Lie, Not Pie, in the Sky

Well, I must admit, you could have blown me over with a helium leak.  I had put the TV sound on mute (I generally find television more satisfying this way), only to see this giant balloon thingie, high in the sky, on the screen.  I immediately thought, oh no, not again, a "balloon boy" situation?  You remember balloon boy, of course, when just a few years ago anxious parents reported their young son was trapped in an escaped balloon making its way across the country?  Turned out to be a hoax with no child inside, though a balloon did soar across the blue as TV and newspaper cameras all over the nation pointed nowhere but up, up and away.  Alas, as I discovered upon turning up the sound, there was no balloon boy, not even a flying Trojan Horse filled with illegal aliens carrying phony gender documentation.  Nope, just the Chinese communists being naughty, obviously supervised and directed by President Xi Xi Winnie the Pooh himself.  Spying?  I would sooner believe China had dispatched a rotund pinata stuffed with Fentanyl than to believe such an outrageous claim.  Say it isn't so. . .

Just two more things today:

First, as Chinese communists were probably slapping knees and rolling on the floor with laughter over Biden's long, long, long delay in shooting their latest surveillance "weather balloon" out of the sky, and as Americans all across the nation cranked their necks upward, hoping to see The Mysterious Invader, those among us who wonder about the content of UFO files and videos still held highly classified by the Pentagon hope for the day when all will be revealed in the name of "transparency."  Unclassified reports coughed up via congressional legislation so far are either a smokescreen or a result of lethargic communication.  This almost qualifies as a national tradition. (Side note:  UFO encounters and bizarre instrument changes overriding military control, reliably reported at nuclear missile bases, are as good a reason as any for the public to be informed immediately. See my link to Robert Hastings' site.)

Second, while we do indeed fret over balloons delivered by communist monsters, does the booming era of high tech not make it possible for surveillance equipment as small as insects or birds to cruise uninterrupted and undetected through our air space, particularly the lower portions, without discovery?  If not now, surely this covert approach is in the cards for the future among all major or amateur spy ventures of national or global consequence.

Next time, instead of a stealthy Chinese gas bag, let's hope for nothing more exciting than the flight of a balloon boy who wasn't there.