If I had to hazard a guess the voters of Georgia Congressional District 14 place a higher value on performative politics than forward-looking governance. I thank my lucky stars that I live in the normal Wisconsin Congressional District 8 with the very normal Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher.
Old Uncle Joe baited these jerk-offs like a bunch of rubes last night.
Way to keep it classy GOP.....
Every visit to the trail camera trap line turns-up more of our resident coyote pack.
It's mating season now so it will be interesting to note if there will be an up-tic in the number of trail camera encounters this spring and summer.......
Evidence of the ubiquitous nature of inflation are these advertisements from the early to mid- 1960s.
Which, coincidentally, were my childhood years.
No doubt inflation is an insidious thief - particularly when it is thrust-upon an unprepared population.
Nevertheless, the historic record is undeniable.
It's been running in the background all along.
Factoid - When I was a kid i would take the city bus downtown to visit the public museum. Aside from bus fare mom gave me money to eat at the Woolworth lunch counter.
Simpler times for an 8 year-old
If memory serves that bus fare was 15 cents.....
In the unlikely event that you missed this air force tidbit the shoot down of the Chinese balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach was the first air-to-air kill for the F-22 Raptor.
Here is pilot sporting his balloon kill marking.
Apparently they had a ready stencil for this...
The drama of a Chinese Civilian Airship (cum) Spy Balloon floating over North America has certainly been an embarrassment for Old Uncle Joe what with Xi Jinping giving him the finger over this.
Was this because Chinese hardliners wanted to upstage the planned summit between Antony Blinken and Xi Jinping thus nixing the opportunity for the first US Secretary of State to sit down with the Chinese Premier in nearly six years and the first of Uncle Joe's Cabinet Secretaries to visit China?
Or was it retaliation for neutralizing and isolating China from the global semi-conductor manufacturing sphere?
Or was this a consequence of the US Navy aggressively exercising Freedom of Navigation operations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait (without violating Chinese airspace)?
Or was it something as benign as clumsy carelessness and gross incompetence?
Or something else?
Out of an abundance of patience and forbearance this blogger is satisfied to wait a bit and see what comes from the salvage of this airship and allow smarter minds in the intelligence community to analyze it, reverse engineer it, scavenge information pre and post-flight and see if this might not be a net intelligence gain for the US.
What I do know is that out of an abundance of patience and forbearance; and on the advice of the military and intelligence community, Old Uncle Joe waited to splash the balloon only after it had safely drifted beyond the mainland and could be dropped into salt water.
Was the overflight of a Chinese balloon an urgent matter of national security to us and our friendly neighbors to the north? Or was it a turgid assault on the national pride of some of my countrymen?
I can only speculate on this, but what I do know is that last Friday and Saturday there was ample evidence of some of my FB friends wasting valuable bandwidth as they got their undies in a twist over (get this) our woke military and senile president didn't shoot down the balloon (including in the sovereign airspace of our friendly neighbors to the north) immediately. Woke military? Between you and me that seems a bit over the top.
My hypothesis is these individuals were going to shout at their handheld devices and furiously broadcast their rage if Old Uncle Joe didn't put the trigger immediately. And if Old Uncle Joe did pull the trigger and something on the order of two to three school buses worth of debris dropped to earth and crushed a school, flattened a business park, set a neighborhood on fire or killed a single Montana steer and possibly hurt or killed a bunch of people they would howl their outrage over that too. Only louder. Anti-Biden people gonna howl their outrage one way or the other. They got grievances - plenty too. I get it. And I got no problem with it. There was a Full Snow Moon out this weekend - which explains much of the howling. It must really suck to go thru life humping the burden of all of those grievances. But I digress.
What they won't grouse about is that the Chinese Communist Party has been launching these balloons for more than a decade. According to the Pentagon five have successfully circumnavigated the globe, three that intruded into our airspace during for the reign of the Former Guy and one additional intrusion earlier in the Current Guy's administration. Including a second over Latin America. Granted, and speaking only domestically, the former incursions were not as lengthy as the most recent; nevertheless before you hurry-up and shoot something down you need to ponder basic stuff such as what toxic or dangerous substances might be present in the payload. Consider our policy not to routinely shoot down other nation's satellites in low earth orbit. From 1992 to 2020 we adhered to an Open Skies Treaty with the Soviets. (Trump withdrew from that treaty). We got history with restraint.
Given all of the forgoing I think an abundance of patience and forbearance was in order and am perfectly fine with waiting until yesterday for the balloon's demise over open water.
We shot down the assholes' balloon, the summit was been cancelled, the Chinese now have another grievance to howl-about on top of being largely shut-out of the semiconductor trade.
My only grievance is that we couldn't capture the airship intact so we could proudly parade it in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as a propaganda prize and give Xi Jinping the finger.
In the meantime, a retired pal of mine in Myrtle Beach sent me some photos of the shoot down. They were really cool. And out of an abundance of caution, patience, forbearance and respect for his privacy I'll not post them here for everyone on the interweb to see.
Instead there is this....
 |
| Not So Secret German Spy Balloon |
And if you are aggrieved - by all means - HOWL!
Pheasants are not a naturally-reproducing species around here. Although we see them all the time - likely birds released by the Door County Fish Farm and Game Club.
The club raises these birds from chicks beginning in the spring. Once they've grown to maturity club members receive an allotment of these pen-raised birds for release on their own property. They can hunt them at their leisure during the pheasant season. As per usual, birds find their way to our property as the cover is plenty nice if you are a critter. When I had dogs this was a real treat as I'd keep a shotgun at the back door and our daily walks would not only entertain the dogs, but keep their flushing and retrieving skills sharp. There was a daily opportunity to bag a bird for dinner.
Anyway, We've had a bird hanging around here. He prefers to roost in the lilacs and we see him every day. There's always spillage from the feeder to pick-at so he's a chubby bird that doesn't have to travel far to forage for his dinner.
Presuming this is the same bird that we're accustomed to seeing he's lost is tail feathers recently.
Native Americans have long grown familiar with this moon.
Colloquially known as the Snow Moon the
origin of the name is rooted in the notion that February has the
largest amount of accumulated snowfall here in this part of the northern
hemisphere.
As a consequence of its association with hunger and starvation members of the Cherokee nation refer to this month’s full moon as the Bone Moon and the necessity of cracking-open bones to access the marrow for survival food. Those of the Kalapuya nation referred to this as the Out of Food Moon. For others it was the Little Famine Moon or the Hunger Moon.
The Ojibwa call this the Bear Moon, the Lakota people know it as the Raccoon Moon, to the Cree nation this is the Bald Eagle Moon and because bear cubs arrive this month the Tlingit people call this the Black Bear Moon.
Indeed, these ancient native tribes named this moon after the way trees cracked in the cold, or how people had to huddle around a fire for warmth. My own people – the early Celts – remember this as the Moon of Ice as it is associated with the coldest month of the year.
Watch for it to climb above the horizon in the east around sunset and reach its highest point in the sky around midnight.
The Snow Moon should reached peak illumination at 12:30 AM CST tomorrow morning, February 5.
Fingers-crossed for cold, clear, winter skies.
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