Seashells and Balloons

[Pakuni]

That was my suggestion from the beginning. For that I was mocked for making a mountain out of a molehill, told my opinion (which the "experts" agreed with from the jump as we all know) was presumptuous and called a right wing, Tucker loving extremist. Now I guess I'm a Biden apologist. Gotta love Scoop.

No, Lenny, it wasn't. You mocked the approach that was being taken and when asked what should have been done instead, you offered many suggestions, like shooting it down earlier, shooting it down over land and hoping no one below got hurt, and finding a way to bring it down without blowing it up.
You 100 percent did not suggest the approach that was taken.
The receipts are on page one of this thread.

[wadesworld]

No, Lenny, it wasn't. You mocked the approach that was being taken and when asked what should have been done instead, you offered many suggestions, like shooting it down earlier, shooting it down over land and hoping no one below got hurt, and finding a way to bring it down without blowing it up.
You 100 percent did not suggest the approach that was taken.
The receipts are on page one of this thread.

Lol right?

Always the victim though.

[Hards Alumni]

That was my suggestion from the beginning. For that I was mocked for making a mountain out of a molehill, told my opinion (which the "experts" agreed with from the jump as we all know) was presumptuous and called a right wing, Tucker loving extremist. Now I guess I'm a Biden apologist. Gotta love Scoop.

That's what you took from what he said?  Dear lord, you're way too far gone.

[MU82]

That was my suggestion from the beginning.

Actually, when asked what you thought China would have done, you said:

China would have brought the balloon down by whatever means they deemed the most efficient. They would be going over the contents with a fine tooth comb to determine what we were after and whether we have technologies currently unavailable to them. ... I'd be OK with us doing the same.

Obviously, then, you're OK with exactly what the United States did and continues to do.

[dgies9156]

SNL had funny open on the balloon last night.
"Americans think a balloon is doing surveillance on them but yet all have an Alexa in their house."

Interesting point. We also have navigation systems in our cell phones that know our every move. I get in my car and depending on day and time my navigation system in my phone maps me to Church, Publix, Home Depot or my favorite restaurant. The Chinese know a lot more about us than anyone imagines!

[muwarrior69]

Absolutely

I'll put together a bigger post in the COVID Economy thread, but it's beyond the "find factories to do work for super cheap" mentality of the last few decades.  I've understood it, but after doing contract manufacturing in China and India and few other countries, and speaking to my friends who did similar in Mexico, Vietnam, and Turkey, I'd much prefer domestic if ANYWHERE close (within even 20-25% of cost) for a bunch of reasons.

But for skilled white collar office work, the dynamic has changed completely.  It's an unintended consequence of a strong push for remote and WFH situations.  And it's not penny pinching, it's cost efficiency.  If they won't be in the office and zooming in anyways, why pay the price premium for domestic? 

In 20 plus years of business, we never outsourced and offshored anything, other than local techs and customer service at foreign offices.  But we have a software engineer retiring.  She's been mostly remote since just before COVID and fully remote for the last 2 years.  Replacing her, for about 60% of the price of a 20-30 hour US contractor, much less a full time employee, we can get someone with her same skill set, speaking great English, and have room to incentivize/"promote"/bonus going forward and still improve the fixed cost of that role.

We actually got connected to a talent pool and the process through a partner company in the EU who completely reshaped their software development and database teams this way, saved a bunch of money while growing their team by 25-30%, improving a bunch of delivery and customer satisfaction metrics, and diversified their employee pool from various spots in Asia and Latin America, bringing extra perspective to a company with a global customer base

I can see IT jobs being outsourced. I worked in R&D in Big Pharma and they too out sourced jobs in particular to India both IT and clinical. Some of the IT jobs remained outsourced, but after a year the clinical R&D jobs were brought back especially in the pharmacovigilance sector.

[muwarrior69]

So reading through this thread....do you guys actually disagree about anything? It seems like everyone agrees that the balloon should have been shot down once it was in a safe location to do so...which is that happened.

What a bogus excuse. I am sure it could have been shot down "safely" well before it reached the Atlantic. When the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated on re-entry over Texas it did not cause any deaths or major property damage on the ground that I recall. There is probably another reason why they did not shoot it down, but I am skeptical of the safe location reason.

[real chili 83]

Interesting point. We also have navigation systems in our cell phones that know our every move. I get in my car and depending on day and time my navigation system in my phone maps me to Church, Publix, Home Depot or my favorite restaurant. The Chinese know a lot more about us than anyone imagines!

Why would they care?  Why would we care?

[jesmu84]

What a bogus excuse. I am sure it could have been shot down "safely" well before it reached the Atlantic. When the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated on re-entry over Texas it did not cause any deaths or major property damage on the ground that I recall. There is probably another reason why they did not shoot it down, but I am skeptical of the safe location reason.

That is quite the comparison

[TSmith34, Inc.]

   ok, i'll admit i watch tucker

Even though in court Fox argued that no reasonable person could take what he says seriously?

Oh wait, I see the problem now.

[Jockey]

What a bogus excuse. I am sure it could have been shot down "safely" well before it reached the Atlantic. When the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated on re-entry over Texas it did not cause any deaths or major property damage on the ground that I recall. There is probably another reason why they did not shoot it down, but I am skeptical of the safe location reason.

They obviously wanted to wait to do it over water so Hunter's laptop would be destroyed.

[Uncle Rico]

They obviously wanted to wait to do it over water so Hunter's laptop would be destroyed.

They should have shot it down over a caravan to inflict maximum damage or downtown milwaukee

[Pakuni]

What a bogus excuse. I am sure it could have been shot down "safely" well before it reached the Atlantic. When the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated on re-entry over Texas it did not cause any deaths or major property damage on the ground that I recall. There is probably another reason why they did not shoot it down, but I am skeptical of the safe location reason.

The shuttle, which was significantly smaller, disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, breaking into tens of thousands of pieces, the large majority of which still have not been recovered.
It's not an apples to apples comparison.

[JWags85]

On a less serious note, I found it kind of hilarious that the shooting down of the balloon was the first air to air "kill" for the F-22 Raptor, which has been in service almost 25 years.  It obviously speaks to the changing nature of war and its sort of a blessing that American pilots haven't needed to engage hostiles in dicey air to air combat, but amusing that such an incredible piece of aeronautical development and technology had a milestone like this. I imagine the pilot got some good natured ribbing back at base

[Lennys Tap]

No, Lenny, it wasn't. You mocked the approach that was being taken and when asked what should have been done instead, you offered many suggestions, like shooting it down earlier, shooting it down over land and hoping no one below got hurt, and finding a way to bring it down without blowing it up.
You 100 percent did not suggest the approach that was taken.
The receipts are on page one of this thread.

I said the options were 1) shooting it down over water after it entered our waters and before it reached land 2) shooting it down over land that was virtually uninhabited or 3) if realistic, puncture the balloon and bring it down safely.

Scoop mopes laughed at the idea of shooting it down at all. To them, it was a big nothingburger, a joke. Nothing to see here. For some unknown reason, we decided to traverse our western waters and virtually uninhabited areas over Alaska and Montana and waited until it was over the Atlantic to take it down. But better late than never.

[Pakuni]

Scoop mopes laughed at the idea of shooting it down at all.

No, Scoop mopes laughed at the panic a balloon instilled in the meat eaters.

For some unknown reason, we decided to traverse our western waters and virtually uninhabited areas over Alaska and Montana and waited until it was over the Atlantic to take it down. But better late than never.

You've been told the reason. Over and over again.

[Uncle Rico]

No, Scoop mopes laughed at the panic a balloon instilled in the meat eaters.

You've been told the reason. Over and over again.

I see a lot of moping in this thread alright 😂

[MU Fan in Connecticut]

I also enjoy tonight's story that 3 Chinese balloons passed over the USA during the Trump administration who obviously did not shoot them down.

[MU82]

I also enjoy tonight's story that 3 Chinese balloons passed over the USA during the Trump administration who obviously did not shoot them down.

Interesting that there doesn't appear to have been any outrage.

[tower912]

Those were the greatest balloons ever trying to see all of the winning up close.

[The Sultan]

I really don't know if Lenny's is intentionally spinning what he said earlier in this topic, or if he simply forgot what he said, but either way it's funny as hell to watch him backtrack.

[Lennys Tap]

There are/were several possibilities. It could have been shot down before it was over water jbut in our air space. It could have been shot down over some area where there was little or no chance of impacting the population. Perhaps there's a way of bringing it down without essentially blowing it up - a tear in the balloon, something of that sort. Or we could do nothing and learn nothing about what was in the balloon, harrumph a bit and cancel our Secretary of State's trip to China.

I don't have the information to say what I would do, but I definitely wouldn't laugh it off as no big deal like Tower, Bias and others have done. And unless there's something they're not telling us I wouldn't have chosen the do nothing option.

Sultan

Here's what I said earlier when asked - by you - what I would do. Just what I repeated 7 pages later.

You, on the other hand, never shared what you would do. Just like with every other topic, you like to wait until the game is over.

[The Sultan]

Sultan

Here's what I said earlier when asked - by you - what I would do. Just what I repeated 7 pages later.

You, on the other hand, never shared what you would do. Just like with every other topic, you like to wait until the game is over.

I trusted the process. That perhaps the administration and the military know more than I do about this. Perhaps they have even dealt with this issue before.

Lo and behold...

Did you learn your lesson that not everything requires a Tucker-inspired take? That maybe jumping to conclusions based on limited data is unwise?

I'm guessing the answer will prove to be "no."

[Lennys Tap]

I trusted the process. That perhaps the administration and the military know more than I do about this. Perhaps they have even dealt with this issue before.

Lo and behold...

Did you learn your lesson that not everything requires a Tucker-inspired take? That maybe jumping to conclusions based on limited data is unwise?

I'm guessing the answer will prove to be "no."

My take was to bring it down safely, something they finally did. Better late than never.

And how can my take be "Tucker inspired" when I never heard him comment on the situation? You're a liar and a despicable human being.

[muwarrior69]

The shuttle, which was significantly smaller, disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, breaking into tens of thousands of pieces, the large majority of which still have not been recovered.
It's not an apples to apples comparison.

Coach Buses have average lengths of 39'4" (12 m), widths of 8'4" (2.55 m), heights of 12'6" (3.81 m), and have a capacity of 44-49 (+1) seats.

The shuttle measures 122.2 feet long, 56.67 feet high, with wingspan of 78.06 feet.

The balloon was reported to be the size of 3 busses. So both are approximately the same size with shuttle being slightly larger.