>

The Republicans are pissed that the first balloons where not detected because shooting them down is a easy way to score no consequence policial points.
The Military gets to shoot something down, so they look tough on security and no one is in the balloon, so no one gets hurt. China can't be too pissed about it because what did they expect? The Democrats would have to support Trump on this issue because no one supports Chinese Spy Balloons over America. Just slam dunk effective grandstanding.
Hmmmm maybe because it would have made their republican overlord look weak?  Whereas right now republicans are going hard on their Cold War with china because democrats hold the senate and White House. >

Trump didn't even know the Chinese were violating airspace and spying.   They may want to go hard, but I can't think of anything weaker on China. >

Why on earth would Trump ever be tough on China, though? They were funneling money to him via his hotels when he was in office, and they gave his daughter a ton of trademarks. He even pays more taxes to China than he does to the US. 
His vitriol in rallies is just performative. >

It would be more revealing to ask, "why did this balloon trigger such a hullabaloo?" >

What a dumb headline, they weren't ignored....they weren't seen.
It says right on the article:

"As the NORAD commander, it's my responsibility to detect threats to North America," VanHerck said. "I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out." >

NORAD isn't the only eyes the U.S. has on the sky and they were allegedly informed after the fact by the intelligence community.
I was genuinely taken aback to hear that they found out from others too. >

Because normally this would be a non issue, but the amount of people who were borderline mentally I'll has been exasberated by conspiracy theorists. >

Trump was aching to start a war with China. It was his intention to be “at war” during re-election even before he was elected the first time. He tried China and Iran.  Pretty much against everyone except fascist regimes like Russia or North Korea. >



These balloons are only supplemental to satellite collection anyway.  Is it really worth damaging relations  to stamp your feet over something that YOU'RE doing to them as well?  The reason this one got shot down is because of internal politics.


A savvy intelligence service will pretend they don't notice the thing and then feed it FALSE intelligence. >

I’m gonna start a news channel called “just why?” >

I think the very obvious answer is no one saw it in the public.... Living in Montana, that shit was everywhere the first time someone saw it.... >

Because security was more important that damaging a political opponent. Now damaging Biden is more important than security >

B/c the Trump administration simply categorized them as UFOs. Seriously.