Doesn't really wash: (1) Big Media aren't giving much attention to the laptop story, so they don't need a distraction. (2) The administration tried to bury the story, then explained it away as no big deal, so they're actually trying to distract FROM the balloon.
Really, the balloon is objectively a Big Deal. There are technical reasons it's better than satellite coverage. But that aside, it's significant that Beijing would think they could get away with it, and that they were right. It tells us something about both their decision-making and ours.
Not sure which "they" and "it" we're referring to here... but I think the Biden administration and its allies clearly wanted to bury the balloon story. They couldn't completely bury it, because people were inevitably going to notice a house-sized object up in the sky. But they're doing their best to downplay it and to move the news cycle past it. Think of all the ways they COULD be drawing attention to this and encouraging hysteria about it -- but they aren't.
Doesn't really wash: (1) Big Media aren't giving much attention to the laptop story, so they don't need a distraction. (2) The administration tried to bury the story, then explained it away as no big deal, so they're actually trying to distract FROM the balloon.
Really, the balloon is objectively a Big Deal. There are technical reasons it's better than satellite coverage. But that aside, it's significant that Beijing would think they could get away with it, and that they were right. It tells us something about both their decision-making and ours.
This is a CCP propaganda coup, flying a slow-moving spy balloon into US airspace to prove that the US is now an daily-defeated nation of pussies.
Government pussies you mean!
No, pretty much all American men.
Exactly.
Pussification of America is the real pandemic.
So your thought is they are trying it and JOE ISN'T just inviting them to go ahead and do it?
Not sure which "they" and "it" we're referring to here... but I think the Biden administration and its allies clearly wanted to bury the balloon story. They couldn't completely bury it, because people were inevitably going to notice a house-sized object up in the sky. But they're doing their best to downplay it and to move the news cycle past it. Think of all the ways they COULD be drawing attention to this and encouraging hysteria about it -- but they aren't.
"They" China and "it" the balloon.