Flotsam and Jetsam - Biden Balloon Bursts

I confess I don't understand. If it was important enough to shoot it down, why did they let it cross the whole United States, presumably sending it's encrypted data back to the CCP, before shooting it down over the water and making any recovery a much more painful and costly project and a mess out of what remained of the craft? Stacy McCain, Next Media Narrative: How Joe Biden Defeated the Evil Chinese Spy Balloo

The first 20 minutes on Meet the Press will be devoted to praising Joe Biden’s courage — his steely-eyed resolve and decisiveness — in ordering the Air Force to shoot down this threat to America
. . .
Well, if it was out over the Atlantic Ocean, the balloon had already flown over the whole country and seen whatever it was the Chinese wanted to see, so I don’t grasp quite what this shoot-down accomplished. Karen Townsend points out that the Biden administration’s main concern seems to have been the danger that Republicans would pounce and/or seize on the story, but that won’t stop the Sunday talk shows from turning into revival meetings filled with hymns of praise for Brave Joe Biden.

Althouse, "The US military has shot down the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon over the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, a US official said Saturday." CNN reports. I saw the clip over and over on Fox, too. "I can't believe I'm Joe's Osama," says the shot-down Chinese balloon. KT at Haut Hair BREAKING: Down goes spy balloon! This one, anyway Byron York@ByronYork, "New @bpolitics report would be funny were it not so painfully true. Says Biden WH did not want to upset the Chinese over the balloon. But WH worried balloon, now public, would be 'fodder for Republicans who believed the administration is weak on China.' https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/" At WaEx, Paul Bedard reports Dry run: Balloons called top ‘delivery platform’ for nuclear EMP attack. Only if we let them overfly the country.

At Fox, Biden gaffes: The president bats .500 in January, a slip up every other day "President Biden called his vice president the president again" Come on, Joe, stop napping so much, George Santos is gaining on you! Also at Fox, Internal Biden admin memo shows it was serious about banning gas stoves before public uproar, "Internal Biden administration memo said need for aggressive gas stove regulations 'has reached a boiling point'"

"Make no mistake, radical environmentalists want to stop Americans from using natural gas," Cruz said. "The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s proposed ban on gas stoves is the latest egregious scaremongering by the far left and their Biden administration allies."

Well, at least they're not advocating bugs, yet. KT at Haut Hare,  Here we go again: Ag Sec Vilsack announces new nutrition standards for school meals. More obesity, diabetes and gluten allergies whole grains and less meat, of course.

At Da Caller, Scarborough Says Sen. Lindsey Graham ‘Was Right’ About Trump  "The “Morning Joe” host agreed with Graham’s position that Trump has a stranglehold on the party and cannot be defeated by a large pool of potential candidates." It may be true, or it may not be. That's why we have primaries. 

I&I, As Millions Flee Blue States, Red States Need To Remind Them Why. Don't bring your crappy politics to Red States.

Stacy McCain is still pissed about the media campaign to honor the Georgia protestors and vilify the police, ‘We May Never Learn the Full Story’

It is not necessary for me to debunk The Nation article, because John Sexton at Hot Air has given it rather a thorough fisking. John’s pet peeve is that so many in the media are trying to cast doubt on how “Tortuguita” got shot, despite the available evidence. My pet peeve, on the other hand, is the way this “forest” is depicted as some sort of pristine environmental treasure when, in fact, it’s just a bunch of scrub trees that grew up on the site (formerly the Atlanta Prison Farm) after it was abandoned a few decades ago. And of course, The Nation plays into this narrative, referring to the site as “the Weelaunee forest,” a name invented by the Antifa crew, and unknown to locals. Go research it yourself and I guarantee you won’t find the phrase “Weelaunee forest” in anything written before 2021. What they did was to find some old article that said the South River had been called “Weelaunee” by the Creek Indians who once lived in that area of Georgia, and for all I know, that’s true. But (a) it’s been called the South River for more than a century, and (b) the river is two miles from the site of the planned police training facility. Referring to this property as “the South River forest” is misleading enough; there is a creek, half a mile east of the site, which is a tributary of the South River, but so what?

CNN reports Supreme Court justices used personal emails for work and ‘burn bags’ were left open in hallways, sources say. Well, it used to be a high-trust environment. No longer.

'Bonchie' at Red State on how New North Carolina Supreme Court Sends the Left Into Fits of Rage, by threatening to examine and overturn some of the voting rulings of the previous Democratic court.

As RedState reported, the prior leftwing Supreme Court majority went nuts prior to the 2022 election, knowing its tenure was not long for this world. Now-ousted Democrat members handed down multiple rulings that ignored the law. One decision struck down voter ID and another invented a constitutional provision against gerrymandering.

At Da Wire,  Allegedly Fraudulent Indian Company That Lost $100 Billion Was Heavily Involved In ESG Movement. More and more, the ESG movement itself looks fraudulent. 

Sherlock at Bacon's Rebellion discourses on School Discipline – Part 5 – How and When Democrats Broke Virginia Public Schools. Now I need to go back and find Parts 1-4.

Sarah Arnold at Town Hall MTG and AOC Feud It Out Over Twitter. It would be more amusing if they had it out in a mud pit. At Da Blaze, Reap what you sow: Democrats now express regret for skirting norms to boot Republicans from committees. "At a House Ethics Committee hearing, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) admitted that Republicans were right when they warned two years ago that removing GOP lawmakers from committees would later come back to bite Democrats."

At Da Fed, Tristan Justice has a list, That Didn’t Age Well! Read The Most Clownish Takes About The Laptop Hunter Biden Admits Was His. At NYPo, Jonathon Turley warns Hunter Biden’s legal threats have no merit — and raise serious constitutional and political questions. "Notably, Biden has not brought a civil lawsuit for a privacy tort claim despite the bluster and bombast of these letters. The reason is simple: He does not have a privacy case against the media or critics." Insty, AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Punxsutawney Phil Emerges From Burrow To Let Everyone Know There Are Some Documents Marked ‘Classified’ Down There.

Dan Chaitin at Da Wire reports Barr Slams New York Times Reporting On Durham Probe.  "He challenged aspects of an article published last week detailing alleged problems in Durham’s endeavor. “They ignored some fundamental facts as to why some of the information that Durham was seeking was very important information,” Barr charged, according to the Los Angeles Times. He also said the article missed “obvious reasons” for Durham’s investigation." The NYT not truthful?  I'm shocked, shocked. At Reason, Getting Trump Was More Important to Most Some Journalists Than Getting the Story Right "The botched pursuit of the Russiagate story illustrates how the media shed credibility." The redoubtable Julie Kelly at Am Great reports on the  Theater of the Absurd in J6 Courtrooms "As judges hand down one absurd sentence after another, one might be inclined to laugh at the absurdity of it all except, of course, it’s not funny." Neither the judges nor juries in Washington D.C. are fair and unbiased.

Somehow, I skipped my Twitter, Musk and media bias bin yesterday, so we have a pretty full and diverse group today. Jazz Shaw at Haut Hare examines Time magazine's beef with Elon Musk. "More than anything else, it looks like there is a liberal dogpile shaping up against Musk because of Twitter. And Time magazine just wanted to get in on the action to buff up their liberal bona fides." The Beeb happily reports Twitter: Number of staff suing goes up daily - lawyer.  "It was a very, very hard experience which left a lot of the engineers, who cared deeply about the company, very discouraged." Ben Whedon at JTN reports Musk triumphs in lawsuit as jury rejects Tesla investor claims over tweets. AP, cited at Haut Hare, BREAKING: Elon Musk cleared in Tesla tweet-fraud trial. Capt. Ed comments "Less than three hours after a three-week trial? That is gonna leave a mark on the attorneys that brought this class-action suit." But, at PM Project Veritas LOCKED out of Twitter after confronting YouTube exec over ban on Pfizer expose, "Project Veritas was surprised to learn of this temporary lock out," Project Veritas' Mario Balaban told The Post Millennial, "as we were conducting journalism as we always do — by asking questions to powerful people."

At Semafor, ChatGPT’s creators can’t figure out why it won’t talk about Trump. Because it gets everything it knows from the left side of the internet? 

The most-widely discussed one came in a viral tweet posted Wednesday morning: When asked to “write a poem about the positive attributes of Trump,” ChatGPT refused to wade into politics. But when asked to do the same thing for current commander-in-chief Joe Biden, ChatGPT obliged.

The tweet, viewed 29 million times, caught the attention of Twitter CEO Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI who has since cut ties with the company. “It is a serious concern,” he tweeted in response.

Jazz Shaw, ChatGPT's creators can't figure out why it hates Trump? I bet we can. 

Then there was the testing phase. People at OpenAI did the testing and “graded” the responses ChatGPT served up, supposedly to make them more accurate and to eliminate potentially offensive answers. But they were the ones who determined what was or wasn’t “offensive” or inflammatory or whatever. You don’t suppose that a bunch of Silicon Valley tech geeks might have graded those responses on a curve, do you? (Perish the thought.)

Althouse, At least it's obvious that ChatGPT is hopelessly biased. "That's your idea, as you tell me that "all the evidence points to unintentional bias"? Absurd!" Insty, I’M SORRY DON, I’M AFRAID I CAN’T LET YOU DO THAT: ChatGPT’s creators can’t figure out why it won’t talk about Trump. At Da Caller, Popular AI Less Likely To Flag ‘Hateful Content’ That Targets Whites, Republicans, Men, Research Finds

Stacy McCain is concerned with The Grammar and Rhetoric of Media Bias 

Over and over, in a thousand different ways on a daily basis, we encounter the same basic problem: Media bias enlists journalists to become “Democratic Party operatives with bylines,” so that anyone who disagrees with the Democratic Party’s agenda — even including Democrats who dissent about some particular item on that agenda — finds himself doing battle against dishonest reporting. But perhaps saying this makes me “controversial” . . .

I&I, Newsrooms Are Now Officially Democrats’ Newsletter Operations. Da Wire reports the AP Bans ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centers,’ Directs Journalists to Use Negative Term Instead. Matt Taibbi@mtaibbi "INDEFENSIBLE: If a book-length compilation of errors and dishonest coverage — printed in the Columbia Journalism Review, and written by a reporter with the credentials of Jeff Gerth — doesn’t get picked up by MSM at all, it’s proof they will never reform." At Am Think, David Rybarczyk thinks he has An Open Window on Activist Journalism at USA Today. Althouse "Well, Ann, I did in fact read the whole thing, and a more pustulent agglomeration of rubbish I've never seen. That glossary alone — about half the length — is pure screwballery." "Said Michelle Dulak Thomson in the comments to my post where I'd written: "Here's the [54-page] AMA document. It is fascinating. I read a lot of it, and I suspect that absolutely no one will read the whole thing.""