It Follows

Why wouldn’t china render support to Russia in its conflict with Ukraine? The US sees the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a proxy war, rallying support for Ukraine as a means to weaken our enemy, Russia, without putting boots on the ground. China certainly has done the calculus determining that this supply-side support is weakening the US, as it has already been made public the fact that we have depleted our javelin missile supplies sufficiently that it will take seven years to replace our stockpile. Somewhere within the CCP, I would imagine they have laid out a scenario where the US will not be able to come to the aid of Taiwan should China decide to invade. Low inventory coupled with a long supply line will prove our undoing. Be it balloons, North Korean missile tests,  Iranian nuclear programs, passage through the South China Sea, or support for our allies, we are being weighed, we are being measured, and, thus far, we have been found wanting. And our enemies are no doubt further emboldened by the indecisive, faltering Biden lead US administration.

Marital Subtrafuge

Loretta Lynn fans should take note of the new age definition of standing by your man. In certain political circles, it has become stand behind your man and, despite his obvious physical and or mental infirmities, give him a push into public office. You have to wonder about the motives of Gisele Fetterman and Jill Biden in supporting their obviously impaired husbands into positions of authority that they are not only incapable of executing but may have deleterious effects on their health and well-being. And if they felt this is their opportunity to climb the power ladder, doing it at the expense of their husbands and the electorate. Shame on them.

Mask Confusion

We spent two years wearing useless paper masks to protect us from the Covid-19 virus despite evidence suggesting that any mask other than an N-95 was next to worthless. Yet in East Palestine, Ohio, where the government just incinerated a trainload of volatile organic compounds and exposed an entire town to a mushroom cloud of carcinogens, I am yet to see a mask on anybody other than the clean-up crews. Sure, return to your soot-covered homes and drink the water that’s killing fish. “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help.” The nine most frightening words in the English language. But personal protective gear?  Masks? Not a word of guidance from the same government that brought you Covid restrictions and lockdowns. When the guys from the EPA are wearing HazMat suits with respirators and telling you everything’s okay, that’s your cue to run. 

Up, Up And Away

Can you believe this balloon debacle?  Apparently, they now suspect we may have shot down one of our own weather balloons. As Tucker Carlson hilariously opined, General Milley may have finally met an enemy he can defeat:  the National Weather Service. It’s now reached the point that I’m afraid to buy my wife a balloon for her birthday next month, fearing the Air Force, on orders from Dirty Joey, will blast it out of the sky. Or worse yet, repeat the Lake Huron disaster and miss on the first attempt and lob $400,000 worth of ordinance into my living room. One had to marvel at a retired general’s explanation of the miss by pointing out that they don’t routinely practice balloon engagement at Top Gun school. Time to change the curriculum, boys. And rather than send up a 137 million dollar F-22 to intercept, perhaps we should consider dragging a biplane out of mothballs and fight WWI technology with WWI technology. Surely the National Air and Space Museum can fire up a Sopwith Camel if they’re not too busy harassing Christians for wearing pro-life beanies.  And the administration’s excuses rank right up there with “the dog ate my homework.” I almost feel sorry for KJP. Almost. We went from “don’t worry, it happens all the time” to “it happened during the Trump Administration too.” Then came the revelation that “we were actually spying on the balloon” and “we’ve been tracking it since it left China.”Sure you have. The latest Biden proclamation was that it’s  just “not much” of an incursion. Traversing the continent from Alaska to South Carolina, pausing over “sensitive sites,” is not much of a breach. Sheesh. What exactly is the definition of a breach on Biden’s watch? We have also progressed from not shooting them down because it could endanger population centers on the ground to “if it flies, it dies.” And are they targeting the balloon or the contraption hanging underneath? One would suspect that they would attempt to recover as much intact hardware as possible by poking holes in the balloon to bring it back to earth gently, as opposed to picking up debris scattered underwater over a 7-mile path after a sidewinder blew it to bits. Or is it more convenient to obliterate the target rather than expose it for what it is? That way, China can continue claiming it's a weather balloon, and the Biden crime family can continue cashing Chinese checks. And what about the other three balloons downed over Alaska, Canada, and Lake Huron?  Why haven’t we recovered any of those pieces? In summary, I now have significantly less confidence in our military and our surveillance apparatus than I did in those halcyon pre-balloon days. And I have no confidence in the Biden Administration's ability to explain a crisis, much less recognize one.  Or do anything about it. 

Civil Rights

It should be equal rights and opportunity across the board, but it is not. Affirmative action belies that premise. You can't undo decades of segregation and prejudice by simply pronouncing all men are now equal. The infrastructure and mindset were not in place to make it so. Subsequent affirmative action was supposed to reinforce that leveling process. When it didn't, they tweaked it by dumbing down our long-standing meritocracy system in the name of diversity.  Those proponents of ever attempting to legislate pandering instant civil rights refuse to recognize that simply in enforcing the laws of our Bill of Rights and Constitution, those so empowered in the ranks of the oppressed were making their mark, albeit handicapped, advising their oppressors that they were their equals. Since Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1872 and Johnson's 1964 civil rights legislation, the United States has moved aggressively and decidedly toward equal rights for all its citizens. Do prejudice and bias still exist in this American heterogeneous society? Of course, it does, but the passage of time and changing mindset has leveled the playing field profoundly. However, what prevails is the human condition and the ever-present malcontents and anarchists using the race card to ferment division.

State Of The Union

With each State of the Union address, our congress more and more resembles the British Parliament with its raucous give and take with the speaker. I’m unsure if that’s a good thing, but I’m pleased that the Republicans didn’t let Joe get away with the tired old “granny over the cliff” scenario.  But this morning, while sitting in my physician's office, I overheard two staff members ranting about none other than Trump, diagnosing him as having a pathological need to be the center of attention. Granted, his personality is abrasive to some, but which would you rather have, a domineering commander steering a country with energy independence, a robust economy, and her adversaries coming to heel or a dementia-addled puppet who has declared war on business, opened out borders, destroyed the energy sector and projects weakness to our adversaries. I just don’t get it. An hour and 13 minutes that started with a nod to bipartisanship then deteriorated into lies and misrepresentation with no path towards recognizing the half of America that disagrees with his agenda.  As our local conservative talk show host summed it up: I feel like an outsider whenever he speaks.

What Are We Thinking

So let me get this straight. We allow a Chinese surveillance balloon to pass over the entire continental United States from west to east, including a flyover of strategic missile sites in Montana, while we dither over what to do about it. Military officials actually congratulated themselves on figuring out the balloon’s true mission when they observed it “linger” over sensitive sites. Idiots. And it’s not like we didn’t realize it was coming. Why not shoot it down while it was over the Pacific Ocean after it violated our territorial waters?  No, that would make too much sense. Instead, we allow it to make landfall, then argue that we can’t shoot it down as the debris would pose a risk to population centers. And when asked by reporters about the precise location of the balloon, a pentagon official advised us that its location is “confidential.” When pressed further and asked if the public is not entitled to information as to the balloon’s location, that same official responded that we are welcome to “look up in the sky and see where the balloon is.” What a phenomenal level of arrogance to deflect from an equally astounding level of incompetence. Finally, after allowing the surveillance balloon to traverse the country and undoubtedly transmit reams of data back to the CCP, we shot it down off the coast of South Carolina. Geniuses. So rather than capture the electronics intact and find out precisely what it was and what data it was collecting, we obliterate it with a missile fired from an F-22 and spread the debris over an area measured in square miles in water 45 feet deep. Bravo, we scramble a state-of-the-art fighter jet to shoot down a dirigible so we could make a huge Chinese jigsaw puzzle. So now the Chinese can keep claiming it was a civilian meteorological instrument, you know because it’s important for China to know what the weather is like in Montana, they likely gathered all the surveillance data they needed to complete the mission, and they determined that when provoked, this administration will do absolutely nothing in a timely fashion. But tough guy, Joe from Scranton, got to puff out his chest and, with that steely-eyed look in his eyes, claim that he issued the order to shoot it down. That was after he had his pudding. But come on, man, Biden was in congress in 2001 when the Chinese forced down one of our  EP-3 surveillance aircraft after a collision with a Chinese fighter jet over international waters. They detained and interrogated the 24-man crew for a week, stripped the plane of its electronic surveillance equipment, and only allowed the aircraft to be returned after it was disassembled and shipped home in crates. Does he not recall this event, or is something else happening here?  So far, chalk this one up as a win for China. They get valuable intelligence, and we get scrap.