Posted originally on the CTH on February 6, 2023 | Sundance
John Boyd Jr., President of the National Black Farmers Association appears on Newsmax TV to discuss the ongoing issue of higher farm input costs. Energy costs, fertilizer costs, fuel costs as well as all packing and distribution costs that are associated with petroleum manufacturing, are continuing to drive farm costs throughout the supply chain.
After a review of the current farm output status, there is a very strong possibility we will see the fourth wave of food inflation hit this spring, in combination with several manufacturing and production facilities. Again, the lack of consumer spending on durable goods has moderated the price in hard goods (supplies up, demand down); however, the highly consumable products like food, fuel and energy continue to experience upward price pressure as a direct result of Biden energy policy. WATCH:
If consumers could eat missiles and weapons, the U.S. government would be offsetting the costs. Unfortunately, for actual farming products, there is no government attention, policy or support. Apparently, food is still not considered a national security issue.
COMMENT: Marty, I know you no longer want to work in Washington. Honestly, your experience is greatly needed. Everything you said that this braindead administration is pushing China and Russia together when Nixon had divided them is coming true. The WSJ has even reported that China is aiding Russia in Ukraine. With all due respect, what you have been saying is not rocket science. There is no common sense in the Biden Administration and every damn person who voted for him should be rounded up for treason.
Thank you for the straight facts.
GD
ANSWER: I understand what you are saying. There is nothing I can do in Washington. Biden has destroyed the world economy. Globalization is dead. Our sanctions have divided the world in two and Russia is immune to our sanctions.
These people in the Biden Administration have their agenda and it is to destroy the United States, our values, culture, and traditions, and remake it into a land of their vision. The Biden Administration has DELIBERATELY waged war against Russia to change our energy system and the goal has been to destroy Russia because 50% of its GDP is fossil fuels.
Even the BBC now reports that this war has accelerated the shift to clean energy, quoting a report now from British Petroleum. Even the Economist, the magazine that is incapable of walking a straight line because it slants to the left so much, is cheering Biden so you know we are screwed. They wrote:
“This is America in 2033, if the Biden administration has its way. In the past two years Congress has passed three bills, on infrastructure, semiconductor chips and greenery, that will make $2trn available to reshape the economy. “
This is why I say that Republican forms of government are the WORST possible. They are no different from a dictatorship other than we pretend to have a right to vote, but there is no representation. None of these issues were EVER submitted to the people for a vote. Biden is changing EVERYTHING about America to the point we no longer can even define what a woman is anymore according to this Administration.
Quite frankly, I can scream all I want, but there is no changing the direction of the country at the polls. Our system of government is precisely what the revolution was all about – no taxation without representation. We have no right to vote to reignite this cold war about to turn red hot because these people also think there are just too many of us running around and they have the RIGHT to create war and hopefully eliminate 50% of the population.
Unfortunately, I have to wait for Scotty to beam me up before I can escape this insanity.
“Eve of Destruction” was a protest song written by P. F. Sloan. Barry McGuire recorded the track in July 1965 about the Vietnam War. History repeats – always – because human nature never changes.
The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) was founded in 2019 and its goal is to push only the accepted narrative ending both free speech and real independent journalism. TNI actually violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and should be criminally charged for its deliberate destruction of our society and the censoring of any news that was warning about the vaccine side effects.
TNI includes companies such as Google, Facebook, BBC, YouTube, Twitter, the New York Times, Microsoft, and Reuters. It also includes all of the companies owned by these companies, and therefore, it has destroyed independent journalism no different than the Stalin control of media in Communist Russia. To this group, freedom of speech means they have the freedom to censor whatever they disagree with. So tell your children to forget journalism as a career. They will be reduced to a mindless propaganda machine.
Everything from ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, and Fox News indeed trickle down to your local news affiliates despite the fact that they are supposed to be independent stations. The newspapers engaged in this monopoly of news are USA Today, the Washington Post, and even the Kansas City Star. Of all of the countless mainstream television channels in the USA, they are ALL owned by only SIX companies! Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, Disney, National Amusements, and News Corp. By uniting in this monopoly TNI for news, this is really criminal activity as if they were producing a car. What is the difference because it is news content?
In 1983, there were more than 50 companies that owned our television channel’s media content. The crime took place with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, during which the FCC removed restrictions on how many news outlets an owner could own thereby legalizing a monopoly in news. Telecommunications Act of 1996, was purported to bring more competition to the telephone market for both local and long distance service. Fine, it ended AT&T monopoly, but it allowed a monopoly in news to take shape.
It was passed by Congress in January 1996 and signed into law by none other than Bill Clinton in February 1996. It permitted firms that served competitive local markets to enter the long-distance market, and it attempted to implement a single layer of regulation at the federal level. Additional provisions of the act removed restrictions on media ownership and resulted in immediate consolidation within that segment of the industry. Yet another provision provided guidelines for Internet indecency and prohibited sending indecent or obscene communications to minors via the Internet (see Communications Decency Act, sponsored by Republican Tom Bliley). The Supreme Court, however, later ruled that the provision was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Another significant provision protected Internet service providers from liability for the content of third parties on their service.
Here we had legislation that was supposed to create competition and instead created a monopoly. Today, we have fewer television media channels compared to what was available in 1983. And there were more than 50 companies who owned those outlets then versus now just SIX!
Posted originally on the CTH on February 5, 2023 | Sundance
Axios is positioning this announcement as FTX asking for political donations to be returned. However, the request is realistically from the FTX debtors.
(Via Axios) – Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX is sending notices to former donor recipients asking for the donated funds to be returned, the company said in a press release Sunday.
Why it matters: Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX Digital Markets Co-CEO Ryan Salame were two of the largest political donors during the last election cycle. Now the company’s debtors want the money back.
Bankman-Fried primarily backed Democrats and was the party’s second-largest donor last cycle with around $37 million in contributions.
Salame’s $19 million to Republicans made him the party’s 10th largest donor.
The big picture: FTX’s debtors are confidentially contacting “political figures, political action funds and other recipients of contributions or other payments.” (more)
Additionally, the Twitter Account “Unusual Whales” which tracks and researches financial transactions, has published the first list I have seen that makes it easy to see who FTX donated to. The list IS HERE and is alphabetized.
Posted originally on the CTH on February 5, 2023 | Sundance
According to the latest ABC/WaPo polling [Full pdf Here], 41% of Americans say they are worse off financially under Joe Biden. That is the highest negative response to the question in the 37-year history of ABC polling.
Yet we are supposed to believe voters suffering under the worst financial outlooks in 40-years rewarded Joe Biden just two months ago with support for his Democrat Party and candidates? Something is just not adding up.
Posted originally on the CTH on February 5, 2023 | Sundance
The more I see how much attention was exhausted focusuing on the Chinese balloon, the more I am inclined to believe the attention was manufactured by internal deep state operatives.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken cancelled his trip to China over the spy balloon issue, and beyond the general cancellation, he also cancelled a rare meeting with Chairman Xi. Xi never almost never meets with foreign ministers, only Presidents and Prime Ministers. So, what gives? Did the intelligence community expose the balloon crossing to stop the Xi/Blinken meeting? I don’t know, but something is fishy.
Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe gives his .02 cents. Ratcliffe takes the position that it was an intended spy and surveillance operation by China, and it was successful. WATCH:
Posted originally on the CTH on February 5, 2023 | Sundance
This is one of those interviews where you don’t have to take my word for what is being said, Gary Cohn and Margaret Brennan are gleeful about the January jobs report and the overall return of the U.S. economy to a service driven system with low wages. Seriously, this is them celebrating out loud.
In order to calm the Wall Street apoplexy about his election victory, President Trump selected Gary Cohn to be an economic advisor early in the administration. However, it was also no surprise that President Trump did not follow Cohn’s advice, and quickly dispatched him after Cohn protested. In this interview the worldview of Cohn is typically globalist, multinational and Wall St centric.
Talking about the January jobs report, Cohn literally gets everything wrong from the position of Main Street USA. Cohn also celebrates what he calls the “renormalization of the new economy.” Continuing with his thought process Cohn states, “A lot of the jobs that we saw were jobs in the service industry, the service, the industries coming back very strong because we’re starting to see the economy go back to what we historically think of the economy,” he said. This is exactly how Wall Street, and the multinationals look at the U.S. economy.
The next part that both Cohn and Margaret Brennan celebrate is even more sunlight. “The interesting thing about last month’s unemployment numbers is we brought people back to work, but we did not have to entice them with pay,” Cohn stated. “So, the monthly, the month over month number in wage gains was 30 basis points. The prior month was 40 basis points. So, we’re seeing we’re getting people back into the labor force for a lower wage than we were prior to this,” he said. With higher prices (inflation) crushing the middle-class and service workers, the multinationals Cohn represents are celebrating that they don’t have to pay workers higher wages. WATCH:
[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: So 517,000 new jobs, but a lot of companies, particularly in tech, are announcing layoffs. So exactly where’s the economy headed?
GARY COHN: So, it’s interesting. We did see the 500,000 plus new jobs, which was quite surprising, I think, to many of us. But I think what we’re actually seeing here is a renormalization of the new economy. A lot of the jobs that we saw were jobs in the service industry, the service, the industries coming back very strong because we’re starting to see the economy go back to what we historically think of the economy. For the first time, we’ve seen occupancy rates in offices in major cities over 50%. When you see occupancy rates go up, you need the service sector to work. Think about people going back into the office. They need parking attendants. They need people to work in the buildings. They need security. They need people to clean the buildings. People stop for coffee when they go into the buildings. They go out to lunch. They go to bars. For the- for that to happen, you need the service sectors to come back to work. So the 120,000 service sector employees that came back to work, that 100% correlates with people going back to what is the new normal. It may not be five days a week in the office, but it’s enough days in the week in the office where you need the service sector to come back to work. The interesting thing about last month’s unemployment numbers is we brought people back to work, but we did not have to entice them with pay. So the monthly, the month over month number in wage gains was 30 basis points. The prior month was 40 basis points. So we’re seeing we’re getting people back into the labor force for a lower wage than we were prior to this.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And that’s a little bit hopeful for you on the inflation front.
GARY COHN: Yeah, and I think this is natural. I think what we’ve seen is, after all the stimulus that was put in the system over the last three months, people are running out of the stimulus money. We saw that in the fourth quarter of last year. We saw consumer spending slow down. We saw debit balances on credit cards go up. We started to see delinquencies go up. And you know what happened? People actually did the right thing and they went back to work. They’re engaged and they reenter the workforce. And I think we saw a lot of that in the January numbers.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So these more positive signs have led Bank of America, for example, to say recession still in the cards, but not until after March. I wonder what your thoughts are on that. And as CEOs warned about borrowing costs going up as a result of the Fed hiking. They are tightening belts. So how far off is this recession?
GARY COHN: Well, we’ve got a couple of phenomena going on. Interest rates have been going up, so borrowing costs have been going up for companies. On the flip side, the dollar has been weakening. So the multinational corporations in the United States who repatriate earnings from offshore, those repatriated earnings have become more valuable. I think the people that have been really worried about a recession in the first and second quarter of this year, I think after what we’ve seen this week with both Chairman Powell’s announcements and the data in unemployment, I think that recession is off the table for Q and one in Q2 of this year. You know, we’re going to get another employment report before the next Fed meeting and we’ll see where the economy’s going. But it does feel like we’re in relatively good shape here. The question is going to be how does the Federal Reserve handle what’s going on in the economy? Are we going to continue to have to increase wages to draw people back in the labor force, or are people coming back in the labor force because they need to? And we’re not going to have wage inflation if that happens. The Federal Reserve is actually in a very good place.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Let me ask you about something the Fed chair said this week. He said Congress has to lift this debt ceiling. I’m throwing one of the things that could screw up your- your rosy prediction at you. He said no one should assume that the Fed can protect the economy from the consequences of failing to act in a timely manner. He’s warning he’s not making plans for a default. You’re on your own if it happens.
GARY COHN: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Should there be a plan for the Fed to step in? I mean, I know legally it’s in question here, but I talk to people on Capitol Hill who say Wall Street is not taking this seriously enough. The politics are really bad around the debt ceiling.
GARY COHN: The politics are very bad. You know, the one thing is every American, every American is holding the US government to raise the debt ceiling. The full faith and credit of the US dollar and the US dollar being the reserve currency is imperative to our economic well-being as a country. We ultimately have to get the debt ceiling raised. That said, what’s going on here is not something out of the ordinary. If you look at debt ceiling raises over the last 40 or 50 years, no matter which party is in the minority, about 50% of the time, debt ceiling raises come with some amendments attached- attached to them from the other party. So this is quite an. Normal, the process that we’re going through.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You don’t sound overly concerned.
GARY COHN: Like I’m always concerned when we’re dealing with debt ceiling, but I have a feeling that we will get there in the end when we have no other choice. You had this- you had the speaker here last week and he felt confident that we would get there when we had no other choice. The speaker met with the president of the United States this week. The two of them came out of the meeting relatively confident. I feel they both understand there is no choice. In the end of the day, we have to raise the debt ceiling. The question is, can the Republicans get something in the legislation, attach the debt ceiling legislation that they want that they feel like is a win and the Democrats are willing to give it to? Historically, that is what’s happened numerous times.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah. And the risk there is real. I want to ask you as well about China. Mark Warner was here with us last week and he said technology competition with China is the biggest issue of our time. He’s worried about things that- like your company does IBM, in terms of quantum computing. Is enough being done to keep America competitive on that front?
GARY COHN: Well, we’re starting you know, if you look at where we’ve been this year, you know, we passed the CHIPS Act in the United States, which, you know, is- is- is something that’s not a normal motion for us in the United States for the federal government to pick and choose–
MARGARET BRENNAN: To subsidize.
GARY COHN: –an industry, and and to subsidize. It really is not a normal action- is an action that, you know, historically I probably not would have been have supportive. I was extremely supportive of the CHIPS Act, we at IBM was extremely supportive of the CHIPS Act. If we learned nothing else from the pandemic, we learned that there are certain goods that are necessity goods for this country to have, and we are overly reliant on places like China. And if we don’t find ways to change the manufacturing system in the supply chain and move it back to the United States where we can take care of ourselves, we have made a catastrophic miscalculation. Chips are one of those areas where we cannot depend on the rest of the world and run our manufacturing business and continue to grow our economy. Pharmaceuticals is another area where we really have to move that industry and that manufacturing back to the United States. So I think we really have to evaluate what are the most crucial and sensitive businesses or industries that we cannot live within the United States. And we’re going to have to make real investments in those here in this country.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’ll keep talking about it with legislators. Have to figure out how to pass some of those laws. We’re going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we’ll be talking with four members of the freshman class and the 118th Congress.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on February 5, 2023 | Sundance
House Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) appears on Meet the Press to discuss his perspective on the motive of China to send a massive surveillance balloon over key U.S. military facilities.
According to Chairman Turner, it appears (a) the balloon was designed to capture some intelligence that satellites cannot; and (b) the flight path of the surveillance balloon was steered to cover areas housing key the strategic military bases and missile defenses. WATCH (Transcript Below):
CHUCK TODD: Joining me now is the Republican Chair of the House Intel Committee, Mike Turner of Ohio. Chairman Turner, welcome back to Meet the Press.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Good morning, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD: All right. Let me start with what you know here. So the decision to take this down – what more have you learned? And you’re part of the so-called Gang of Eight. I don’t think you guys have gotten a personal briefing, but I know staff has. What more can you tell us about the take-down operation?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yeah. Well, clearly the president taking it down over the Atlantic is sort of like the quarterback—sort of like tackling the quarterback after the game is over. The satellite had completed its mission. This should never have been allowed to enter the United States, and it never should’ve been allowed to complete its mission. If you ask somebody to draw an X at every place where our sensitive missile defense sites, our nuclear weapons infrastructure, our nuclear weapon sites are, you would put them all along this path. Clearly, this was an attempt by China to gather information, to defeat our command and control of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapon sites. And that certainly is an urgency that this administration does not recognize.
CHUCK TODD: Do you think we should have a policy that just anything that enters our airspace that’s a balloon from China gets shot down immediately?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, first off, you have to understand this administration didn’t just fail here; they failed to prepare after the first time this happened during this administration. The administration has already admitted, which I’ve been briefed on, that China has done this before in the continental United States during this president’s tenure –
CHUCK TODD: When did that happen?
REP. MIKE TURNER: I – you have to let them release it; I can’t release classified information, but they can tell you.
CHUCK TODD: Were you also briefed on – there was apparently two or three incidents in the previous administration as well.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, that’s what they’re saying now. But I think that the administration needs to come forward, because this is not an ability to say that this is a crisis that was handed to them. This is a crisis that has developed as a result of this president during his administration allowing China to do a similar act before, not responding and then clearly in this one, not seeing the urgency of what was unfolding. I mean, the president allowed this to go across our most sensitive sites, and wasn’t even going to tell the American public. If you hadn’t broken this story, the American public would not have even known. There was no attempt to notify Congress, no attempt to put together the Gang of Eight. I think this administration lacks urgency.
CHUCK TODD: Do you – the Pentagon says that they were able to use some countermeasures that blocked or limited the ability of China to extract information from this balloon. Do you buy that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: No. And certainly you don’t either. Here’s the thing that’s interesting. The administration says there was nothing for them to gain here. This was quite a risk by China, quite a calculation that they would take a balloon, put it up in China, take it across the United States where it’s clearly going to be discoverable by us. They clearly had some information that they were trying to garner, that they can’t garner from space, so they did not have otherwise.
CHUCK TODD: What could that be? Have you – I mean what – you’re pretty familiar with this. What is it that they think they could have gotten from a balloon? Or what can be done with a balloon that can’t be done with a satellite?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well, the key obviously is not just the balloon. The key is the payload that was attached to it, which you’ve reported is, you know, the size of three buses. That’s obviously huge. And it was being commanded and controlled by mainland China, and delivering data and information back to mainland China. Again, if you look at the path, and you put X’s where all of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapons facilities are, I believe that they were trying to gain information on how to defeat the command and control of our nuclear weapon systems and our missile defense systems. That’s a crisis. That certainly should’ve had an urgency to the president, and not just wait until this gets to the Atlantic to take it down.
CHUCK TODD: Do you at all accept – I mean, it sounds like he did put the order in on Wednesday to shoot it down, and then it’s the military that said, “Hey, it’s not safe yet.” Do you accept that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yeah, no. There’s no excuses here. When this first occurred last time during this administration — remember, this is the third year of this administration — they should have been preparing for this. They knew what this was. They know what the balloon is, what its capabilities, maneuverability is, from having observed previous actions by China. They should have been prepared. They seemed not only to be unprepared, but to even be waiting. You know, where is the balloon going to go? What are they trying to do? That’s not how you look at the actions of an adversary. China is a self-declared adversary. They are clearly expanding their military capabilities. They are tripling their nuclear weapons capabilities. They’re fielding hypersonic weapons, they’re expanding in space. In this instance, this president should’ve taken this as an urgency, and so should’ve our military. This should have been taken down before it entered the U.S. airspace, when it was over Alaska.
CHUCK TODD: This, there’s some sort of surveillance technology with this balloon. There’s been some speculation that it might have the capability of launching its own drone – sort of miniature drones to do extra surveillance. Do you know anything about that, or has there been any reports to confirm any of that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: No. I have not been briefed on that. But I can tell you — and we’re supposed to be briefed this week as to what we know. But I think what we can believe is that this administration says, “We don’t really know.” And if we don’t really know, how they keep telling the American public this is not a threat, that there was no need to act is just extraordinary to me. This administration does not understand the urgency of taking action to protect our national security –
CHUCK TODD: What do you believe the actual threat is right now? What is it that they’re trying to do? I mean, you see this as just a simple military exercise by the Chinese.
REP. MIKE TURNER: Absolutely. I mean, they didn’t go and look at the Grand Canyon; they went and looked at our nuclear weapon sites and the missile defense sites throughout the country. And whatever was in this humongous payload — I mean, there wasn’t a camera on this thing. I mean, I’m certain there were cameras, but at the same time, this was huge. The expanse that was there, and what they were trying to accomplish obviously was important enough to China to take the risk of something that was overt. This was not covert, this wasn’t secret. They did it in such a grand scale. They knew that the United States would know, and they did it anyway.
CHUCK TODD: So was it the right call for Secretary Blinken to postpone his trip?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Sure. But if you noticed – and I have a great deal of regard for Secretary Blinken – but if you notice, he didn’t cancel it until it was already public, and there was public scrutiny of the fact that he was going.
CHUCK TODD: Well, there’s some that argue that it shouldn’t have been canceled, that this should be immediately they – we should be immediately confronting them. What do you make of that idea?
REP. MIKE TURNER: What should’ve happened is the first time this happened during this administration, there should have been outrage. They should have addressed this with China. They should have prepared for when this balloon was coming. They should have understood that there was a great deal of risk at our national security. And they should have been prepared the moment this balloon was launched, because they knew what this was like, they knew what it was capable of, and they should have responded.
CHUCK TODD: So what now should be the American response here? What would you like to see going forward in our, in response to this incursion?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Well I – first off, the president needs to shift and understand that he has urgent national security matters. You can’t just act like nothing matters if it matters to our adversaries. If our adversaries think this is important, we need to thwart it and we need to respond. With respect to this balloon, obviously, you know, the administration’s indicated they’re going to try to collect whatever is left of having this strewn across the ocean to see what we can learn there. We’re going to find what signals intelligence that the administration might have been able to capture, and from that, understand what this was doing. But they need to make clear to all our adversaries, “You’re not going to get to come to the United States and take a tour of our most sensitive military sites and have a free shot.”
CHUCK TODD: How aggressive should we be about these balloons that are in the Western Hemisphere, not over our airspace, but we know there’s reports that there’s one of these balloons in Latin America right now?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Right. Well, I think all of these – if the administration had, when they became aware that China was deploying this capability, if they had been aggressive to determine how to capture them, how to exploit the technology, how to thwart the technology, we would be in a different place today. And I think, you know, the same is true for the other balloons that you’re seeing.
CHUCK TODD: All right, I’m going to – we’re running out of time – but before I let you go, you and others in the Gang of Eight have asked for a briefing on all of the classified documents that have been discovered from President Trump, President Biden, and Vice President Pence. Where are we on that?
REP. MIKE TURNER: You know, what’s striking about this, Chuck, is that the Biden administration told the American public that they raided Donald Trump’s home because it was a national security risk. But what we found in the intelligence community and in the intelligence committee is that the Biden administration had not engaged at all anyone who was in national security on the issue of threats from these documents. It took Congress to step in and say, “We want a security threat.” And then they tried to deny giving the briefing to us from that threat. What’s interesting is that the moment this balloon became public, I got a notice not from the administration that I’m going to get a briefing on this balloon, but they have to rush to Congress now to talk to us about Donald Trump’s documents. You can see they want to change the news.
CHUCK TODD: So you’re going to get a briefing on Trump’s documents, but –
REP. MIKE TURNER: There’s nothing scheduled on the balloon, but they’re scheduling Donald Trump.
CHUCK TODD: Anything on Biden or Pence?
REP. MIKE TURNER: It’s included, yes.
CHUCK TODD: That will all be included. When is that, this week?
REP. MIKE TURNER: Yes, it’s supposed to be this week. We’ll see whether or not the balloon happens first. It certainly should. Again, urgency. This administration needs to understand we do have national security urgent matters.
CHUCK TODD: Mike Turner, Chair of the House Intel Committee, Republican from Ohio.
REP. MIKE TURNER:Thank you.
CHUCK TODD: Thanks for coming in, sharing your perspective with us —
Only in America where we have Democratic politicians preaching about the greed of the rich at a $10,000.00 a plate campaign fund-raising event held at John Kerry’s home. Yes it was $10,000 to get in.
The Chinese Balloon is a surveillance balloon. It is meant more for intimidation. It is unlikely that it really poses a national security threat. There is also one flying over Latin America. Joe Biden’s response was immediately to shoot it down. He was warned that it is too big and would possibly create a debris field that would harm civilians for no reason. The Chinese did the same when Trump came to power. He knew it was just intimidation and gave no order to try to shoot it down.
It flew over Montana which is the #1 target to eliminate our major intercontinental missiles that would point to China. So from that perspective, it had targeted sensitive areas but everyone in the world knows where those missiles are at.
Biden has shot it down once it made it to the Atlantic. Any information would have been transmitted back already. So this too was a measure of Bravado for the PR value. As one client wrote in:
Message: Martin, I live in Myrtle Beach, SC. Today was a clear sky day, the balloon and 5 military jets flying around were clearly visible. Many neighbors were calling each other to inform them of what was happening outside, we and many neighbors were out in the street watching this. Then all of a sudden there was a boom and the balloon disappeared, so much for the balloon. It was interesting. End of story.
WES
This is just intimidation. It seems to have worked for Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at supposedly easing U.S.-China tensions after the US has done everything it can to make matters worse. Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan was stupid. By the US making such a grand stand against China over Taiwan, they have absolutely now guaranteed that China will take Taiwan. Pelosi went just before the Chinese election which only guaranteed Xi’s reelection.
I do not know if there is something in the water in California that seems to make the politicians there lose all understanding of war and intimidation. Now the Republican McCarthy is showing that he too is just acting irrationally and poking China to ensure it MUST now take Taiwan. He announced a Taiwan trip simply because Pelosi did it, and it will do nothing but ensure a war that the USA would lose. Because China warned McCarthy, then he has to certainly go,
McCarthy has now come out and said that China cannot tell him where to go. So he now must go to Taiwan as a matter of gamesmanship, but that works both ways. Pelosi’s trip and now McCarthy’s trip are both doing the same to China. The US pretending it will defend Taiwan when we cannot is absurd and it then forces China to invade for the very same reason McCarthy is saying they cannot tell him where to go. McCarthy is part of the uni-party where Democrats and Republicans will act ONLY in the self-interest of the government.
China has come out and declared that its people should be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. The Air Force general told everyone to be prepared for war with China by 2025. Even just looking at the ECM from the start of Taiwan, this is the second wave of 51.6 years and the third wave peaked on January 13th, 2023 (2023.036). That was the week when China staged a massive drill against Taiwan which was three days after a US Navy destroyer transited the Taiwan Strait in a “freedom of navigation” operation which prompted the reaction from China.
All of this poking China only forces war. Just as McCarthy now views he must go since China told him not to, China will respond by invading or they will appear weak. This is like kids pretending to be tough in a schoolyard. The emotions are the same and it becomes a matter of pride.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
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