The one constant among all western liberal parties is how bad they are at politics.

Yeah, I think that poll has to be majorly off. Not that Labour isn't in the drivers seat right now, but those numbers are crazy.

An unidentified flying object was just shot down off the coast of Alaska. They said it was roughly the size of a car. My guess is Chinese not alien origin.

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I, for one, welcome our alien overlords.

Poor Kodos

Hey this is real, he hasn't posted to refute yet

China must be pissed that we no longer have a President with a daughter trying to get trademarks for her handbags in China.

We keep shooting down their spy shit instead of pretending it doesn't exist.

But Hunter's laptop

Trump team turns over additional classified records and laptop to federal prosecutors | CNN Politics

Every accusation is a confession for the GOP.

Canada has also shot down an unidentified object and then immediately apologized to it.

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More documents found in Pence's home as well on Friday.

And now an area of airspace over Montana has been shut down.

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Any chance of just shutting down Montana?

Just sayin

Man if only the US had a Space Force...

The explanation I have seen of all this is that NORAD has turned off some filters on radar that had ignored these objects in the past. So now we suddenly have all these objects everywhere, but they have actually been around for a long time.

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CNN said the US shot down the object over Canada after Trudeau okayed it. There was a Canadian F-16 also but it was the US F-22 that took it down.

I’m sure the rationale will come out soon but just seems a little weird Canada didn’t take it down herself.

NORAD is a joint command between the US and Canada. So it was shot down by command of Trudeau, but the craft with the better shot took it.

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Does shooting down balloons count towards Ace status?

Maverick, Iceman and Hangman may have some competition now.

Basically our Alaska based fighters were closer than their Alberta based fighters and got there first.

Which was just as intended by NORAD.

It would be cool if it was aliens but it's probably just a weather balloon. They do a lot of scientific research up there with weather balloons.

The bigger story is that the F35 remains worthless.

Now the action is over Lake Michigan as an AWACS and tanker (probably fighters as well, but they wouldn't show on radar) circle above the lake. They have not said whether they have a hit or not on radar, but most likely they have and just don't want to speculate until they know what it is. The Montana one yesterday was a false alarm, and I imagine turning down the filters is going to increase the number of false alarms they are going to have to react to with full force till they get a confirmation.
They are also reporting that both UFO's shot down in the last couple of days were balloons. China has been sending these balloons out over the four corners of the earth for awhile it seems. These small ones just didn't get noticed until the big one sort of sold the whole project out. Honestly, kudos to them. Rather ingenious.

Dola: Even as a typed that we get confirmation of a balloon shot down over Lake Huron.

This article is from a couple years ago and sort of talks about what is happening.

Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like They're UFOs

If I'm reading correctly, the recent ones have been at ~40,000 feet, which poses a threat to commercial aircraft, as I believe most cruising altitudes are 30,000 to maybe 45,000 feet? @PilotMan

It seems unlikely everyone would have been OK with this for years if these were indeed the altitudes the objects were at.

So my guess is the change in operating altitude is what's brought it on. That's presuming that the earlier ones (during the Trump administration) were operating at, say, 60,000 feet+.


Yeah, seems like the risk-free mission for which the F-35 was built.

I guess another alternative is that NORAD has known exactly what these were for some time and deemed them not a threat, but eventually someone made the call that the public was likely to find out, and so it was decided to start shooting them down.

There is no truth to the rumor that the object shot over Lake Huron had "Goodyear" on its side.

Feels like we should be getting more information about these objects by now. Unless it's just to keep attention away from what's going on in Ohio.

I guess it’s obvious it’s not a one shot deal (or mistake) with the multiple UFOs we’ve seen. Likely they are coming from China.

But wonder if we can positively confirm they came from China by backtracking the trade winds, known trajectory (or whatever) and show the satellite tracking.

And so why is China doing this? I read there are advantages in gathering intel in a relatively slow moving balloon that you can maneuver up and down. But you’d still think China would realize that one of these would be taken down and is the intel worth the western condemnation (and embarrassment).

Weird. My guess is something that has been going on for years but Xi didn’t really know the extent. But good initiative by some PLA general.

Per Bloomberg article. Interesting turn of events if true. I’d like to see some evidence first. We’ll definitely lose the moral high ground.

Speaking of which ... The handling of this, including locally, seems weirdly laid back...

We never had the moral high ground. We spy on everybody all the time. It is the game of international espionage. Everyone does it in any way they can and not be caught publicly. China just got a little brazen here. I guarantee we have capabilities to spy on China that are way more intrusive than floating balloons.

When you read about the Cold War spying era, it seems like 95% of the people working at our embassy were spies, and vice versa for the Soviets.

And it was just understood. We're constantly spying on you. You're constantly spying on us. We catch your people sometimes; you catch ours sometimes. We trade them back and forth. And sometimes the media gets wind of it, and we all have to pretend it is a big deal and not something that happens every day.

This seems just like that.

Yeah. There's a big cloud of toxic gas, and we aren't really talking about it. And the story isn't being hidden or suppressed. It's just . . . I like your words--"weirdly laid back"

Reporter arrested during news event on Ohio train derailment
Well, the Ohio cops roughed up an arrested a reporter for not stopping his report in time for DeWine to hold his press conference.

This whole thing is a slow-moving superfund site and I think we all know how this plays out. If you live anywhere near there, you've already been exposed to a ton of cancer causing agents. There are going to start being illness clusters over the next few years. But if you lived there and most of your "wealth" is tied up in your home, you can't do anything about it because the value is worthless. But, hey, they offered to buy off these people for $25K, like that would fix all the above problems.

And, somehow, not a single person at that railroad will face any real monetary damages or jail. They might fire an overworked peon or two.

SI

Dianne Feinstein won't run for re-election in 2024 opening the door for an Adam Schiff and Katie Porter run for the seat

Nvm. Admin is saying the +3 are probably benign. I guess good practice with $400k missiles.

Hot Biden from college photo making the rounds. I feel like we don't see as many young photos of him as we did other recent presidents



Oh the ravages of age. And even though I wasn't born quite yet in 1967, it doesn't feel like that long ago. When I was a little kid in the early 80's, it was just the equivalent of maybe 2008 now.

Yesterday my gun loving, maga/libertarian/whateverfitsuseit congressman proposed a bill that was just - The Department of Education will cease to exist as of December 31, 2023.

That was it. No other problems to solve, no other solutions, just that he no longer feels that the government of the country that you were raised in should be responsible, in any way, for the education of it's citizens.

Thomas Massie is a massive hypocrite, and an even bigger douchebag.

Where in the constitution does give it the federal government the power to fund or regulate education?

General Welfare clause. Necessary and Proper clause.

We are under the Constitution, not the Articles of Confederation.

I hate he is going through this:

News from Fetterman’s office: “Last night, Senator John Fetterman checked himself into Walter Reed … to receive treatment for clinical depression. While John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks” pic.twitter.com/Yp6yGhpX7L

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 16, 2023

I'm glad that he is getting the treatment he needs

The more famous people who are open about their mental health struggles, the easier it makes it for others to get the treatment they need

I challenge you to produce a well functioning society without any sort of organized educational system. I promise you it will fail, or be overrun by someone else. Promise. It's the primary investment that the government makes for the future.

I actually don't have a problem with ending venue shopping, the problem is you then have to hope the judges in your state aren't owned by the people you filed suit against.

This ruling would result in venue shopping by corporations. They can pick and choose where they are allowed to be sued. So someone who was sick from the chemical spill in Ohio may have to sue in Alabama which is incredibly costly.