The challenges ahead (Biden's America)

[N.E. Brigand]

Last April, the FBI raided the home of Emmy-award winning ABC reporter James Gordon Meek. In an October Rolling Stone article that in retrospect seems to have misleadingly riled up some readers with the statement that the raid was "among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration," it was noted that Meek's colleagues said they hadn't seen or heard from him in six months. I'd like to call your attention to the replies to this tweet that Rolling Stone posted to promote the October story. Almost all of them are in this vein:

--Rendition. Biden’s not so secret police.
--Thought crime. It’s a thing.
--Probably suicided by the FBI.
--The FBI is now the Gestapo.
--Same thing that was happening in the 1940s. Biden SS claims another victim.
--Well don't write a negative book about Biden.
--Just like the Jan. 6 protestors.
--Pesky dissidents. Us right-wing conspiracists have warned that it eventually comes for you after we're out of the way.
--The institutions that are supposed to protect are operating like the Mafia.
--My American propaganda says only the Saudis make journalists go missing; did they lie?
--The Regime sending out the Stasi to black bag another one.
--This Democrat fascist government is tyranny.
--Why is Rolling Stone just now waking up to the fact that there are raids going on in America? You didn't see this happening under President Trump.
--Yes, how dare he report anything negative about dear leader Biden? We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.
--Wtf this ain't America anymore.
--Did he cross Hillary Clinton?
--Speak ill of Comrade Joe... Go to Purgatory
--Biden has weaponized the FBI.
--As he was working on a book about the disaster Afghanistan withdrawal. Terrifying.
--So it’s just a coincidence he was writing a book about Biden’s failed Afghanistan withdrawal.
--One does not write books embarrassing the empire.
--Tying up loose ends, I see. #Authoritarian
--The FBI is the Biden administration Gestapo. Congress needs to step in and #DefundTheFBI and shut them down till they can clean house.
--Biden's Gestapo is at it again. We have to stop these vile people in November. Freedom depends on it. #AbolishTheFBI #VoteRedToSaveAmerica
--Third world banana republic shit.
--Just like Obama's DOJ and FBI.

Some prominent conservative commentators made similar comments, like Glenn Beck, who said of Meek's situation: "When did we become Saudi Arabia?"

Well, the Dept. of Justice announced today that Meek was arrested last night for "transportation of child pornography." And that's why his home was raided last year.

What on earth is President Biden doing, letting the FBI arrest (alleged) pedophiles?

(You won't be surprised to learn that Glenn Beck has tweeted multiple times since this news broke, but none of those tweets mention it.)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Somehow, this is bad news.

The US economy added a whopper 517,000 jobs in January

[RoseMorninStar]

Why bad?

It seems like a lot, considering all of the big tech lay-offs we've been hearing about.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The stock market immediately tanked upon hearing the news, I guess because of concerns that it would lead to the Fed continuing to raise interest rates in order to fight inflation, though I think it has stabilized.

Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

[N.E. Brigand]

President Biden takes a little victory lap following the news that V shared above:



A 3.4% unemployment rate is the lowest in 54 years. And that's despite a spate of prominent layoffs announced in January. As Matt Yglesias notes (and was pointing out prior to today's news), there are a bunch of layoffs every January, and data we'd already seen over the past couple weeks suggested that there were actually fewer layoffs this year. And so: "There’s going to be a certain amount of double-backflip good-news-is-bad-news response to this, because it means more interest rate hikes, but don’t overthink it — strong employment growth is good".

That said, Yglesias also notes that while inflation is improving, the cost for goods and services continue to rise faster than wages (both are rising), so people are still feeling an economic crunch:



But as you can see, the red line is getting close to the blue line, so this problem is trending toward resolution by summer.

[N.E. Brigand]

In this column in the Washington Post today, David Hopkins argues that while the legislative achievements of Joe Biden's first two years are solid, they are less impressive than those of Barack Obama's first two years and particular less impressive than Lyndon Johnson's first two years.

As regards Obama's accomplishments, Hopkins notes that by getting the ACA passed, Obama saved his successor from having to deal with health care -- meaning both that Biden didn't need to wrangle a health bill into law and that Biden didn't face the electoral fall-out that Obama did. A big part of why Congressional Democrats took a huge loss in 2010 (a "shellacking," as Obama said), is because Obamacare, which is now popular, was then very unpopular.

That said, both Obama and Johnson had large majorities in Congress to work with compared to Biden. Here's a comparison. The composition changed during each Congress. I've picked the time when (1) there were no vacancies and (2) the totals were most typical for the period in question, except that apparently there was no time in the past two years when the House had no vacancies.

88th Congress (1963-1965)
House: 253D - 177R
Senate: 66D - 34R (filibuster-proof at all times)

111th Congress (2009-2011)
House: 250D - 180R
Senate: 59D - 41R (filibuster-proof (60-40) for 72 days)

117th Congress (2021-2023)
House: 222D - 212R
Senate: 50D - 50R

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thank you for this. It really does help show how astounding it is that Biden was able to get as much accomplished as he has. And that doesn't even take into account the difficulties of navigating a "majority" in the Senate (when Harris's tie-breaking vote is taken into account) with two fractious, unruly members in Manchin and Sinema, plus the counter-weight of the progressive caucus in the House and Sanders et al. in the Senate.

[N.E. Brigand]

As you probably heard, earlier this week, the U.S. military announced that a spy balloon launched by China was in the sky over Montana (apparently having previously passed over Japan, Alaska, and Canada), floating at heights of 60,000-100,000 feet. The balloon continued across the U.S. before reaching the Atlantic Ocean off South Carolina this morning. President Biden just said that he had ordered the balloon shot down Wednesday, was advised by military advisors that doing so could present a risk to people on the ground below, and agreed to delay that action until the balloon was over water -- but still within U.S. territorial limits. The president just confirmed that the balloon was shot down about a half-hour ago. CNN has footage of the debris falling from a great height. A few days ago, a scheduled visit by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was postponed until some future date.

There has been some claims that this balloon incident represents (1) a special danger to the U.S. and the world and (2) some new weakness in American policy. David Frum offer some sensible observations:

Paradox. When Russia invades a neighbor-smashes cities and kills tens of thousands in the biggest war in Europe since 1945, your social media and mine fill with voices from far left and far right warning against over-reaction and escalation. Russia is a nuclear power, they remind us, and so nobody should resist. But when a high-altitude Chinese spy balloon floats into US airspace (supplementing China's 500+ satellites) -- and Republican hawks go hysterical -- those same voices that caution against resisting Russian mass killing fall silent. Why? The Chinese spy balloon is provocative for sure. But it's not killing anybody, unlike Putin's war of aggression and atrocity. Yet the MAGA-heads and tankies who object to aiding Ukraine lest that offend Russia seem untroubled by the most aggressive rhetoric against this balloon.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
The balloon should be taken, not as an invitation to shoot at things, but as a reminder to return to the "Open Skies" treaty. As Eisenhower and HW Bush showed, agreed mutual surveillance is mutually stabilizing. There are few good surprises between adversary nations. It was the U2 overflights of the U.S.S.R. that proved to President Eisenhower that the Soviets were not ahead in missile race. Ike offered the Soviets overflights of the U.S. Agreed mutual aerial surveillance is strategically stabilizing.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
The people who, on Friday night, are going mad over the Chinese balloon are the same people who, on Monday morning, will threaten to push the U.S. government into default to force an $80 billion cut in the defense budget against, among other things, Chinese balloons.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Americans used to have something better than a balloon inside China. It had 47 CDC personnel observing trends in Chinese health. The Trump administration cut that figure to 14.

I did see that Rep. Matt Gaetz of all people offered a sensible comment of his own a couple days ago: he pointed out that the Chinese may have wanted us to try to shoot the balloon down to test our abilities to do so at such high altitudes. (At 100,000 feet, it would be very difficult to do so.)

[RoseMorninStar]

The balloon/China's recent posture has given cause for the US to (wisely) think about Chinese companies buying land and setting up operations in the US and wondering if they have ulterior motives.

[N.E. Brigand]

There was at least one similar incident of a Chinese balloon overflying the U.S. during the Trump administration, according to ths article in Forbes.

Edited to add: apparently the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before, intended to keep this balloon's incursion secret. The U.S. knew about the balloon last Saturday, when it was over Alaska.

Edited again to add links to various cool photos of the shootdown, radar of the falling debris, video as it happened on TV, video shot by bystanders on the ground, better video, even better video, and the best video I've seen so far (setting aside the added music).

The balloon, floating at 65,000 ft. and was shot down by an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile launched from an F-22 flying at 57,000 ft. (The Wikipedia entry on Sidewinder missiles has already been updated to note this.) The debris is in 45 ft. of water, which should make it relatively easy to recover, but it's spread out over seven miles. The missile alone costs $381,000, so I would think that this balloon incident cost the U.S. well over a million dollars.

[N.E. Brigand]

I'd like to know more about this:



I'm seeing some suggestions that the U.S. military was jamming the balloon's transmissions. This was probably also true of previous overflights. The U.S. decided to take action to shoot it down this time because a member of the public spotted it over Montana.

[N.E. Brigand]

There was at least one similar incident of a Chinese balloon overflying the U.S. during the Trump administration, according to ths article in Forbes. Apparently the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before, intended to keep this balloon's incursion secret. The U.S. knew about the balloon last Saturday, when it was over Alaska.

Links to various cool photos of the shootdown, radar of the falling debris, video as it happened on TV, video shot by bystanders on the ground, better video, even better video, and the best video I've seen so far (setting aside the added music). The balloon, floating at 65,000 ft. and was shot down by an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile launched from an F-22 flying at 57,000 ft. (The Wikipedia entry on Sidewinder missiles has already been updated to note this.) The debris is in 45 ft. of water, which should make it relatively easy to recover, but it's spread out over seven miles. The missile alone costs $381,000, so I would think that this balloon incident cost the U.S. well over a million dollars.

Update: Lloyd Austin, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, says that the U.S. worked with Canada to track the balloon's progress between Alaska and Idaho. And a Defense Department official says that "Chinese balloons briefly transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration" (my emphasis).

[Frelga]

Meanwhile right wing social media is full of right-wing (redacted) like Kari Lake posing with their shotguns and ARs as if prepared to shoot the balloon.

[River]

I wonder if we have the ability to capture a balloon without shooting it down...though I bet if we knew how to do that we'd never, ever advertise it.

[N.E. Brigand]

I see a Republican congressman said on Fox News that if there had been a foreign spy balloon overflight of the U.S. in 2018 (when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress), Donald Trump would have been impeached.

But we know that there were three such overflights. (And I would emphasize that this news was published yesterday on the U.S. Department of Defense website. (Edited to add this from the Washington Post: A "Pentagon official said Saturday night that five Chinese balloons have circumnavigated the globe, and China has conducted 20 to 30 balloon missions globally over the past decade." Also this is apparently the second Chinese balloon to float over the continental U.S. during the Biden administration, following the three during the Trump administration.) Apparently Trump kept them a secret from Congress, or this congressman surely wouldn't say Trump should have been impeached.

Do we need an investigation into whether China paid Trump to not shoot down those balloons?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Richard Grenell, who was a (completely unqualified) National Intelligence Director in the Trump administration in 2020, tweeted:



Of course, we don't know when the balloons were supposedly flown, and presumably they were before he became the acting intelligence director on February 20, 2020, but in a functional government one would assume that he would have been briefed about such things. But this was not a functional government. I'm certainly more willing to believe the DoD than I am Grenell.

[N.E. Brigand]

There was at least one similar incident of a Chinese balloon overflying the U.S. during the Trump administration, according to ths article in Forbes. Apparently the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before, intended to keep this balloon's incursion secret. The U.S. knew about the balloon last Saturday, when it was over Alaska.

Links to various cool photos of the shootdown, radar of the falling debris, video as it happened on TV, video shot by bystanders on the ground, better video, even better video, and the best video I've seen so far (setting aside the added music).

The balloon, floating at 65,000 ft. and was shot down by an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile launched from an F-22 flying at 57,000 ft. (The Wikipedia entry on Sidewinder missiles has already been updated to note this.) The debris is in 45 ft. of water, which should make it relatively easy to recover, but it's spread out over seven miles. The missile alone costs $381,000, so I would think that this balloon incident cost the U.S. well over a million dollars.

I didn't realize until today just how large the balloon was. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who regularly represents the Biden administration on the Sunday morning talk shows, explained on NBC today that shooting the balloon down while it was over land "sounds simple, I suppose, if you don't think about it for more than a second," not only because, as I noted above, the debris landed over an area covering seven square miles, but also because the payload carried beneath the balloon was the length of two school buses. I now see that this concern was pointed out before the balloon was shot down Saturday:

"One official said the sensor package the balloon is carrying weighs as much as 1,000 pounds. The balloon is large enough and high enough in the air that the potential debris field could stretch for miles, with no control over where it would eventually land.'

(And speaking of Buttigieg, who recently moved from Indiana to Michigan: he said he won't be running for U.S. Senate in 2024.)

Josh Marshall speculates that the four known earlier balloon incursions into U.S. territory (three during Donald Trump's presidency and one earlier in Joe Biden's presidency), which some sources are describing as "brief" flyovers, happened close to the border: along the Rio Grande in Texas and briefly crossing Florida. This one may have been intended to do the same thing in Alaska and simply have been blown off course. I'm not sure, although I agree with Marshall that a full continental overflight certainly made detection likely.

And Donald Trump says that the balloon may have been manned, and that by shooting it down without knowing for sure, we lost a great chance of taking the supposed pilot hostage and using him or her as leverage against China.

[Frelga]

My dad served in the Soviet Army in the 60s, way out there on the Aldan River (Yakutia, extreme North East). He was reminiscing today about manning the radar station, tracking what were probably American spy balloons. They were very annoying to track, he said. Erratic. They were too high to be captured (or shot down?) by fighter jets, at least of the time. Supposedly, air defense farther inland could get them, but he doesn't know if they did. They were off his grid by then.

I used to work with a guy whose dad was an American fighter pilot, flying on spy missions from Alaska (or mostly just to annoy the Soviets) around the same time. He probably showed up on my dad's radar, too.

[N.E. Brigand]

It seems the Chinese overflights during the Trump administration were not detected at the time but only discovered in the past two years. This is the problem when a sensitive intelligence matter goes public. The Biden administration would probably rather not have the Chinese government learn what they U.S. knows and when the U.S. knew it. And former Trump administration officials would probably not be embarrassed now by the news that Chinese balloons secretly overflew the U.S. while they were in charge.

[N.E. Brigand]

Besides showing that Americans just don't pay attention to the news, do the results of the poll below augur ill for President Biden's reelection, or is Matt Yglesias correct to say that "probably Biden's biggest political achievement is convincing people he's not doing very much"?



Personally I think Biden's lately restired Chief of Staff Ron Klain is correct to say:



But maybe the public is better off not knowing that?