Live data from Hacker News

US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

thehill.com

51–60 of 657 posts

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#51
So to temper expectations, the article only cites Republican Marco Rubio has having any real inquisitive drive to unearth clandestine UFO knowledge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy

Chances are excellent Rubio might be doing this to try and draw attention away from several state supreme court rulings striking down bans on transgender care and drag shows incepted and championed by republicans. If not that, then to draw attention away from the spectacle of republican cooperation during successful debt ceiling negotiations.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don’t think the government is sufficiently competent to cover up something as big as intelligent aliens arriving on earth. That’s the most exciting news ever. There’s just no way in my mind they could keep that quiet successfully.

Aliens that are alternate dimensional / advanced technologically could control the release of their existence through various means, while still having some incentive to reveal themselves in stages that seem plausible to us. Imagining them only as meat-sacks-from-another-rock is lacking imagination.

But at this point you're also arguing for the existence of fairies.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don’t think the government is sufficiently competent to cover up something as big as intelligent aliens arriving on earth. That’s the most exciting news ever. There’s just no way in my mind they could keep that quiet successfully.

Right they simultaneously believe the government is so incompetent they can't implement national healthcare that every other major nation on earth has figured out but are so competent they can get thousands of people to keep the most impactful secret in the history of mankind.

Not implementing national healthcare is a choice made to placate US corporations that contribute to politicians' campaigns. Like most "hard to solve" problems, it isn't a competency issue and isn't that hard to solve. The "problem" makes a lot of money for the right people, and it doesn't matter that it costs a lot of money for most people.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#54
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are hostile countries using declassified nuclear blueprints to bomb our homeland. Alas, if you want the democratic experiment to succeed, you need to account for those who stand to lose everything from your success.

Official secrecy clearly failed to stop the very scenario you're talking about! We have had nuclear secrecy for nearly 80 years. In that time, nuclear weapons have proliferated to nine countries. North Korea has them, for God's sake. Nuclear weapons are simply a function of having a large enough industrial base to support their development. The "secret sauce" is officially secret, but it isn't actually secret.

> We have had nuclear secrecy for nearly 80 years. In that time, nuclear weapons have proliferated to nine countries. North Korea has them, for God's sake

Nine countries as opposed to...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#55
post #17

There sure is a lot of UFO talk around the same time audio of a former president laughing about all the treason he’s committing. Probably just a coincidence.

As a non-American, let me ask you if you really think all the other high level American politicians are clean? If not, would you be better positioned to scrutinize the current political system as inherently flawed instead of barking at current political candidate X or Y?

> As a non-American, let me ask you if you really think all the other high level American politicians are clean?

No, a bunch of somewhat less high-level but still, in some cases, high-level ones are somewhat less flamboyant co-conspirators, co-principals, and/or accessories in Trump’s crimes, as well as having their own; most of the rest are comparatively if not absolutely clean.

> If not, would you be better positioned to scrutinize the current political system as inherently flawed instead of barking at current political candidate X or Y?

I don’t know about the person you’re responding to, but I’ve written more, over a longer time, about the structural problems of the American political system than about Trump’s personal crimes, and I’ve written specifically about how the culture of impunity fed by, inter alia, Ford’s pardon of Nixon fueled a series of subsequent executive abuses of which Trump’s are the most serious.

One can simultaneously recognize and discusss the forest and the unique, largest tree. The one does not, and should not, preclude discussion of the other, both are important.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#56
post #44

I don't need to believe in UFOs to believe the government would spend tons of money trying to retrieve one.

I think that's the story here -- congress is trying to fix some serious corruption. Replace UFOs with magic beans and it sounds like some folks in government seem to have been swindled into diverting money through multiple paths into "classified work" chasing after Jack and a giant stalk. That sounds like a potentially fantastic grift for whoever is running it. This is why the bill says: no more money for anything re…

This would be a stronger theory if the UFO triggers in congress weren’t also the most credulous / disingenuous believers in numerous other conspiracy theories, and only slightly further behind in their advocacy for corruption.

Maybe there is fraud and the wrong people are getting rich from it?

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#57
post #51

So to temper expectations, the article only cites Republican Marco Rubio has having any real inquisitive drive to unearth clandestine UFO knowledge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy Chances are excellent Rubio might be doing this to try and draw attention away from several state supreme court rulings striking down bans on transgender care and drag shows incepted and championed by republicans. If not th…

[flagged]

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#58

What I find most fascinating about aliens and UFOs is that they always seem to be heading for America. If a UFO arrived from another galaxy it might choose any place to land, but talk is always America-centric. Do other countries feel so UFO special?

Why did Jesus allegedly air travel to America after being resurrected according to Mormons? It’s American exceptionalism, duh.

He allegedly spent his teenage years wandering around Glastonbury in England as well and we get plenty of UFO sightings!

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#59
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are hostile countries using declassified nuclear blueprints to bomb our homeland. Alas, if you want the democratic experiment to succeed, you need to account for those who stand to lose everything from your success.

Official secrecy clearly failed to stop the very scenario you're talking about! We have had nuclear secrecy for nearly 80 years. In that time, nuclear weapons have proliferated to nine countries. North Korea has them, for God's sake. Nuclear weapons are simply a function of having a large enough industrial base to support their development. The "secret sauce" is officially secret, but it isn't actually secret.

“Policy X is useless because it did not stop every single instance of the thing it was trying to reduce” is a fallacious argument. Seat belts did not halt deaths in auto accidents, etc.

Secrecy may or may not be warranted, but this is not a good argument against it.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#60

What I find most fascinating about aliens and UFOs is that they always seem to be heading for America. If a UFO arrived from another galaxy it might choose any place to land, but talk is always America-centric. Do other countries feel so UFO special?

Assuming this isn’t just a big psyop trying to scare US adversaries, and that UFO’s are real… the US was the first to detonate nukes in 1945, and on its own territory, which might explain some of it. Maybe the UFO’s were investigating how scientifically and technologically advanced humanity was becoming, and naturally focused on nuclear tech as a leading indicator.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics TV broadcast might also have alerted them to humanity, and travel time of the broadcast plus travel time of UFO’s to Earth (assuming they have lightspeed capability) might have resulted in them arriving right around when nukes were invented (if they’re from, say, Alpha Centauri which is 4 light-years away).

The US and Europe also have free press where things like this are more likely to be publicly reported than in say, the USSR back in the day, or China under the CCP. Which in conjunction with the above may explain sightings maps like this one, where sightings are most frequent in the US and secondarily in Europe:

https://updb.app/map?zoom=1.00&lon=149.0917&lat=37.3003

Also, if you search number of reports by date ranges, look at what you get:

1-1943: 1566 sightings reports

1944-2023: 294,641 sightings reports

Two orders of magnitude more sightings reports in the 80yrs since nukes were invented, vs in the almost two millennia previously. Obviously we also had more robust and technologically advanced media in the latter time frame, so that contributes much to the discrepancy. But still a huge discrepancy.

Post reply on HN