February 4, 2018

Hey Orange County Residents: What Is This?

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of odd contrails in the sky, and today I got some pictures with my phone. Here’s what the path looks like at the start of their flight:

I’m pretty sure airplanes don’t take off at a 45 degree angle. So it’s a missile test of some kind, right? Or a military jet? Here’s the middle of the path:

And here’s the end of the path as it flies out over the Pacific Ocean:

I’ve enhanced this photo so you can see another odd thing: the black trail ahead of the contrail. The missile, or whatever it is, is following the exact path of some earlier missile without the slightest deviation. I don’t doubt the precision of our armaments, but this seems almost creepily accurate.

Also: it’s coming from the south, so it’s not something out of Vandenberg. Do they test missiles from Camp Pendleton? Does anyone know what this is?

UPDATE: The black trail is the shadow of the contrail. I’ve never seen that before, so that’s pretty interesting. The airplane/missile/UFO is still a bit of a mystery, though. The betting money in comments is that this is an ordinary commercial jet flying out of San Diego, and the steep angle of ascent is just a trick of perspective. That seems really unlikely to me. I never saw anything like this until about a month or so ago, and since then I’ve seen it several times. And anyway, San Diego is just too far away for this. Maybe something out of Ontario? Or March air base? Or a new aircraft carrier floating around on Lake Elsinore?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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