Aviation Update

Drudge is pointing to this Daily Mail story with angst..

A new photo of a mysterious flying object over Kansas has been revealed. It appears to be the same aircraft as one that was snapped soaring over Texas last month. The exact identify of the aircraft remains a mystery, but rumours abound that it could be a secret jet.

Here's the Daily Mail photo:

Now, here's a few photos of a United States B2 bomber:

Seems pretty close to me.  The wingspan on today's photo doesn't look like the one the Daily Mail claims is the secret aircraft.  B2 bombers are stationed at Whiteman AFB near Knob Knoster, MO, so seeing one in Kansas would hardly be shocking.

MORE  4/20/14

Some have said it appears the picture up top shows a smooth trailing edge to the flying V, as opposed to the B2 which is jagged.   That's apparent when looking closely at blowups of the pic.  Part of the uncertainty is the high altitude at which this plane is flying along with the camera zoom needed to capture it.  The contrails line up with the B2's engine position, the wingspan appears similar, the region is close to the B2's home base.  But if the trailing edge is indeed smooth (and this isn't an illusion created by atmospheric conditions or photography effects) then obviously it could be a new model.

The next question would be, whose new model?   

Clintonville Booms

I usually don't link to these guys, well, ever, but they've covering a story that sounds interesting--the Wisconsin booms:

Loud booming noises have shattered the air and rattled the ground in parts of the town, wrenching many residents out of their sleep. And no amount of investigation has determined the cause, city administrator Lisa Kuss said in a telephone interview.”

Of course the Jones gang is skeptical of yesterday's USGS announcement that a swarm of small earthqaukes, 1.5 magnitude, caused the noises, case closed, nothing to see, move on. Problem is, the sounds were occurring before the measured quakes:

Indeed, the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune reports that residents have been feeling the booms for months, noting that, “Several residents questioned the solution. After all, earlier that week they were told earthquakes had been ruled out as a potential cause of the sounds that shook them awake for several nights.”

Not to say micro quakes aren't the cause--they may be--it just seems odd the USGS would not show any quakes then suddenly find a swarm of tiny ones near Clintonville, solving the mystery. Small earthquakes aren't normally felt. But what else could it be?

Well, there are no railroad lines in Clintonville. There is a small airport but it's an unlikely source since small jets have been known to visit there without previous complaints. Obviously fracking comes to mind, the cause du jour for all recent mysteries, but..

No one seems to know what the mysterious booms in Clintonville are, which means runaway speculation is about to begin. City officials have checked and rechecked methane levels at the local landfill, monitored water, sewer and gas lines, contacted the military about any exercises in the area, reviewed mining explosive permits and inspected the Pigeon River dam next to city hall.

Nothing. And there is no mining or heavy construction nearby.

That leaves what, pranks? Someone shooting off contraband artillery? An alien base? Secret underground nuke tests? Dick Cheney hunting trip? AQ training? The entity that killed the blackbirds in Arkansas?

I'm stumped. Alex Jones obviously believes the earthquake explanation is a little too convenient--me, too--although he probably thinks it's an underground FEMA camp being constructed. If you watch the geologist on the linked video he says a possibility could be the low water table (lack of snow this winter) causing the granite subsurface to 'settle', which perhaps could explain the small earthquakes. It has been a very warm winter across most of the US, so perhaps we're experiencing some new geologic effects we've not seen before.

Whatever the case it shows how much mankind knows about our environment. These USGS guys are probably just guessing. Yet we've been told to implicitly trust climate forecasts out to 100 years.

Hannity and the Letters

There's a "Wired" story going around the net about Bruce Ivins and the anthrax letters that succinctly states what everyone already knows--Dr. Ivins appears guilty as sin but he's dead; there's no smoking gun; and even some of the investigators are still not convinced. So if he didn't do it, who did?

The article breaks some new ground making Ivins look even guiltier, but it also suggests the FBI had their suspicions from at least 2003 onward. At the time Steven Hatfill was their official non-official suspect in the media. Why did the Bush Justice Dept leave him out there? Yeah, it's not too hard to imagine a sinister lefty fantasy where evil Bush warlocks used him as a foil to invade Iraq...wait, how would that have worked again?

Seems to work better to consider that if Hatfill was indeed a foil he would have been more useful as a focus to get America's mind OFF state-sponsored (or rogue non-state terrorist) culprits rather than the reverse. It was the classic lone wolf. Besides, he was paid well in the end. The plausible reason is that they needed someone, anyone, to assuage public paranoia, and if the public believed the suspect was under surveillance, the threat would be reduced.

At the same time it might also act to lessen the worry of the real culprit, leaving them open to error. But as the Wired story suggests, nothing is crystal clear. A lot seems to depend on the mailer and his/her targets--mainly media figures. In looking back at some of the early coverage a story emerged that didn't ring a bell in the ole memory banks:

A series of hoax anthrax letters are sent to Fox News commentators Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. Hannity will later say he began receiving the letters in the winter of 2000 and then a second batch in August 2001. Most of them were sent from a postmark in Indianapolis, Indiana, but “one or two were from Trenton,” New Jersey, where the deadly anthrax letters will be sent from shortly after the 9/11 attacks.

The FBI will later allow the New York Post to see copies of these letters, which have block handwriting sloping down to the right and other features remarkably similar to the later letters containing real anthrax. Hannity will later say: “When I saw the Tom Daschle envelope and the Tom Brokaw envelope, I immediately was stunned. It was the exact same handwriting that I had recognized.… When I saw it I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s the same guy.’”

Were those letters ever published? If Hannity was getting hoax attack letters sans powder leading up to 9/11, and postmarked from Trenton, NJ--the same place the actual attack letters were sent--that seems kind of important. In the least it would provide another opportunity to check Ivins' alibi as to his whereabouts during the likely mailing windows for those letters, that is, if Hannity wasn't just blowing smoke trying to horn in on a big story after 9/11.

Also, if the Hannity letters were a match does it make sense for AQ or Iraq or some other terrorist entity to have been sending them empty before 9/11? Maybe, maybe not. Supposedly an anthrax letter was sent to Canadian authorities in early 2001 in an effort to get an Egyptian terrorist released. A hoax powder letter was also sent to former NY Times writer Judy Miller in the period after 9/11 but before the letter story had become news, and she had written a book on bioweapons. So it's hard to speculate precisely. Which is the jist of the Wired story.

Anniversaries

On February 26, 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed by terrorist Ramzi Yousef (who now claims to be a Christian) and several others in what amounted to the first unofficial sortie by Islamic terrorists on US soil. At least one of the bomb-makers remains at large (and not even mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report).

There was no national commission to investigate the attack so the public is left to wonder in perpetuity about the players involved. The presumption was al Qaeda, but it was just a presumption.

Two years earlier on the same date then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered his invasion forces to retreat from Kuwait City, marking the end of occupation and the Gulf War. Kuwait is celebrating the 20 year anniversary this year. Unlike the royal wedding in Britain, Obama was formally invited to attend but apparently declined; Admiral Mullen and Colin Powell were there.

Today is also the first anniversary of another weird Obama conspiracy--the death of a woman named Holiyah "Lia" Soetoro, who claimed to be a step-sister and caretaker of the president when he lived as Barry Soetoro in Indonesia. One might think a story about a long-lost and previously unnamed step-sister would make national news, if nothing else in a puff piece, but beyond WND this one only made news on the blogs:

“Lia, a nickname. She lived at the family home of Lolo Soetoro for 15 years. And four years of which she spent in the company of a black kid who came from Hawaii.

Obama's half-sister Maya reportedly called this woman a fraud--she may well be--yet it would seem rather easy for a mainstream journalist to confirm or deny. Obama just recently visited Indonesia on November 9, 2010 and reporters mentioned his history as such:

Obama's stop here, the second country on his 10-day Asia trip, is a homecoming for the president. He spent four years in Indonesia as a boy after his mother married an Indonesian man, and his return was highly anticipated. "Much has been made of the fact that this marks my return to where I lived as a young boy," the president said. "I will tell you, though, that I barely recognize it."

Nothing about the mysterious Lia, though. The visit was cut short, reportedly due to volcanic ash from Mt. Merapi. Obama's earlier planned visit to his boyhood homeland was to have taken place in March 2010 but was canceled by the health care debates, then later in June, canceled that time by the BP oil spill. If Lia was indeed a childhood step-sister to Obama she would have missed them all anyway. But like the first World Trade Center bombing this one appears destined to remain just another unexplored mystery.

Coincidence?

Regarding the dead fish and birds in Arkansas..

Hey, the GOP is taking over the House this week. Puppies and kittens are next. You know they are, followed by Grandma and Tiny Tim. It's just too bad Grayson is not around to point these things out anymore.

MORE 1/3/11

A CSI investigation is in on the berds (imagine a Hitchcock accent):

"The birds obviously hit something very hard and had hemorrhages," said Rowe.

Well yes, and that's quite a conundrum if that something "very hard" was not the ground. There's absolutely nothing beside an airplane that would be very hard in the atmosphere, and we know it wasn't an aircraft since hitting a field of starlings/black birds would be traumatic for any flying object and nothing was reported.

My rudimentary knowledge of their pattern is this--they fly off the roost at dawn and back at dusk in massive waves that sometimes darken the sky. I saw one just this morning going to work. They can even appear on doppler radars. It's not unusual for them to invade a series of trees and cackle, even after sunset. Who knows what these birds were doing, but something certainly made them fly around 10 pm, which seems odd.

Weather radar suggests there were no thunderstorms in the Beebe area around 10pm, with most of the activity passing east much earlier in the evening. An archive report from Little Rock, just to the southwest, shows no remarkable weather around the time of event, nor does this one from nearby Searcy.

So, assuming weather (lightning) was not a factor (and that's not conclusive since there could have been some hail not reported) that leaves their other theory--fireworks. Going back to the assessment of the folks from the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission, they said the birds died of blunt force trauma, either from hitting something or hitting the ground. We assume they weren't AQ in training or suddenly became suicidal (over the new Congress) so something had to zap them first to make them fall. Saying their organs were intact seems to rule out shock, surprise over fireworks so that leaves what, a cloud of gas of some sort? But wouldn't that have harmed and other creatures as well?

OK, well it seems this story may be destined for two directions. One, it was some weird global warming effect heretofore unknown, perhaps associated with massive warming of the sub surface layer or the aliens are sending a stronger message to Obama. Otherwise, I got nothing.

MORE 1/3/11

Here's an MSNBC article stating that the birds were not poisoned, because there were no instance of dead cats in the neighborhood after munching on some of them. It also says they died 'in midair', which narrows things down (if true). IF they died in midair then there appears to be only one plausible explanation--they ran into another dense flock of birds. But why would they have been on the move that late?

The above story said there were loud noises before the event, which could have been shotgun blasts or some other noise effort to get them to move on down the road. The MSNBC story says these same kind of birds (generally nuisances) had been pestering Beebe some years ago before they tried some mitigation, so maybe this was some kind of a state effort gone wrong and nobody's talking.

But if they were spooked by the noise and assuming several large flocks took off at the same time then collided, well that's a pretty quick event and not something spaced over a large area. An Examiner story had this quote:

Joseph Brean of the National Post writes: "Within just a few minutes over about a kilometer and a half, it was raining birds; they fell onto houses and lawns, dead as Monty Python’s Norwegian Blue parrot. A wildlife officer responding to an emergency call reported that he arrived on the scene as birds were still falling around him, some of them still alive."

That's about a mile in area, which seems way too large to be just a few roosts. Also, if a guy showed up on the scene after being called via 911 and birds were still falling it seems far too slow for just a quick scare-then-midair after fireworks. However, if the noise scared almost every roost in town, and say there were 15,000 or more birds chilling before the event, then maybe a bunch of them survived the collisions, in other words, a lof of unreported near-misses as well. From what we know so far it sounds like a massive roost of sleeping birds scared shitless by a noise of some sort, causing them all to fly off like bats out of hell with a massive bird collision, taking out about 5000. It would seem prudent to identify the noise next because if there was no big noise then I'm back to nothing. And yes, I'm spending way too much time on this.

By the way, as if on cue some commenters on the MSNBC site are bringing in the Pine Bluff Arsenal, one even saying the wind favored some kind of dispersal plume to drift into Beebe. First of all, no it didn't--the weather reports above clearly show the surface wind was westerly (Pine Bluff is almost due south and over 50 miles away) and second, if there was some kind of deadly cloud released then it would have killed many other living things and not just a bunch of blackbirds.

But admittedly that was one aspect I left out of the speculation on the previous update--blaming it on Bush. One must ALWAYS consider this for every calamity, so my bad.