Posts Tagged ‘Drones’

The News: Regrets and Renaissance

Monday, January 13th, 2025

By Bob Gaydos

The cap of a proud Notre Dame alumnus. RJ Photography

The cap of a proud Notre Dame alumnus.
RJ Photography

   Ok, I’ve dithered long enough. The holidays came and went and he’s obviously not going to do the same. The first four presidents of my lifetime were FDR, HST, Ike and JFK. Dotard felon doesn’t have quite the same ring, so I guess I have to stick around until America realizes it needs a woman  president. Therefore, with a bow to the late, great Jimmy Cannon, I persist.

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: All that Canada, Greenland, Panama BS spewing out of his increasingly distracted “brain” is just that, a distraction out of the Putin playbook And an embarrassing one, at that. Only true MAGAS and the sold-out mainstream media treat it seriously. Which is, of course, sad.

    — Maybe it’s just me, but: Having his hands tied by the U.S. Supreme Court’s presidential immunity nonsense, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan made the best of it by making sure Trump gets sworn in as a convicted felon. The first ever, America. Be proud. Merchan made sure everyone knew that if it had been anyone else there would’ve been more serious consequences for the 34 felony convictions than a blow to the huge Trump ego.

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: The fact that the Supreme Court allowed the sentencing in New York to go on before the inauguration suggests that the court is not necessarily 100 percent in Trump’s pocket. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices in rejecting Trump’s bid to avoid sentencing before the inauguration. The four stooges objected without any comment.

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: I hope Merrick Garland fades into the woodwork as quickly as did that other faux prosecutor, Robert Mueller. A major disappointment.

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: Watching the Dow, NASDAQ, etc. tank on the heels of yet another report showing a healthy increase in jobs on Joe Biden’s watch is a worthwhile reminder that Wall Street has little to do with Main Street. More like the Vegas Strip.

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg can all _______. Fill in the blank.

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what all the New Jersey drone stuff was about. Remember newspapers?

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: Jimmy Carter was a wonderful human being and a better than average president. Not a bad epitaph.

  — Maybe it’s just me, but: Welcome back to nightly reports, Rachel Maddow; turn off the lights, Morning Joe.

   — Maybe it’s just me, but: Having given up following college football when they started mixing and moving colleges willy-nilly to conferences across the country based on big bucks and big ratings, it came as a pleasant surprise to me to see that the two schools who will be playing for the college football championship are Notre Dame and Ohio State. Of course. Who else? It was as if I had escaped from a time warp. Their names are synonymous with success and championships. Then I learned that Notre Dame, the university in South Bend, Indiana, had undergone a renaissance much like the other Notre Dame, the cathedral in Paris, France, which has been rebuilt and reborn and recently returned to its position of prominence after a devastating fire. No, I don’t believe in coincidences.    

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Drones … drama — What’s Going On?

Tuesday, December 17th, 2024

By Bob Gaydos

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is watching for his children at his house when something strange is happening in the sky over the Bayonne Bridge. “War of the Worlds,” 2005.

Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is watching for his children at his house when something strange is happening in the sky over the Bayonne Bridge. “War of the Worlds,” 2005.

 “We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin. The aliens have returned to New Jersey. … and, apparently, everywhere else.“

   Eighty-six years after Orson Welles created widespread panic with his Halloween radio broadcast of HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds,“ with spacecraft, piloted by non-humans launching attacks all over New Jersey, strange spacecraft are now being seen again, all over the skies of New Jersey. 

    Well, actually, this time they are real, not the center of a well-done radio drama that played on the imagination of listeners. But this time, there are no attacks. That we know of.

     However, the government, which is to say all the agencies responsible for policing and protecting the skies above the United States of America, are acting like this is a radio drama.

    Hear no evil, see no evil. Your eyes aren’t seeing what they’re seeing. Forget those video tapes. These objects, supposedly drones, represent no known threat. There are no foreign actors involved. But we don’t know what they are. Or, if we do, we’re not telling you. Trust us.

     Yeah, folks, it’s the wrong time for that trust us approach. Especially with large drone-like objects that first manifested over New Jersey now showing up in the skies over New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and even on the West Coast.

     For a month now, reports of unusual drone activity have been filling TV news reports with the same basic information: Average citizens see the drones, some take pictures, some take videos, and all wonder what’s going on. They contact public officials, who wonder what’s going on. They contact federal agencies who are supposed to know what’s going on and they tell us don’t worry, there’s no evidence of a threat. Period. Oh, yeah, also don’t shoot at whatever they are because it could be dangerous. So it sounds like they know what’s going on, but don’t want to tell us, which is frustrating, if not scary, or they don’t know what’s going on and don’t want to tell us which is scarier.

     So naturally, conspiracy theories crop up about aliens (most people I talked with felt aliens would be too smart to bother with us). One other theory I found interesting was that it was a “psyops” operation by the government or some group to either divert our attention from some real news (governments around the world are collapsing, the incoming Cabinet nominees are a disaster), or to frighten us into giving the incoming administration more powers to deal with perceived threats. 

  The latter would be accomplished by the likes of Elon, Jeff, and all the other Trump-happy billionaires and their tech savvy minions with their AI, driverless cars, super chips, spaceships and Metasphere. What’s a few big drones?

    Now, as usual, it may turn out to be something more down to earth and troublesome. I heard one of those New Jersey mayors talking on TV about a briefing in which some federal officials said something about radioactive material going missing at Newark Airport. Coincidentally, about a month ago. Nobody knows where it is. Federal government likes to keep track of where this stuff is. If you’re searching, you would start in New Jersey and spread out to New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. After that, wherever the clues lead you. That would include closing down runways at Stewart International Airport in the Hudson Valley for an hour.

    What this would mean is that our government has such mega drones, ready for use for such reconnaissance and search operations. Good to know. Not good to know is that some potentially hazardous material managed to somehow disappear from one of our airports. Maybe that’s what the government really doesn’t want us to know. 

   If that’s the case, I think someone made a bad decision in trying to act as if what we were seeing wasn’t happening. If you tell us what’s going on just maybe someone will have seen or heard something that could help find the stuff you’re looking for. Isn’t that how the FBI works?

   Then all the TV reporters could go back to pretending they’re covering the news.

    Apropos of nothing really, the New Jersey connection with aliens and “War of the Worlds” was repeated in 2005 when Tom Cruise starred in the movie version of the HG Wells novel. It was set in Bayonne, N.J., featuring shots of the beautiful Bayonne Bridge.

     Also, Orson Welles apologized to the nation after he scared the bejezus out of people with his Halloween broadcast. Whatever happens with the radioactive material, if that’s what’s going on, President Biden should do the same. Tell us what you know, Joe. Heck, at this point, aliens would be a welcome relief.