RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/04/peace-through-strength-or-chaos-through-senility/

Where’s Laocoön when you need him? News that the Chinese have a huge balloon loitering high above the middle of the country—just where, wouldn’t you know, we have a bunch of ICBM silos sited—reminded me about the reaction of the ill-fated Trojan prince when he saw the gigantic wooden horse sitting on the beach in front of Troy. At the beginning of book two of the Aeneid, our hero, with a heavy heart, accedes to Queen Dido’s request that he tell her the story of Troy’s downfall and his ill-starred voyage to her court. Infandum, Regina, iubes renovare dolorem: “O Queen, you bid me renew an unspeakable grief.”  

But he does as she asks, beginning with the story of the Trojan horse. The Trojans were divided in their opinion about the monstrous equine. Some thought it was a Greek gift or trophy or memorial to commemorate their departure. Laocoön knew better. Rushing down from the town to the beach, he cried

Poor Trojans, have you lost your minds? . . .

‘You think they’re gone? Are any Greek gifts given

Sincerely? Don’t you know Ulysses better?

The Greeks are hiding in this wooden gadget, 

Or else this is a siege machine they’ve built 

For spying or alighting on our homes,

Or some such trick. Don’t trust the horse, my people.’

Then comes the famous line: timeo Danaos et dona ferentis: “I fear Greeks even when they are bearing gifts.” 

Well, nobody thinks the Chinese are bearing gifts. But the response to that minatory skyborne bladder has ranged from Laocoön-like alarm to amused indifference. The Pentagon says it doesn’t think the blimp poses a threat, but then the Pentagon is home to General Mark “White Rage” Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd “Stand Down” Austin. Not much joy from that Keystone-Kop quarter. 

News that a second Chinese balloon—I wonder if these dirigibles have the likeness of President Xi painted on them—is wafting about somewhere over “Latin America” (not a terribly precise designation) raised eyebrows, but again not much is known about its purpose. The Chinese said the first balloon was an errant weather balloon that was blown off course and wound up over highly sensitive American military installations. Imagine that. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/whether_its_illegals_or_balloons_joe_biden_fails_to_protect_the_us.html

Joe Biden has been hit by crisis after crisis as a result of his own bad decisions, and oddly enough, they are starting to look alike.

Take the latest China balloon incursion, where some kind of spying device has been sent over military installations throughout the U.S. interior, with Biden doing nothing about it.

That’s a sovereignty violation that ought to be drawing a major response to an arrogant, expanding wannabe superpower desperate to flex its military muscles, yet Joe’s response, that shooting the invading device down might create debris or hit a populated area (America is loaded with unpopulated ones the balloon is traversing) is simply pathetic. 

Is it all that different from his open borders policies, where millions of unvetted foreign migrants are flooding into this country without authorization, bringing crime, drugs, and costs, yet there too nothing is done about it? Joe offers an absurd excuse for that decision, as well claiming that all migrants who can utter the magic word ‘asylum’ are entitled to a free ride inside the U.S. for years or more, amounting to an all-expenses paid trip for thousands.

What we see here is a failure to protect, the prime duty of any leader of a nation, and an indifference to duty. Years ago, over at the United Nations, Samantha Powers and her ilk, writing about Rwanda, even came up with the concept of “duty to protect” on humanitarian grounds, claiming that all nations have an obligation to prevent genocide. Duty and protection has an odd parallel to the archetypical concept of manhood, as it’s a manly virtue to protect one’s own and immediate community, a masculine virtue that, to look at his fatherhood output, Joe’s never had. 

Now that the nation is being invaded from its south and now from above, Joe’s excusemaking for doing nothing rather resembles that of a slovenly absentee father who lets his kids grow up with no guidance, like stones in the field, with the predictable outcome of Hunter Biden.

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/02/05/democrats-get-even-more-racist-n2619169?utm_medium=widget&utm_source=slider

You can tell what Democrats don’t want to talk about by what they blame on racism or some other irrelevant factor. When they don’t like a story, or can’t spin it to their advantage, they cry some kind of “ism” or “phobia,” and the granddaddy of all of it is racism. When the agenda isn’t helped by reality, Democrats simply declare a new reality. Matthew Shepard was a gay guy killed by someone who was reportedly a former lover over money and a drug deal gone bad, but he was somehow turned into a martyr for gay rights because his murder was so horrific it attracted national attention and the truth wasn’t useful to the left so it was declared homophobic. When reality isn’t helpful, insistently deny it and push forward. It’s how Democrats work.

The death of Tyre Nichols is another such event. Five black cops beat a black man who ultimately dies…and it’s about white supremacy somehow. The Governor of Florida bans racism and victimhood being drilled into the heads of students in the state and he’s one of the worst monsters history has ever produced. It’s all lies, but the truth does not serve Democrats. 

When Ron DeSantis banned the AP African American Studies class you would’ve thought he was standing in the schoolhouse door. But he’s not a Democrat. 

The View, always on the leading edge of stupid and one of the most destructive forces in all of American culture, talked about this because DeSantis is all Democrats seem to talk about these days. Whoopi Goldberg, who you’d think would have learned something throughout her life (if only by accident), demonstrated a level of ignorance you almost have to fight to achieve. 

“I don’t understand why he (DeSantis) believes that — he wants people to see the history of Western Civilization and history and philosophy of Western Civilization,” Goldberg said. “Because he wants it seen through that lens. Why is your lens better than my lens?

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/02/05/china-is-not-happy-that-we-shot-down-their-spy-balloon-n2619170

This Chinese spy balloon fiasco could have been avoided—at least, that’s the feeling, and you don’t need a security clearance to have that assumption. We have the capability to track these devices; we’ve been on pins and needles regarding missile launches since the Cold War. We never saw this balloon coming. It’s a balloon—one that measured three bus lengths and drifted at high altitudes, but a balloon, nonetheless. China regretted this spy balloon which hovered over areas where we house nuclear missiles. Montana is where passengers on a commercial airliner reportedly spotted this Beijing bag of tricks launched from Central China. 

China’s reaction to the US was as expected: don’t overreact because this balloon drifted off course. For once, Joe Biden made the right call by wanting to shoot it down—the Pentagon advised against it. This spy balloon drifted with impunity across American skies for days before being shot down yesterday. And Beijing was none too pleased (via NBC News): 

The U.S. downed the Chinese surveillance balloon off the Carolina coast on Saturday, a U.S. official said, setting off a tense exchange between both nations. 

An F-22 raptor with a single missile shot the balloon down at 2:39 p.m., according to a senior defense official. It was between 60,000 to 65,000 feet in the air when it was downed. 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/02/04/faa-issues-ground-stop-n2619167

The United States has shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic, the Associated Press reports.

The United States on Saturday downed a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America and became the latest flashpoint in tensions between Washington and Beijing.

An operation was underway in U.S. territorial waters in the Atlantic Ocean to recover debris from the balloon, which had been flying at about 60,000 feet and was estimated to be about the size of three school buses.

President Joe Biden had told reporters earlier Saturday that “we’re going to take care of it,” when asked about the balloon. The Federal Aviation Administration and Coast Guard worked to clear the airspace and water below the balloon as it reached the ocean.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/02/04/bombshell-white-house-knew-about-the-chinese-spy-balloon-and-covered-it-up-but-then-n1667854

How cowardly and compromised is the Biden regime? We have fresh evidence of just how bad it is, courtesy of the Chinese spy balloon. The world found out about the now-infamous balloon on Thursday, when a Montana resident named Chase Doak spotted it and posted a video. But that was not the first that Old Joe Biden’s handlers heard of the balloon. Now it has come to light that they knew about it all along but kept the knowledge secret so as to avoid a confrontation with the Chinese Communist Party and keep Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s now-canceled trip to Beijing on track. Patriots can thank Chase Doak for the small show of spine from the Biden State Department that the cancellation represented.

“Not gonna lie,” Doak tweeted with his video. “First, I thought this was a #ufo. Then, I thought it was @elonmusk in a Wizard of Oz cosplay scenario. But it was just a run-of-the mill Chinese spy balloon!” But Bloomberg revealed in a bombshell report Friday that “as it turns out, US authorities were well aware of the unidentified object that had entered American airspace on Jan. 28, that had then left and re-entered over North Idaho on Tuesday.” But Blinken was slated to huddle with the ChiComs in Beijing, and Old Joe and his henchmen didn’t want to let something as trivial as what J. Michael Waller of the Center for Security Policy terms “China’s military espionage incursion into the US” get in the way of a friendly tête-à-tête in the Forbidden City.

In fact, Biden had already been informed about the spy balloon long before Chase Doak spotted it, and his handlers were holding nervous discussions about whether or not to shoot it down. Yet Blinken thundered Friday that China’s decision to launch the spy balloon was an “irresponsible act” that represented a “clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law.” He added that China’s “decision to take this action on the eve of my planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/02/03/responsibility-in-the-debt-ceiling-negotiations-fuhgeddabadit/

AP: “Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an Associated Press interview Saturday” that “demands by House Republicans for spending cuts in return for backing an increase are ‘a very irresponsible thing to do.’” — Huffington Post

“The greatest threat to America, it doesn’t matter if you sit before a four-star general, they’ll tell you the debt is the greatest threat to this nation. And for the president to say he won’t even negotiate is irresponsible.” — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy at his weekly news conference

‘Irresponsible?” Seriously? This from an Establishment politician first elected to Congress 16 years ago, during which time federal outlays have more than doubled and national debt has tripled under congresses and administrations of both parties?

And from a liberal Democratic economics near-lifer long known as an inflation dove, who as Fed chair ran an accommodative policy to cover for Obamite profligacy?

Who, as Treasury chief, in just two years has driven into the ground an economy that was roaring back after COVID lockdowns, while insisting inflation was “transitory” and abortions necessary to economic growth?

Not to mention presumably brainstorming and helping shepherd through the Biden economic troupe’s $1.9 trillion American “Rescue” spendapalooza, its $1.2 trillion infrastructure hog trough, its $200 billion semiconductor industry boondoggle, its $1.7 trillion Green New Deal-not-so-lite “Inflation Reduction” hornswoggle, and the $1.9 trillion everything-including-the-kitchen-sink (but not gas stove) omnibus(t)?

Pardon this commentator while he is engulfed in an Earth-shaking belly laugh.