Everybody was talking about the Chinese balloon: It’s spying on us, and if Biden had balls he’d shoot it down. Well, on Saturday, Biden did just that. The Airforce shot it down in the Atlantic off of the Carolina coast. Wrongo is sure that our military will recover the important parts of the balloon. Once we take a look at the technology that the Chinese are using, we’ll know why the balloon was sent over the US, and confirm whether it is a device for spying or not.
We need to view the balloon saga in the larger context of our relationship with China. John Dean has a good observation:
“I’m starting to see China as an enemy. I type those words, of course, on my Chinese-made HP laptop. I watched news reports of the balloon on my Chinese-made TV. The chair I’m sitting in may even be Chinese. The only thing I’ve bought recently that isn’t Chinese, I’m sad to say, is the Chinese food I had for dinner last night, but I could be wrong.”
Our current relationship with China is complicated by our dependence on them for much of our manufacturing. They also are a huge export market for US commodities. As China has flexed its muscles, they have become an economic and geopolitical competitor with the US. Our relationship with them will become much more difficult in the coming years as we wrestle to contain them geopolitically in Asia, while blunting their advances in the rest of the world.
Dean points out that our trade with China has provided them with the resources it is using to build its military force. We need to wake up and wean ourselves off of Chinese goods. Otherwise, we’re paying for two militaries, ours, and theirs. On to cartoons.
One plan for the Chinese balloon:
The new DeSantis school library:
Revised College Board AP course seems fine:
Economy’s too good for GOP:
Sad truth:
Have you read that Tennessee, a current hot spot for HIV, is refusing $8mm of Federal Aid because, among other things, they would have to send some of that money to Planned Parenthood for condom distribution. It is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
What passes for conservatism is now just mean spirited and unmoored from the problems that they ought to be working to solve.