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I'm Michael Baranowski, Professor of Political Science at Northern Kentucky University.

I'm joined today by my conservative counterpart, Cleveland area attorney and defender of freedom,

Jay Carson. Hey, good morning, Mike. Hey, Jay. So I thought we would start off this midweek show

with more on balloons because keep on popping up being shot down, right?

And this last week in the wake of the U.S. shooting down a Chinese spy balloon that was February 4th.

There have been at least at this point three additional objects shot down.

And, you know, people are understandably starting to wonder what exactly is going

on. And not too long ago, President Biden actually addressed the issue saying, we don't yet know

exactly what these three objects were, but nothing right now suggests they were related to China's

spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country.

And it appears likely at this point that the latest three objects that were shot down were balloons owned by private companies

or research institutions. And the Biden administration has gone at this point now for being

criticized for waiting too long to take down that initial Chinese spy balloon to now being criticized for

what seems like a policy of just, well, if it's up there, let's just shoot it down, basically,

and figure out what it might be after the fact at some point.

Yeah, kids' birthday parties getting real.

You know, yeah, I mean, you know, and the president said that these three latest objects

were detected after NORAD, that's the North American Aerospace Defense Command, stepped up its initial aerial surveillance following the Chinese spy balloon incident, and that they were taken down because they posed potential hazards to air traffic, and that the government couldn't entirely rule out the possibility that there might be surveillance balloons.

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