Some things work, some things don't. Maybe Carole King and Toni Stern said it better on "Sweet Seasons"? "Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and most times you choose between the two"?
That's certainly the way we feel a lot lately. Although more on the losing side.
Take Aaron Mate who finally managed to find the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The story he pooh-pahed repeatedly to Jimmy Dore. The one he insisted everybody does it about. Well murders happen to and we object to them. Government corruption is a breach of ethics, public trust and often the law. This is major, if you can't realize that, we wonder about your sanity -- whether you're on the right or the left or -- like most people -- somewhere in the middle.
Ourselves, we're on the left. And we wish we could just say, "We're glad Aaron finally covered it." We wish we could. And we'd love to say, "He treated it seriously at last."
But we'd be liars if we said that.
Watch the video, that's why we included it. If you don't know the story -- from sources other than Aaron -- how do you know what's being discussed. At what point does Aaron ever set the topic up?
He doesn't. He does a perfunctory 'review' that never addresses any real issue but does want you to know that Hunter or Joe or someone in the Biden family or someone who knew a Biden or at least Marcia Brady had nothing to do with a political official being fire in Ukraine despite Donald Trump saying otherwise. If he actually knows that, he does nothing to establish how he knows it or to back it up. What we know is Joe Biden bragged about getting an official fired. The same one. He's on video with that brag.
Maybe a little less bulls**t about Donald Trump would have helped?
Donald is not the president of the United States. Aaron does realize that, right?
The current president is Joe Biden. His son Hunter is the focus of multiple ethical questions and he is the subject of a criminal probe by the Justice Dept.
Now we know some liars are wanting to argue. Welcome back, we haven't seen you in a while. But we told you that Hillary Clinton was under criminal investigation when she was seeking the presidency and you didn't want to hear it. You had no legal expertise and never studied the law but you just knew better.
Of course, the reality is that those of you telling us we were wrong didn't know what you were talking about. Any investigation that the Justice Dept does is, by its very nature, a criminal investigation. That's what they do. Sorry if that confuses you.
But go away now, we want to talk to the mature people -- mature regardless of age, mature because they want to be part of a real conversation. Go on now, back to your David Brock plantation.
Okay, now that they're gone, the laptop story was a serious story. It was serious and important when it happened and we treated it as such. It remains serious and important unless you don't care about corruption. If that's the case, you don't care about much of anything. Corruption leads to war, fosters war, fosters displacement, etc, etc.
This is a serious issue.
“Come on H this is linked to Celtic’s account.” Those nine words from a retired Secret Service agent to Hunter Biden in recently released emails may prove a nasty complication for some in Washington who have struggled to contain the blowback from the still-unfolding scandal linked to Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
“Celtic” was the Secret Service code name for Joe Biden, and recent disclosures may puncture the media’s cone-of-silence around the scandal. The emails link President Biden to his son’s accounts and indicate a commingling of funds with money coming from controversial foreign sources. Even more embarrassing, the shared account may have been used to pay a Russian prostitute named “Yanna.”
The commingling of funds is the latest contraction of President Biden’s repeated claims that he was unaware and uninvolved in past dealings by his son. Given these links, there are legitimate questions of why the Justice Department has not sought a special counsel in the ongoing investigation of alleged money-laundering and tax violations linked to the president’s son. More importantly, even if there are no criminal charges, there is now a compelling need for an independent report on the alleged influence peddling operation by Hunter, his uncle James Biden, and potentially his father, President Biden.
In the latest disclosures from the laptop, a former secret service agent reportedly texted Hunter on May 24, 2018, when he was holed up with a Russian prostitute in an expensive room at The Jeremy Hotel in Los Angeles. Hunter wired the woman $25,000. That alone was nothing out of the ordinary for Hunter who, while his father served as vice president, seemed to divide his time equally between influence-peddling and personal debaucheries.
Hunter clearly only had influence and access to sell. We know now that foreign interests gave Hunter millions at a time that he admits that he was a crack addict and alcoholic — in his words, “Drinking a quart of vodka a day by yourself in a room is absolutely, completely debilitating,” as well as “smoking crack around the clock.”
However, the tranche of emails raises a new and disturbing element: the possible mixing of accounts and funds between Hunter and his father. If true, President Biden could be directly implicated in ongoing investigations into his son’s money transfers and dealings.
It's a serious issue.
Glenn Greenwald walked away from a high paying job to treat this like a serious issue. Not only did he lose out on that big money, he also has been attacked repeatedly for covering the laptop story so, forgive us, Aaron, we don't applaud your chicken s**t. It's way too little.
How dare you, honestly. How dare you. You're supposed to be Glenn's friend.
We aren't. We're not his friend. We don't run with him or hang with him. We call him out when we think it's needed. We praise him when we think he's earned it. We're not Glenn groupies.
But we are appalled at how you have handled this.
You didn't do that much on Russia-gate. We're sorry that you think you did. You did some. We'd argue many others -- including Ray McGovern and Caitlin Johnstone -- did much more than you ever did. Hell, we'd argue we did more than you ever did. And we'd be right. Because until the pandemic, we were at one college campus after another, at high school campuses, at women's groups, at this and that, talking endlessly about how Russia-gate was nothing but lies. And we continue to do that on Zoom chats.
Glenn did something brave and we'd think you'd at least appreciate that and stop insisting that it's no big deal and every politician does it and blah blah blah.
We wanted to win but, with Aaron, it just felt like we were losing yet again.
And we feel that way when NETFLIX tries to do animation. Two of the most recent attempts? Q-FORCE and INSIDE JOB Both are huge disappointments.
Q-FORCE comes from Sean Hayes and it could have -- and should have -- been better. Some have complained that this joke or that joke or . . . With both shows, the problems aren't with the dialogue per se. No, the problems are that they think dialogue is all you need.
These are not live action shows. You need a look and they lack that. They also exist in the same world as Road Runner and assorted others but have nothing to offer. By that, we mean why are these animated? If you're doing an animated show, you should be using visuals, you should be going beyond what you can do with live action. But both shows seem like a radio series -- too talky and nothing visual.
Q-FORCE, in the opening of season eight, sports a look it should have gone with for the entire series but couldn't even carry that out for a full minute. Barely forty minutes into an orgy of visuals, Steve Maryweather wakes up and declares, "Well it's official, I cannot handle Sleepy Time Tea."
Some might argue that INSIDE JOB is more visual. It should be. It's got a cast of characters that include aliens. It really does not visually live up to its premise.
Again, Carole and Toni told us sometimes we win but, these days, it really seems like all we do is lose.