Chinese balloon floats with air of mystery

The farmer saw a white object in the clear Montana skies on the fourth Saturday of January, the 28th.

His first reaction was to grab a cell phone and submit his photo to the local newspaper. Gosh, times have changed from my youth when our reaction might have been to think of the intro to a popular radio show of “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s …”

What were the reactions to the photos?

The telephones of Montana Gov. Mike DeWine ran off the hook searching for answers that he did not have, but he reached out to President Joe Biden for answers.

What did the president say?

Nothing because it was a Saturday, and President Biden has spent 164 Saturdays in the silence that surrounds his Delaware houses. Unfortunately, this time it proved the wisdom of the line “Silence like a cancer grows” from the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence.” And grow it did.

Since the photo showed a round, white object, it was believed to be a balloon.

When my friend Francis X. O’Sullivan, the 6’5” former Marine captain said “People want a complete story, so when some facts are missing, they tend to ‘fill-in’ the story circle by adding something that sounds right to them,” I listened because his deep voice was full of wisdom: Semper Fi.

Since the concept of a balloon being able to carry something as heavy as a person was demonstrated centuries ago by none other than Ben Franklin, the “fill-ins,” necessary by the absence of our president, began with the story that it might be a weather balloon that had drifted off course from China. Or was it Russia?

Another “fill-in” — that it was an Unidentified Flying Object — caused stories of pilots, both military and civilian, seeing strange objects standing still or flying at supersonic speeds.

Once the weekend passed, while the balloon was leisurely moving over the U.S., the president gave one of his crisps “over the shoulder” responses to the question of why he had not ordered it shot down with “I gave the order to the Pentagon three days ago.” Mr. President, the Pentagon is a building. Who was that person, or persons, who refused a presidential order?

As the days drifted by, and the balloon drifted over the U.S., including missile sites, the “fill-in” became that it was too dangerous to shoot down over the wildernesses of Alaska, Canada or Montana, because the waste might fall on people.

Unexplained was the reason that it was not shot down as soon as it was spotted in U.S. airspace over the Aleutian Island where we have an observation post.

As the balloon continued its journey over the U.S., the “fillins” became that the military blocked their transmissions, then that they learned from it. Really?

They learned from blocked transmissions after they blocked them?

On the Saturday before the president’s State of the Union speech on Feb. 7, the balloon

The 118th Congress has barely begun. A wave of freshman representatives and senators are coming in with a mandate to help address a lagging economy, record inflation and an increasingly volatile geopolitical landscape.

The federal government also just hit its borrowing limit and is approaching a fiscal cliff. January and February are months to get down to business.

Yet the full Senate Judiciary Committee held one of its first hearings of the year on another topic: last year’s Taylor Swift ticketing debacle.

For context, ticket presales for Ms. Swift’s “The Eras Tour” experienced a barrage of difficulties. “Eras” was the first tour for the singer since she toured back in 2018. Fans were stuck in massive online queues, with some waiting days and many not being able to get any tickets at all.

Things got so out of hand that Ms. Swift and ticket distributor Ticketmaster canceled the presale event. Given Ms. Swift’s popularity, national outrage promptly ensued. This is what led to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., calling this hearing, claiming consolidation in the ticketing industry led to the incident.

Claims by politicians like Sen. Klobuchar rest on the notion that Ticketmaster has been a monopoly in the ticketing space since its merger with global entertainment company Live Nation Entertainment in 2010. Sen. Klobuchar — who has attempted to bring antitrust action against a variety of American industries — is urging the Department of Justice to unwind the merger between the two companies.

However, the merger between Ticketmaster and LNE has already been thoroughly litigated. The 2010 merger agreement came about as part of a meticulously negotiated settlement with the DOJ to ensure the protection of consumers and competition. The joint entity is also operating under a consent decree with the DOJ so that they continue to uphold the terms of that merger and comply with regulatory standards.

Further, the joint entity still has a host of competitors like SeatGeek, Spotify, Vivid and StubHub. In fact, SeatGeek has agreements with several venues on the Eras Tour and was the primary vendor for five locations for Ms. Swift’s upcoming shows. There is adequate competition in the space.

The merger — and any alleged consolidation as a result — is not the issue.

However, what is clear to many Taylor Swift fans across the nation is that something clearly did go horribly wrong.

Eric Budish, an economics professor at the University of Chicago, points out some of the mistakes Ms. Swift made that led to the disaster. Dr. Budish notes that Ms. Swift likely played an outsized role in determining pricing, instead of using an algorithmic system based on actual demand.