Sometimes a Big White Balloon Can Also be an Ominous Red Flag (posted 2/6/23)

Before I get started today, I just wanted to tell you about a short podcast that I was a guest on last week.  It’s run by a couple of the guys from the small town I grew up in, and one of my cousins is a regular.  The topic was, “Assessing the Cultural Divide in America.”  It’s audio-only for now, but fortunately, I’ve got a face made for audio.

I’m afraid I didn’t speak up a lot, when I realized that the host’s theory is that we’re not as divided as many think we are.  (I admire his optimism, but can agree only partially at best.)  He tries to steer away from politics on their show, so even when one of the guys took some shots at Matt Gaetz, I bit my tongue, and didn’t mention the litany of congressional Dems who make great counter-examples.

Anyway, the podcast is called “Mitch Wonders,” and it’s at https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2041434.rss  (If you do listen, those guys had an inside joke of trying to bring up the model Emily Ratajkowski’s name in some episodes, so they can put that hashtag in social media to get more listeners.  Hence my lame Ratajkowski reference right out of the box.  Just to be clear: I am married to a Norwegian goddess, and I did NOT recently break up with Emily Ratajkowski.)

And now, on to our regularly schedule column…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about red flags, the indicators that reveal the flaws in people or their plans, or that otherwise confirm that something is going to end badly.

Sometimes red flags can be statements.  Conservatives saw such red flags from two of their past presidential candidates.  When Bush 43 ran in 2000 he called himself a “compassionate conservative.”    I liked Bush – he compared pretty well to his GOP rivals, and was light years better than the Dems he ran against and who succeeded him – but my antennae went up at that “compassionate.” 

Conservatives believe that conservatism IS compassionate, so that modifier is unnecessary.  And suspicious!  (Is it more compassionate to poor people to give them welfare that traps them in multi-generational dependence?  More compassionate to crime victims to allow their predators back on the street as quickly as possible?  More compassionate to job seekers or business owners to bury the economy under mountains of regulations and taxes?)

We saw the same thing when Mitt Romney, being challenged on whether he was conservative enough, gave the game away when he replied that he was, “severely conservative.”  “Severely”?  No real conservative would say that.

We also see it – nearly constantly! – in our opponents. 

Has anyone ever summed up the leftist view of America better than Andrew “Gropey McGrandma-Killer” Cuomo did in a 2018 speech to a friendly Democrat audience in New York: “We’re not going to ‘make America great again.’  It was never that great.”

His audience made that occasion a red-flag two-fer, when instead of booing such a slanderous statement, they laughed and applauded.    

Sometimes red flags can be governmental decisions.  Adam Carolla pointed out a few years ago that he knew that LA was in serious trouble when he saw the city’s response to miscreants spraying graffiti over everything, including the signs over the highways.  Rather than policing the painting creeps, the city just started wrapping highway signs in barbed wire.

Which really sends a positive message to the millions of residents and tourists who see those signs each day: “Welcome to LA!  Come for the obscene taxes and bullying government, stay for the Super-Max Penitentiary vibe!”

Other red flags can just be revealing events.  One example is annually acted out on the world stage when the preening, self-appointed world elite fly to Davos to posture about how they are our moral betters.  Simultaneously, virtually all of the high-dollar hookers in Europe swarm to Davos to ply their trade for those 5 days.

And that tells you all you need to know about the moral high ground occupied by those arrogant, power-hungry degenerates.  (In other words, sometimes red lingerie can constitute a red flag.) (Did you hear that, Eric Swalwell?)

Sidebar: I don’t care how much those gals are charging; if they are required to engage in sexual congress with the likes of Al Gore, Lurch Kerry or Klaus Schwab, it’s NOT enough!   

Unfortunately for all of us, the Biden administration has been pretty much a constant stream of red flags. 

On his first day in office, he killed the wall and opened the southern border, and killed the Keystone pipeline and all oil exploration that he controlled.  Then he ratcheted up unnecessary and ineffective covid lockdowns and turbo-charged the worst inflation in 40 years, safe in the knowledge that even though we would all like to throw eggs at the White House, we can no longer afford the eggs.

Before we knew it, he was defying all military history by pulling the troops out of Afghanistan first, and leaving the civilians, women, children and baggage train behind, trusting the Taliban to oversee the exodus fairly.   Not to mention shaking hands with ghosts, sniffing pubescent girls’ hair, and losing battle after battle with teleprompters, English grammar and basic logic. 

He also handed the keys to the Corvette and the Top Secret Classified Documents Storage Facility – some might call it a “garage” – to his meth-head son and his hookers-de-jure.

(By the way, if Que Mala were to try to draw one of her beloved Venn diagrams of two groups – the top-shelf Davos hookers, and the down-market Hunter hookers – those two circles would NOT intersect.)

I know: more red flags than a May Day parade in Red Square. 

But last week’s red flag came in the shape of a big, white ChiCom balloon, which Slow Joe allowed to float all across our country, from Alaska down into the lower 48, and then across our continent to the Atlantic, where he finally had it shot down after it had completed its journey, a full week after it had entered our airspace!

This was the most basic test of the Biden administration’s competence, and they failed with flying colors. 

Consider the info they had with which to make a decision: This thing is illegally in our airspace, and it’s relatively slow moving and very easy to shoot down.  It came from a bloodthirsty dictatorship that is the #1 geo-strategic threat to our country and the free world. 

There are 2 possible explanations for its presence:  either it’s just a weather balloon and Beijing’s incompetence allowed it to drift off course and into our airspace, or it’s a means of spying on us and Beijing purposely sent it here, both to spy and to test our Cadaver-in-Chief.

Either way, the right decision was a no-brainer: shoot it down as soon as we detected it in our airspace over Alaska last Saturday.

But never say “no-brainer” when the man making the call has stage-4 dementia.  Because that’s a cruel, ableist slur, I guess. 

The only thing worse than the spy balloon’s presence itself was the Biden brain trust’s reactions.  First they hid the balloon’s presence for as long as they could.  Then, when the first of literally thousands of ground-bound civilians saw the damn thing, they fumbled the messaging.

Spokes-stooges said that the balloon posed no danger to anyone in America.  But they also kept shutting down airports in its path, and the military scrambled a jet to shoot it down if ordered, and the Pentagon was reportedly “alarmed” when the balloon went over one of three silo-based ICBM sites in Montana.

After several days of public pressure building, Biden said that he had ordered it to be shot down Wednesday.  Which raised the question of why the greatest military in the world couldn’t down a defenseless balloon in less than 3 days? 

My theory is that Joey Gaffes says so many goofy things all the time, nobody in the military realized what he meant, or that he was serious. 

Put yourself in their shoes.  Biden walks stiffly into the briefing room, Jill guiding him by the elbow, and his eyes have that glazed look in them.  He starts to sit down on a potted plant before Jill redirects him to a chair. 

He starts to straddle that, facing backwards, but Jill turns him around.   He sits down, and all of the generals sit too.  Then Joe tells them to be seated.  And they all look at each other with raised eyebrows.

And then Biden says something like, “Corn Pop loved the hair on my legs in the swimming pool.  Speaking of hair, how about when a girl scout troop comes over to the Rose Garden to get some kind of awards, and you’re standing close enough to them to smell the Prell in their hair.  Shoot down the balloon!   Or Head and Shoulders!  I love that one!  Not a joke, Jack.”

Then Jill puts her hand on his and leans over to whisper in his ear.  “The Chinese balloon is over Montana.  Have them shoot it down.”

And Joe says, “Who are you?”  And he gets the same panicked look in his eyes that he had when that Chinese dragon came dancing into the White House in that Lunar New Year celebration last week.  Until he recognizes Jill, and nods his head, and turns to his generals, and clears his throat.  

“Let’s get some Chinese food, Hannah Montana!  Luft balloons! Shoot the moon!  C’mon, man.”

Then he closes his eyes and his head drops onto the table as he starts to snore.  And all of the generals slowly get up and back out of the room. 

And two nights later, one of the generals wakes up in a cold sweat, and bolts upright in bed.  “Good lord!  Did he mean that we were supposed to shoot down the Chinese balloon over Montana?” 

Even with literally days to figure out a PR approach, the best excuse the Dems could come up with is that it wouldn’t have been safe to shoot down the balloon over land, because of the threat that it would have posed to civilians below.

[Cue Sam Kinison voice]:  It flew over ALASKA and MONTANA for 3 DAYS!  Have you ever been to Alaska or Montana?!  Once it cleared Nome and Anchorage, or Helena and Butte, THERE ARE NO PEOPLE!  OH! OHHHHH!! Shoot it DOWN!  SHOOT IT DOWN!! [end Kinison voice]

Seriously, we were tracking the balloon over Montana.  Most of its path there had to have huge areas where there was nothing more than a couple of farmhouses, or maybe a raiding party from Liz Warren’s old tribe, for miles.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’m afraid that this debacle was more than just a red flag.  It was – literally – a trial balloon.

And I shudder to think of what verdict the Chinese have reached after seeing the way the idiots who govern us reacted to this particular trial balloon.

Fetterman/ Emily Ratajkowski, 2024!