Acknowledging at least five previous Chinese balloon flights over the United States, the head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command stated the incursions spotlighted a recently-released hole in US national security, the Washington Post writes.

“As NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America,” Air Force General Glen D. VanHerck said at a Monday media briefing.  “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out.”

VanHerck said that elements in the US intelligence community informed him of the previous overflights “after the fact;” previous reporting said the Biden Administration had pushed for greater vigilance regarding Chinese activities, pushing for a review of previous intelligence which uncovered the balloon flights that occurred during the previous administration.  Members of Biden’s administration have reached out to befuddled and ignorant members of the Trump cabal to offer them briefings on the matter, presumably only if their security clearances are in order.

The House GOP are planning to flex their legislative muscle with a resolution saying ChiCom spy balloons are bad for America, CNN’s Alayna Treene reports, adding that they’re probably not going to condemn Biden or mention the response at all, but just stick to China.

Warning residents to leave immediately or risk physical harm, emergency officials plan to release the toxic gases being stored in five train cars that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, with Republican Governor Mike DeWine saying, “You need to leave, you just need to leave. This is a matter of life and death,” according to the Associated Press.

A spokesman for Norfolk Southern Railway said the process would involve using a small charge to open a hole in each of the tankers, allowing the gases to dissipate in the air.  Officials are calling for the complete evacuation of the area because, as the spokesman noted, ““We can’t control where that goes.”  He noted there is also the potential for each car to explode, sending debris and shrapnel rocketing throughout the area, which includes the town of East Palestine and around 20 properties in neighboring Pennsylvania.

Emergency crews were pulled away from the 50-car derailment hours after the accident late Friday night after crews from five states responding to the scene were told one of the cars contained vinyl chloride, a dangerous and potentially explosive chemical.  In fact, five of the cars contain the dangerous chemical.  Although officials have not yet specified the cause of the accident, members of the three-person crew aboard the train reported receiving a warning that there was a warning signal from one of the cars’ axle just prior to the derailment.

Along with Bill O’Reilly, novelist Newt Gingrich has led the effort to rewrite American history, and now he wants to rewrite physics and US military capability.  Gingrich insists the US government has the equipment and capability to have captured, safely and intact, the 120+ foot-long Chinese surveillance balloon traveling at 60,000 feet whose cargo alone weighs an estimated 2,000 pounds.  Where this capability exists is questionable:  at one time, the US military ran a program using the Fulton system (also known as Skyhook) to extract individuals using a guide balloon to lift a rope, tied to the extractee, that was caught by a specially-equipped cargo plane, typically a C-130, but those lifts were smaller weight, lower altitude and had one point connected to the ground; Fulton was last acknowledged to be used in a 1982 training exercise in which a serviceman was killed.

Another process, used to capture small cylinders of dust sample, allowed planes operated by NASA to catch a small canopy parachute as it fell to Earth after reentry; it succeeded about half the time.  (The US military reportedly used a similar process–with similar success–to capture top-secret satellite film, a process that has not been used since the age of digital transmissions.) Gingrich apparently believes the technology to capture a 15-pound film canister on a 8-foot parachute is the same as that needed to stop a one-ton platform on a 120-foot-long weather balloon.

The death toll from a series of devastating earthquakes that centered in south-central Turkey on Monday rose to 3,400 in less than 24 hours since the tremors flattened buildings across the region and into neighboring northern Syria, officials in both countries said, per the AP.

Tens of thousands of civilians in both nations were left homeless amid fucking brutal cold rain and snow, heaping more misery on a region torn by civil war and a refugee crisis for more than a decade since a 2011 uprising against Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Asad. Assistance began pouring in from other nations across the globe as tens of thousands were believed still trapped underneath the rubble of buildings across the vast areas affected by the two 7.0+ magnitude earthquakes and aftershocks.

The leadership of the Republican majority Virginia House of Delegates let a procedural deadline expire Monday on bills that had not yet gotten a hearing and thus ending the bills’ chances of getting passed this session, among them HB 1562, which would have barred people convicted of participating in an insurrection from “positions of public trust,” such as teaching, law enforcement, health care, and running for elected office, Virginia Public Media reports.

INFLATION.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.
SPY BALLOON.

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) February 6, 2023

Portly North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un hasn’t been seen in public for at least 35 days, raising concerns among fans that he might be dead or in a coma or something, the Telegraph reports.

Kim has disappeared for similarly long stretches in the past, most recently in 2021, but the upcoming parade for the NK military’s 75th anniversary will be a key moment in determining whether the chunky “nepo-baby” bastard (or a convincing body double) is still alive and marginally lucid.

Responding to a particularly insane lie by George Santos, in which he claimed to have been one of the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark – reportedly the greatest flop in Broadway history, losing $60 million for its investors during its run in 2011 – the actual former producers on Monday released a statement, saying “Of all the tribulations the producers of Spider Man had to endure, we are very pleased, proud and relieved to report working with George Santos was not one of them.”

If it’s true the Pentagon purposely did NOT tell President Trump of Chinese Spy Balloons during his administration then we had a serious breach in command during the Trump admin.

The POTUS is the Commander in Chief.

We must investigate and hold accountable those who broke rank.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) February 6, 2023

On Monday morning the collective MAGA hive mind switched from “that story about ChiCom spy balloons entering US airspace at least three times during the Trump Administration is bullshit” to “the Deep State military kept them hidden from President Trump.” It’s not clear precisely what new information prompted the goal posts to be relocated, as normally right wingers are impervious to facts and evidence that challenge their narrative, but whatever it was it’s plainly frustrating to them that they could no longer act like it was simply Joe Biden and Democrats making it up.

Republican Senators Ron “RonAnon” Johnson and Chuck “Should Be Pushing Up” Grassley, New Age “Hindu” death cult member former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and some washout former FBI agent calling herself a “whistleblower” Nicole Parker will be the star witnesses of grapple freak Jim Jordan’s “Weaponization” select subcommittee hearing on Thursday, CNN’s Annie Grayer reports.

What a joke. The best they can get for witnesses are two currently serving Republicans from the other chamber and fucking Tulsi Gabbard. Okay, maybe Parker could theoretically say something actually material to the investigation. RonAnon and Grassley might be the funniest, that their own anti-Deep State “investigations” have been ignored in the Senate so now they have to go under oath to talk about it in the House. That’s somehow even sadder than Gabbard being a witness.

A 27-year-old Maryland neo-Nazi and his 34-year-old girlfriend he met while incarcerated have been charged with plotting to knock out power stations around Maryland, the latest in a string of criminal and anti-government domestic terrorists attacks on the nation’s power grid, the Washington Post reports.  Brandon Russell, the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, and Sarah Beth Clendaniel are charged with conspiring to destroy an energy facility, sabotage similar to attacks in North Carolina, Washington and other areas.   They face up to twenty years in prison if convicted.

The exact manner in which the two met while both were in prison is unspecified; Russell was in federal custody for possessing bombmaking materials and Clendaniel was in a Maryland facility for robbing convenience stores armed with a machete with the help of a 59-year-old male accomplice.  Both are still on probation for their previous charges.    “Going to prison was worth it because I might not have met you otherwise,” Russell said in one text to Clendainiel, prior to his latest run-in that will likely end in another jail sentence.

The “ReAwaken America” tour, which are basically just a fucked up QAnon version of TED Talks, has always been a total freak show, featuring maniacs like Mike Flynn, Texas AG Ken Paxton, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, Mike Lindell, Dr Stella “Demon Sperm Lady” Immanuel, the Michigan booze lady, Lin Wood, and others. One of the newer additions to the roster, Eric Trump’s pal Scott McKay, however takes it even further with his anti-semitic batshittery, according to Media Matters.

The rundown of McKay’s conspiracies includes his beliefs that the 9/11 attacks, the Lincoln, Kennedy, and McKinley assassinations, the Oklahoma City bombing, and all sorts of other horrible acts were perpetrated by “the same group of people that has done a very good job at hiding under the religion of Judaism,” which he says are the “Khazarian Mafia,” whatever the fuck that means.

I’m headed to Iowa on Friday, February 10th for a Meet & Greet hosted by the Scott County Republican Women!

I hope to see you there!

REGISTER ⤵️https://t.co/9BQ4WNdXzd pic.twitter.com/7BF9MXNrAw

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) February 6, 2023

Like lots of other politicians with a track record of successful campaigns, the “duly elected” Governor of Arizona Kari Lake is headed to Iowa on an exciting trip to “test the waters” for a presidential run, while loser Katie Hobbs is stuck in Phoenix doing boring office paperwork.

A MAGA Pennsylvania family of three were found dead in their backyard last month may have ended it over disgraced former President Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, NBC News reports.

Cops in West Manchester Township last week announced the results of their investigation after James Daub, 62, his 59 year-old wife Deborah, and 26 year-old daughter Morgan were found dead of gunshots outside their home on January 25th, with officials having determined it was a “joint decision” based on a note left at the scene. Friends and neighbors described the Daubs as hardcore Evangelical Trump fans who had ghosted after the fat orange fuck lost reelection in 2020.

“They were just so hell-bent on Trump winning, like this could be in the end if he doesn’t,” said Bret Stabley, manager at the Bowlers Supply in York, Pennsylvania where Deborah and Morgan Daub had been frequent customers prior to the 2020 election but disappeared afterward.

The National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the United States is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week at 1-800-273-8255 or 988. Please call or text if you need to talk to someone.

A relatively massive 3.8-magnitude earthquake struck the town on West Seneca, New York, just outside Buffalo at approximately 6:15 AM on Monday, Fox 5 reports. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the temblor, its epicenter in a not seismically-active area.

It was no coincidence that a promo card saying Pfizer had sponsored the Grammy Awards on Sunday night appeared immediately after a Satanic-themed performance of the song “Unholy” by Sam Smith and a transgender pop star named Kim Petras, the Gateway Pundit reports.

“The 65th Annual Grammy Awards held in Los Angeles Sunday night and broadcast on CBS featured the Grammy’s [sic] usual tribute to the Prince of Darkness, this time apparently sponsored by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer,” wrote the Gateway Pundit’s, um, entertainment reporter, Kristinn Taylor, who then added that First Lady Jill Biden made a surprise appearance at the end of the music industry awards show and that “Unholy is definitely a Biden family values song.”

Taylor made no further real effort to establish a connection between Satanism and Pfizer in the article, nor did she ever mention the COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by the pharmaceutical giant.

The death toll from a massive 7.8-magnitude overnight earthquake that struck north of a provincial capital in south-central Turkey continued to climb Monday, with at least 1,300 dead and hundreds more feared trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings, the Associated Press reports.

People were forced outdoors in the middle of the night amid snow and freezing rain by the quake and a 6.6-magnitude aftershock that struck just hours later. The quake was just another hardship imposed on a region ravaged by Syria’s long-running civil war, with an estimated 4 million refugees having fled over the border into Turkey during the now more than decade-old conflict.

UPDATE 2/6/2023 5:55 AM EST: A second 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Kahramanmaras province, to the north of the earlier 7.8-magnitude quake, at 1:24 PM local time on Monday.

The ChiCom spy balloon spotted over Costa Rica on Friday was “blown off course” from its “weather research” task, Chinese officials said at a news briefing on Monday, according to Bloomberg.

“It has made an unintended entry into the airspace of Latin American countries,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning at a regular news briefing Monday in Beijing. “It’s for civilian purposes, and it is affected by the weather and with limited self-steering capability.” When asked by a reporter why China had lost control of two balloons across the Pacific Ocean, Mao said “I’m not an expert, so it’s not convenient for me to answer the question.”

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake has struck central Turkey early Monday morning local time, with a strong aftershock following shortly thereafter, causing massive damage and likely a significant number of casualties, the Washington Post reports.