BALLOONGATE: US MILITARY DEFENDS THE CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES FROM BIRTHDAY BALLOON
A thirteen-year-old boy in Bejing was celebrating his birthday Wednesday when a helium balloon
filled with candy flew out the window of his house and took off over the skies
of China. Because of high winds the balloon sailed across the Chinese mainland,
traversed across the Pacific, and was spotted by the crack US radar system over
the state of Montana.
Debate in the Biden Administration ensured about how to
respond to this birthday balloon’s clear penetration of US air space. Hawks in
the administration argued that the balloon had to be immediately destroyed before
American children heard about the sweets in the balloon. More patient advisors
from the State Department took the view that maybe the US should keep the lid
on informing the media about the birthday balloon until it sailed across the
Atlantic. Then the world’s greatest air force could shoot down the balloon and
confiscate the evidence of the Chinese birthday party without Americans seeing
what was in the balloon.
Finally, the balloon was shot down off the coast of North
Carolina. Retrieved from the shootdown was much of the contents of the balloon:
candy corn, milk duds, M and Ms, Baby Ruth candy bars, and popcorn and 42 packages
of cherry Life Savers.
Biden spokespersons accused the Chinese of trying to
embarrass the United States in the eyes of the world by showing off their
typical birthday presents. The Chinese claimed, on the other hand, that if the
window in the apartment where the party was held had been closed, the birthday
balloon would never have flown into the sky and drifted toward the Western
Hemisphere.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy charged that the Biden
Administration knew of the birthday balloons, charging that Biden’s son, Hunter
Biden, was a CEO in a balloon manufacturing company. Others pointed out that
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken did not write down his scheduled Chinese
visit and just plain forgot about it.
Meanwhile two Senators, one from Indiana and another from
Arkansas have called for an additional $100 billion increase in the 2023
military budget, called the Balloon Production and Distribution Act. The CEO of
the Happy Balloon Company of Battle Ground, Indiana said that the BPD Act is
vital to US national security. If US “kids”, he said, learn about Chinese
birthday parties they will mobilize against their own government.
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC was quoted as saying on a “breaking
news” special that this balloon attack is the biggest story since Pearl Harbor.
When asked about whether this crisis could lead to nuclear
war between the US and China: Biden said: “Maybe Not.”
