Man, this whole balloon/UFO story just keeps lurching off further and further into the realm of rank absurdity.
The New York Post published this story last night:
No, wait: It’s really not the Babylon Bee - this is an actual news story that has also been reported by the Washington Post, Politico, Forbes and other media outlets.
NOT A PARODY, folks. As hard as that is to believe.
Here’s an excerpt:
One of the UFOs shot down last weekend by the US Air Force with a $400,000 missile may have simply been a $12 balloon belonging to an Illinois enthusiast club, a report said.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week on Thursday that it fears one of its diligently-tracked gasbags that recently went missing was mistaken as the mystery object taken out by the military over Canada on Saturday.
The Pico Balloon — a silver-coated, cylindrically shaped object — reported its last position at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska on Friday.
By Saturday, based on the balloon’s projected path, it would have been over the central part of the Yukon Territory around the same time a military Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same Canadian vicinity, the outlet reported.
…
NIBBB’s balloon was equipped with a small GPS transmitter and an antenna, allowing the group to track it with a ham radio.
The Air Force used Sidewinder missiles in their targeted attacks against the Chinese spy balloon downed earlier this month and the mystery UFOs taken down last week, Fortune reported. Each missile comes at a price tag of roughly $400,000.
[End]
Oh.