you are right that it is brilliant trolling far right propagandists in the GOP will do the work for China of undermining the US government
Problems ahead for balloon discourse During the Trump admin there were at least 3 known Chinese balloon incursions over the USA, and one incursion that they know of during the beginning of the Biden admin, according to a senior DoD officials who briefed reporters.— Dan Sagalyn (@DanSagalyn) February 4, 2023
If this is true, I can't fathom why Biden just didn't say so -- and say "We didn't have a reason to shoot them down then, and we don't now." Instead, he just gave into the wingnut echo chamber -- where shooting at something is always the solution.
This is my problem with the whole thing. The value of this balloon as a spy device is negligible - there's no useful intelligence that can be obtained by floating a slow-ass balloon over land which can't be more easily obtained by a spy satellite (even a Chinese spy satellite which is going to be a few generations behind an American spy satellite). There's no effective type of attack which a slow-ass balloon can make on a foreign country. When Japan was sending balloons over the Pacific with bombs attached, it wasn't because it was a brilliant attack, it was because they were desperate and didn't have any other way to bomb the US the way the US was bombing them. If the Chinese balloon is loaded with bioweapons, it's going to hurt a few dozen people, and then in the ensuing war millions of Chinese will get killed, so it's not an effective weapon in any way. It may be a propaganda tool to try to tamp down internal dissent. "Ha, we sent a balloon over the American continent and they did nothing! We are strong!" Honestly, that just makes China look weak. They can't fly spy planes over the US or do anything else military-wise, so they launch balloons and hope they float over the US? That's not something strong countries do. I guess the one good thing about shooting it down (over water so there's no danger to people on the ground, and within our territorial waters so we can recover the wreckage) is we can investigate to find out what it was actually carrying. If it was spy stuff, there may be some diplomatic leverage, maybe? The point is, this thing was zero danger to the US, and overreacting to things that can't hurt you is not strength. Let the Republicans overreact and look dumb.
I am not sure how many Republicans regarded this as an actual threat. As long as they could have a grievance, that was enough.
My wife talked me into getting the mostly daily message from Heather Cox Richardson. In her piece yesterday she stated that these balloons are a common occurrence (there were at least 3 during the Trump era and this is the second one during Biden's term) and the only thing unusual about this recent one is that for some reason it was low enough to be visible.
It's literally exactly the sort of thing they hyperventilate over. Too bad the Chinese didn't think to put "Trump 2024" on the side. Can you imagine the sort of pant-shitting that would be going on within MAGA Circles right now?
I can't believe it took until today for the Fu-Go balloons to be mentioned. Y'all are slippin'. Not to mention, they knew it would be best as a psychological effort rather than anything tactical. It actually ends up being a fairly astute effort and development of meteorology.
The whole thing was utterly ridiculous. Steve Clemons: “I’ll be honest: The way Washington has hyperventilated over a Chinese spy balloon feels silly, and a little depressing, to me. Chinese, American, and Russian satellites orbit earth every day, carrying out intelligence gathering with incredible photographic precision. The balloon isn’t much different, yet it’s sparked an uproar that’s forced Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel his trip to Beijing.”
Agreed I mean we expect GOP and GOP media to fap in each others mouths over M&Ms sexuality but the legacy media really needs to take a look at itself
Politico is the dumbest timeline Politico Playbook is now in the lead for dumbest balloon commentary by an ostensibly straight news organization. There's still time left for other entries, but this nonsense is going to be hard to beat. pic.twitter.com/aAZAuvjSkP— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) February 6, 2023
This episode reminds me of the movie "Deep Impact" (I liked it better than Armageddon). Kids sees a comet way off in the distance, astronomer becomes alarmed, but nothing happens because it is not visual to most, and nobody is talking about it. When the President says something, and it can be seen, everybody begins to freak out. In part because it is visual. That is the same here. It's visual. And it is being talked about (even was just talked about as a weather balloon). People will freak out because of that, even though we all know there are satellites up there, and TikTok down here.
It can be a prequel to "Don't Look Up". This one has the opposite premise, and it can be simply called "Look up!"
US probably shot down another Chinese balloon earlier today. https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/politics/biden-alaska-military-down/index.html They haven't released any details other than the F-22 getting its second confirmed kill and that this "object" was floating at 40k feet instead of 60k that the last one was floating at.
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 11, 2023 I still think the first balloon was pulled off course by the polar vortex, most likely due to it's size and weight and we are shooting down this crap now cause we can thanks to the miss course by the older balloon.