From the Department Of Random Idiocy That Keeps Getting Yakked About File:
Balloonatics and Ballunacy
1) This was a Clown Show, and a distraction. No more, no less.
2) There's nothing China could do in this regard that rises beyond the level of Official Mischief, and gets nowhere near Strategic Problem.
3) This was evidently going on for months to years. So why make it A Thing now?
4) There are no coincidences in geopolitics. Not for 100 years, or more.
5) The size of balloon needed to do anything strategic, even an EMP, would probably dwarf the LZ Hindenburg, be visible to the naked eye at 1000 miles, and detected by NORAD two days out from US airspace. And there was nothing you could imagine that could have been on that balloon that couldn't have been driven into any spot in the US by rental truck up from Mexico, or inland from any seaport, in plain sight. And probably already has been, years and years ago. Ponder that cheery thought for a couple of seconds, and then STFU about any balloon hyperventilations.
6) If you thought we haven't been overflying Russia, China, and any other damned spot on the planet we wished to, 24/7/365/forever since about 1958, I can't help your general ignorance. We didn't just "retire" the SR-71s in the 1990s without having something you haven't been briefed on that's orders of magnitude better to replace it. Like Mach 6 better. FFS, the word on that has been out in open sources for over thirty years. Stand up and catch a cluebat in the forehead. Then imagine what we've developed and deployed in the thirty years since then.
7) Stop looking at the magician's hand doing the waving, and go look at what his other hand is doing.
8) Anybody see anything about the border invasion? Secret documents in everyone's garage? 57 other more pressing problems? Beuller? Ferris Beuller...?? Anyone...??? Even confirmed Leftard Aaron Sorkin wrote about this legerdemain time and again in Taking Out The Trash on The West Wing, twenty years ago. You're meant to be watching the clowns get out of the Volkswagen, so you don't notice the guys pushing the lion cages into the center ring. Every. Single. Time.
Tanks A Lot
1) Vlad and his ass-kissing minions are high-stressing because we're sending (not even a battalion's worth of) modern tanks to Ukraine. Someday. Months from now. Maybe.
2) And so are Britistan, and Germany.
3) This is because Ukraine is running out of captured Russian tanks to strip for parts to keep their own Russian tanks running. Both sides have no shortage of second- and third-rate Russian tanks that have gone all explodey, like they do in every war they've been used, and which aren't very useful after they're charred and rusted.
4) Russia is refurbing, over years, a few hundred 60-70-year-old rusted museum pieces, because they have no other source for new tanks, including themselves. Ukraine, under the heading "No Shit, Sherlock!" can't buy more Russian tanks, or Russian tank parts, or Russian tank ammo, from Russia at the moment. Who Knew? Film at 11.
5) Vlad's hyperventilating over Ukraine getting Western first-line tanks, because he's winning so hard! getting his own armies asses kicked halfway back to the pre-war borders, with a good chance of losing his illegal occupation of Crimea since 2014, and all the rest of stolen Ukrainian territory, in the bargain.
6) Cooler heads recognize that the number of tanks being sent isn't enough to make a decisive difference in the war, and that modern tanks have an even fatter logistical tail than the clunky Russian pieces-of-shit do.
7) By definition, it also isn't enough tanks to seriously stress our stocks of same. You can't have it both ways, so kindly STFU about how this is weakening our own forces. We've handed this shit out all over the Persian Gulf for decades, and we're running half the Army we had at the height of the Cold War, so put the bong pipe down, and quit licking LSD sugar cubes. This is Military Industrial Grade war profiteering, plain and simple. Which has gone on uninterrupted since 1941. It's a little late to get hyper-jacked up about it now, just because some people are Baby Ducks, and only noticed five seconds ago. Anybody sharting their pants over this now isn't impressing anyone else. Daddy Warbucks always comes out ahead, no matter who wins or loses the shooting war.
8) Meanwhile, we're in Month Three of "Any Day Now, Russia's Gonna Do...Something, Besides Bleed Out". We're in Month Seven of "Russia's Just Sucking Ukraine In...", and we're also about to hit the One Year Anniversary of "Two Weeks To Flatten Kiev". No one's seen the Russian Air Farce (except smoking holes in the Ukrainian countryside) since last March, they haven't figured out how to run a combined arms battle successfully in a year of trying, and they're down 20% of their actual combat strength in that time, losing three times more men in less than a year than the US lost in ten years of Vietnam War, and ten-plus years in Irag and Afghanistan, all combined.
9) Just like in football, if you want to know who's winning, answer the question "Which way is the line of scrimmage moving?" You'll have your answer. Over time, it's predictive of outcomes. Option One, Russia finally catches a clue, and quits. Option Two, they do to Ukraine what Rome did to Carthage. Neither of those options is visible anywhere on the horizon at present. Option Three, this becomes the Iran-Iraq War, and both sides settle in for fits of lethargy, punctuated by days of carnage, until one or both sides get tired of it. Russia is fighting for Vlad's territorial ambitions; Ukraine is fighting for existence. You decide which motivation has longer legs.
