After subjecting the country to nearly two years of Star Chamber proceedings known as the January 6th Committee, Democrats, some Republicans, and the lapdog media are apoplectic over the decision of House Speaker McCarthy to give the full set of Capitol surveillance video to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.  Congressional hearings are supposed to be conducted for the purpose of uncovering the truth.  The January 6th Committee charade was anything but that.  The results of the hearings were decided before the first hearing was held.  “We told you Trump was bad and dangerous, and here’s the proof.”  Repeat after us, “January 6th was the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”  To publicize these predetermined findings, the Committee (a/k/a the Democrats) took carefully tailored testimony only from those witnesses whose stories they approved of, and aired carefully selected video clips from some 41,000 hours of surveillance video.  Now, before I get into this, let me say, as I’ve said before, what happened on January 6th was shameful, in that what should have been a perfectly legitimate protest went out of control.  More than 1,000 people have been hunted down and charged with crimes.  Many of the criminal charges were appropriate.  Anybody who broke down barriers and broke into the Capitol needed to be arrested and prosecuted.  Anybody who put his hands on a police officer or did violence needed to be jailed.  Violators should have been taken promptly to court, fined, and sent on their way.  Simply put, there was no insurrection.  Yet more than two years after the fact, prisoners remain in pretrial lockup in the D.C. jail.  In short, the January 6th Committee performance was a farce, because it highlighted only the reaction of the crowd, ignored the events that motivated that crowd to be on Capitol Hill that day, and covered up the incompetence that permitted the protest to get out of control.  What culminated in the January 6th protest resulted from the three concepts at the heart of the law of official misconduct: misfeasance, nonfeasance, and malfeasance.  An official commits misfeasance when he does or permits others to do things they are not supposed to do.  Examples would be illegally changing election laws without the action of the State legislature, which is unconstitutional, and stuffing, or permitting allies to stuff remote ballot boxes with spurious paper ballots in the dead of night.  These actions might well tend to convince people that the election process was corrupt and motivate them to protest that corruption.  And so it did.  It was well known to dozens of law enforcement agencies that massive protests would occur on January 6th.  Not rebellion or insurrection – protests.  And here is where nonfeasance occurred.  Although forewarned of the protests, although President Trump repeatedly offered 10,000 military troops to bolster security, and although the head of the Capitol Police begged for help, Nancy Pelosi rejected the offers.  This resulted in the Capitol Police being woefully understaffed on January 6th.  This could have and should have been prevented, witness the iron-clad security measures put in place for the Biden inauguration.  The Democrats’ failure to act doesn’t excuse the excesses of January 6th protestors, but it explains how the situation went out of control.  The Committee permitted no mention of this official negligence.  It conflicted with their preordained conclusions.  Malfeasance occurs when an official acts with malicious or evil intent.  An example would be smearing others to cover up one’s own illegal acts or omissions.  Many people had good reason to question the conduct of and the result of the 2020 election.  No, this doesn’t mean that I think it was stolen or that it could be proven to be stolen.  Elections are notoriously difficult to overturn in court, and they should be.  However, representatives of any Party have an absolute right to challenge an election in court, or in Congress.  We have a long history of such challenges.  For instance, Lyndon Johnson lost a 1941 Senatorial election in Texas when his opponent belatedly “found” enough ballots to win.  Sound familiar?  Running for the Senate in 1948, LBJ was prepared.  He delayed reporting the vote from Duval County till he was ahead by 87 votes out of nearly 1 million cast, earning him the name “Landslide Lyndon.”  His opponent went to court, noting that the last 249 voters in Duval County had voted in alphabetical order.  A friendly judge killed the lawsuit and the rest is history.  Democrats who like to call others “election deniers” forget they delayed the reporting of electoral votes in 2001, 2005, and 2017, claiming fraud.  Yet in 2021, all protests, or even lawsuits about the 2020 elections are labelled as seditious, insurrectionist threats to “our democracy.”  Note that democracy is at risk only when they win.  When Democrats broke windows, overturned and burned cars, and assaulted police on January 20, 2017 during the Trump inauguration, that wasn’t “an attack on democracy.”  In 2020, when Democrats burned cities, assaulted more than 1,000 cops, killed dozens of people, ruined businesses, caused billions in damage, and took over police stations and courthouses, in protest over the murder of a career criminal, that wasn’t “an assault on democracy.”  It was “a mostly peaceful protest.”  And on May 31, 2020, when rioters in Washington, D.C., attacked the White House, burned St. John’s church, the Church of the Presidents, which had stood since 1816, and forced President Trump into a security bunker, that wasn’t “an attack on democracy.”  On January 6th, the only death was the murder of unarmed Ashley Babbitt by a Capitol police officer.  He wasn’t prosecuted, or even investigated.  Democrats gave him a medal.  But a nitwit with dopey horns on his head, who dared to enter the Senate Chamber threatened our democracy.  Don’t get me wrong, he deserved to be prosecuted, but back to the videotape.  Democrats are decrying the fact that Tucker Carlson is airing video that proves the January 6th Committee was uninterested in the truth.  The video proves many people were let into the Capitol by police, and some, including the idiot with the horns, were escorted through the building by police, instead of simply being arrested on the spot.  This video was denied to the January 6th defendants who have been tried or pled guilty.  This is a blatant violation of their 6th Amendment rights, and the convictions may now be overturned.  The point is, Democrats wouldn’t be screaming about the video release if they didn’t have something to hide, and they have plenty to hide.  The January 6th mess was not an attack on our democracy.  It was a challenge to the self-important,  privileged bastards entrenched in Washington, who pretend to be the guardians of our freedom, but who, in reality, guard only their own phoney-baloney jobs, while our freedom ebbs away.  The January 6th protests dared to disturb the comfort of the fat cats.  That can’t be tolerated.  If your place of business is burned to the ground, they call it just the mostly peaceful price you have to pay for the First Amendment.  If the schedule of their place of business is merely interrupted, they call it an insurrection.  I call it all bullshit.

The title of this week’s offering comes courtesy of The New York Post.  I couldn’t think of a better one.I hate to say “I told you so,” but frequenters of these pages will recall that the notion that Covid-19, a/k/a the Wuhan virus, unleashed a plague on the world after it was released from the laboratory in Wuhan, China, has not come as a revelation.  I claim no medical expertise, nor do I claim prescience.  One didn’t need to be Nostradamus to know where the virus came from.  One merely had to be honest enough to accept the truth that was staring him in the face.  In the Fall of 2019, a new virus broke out in Wuhan.  In early 2020, at the time of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the virus spread from China to every part of the globe visited by Chinese travelers.  For example, after the New Year celebrations, the thousands of Chinese engaged in the fashion industry in Northern Italy returned to that country.  Lunar New Year was January 25, and in February, hundreds were hospitalized in Milan and the city was shut down.  I noticed this, and it wasn’t just me.  In June 2021, liberal Jon Stewart took flak for suggesting the lab was the source of the virus.  “Oh, my God, there’s a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China. What do we do?  Oh, you know who we could ask?  The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab.  The disease is the same name as the lab.  That’s just a little too weird, don’t you think?”  Wuhan is the site of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory used by the Chinese military for “gain of function” research to engineer new viruses.  Contrary to Dr. Fauci’s denials, the U.S. government provided some of the funding for this research.  This is neither speculation nor a conspiracy theory.  It was well known to the U.S. government throughout the period when Democrats hid the truth and tried to destroy anyone who suggested the virus came from the lab.  I came across a stunningly honest Fact Sheet from the U.S. State Department dated January 15, 2021.  You can read it yourselves at https://2017-2021.state.gov/fact-sheet-activity-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/index.html.  It says that workers in the Wuhan lab contracted Covid and spread it in Wuhan, and posits that it was the result of a lab accident, noting that such accidents had happened before.  It also noted the use of the Wuhan lab by the Chinese military for “classified experiments.”  I guess it was safe for the State Department to issue the Fact Sheet in 2021, because they had managed to get rid of President Trump by then.  It must be recalled that throughout 2020, and even after the State Department report in 2021, Democrats, including those entrenched in the Deep State bureaucracy, were dismissing any suggestions of a Wuhan lab leak as “racist conspiracy theories.”  Plus, of course, whatever Trump said had to be denounced, even if it would cost American lives.  When President Trump halted flights from China to the U.S. he was called xenophobic.  Medical professionals who dared to accept reality were sanctioned.  Dr. Fauci and his allies took steps to silence and defund dissenters.  But suddenly, this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Energy and the FBI have concluded that the Wuhan virus came from the lab in Wuhan.  Better late than never, I guess.  FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the FBI, “for quite some time now, assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.”  Wray added, “the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here … and that’s unfortunate for everybody.”  Doing harm and then covering it up is what’s known in the law as consciousness of guilt.  The fact that Fauci and his cohorts who funded the Wuhan research are aiding and abetting the coverup raises a legitimate question as to their complicity with the Chinese.  The recent revelations go only so far as stating the likelihood of a “lab accident.”  Hong Kong virologist Dr. Li Meng Yan went further, telling Tucker Carlson, first in September 2020, and again this week, that the Chinese government intentionally manufactured and released the COVID-19 virus, leading to nationwide shutdowns and deaths.  Dr. Li added, “Of course, it was not an accident.”  The doctor said that she has seen evidence and has spoken to a source who claims the virus was intentionally brought out of the lab and released in the community.  She added, “I don’t think the outbreak in Wuhan was intentional.  I would say it was because CCP government and the military scientists underestimated the transmissibility.” “That’s why finally it got out of control and the cost [was] a local outbreak.  However, we should know that [the] CCP government intentionally let it go all over the world to kill millions of people.”  If you think this is farfetched, think again.  The U.S. government has done the same thing here.  From the 1950’s to 1969, the Navy sprayed bacteria, including serratia mascarans over San Francisco to study the possible affects of a biological attack.  The bacteria, thought to be harmless, caused rare infections.  And the revelations just kept coming.  The British medical journal,  The Lancet, which had been participating in the medical smear campaign against doctors who doubted the effectiveness of Covid vaccines, finally has admitted that a review of 65 world-wide studies proves that natural immunity from Covid infection is at least as good as two doses of the vaccine.  Too bad we fired all those police, firemen, medical workers, and military personnel who had the Wuhan but refused the vaccines.  And there’s more.  Another review of studies on the usefulness of face masks (both cloth and N-95 masks) concluded that wearing any kind of face covering “probably makes little or no difference” in reducing the spread of respiratory illness.  The study summed up, “There is just no evidence that they make any difference.  Full stop.”  Again, I hate to say “I told you so,” but I made this very point on these pages in April 2021, in a FOF entitled, Covidiocy.  “There’s no science supporting universal masking.  Dr. Jim Meehan, a surgeon and editor of a medical journal says the premise that surgeons wearing masks proves that ‘masks must work to prevent viral transmission’ is false.”  But Bill Maher said it best, “We have to cover our faces so others can cover their asses.”  Well said.  All in all, I hope that this recent spate of honesty about the Wuhan plague continues.  It’s high time people knew the truth.

Last week we were treated to headlines about riots in a city that had chosen to defund the police.  There were rowdy crowds, blazing fires, and people vandalizing police cars.  You know, just good, clean fun.  The headlines didn’t identify the location of the rioting.  Was it Seattle, Washington?  Portland, Oregon?  No.  Surprisingly, the rioting took place in Texas.  More specifically, in that portion of the State of Texas where the Woke imbeciles are in charge.  The State’s capitol.  Austin, in Travis County.  Austin, the liberal backwater of Texas, decided to defund the local police department by taking away one-third of its budget.  Add to this a George Soros funded district attorney, who spends his time prosecuting police officers instead of criminals, and you’ve sown the seeds for the unrest we saw last week.  The riot has been variously described as a street racing incident, or a street closure incident.  In truth, it looked like open warfare.  A screaming mob threw rocks and bottles at police, attacked police cars, and shot lasers and fireworks at the police.  Several officers were injured.  Meanwhile, in a scene that resembled what might happen if all the residents of an insane asylum were released and issued smart phones, maniacs drove cars at high speed, round and round in circles, while asylum patients inside the circles shot videos of the mayhem.  Occasionally, the cars went out of control and struck one of more of the mental defectives, sending them sailing into the crowd.  At least two of the numb-sculls were set, or managed to set themselves, on fire.  What else is there to do on a Saturday night?  Take a look.

The scene brought to mind the words of a fictional Texas law enforcement officer.The street festivities blocked traffic on major roads in Austin, and spilled out onto Interstate 35.  Austin Mayor Kirk Watson called the incidents “illegal and outrageous” (you think?) and said “they will result in arrest.”  The Austin police must have given significance to the fact that the Mayor said “arrest” instead of “arrests” because, despite the fact that there were hundreds of rioters, many of whom were carrying phones containing video footage proving their guilt, Austin police arrested only two people.  The Mayor went on to say he was relieved that property damage was limited, but the real damage to life and property cannot be calculated, as 911 call volume went up dramatically, and the rioting prevented police from responding to emergencies.  The larger problem isn’t the fact that a crowd in Austin went berserk and created a dangerous spectacle, the problem is that the participants no longer think that they’re doing anything wrong, and actually believe that it’s their right to do as they please, the public be damned.  One of the rioters who was interviewed afterward said it all when he advised the Austin police to “just stay in their lane.”  Can you imagine that?  In Texas no less?  Let’s hear again from Sheriff Buford T. Justice –

And that’s the point.  If this can happen in Texas it can happen anywhere, and the combination of rioters who think it’s their right to run amok, impotent police, and prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law sets the stage for the complete breakdown of society.  I’m once again reminded of the 15th Century words of Thomas Hobbes, who described the breakdown of civil law and society as a return to “the state of nature,” resulting in a “war of every man against every man.” “In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  Hobbes could have been describing the current condition of every major city in this country.  But we don’t have to let Hobbes’ dystopia be our future.  There’s still time to put the inmates back in the asylum.  Texas Governor Abbott has been criticized for failing to step in to stop the chaos in Austin.  He has the resources.  The Austin police may be unable to take action, but Texas has the Texas Rangers, and the Texas Highway Patrol (State Police).  In truth, there are fewer than 100 Texas Rangers, but that’s enough.  A legend from the 1890’s recounts a town calling on the Rangers to put down an impending riot.  The local Sheriff met the train, and only one man got off.  The Sheriff asked, “They only sent you?”  The Ranger replied, “One riot, one Ranger.”  There are, however, nearly 3,000 State Police, and this nonsense needs to be stopped.  It won’t be easy, it won’t be pretty, and the usual Woke suspects will scream bloody murder, but screw them.  If law enforcement cowers in fear at the prospect of being criticized for merely enforcing the law, then we’re through, and get ready for Hobbes’ state of nature.  The Woke imbeciles make the mistake of believing that they represent the majority of public opinion.  They don’t.  Woke idiocy is not the mainstream, its just louder than the majority of people who simply want a peaceful, safe, and orderly environment in which to earn a living and raise their families.  We used to say, “the law’s the law.”  Lately, in a world where looters are allowed to empty retail stores without fear of arrest, we’ve clearly lost our way.  It’s time for the silent majority to stand up, speak up, and put an end to the chaos that threatens to destroy society in the name of equity, whatever the hell that means.  Permitting criminals to run amok, and the homeless to crap in the street is neither equitable nor compassionate.  And forcing the law-abiding people who are the ones funding this insanity to live in fear is an outrage.  If we wait to restore sanity, we are playing with fire.  As Thomas Hobbes also noted, “Hell is truth seen too late.”  And if any of the Woke imbeciles object to the restoration of law and order, I direct them to Sheriff Justice, who will overrule their objections very succinctly –

Recently, the Leftist environmental lunatics who inhabit the Administration of Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden added a new station to the route of its Crazy Train.  The elimination of gas stoves.  This is yet another component of the Left’s unasked for, unwelcome, unnecessary, and unconstitutional attempt to transform what was once the freest nation on Earth into a totalitarian Gulag.  It was announced that gas stoves present health hazards such as the production of nitrogen dioxide, which may irritate the respiratory system and cause asthma.  More importantly, it was suggested that the elimination of gas stoves was necessary in order to save the planet.  Again with the planet.  Why can’t they just leave the planet alone?  The planet was doing just fine without the interference of these sanctimonious,Woke A-holes.  George Carlin had their number long before Woke A-holes were even called Woke.  “Save the planet!” What?!  Are these fucking people kidding me?!  Save the planet?!  We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet!  We haven’t learned how to care for one another and we’re gonna save the fucking planet?! I’m getting tired of that shit!  I’m tired of fucking Earth Day!  I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists; these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren’t enough bicycle paths!  People trying to make the world safe for their Volvo’s!  Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet.  They don’t care about the planet; not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in?  A clean place to live; their own habitat.  They’re worried that someday in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced.  Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.  Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet.  The planet is fine… the people are fucked!  Difference!  The planet is fine!  Compared to the people, THE PLANET IS DOING GREAT: Been here four and a half billion years!  Do you ever think about the arithmetic?  The planet has been here four and a half billion years, we’ve been here what? 100,000?  Maybe 200,000?  And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200 years.  200 years versus four and a half billion and we have the conceit to think that somehow, we’re a threat?  That somehow, we’re going to put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that’s just a-floatin’ around the sun?  The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us: been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sunspots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages, and we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference?”  Amen, George.  Anyhow, the furor over supposed gas stove dangers caused speculation that the federal government may try to ban gas stoves.  Richard Trumka, Jr. (son of the late AFL-CIO President, which was his only qualification), of the Consumer Products Safety Council sparked the controversy by signaling that the CPSC might try to ban gas stoves.  The outcry was so loud that he was made to walk his suggestion back, for now.  But the Left never gives up.  This gas stove B.S. will be back.  The recent trial balloon (not balloons again) was the work of the Climate Imperative Foundation, an extremist environmentalist group, whose mission is to transition the world to renewable energy and away from so-called fossil fuels.  They say the world’s scientists agree this must be done.  Of course, that’s a lie, but even if true, since when do scientists dictate world energy or any other policy?  This Foundation is so dedicated to science that it gave money to the Rocky Mountain Institute, which produced a study that concluded that “gas stoves have to go.”  The only problem with this is that, as Kimberly Strassel has reported, neither of the authors of the Rocky Mountain Institute anti-gas stove study are scientists, nor do they have any science degrees.  They’re two Leftist lawyers.  They’re climate change activists who are dedicated to ending the use of oil and natural gas.  The Rocky Mountain Institute promotes the use of solar, wind, biofuel and geothermal energy to get to “net zero” carbon emissions.  All the fuels that have driven California’s electrical grid to the brink of collapse.  This is necessary to “save the planet” don’t you know.  Climate Imperative has also given Consumer Reports $375,000, which coincidentally led to a CR story about the dangers of, guess what?  Gas stoves.  That’s right, the same Consumer Reports that keeps telling us it’s unbiased.  All of these outfits are tight with the Biden Crime Family.  They won’t give up.  And the truth will never stand in the way of messianic socialism.  This has nothing to do with the safety of gas stoves, and everything to do with the fact that the stoves run on natural gas.  If it was proven that natural gas cured cancer, these bastards would still be trying to get rid of it.  All of a sudden gas stoves are a known risk to life?  The first gas stove was built in 1802.  Gas stoves were in use by the 1820’s.  Life expectancy in 1860 was 40.  In 2020, even with millions of gas stoves in use, it was nearly 80.  Do you think that without gas stoves we’d live forever?  The truth is that natural gas accounts for 17 deaths a year.  Windmills kill 1,000 birds a day, and solar power farms kill nearly 400 a day.  And why are all those dead whales washing up near wind power sites?  This is not about safety or climate, it’s about Woke A-holes who want to tell you how you must live your life.  We should be exploring all the so-called renewable energy sources – in addition to oil and gas – not instead of oil and gas.  The Woke A-holes keep talking about renewable power sources, but the only power they seek is the power to make your life more expensive, more uncomfortable, and less free.  Never forget, the day after the Berlin Wall fell, all the Reds turned Green.  They have the same agenda, only now, instead of denouncing any opposition as “counter-revolutionary,” opponents are denounced as “climate deniers.”  If it walks like a tyrant and talks like a tyrant, it’s a tyrant.

Events go by much more quickly than in times past.  Back in 1863, when Jules Verne published his book, Five Weeks in a Balloon, or A Journey of Discovery, the five week-long balloon journey covered only the African continent.  We’re much more efficient today.  This past week, we were treated to a Chinese retelling of the Jules Verne classic, One Week in a Balloon, or a Journey of Espionage.  By now you’ve probably had your fill of stories about the Chinese spy balloon that our inept government, led by Corrupt Demented Imbecile Joe Biden, permitted to transit the North American continent, collecting data as it went, until finally it was shot down last Saturday just off the coast of South Carolina.  As with all Biden Administration fiascos, a number of contradictory stories have been floated (pun intended) about the balloon.  Take your pick.  We either know so much about the Chinese balloon, that we know that it was released from a specific site in central China, from whence it sailed a track east out over the Pacific Ocean and toward North America.  Or else, we knew nothing about the balloon until it was over the Aleutian Islands on January 28, transited north of the Aleutians chain, and then transited part of Alaska.  The Chinese have contributed to the obfuscation, claiming that the balloon was a weather balloon, released by a “private company” in China, which “simply got away” due to wind conditions.  “It was just an accident.  So sorry.” But we know that’s a lie for two reasons: first, the Chinese government said it; and secondly, there are no “private” companies in China.  Anyhow, when the balloon violated U.S. airspace, our government said nothing and did nothing.  Then, on January 30, it entered Canadian airspace over British Columbia.  The following day, the balloon reentered U.S. airspace in northern Idaho.  Our government again said nothing and did nothing.  On February 1, the balloon was approximately 60,000 feet over central Montana, near Billings.  It was clearly visible to people on the ground.  Even Native Americans in the area reported sightings.

It became so much of a concern that the airspace over Billings was closed to air traffic.  At this point, the balloon could no longer be ignored.  If you choose to believe it, this was the first time that the military notified Joe Biden of the problem.  Old Joe says he immediately ordered the balloon shot down.  This was Wednesday, but the military said no, the balloon posed no threat to the U.S., so we should wait.  The stated reason was concern for people on the ground.  Putting aside the fact that there are almost no people in the interior of Alaska, where it could have been shot down, there also are very few people on the ground in south-eastern Montana.  For instance, nearby Powder River County covers 3,300 square miles.  Population density is 0.6 people per square mile.  The largest metropolis is Broadus, population 456.  The nearest town to the east of Broadus is Buffalo, in another County, some 90 miles away, population 195.  So this story doesn’t wash.  The Chinese balloon was a spy platform, capable of navigating itself despite the wind direction.  And navigate it did on its journey of espionage.  It flew over Alaska, Idaho,  Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina.  And for a harmless, out of control weather balloon, it somehow managed to fly over a number of U.S. military installations.  Here’s a partial list: Malstrom AFB, MT (ICBM site); Ellsworth AFB, SD (28th Bomb Wing); Joe Foss Field, SD, Air National Guard (114th Fighter Wing); Offutt AFB, NE (U.S. Strategic Command); Whiteman AFB, MO (B2 bombers); Scott AFB, IL (Air Mobility Command); Fort Campbell, TN (101st Airborne); Pope AFB, NC (Air Mobility Command and Special Forces); Fort Bragg, NC (82d Airborne); Marine Corps Air Station, New River, NC; and Camp Lejeune USMC base, NC.  What a coincidence, huh?  Yet our military said the flyovers posed no threat.  As an aside, when my daughter was married last October at the Thayer Hotel, next to West Point, the photographer was prohibited from using a drone to take wedding pictures, for reasons of security.  He should have said it was a Chinese drone.  Meanwhile, the Chinese continue to claim that the balloon wasn’t a spy platform.  Maybe that’s true, after all.  There could have been another reason for the balloon’s trans-continental trip.  I’ve got it!  The Communist Chinese are buying up lots of real estate near U.S. military bases, and for some reason we permit them to do so.  So maybe the balloon was sent by the Beijing Office of Century 21 Real Estate to look for For Sale signs.  Was the Chinese government spokeswoman wearing a green jacket?  That could be it.  Then again, the balloon navigated itself to South Carolina the day after Biden arranged to make South Carolina the site of the first primary election for the 2024 presidential race.  Maybe the Chinese went there to deliver some early voting ballots for their employee Sleepy Joe.  Then Biden shot the balloon down over water to destroy the evidence.  Another possibility that must be considered is that it is tax season.  The balloon actually may have been blown off course on its way to deliver Hunter Biden’s 1099 Form for services rendered and assorted artworks.  That’s plausible.  Our government continues to try to minimize the danger posed by the Chinese balloon.  They have claimed the balloon was prevented from collecting and transmitting its data back to China.  They didn’t explain how, and that’s not credible because if they could jam the collection and transmission capabilities of the platform there would have been no need to shoot it down.  No, it’s more likely that the Chinese Communists sent the balloon over here secure in the knowledge that their North American representative, Joe Biden, would permit it to complete its espionage job before taking it down.  That’s exactly what he did, after permitting them to extract information from our most secure military facilities from Alaska to South Carolina.  Maybe that’s why Biden failed to mention the balloon at all during the Tuesday night lying contest, uh, I mean State of the Union speech.  Wait, this just in, the Biden Administration has released a new photo of the invading balloon.

Just as CNN suspected.  More Russian interference.  Damn Putin.  No, wait, now this just in.  The Biden Administration just released a specially enhanced high definition image of the balloon taken by the Hubble Telescope.  Finally we get to the truth.That settles it.  It was all Trump’s fault.  We should have known.