RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19373/goerge-soros

According to published reports, George Soros is teaching college courses these days to thousands of students.

To be clear, he is not actually on campuses in front of the class. Rather, exhaustive investigations by journalists reveal how his reach, influence, and above all, money, is resetting curriculum to reflect his political ideology wherever and whenever he can.

Investigative author Matt Palumbo wrote in the New York Post last month:

“In 2020 alone, Soros’ Open Society Foundations budgeted more than $63 million, or just over 5% of its budget, toward influencing higher education here and abroad….

“More than 19 colleges had individually received at least $1 million from Soros, including Harvard University, Columbia University, Indiana University, and Georgetown University, among others.”

One institution in particular, Palumbo reveals, has significantly benefited from Soros’ campaign of campus influence, Bard College.

“Bard College had received nearly $80 million total from Soros when he announced in 2020 that he’d be awarding it an additional $100 million over the next decade.”

For what purpose?

It would appear that Soros is seeking to leverage his enormous wealth to create a new political cadre from an emerging generation that will pursue his goals today, and long after he is gone. It is what these goals are that is being questioned (for instance here , here and here).

Soros was a student of Karl Popper (author of The Open Society and Its Enemies) in London. Later, to promote freedom and defeat totalitarianism, Soros donated millions to such causes as Lech Walesa’s Solidarity Movement, which led Poland out of the grip of the Soviet Empire, and to financing democracy movements in Yugoslavia working to oust Slobodan Milosevic.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/03/theater-of-the-absurd-in-j6-courtrooms/

The Department of Justice carefully crafted the dramatic moment in court.

A federal prosecutor handed an enclosed paper bag to an FBI agent responsible for investigating members of the Proud Boys, now on trial for seditious conspiracy related to their participation in the events of January 6. The bag contained “evidence of the unlawful entry of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 and evidence of the disruption to the certification of the 2020 presidential election,” FBI Special Agent Elizabeth D’Angelo told assistant U.S. Attorney Nadia Moore on Wednesday.

D’Angelo cautiously pulled the evidence out of the bag to present to the jury.

Spectators in D.C. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly’s courtroom were on the edge of their seats. What would the mystery bag reveal?

Would it disclose the group’s intricate but failed plot to overthrow the government? A detailed list of weapons the “seditionists” planned to use in service of their dastardly deed? Names of targeted officials?

A nervous hush fell over the room; sweat beads formed on furrowed brows. Finally, the big moment arrived.

It was—a set of challenge coins.

Moore: Can you give a brief description of what they are?

D’Angelo: They are challenge coins. This one is black and gold—and this package contains four black and gold colored challenge coins.

Moore: Are these the same coins that were seized from Zachary Rehl’s home?

D’Angelo: Yes.

What?