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October 03, 2019

No twosiderism on Trump-Ukraine, please, OTB stenos!

That's even as Glenn Greenwald seems to be joining the Aaron Matés and other alleged outside the box journos in doing just that, based on recent Tweets by Glenn.

Greenwald, like them, has a history of framing every attack on Trump's foreign policy as "the Resistance."

Aided by his own colleague, James Risen, though, on Glenn's own pages, this isn't so true.

The reality is that we have:
1. Some degree of corruption by Hunter Biden;
2. A background of the US supporting a semi-coup at the Maidan;
3. Topped by usual Trump grifting, in this case, tightening a money spigot, which Ukraine's now president probably knew about at the time, though this is undercertain;
3A. Contra Maté, the issue ultimately NOT depending on whether he knew or not, just Trump acting as though he knew. (At least Aaron used the "might" qualifier in his header, or maybe somebody at the Nation insisted on it.) As it turns out, as the WSJ reports in much detail (another non-Resistance outlet, Aaron) the reason Trump didn't get Ukraine's new president Zelensky to know he was being extorted is a usual-type clusterfuck Trump Team breakdown in communications.
4. As for the whistleblower approaching a Schiff staffer, contra both Aaron and fellow traveler Megyn Kelly, that says nothing about this being "The Resistance" organizing this. Rather, the whistleblower may simply have seen Schiff's name, knows that Democrats control the House, and thought to approach a staffer.
5. Although no quid pro quo was suggested, Trump apparently trying to get Chinese President Xi Jinping to investigate Hunter Biden? Well, Aaron, that means this isn't all about Russia, Russia-Ukraine, or a new version of the Cold War. And, although Trump didn't talk about a specific quid-pro-quo on the tariff war, his mentioning of tariffs leaves that open.
6. To riff on Risen? The bottom line is that two wrongs don't make a right.

Sooo .... ??

My "please" is too late.

These folks come off looking as bad as the MSM journos they like to deplore. And, like them, it's not that they're not capable of better (with an asterisk) but that they WON'T do better. The asterisk is that they're so psychologically constrained that the could do better will take work.

If I write more, it may be time for an acronym to parallel. Better yet, an acronym plus a parallel word: OTB stenos.

===

Update, Nov. 8: Aaron got kicked on his former news site, The Real News over his twosider-stanning. (Watch out, world, "stanning" is going to get attached to more!) Matt also got a bit of kicking. Ryan Cooper and William Rivers Pitt are pretty insightful themselves. So, contra this DSA Rose who's still part of the duopoly, and where I saw the link:
I'll take them first.

That link deserves a good read. Among other things, the Aaron-"bashers" note that motive doesn't matter on Vindman and others. It's simply whether Vindman, the anonymous whistleblower and others are telling the truth.

And, beyond the issue of motive? I'm not defending Hunter Biden. And, contra John Halle, I'm not a Democrat of any sort, so I'm not part of ANY duopoly when possible on national level elections. But ... there's an old cliché that's more than a faded cliché:

Two wrongs don't make a right.

That's part of where the steno-stanners are at.

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