    If it gets a third season I bet they go to the future.

    That would make things interesting, but I keep wondering if they will find themselves in some kind of serious alt-history situation that takes them a season to unravel. Would be cheaper, and could be more interesting. 

  10. 24 minutes ago, Aqua Buddha said:

    Buck Sexton is a real name?

    Yes, but that’s not actually him, because I’m fairly certain the Buck Sexton going on Fox and Friends has never noodled for a catfish in his life. 

  11. 2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    For the record this Giuliani shit is just a PR stunt to give the appearance of Trump cooperating and maybe an interview in the near future.

    Trump has no intention of answering questions, he’s just stalling for time at this point.

    If Bannon was using Cambridge Analytica to discourage Democrat turnout, where does that fall into the scheme of things.  Not quite illegal. 

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