Sunderland Echo

US declares war on balloons! Time to take cover Sam Smith

- RICHARD ORD E-mail richard.ord@ jpimedia.co.uk

Singer Sam Smith picked a dangerous time to unveil a balloon-shaped red carpet costume. America is waging war on balloons. At least, it started with balloons, but pretty soon these floating objects took a mysterious turn.

When pressed by reporters if these UFOs could be from an extraterre­strial origin, US General Glen VanHerck decided it was prudent not to rule anything out.

"I'll let the intel community and the counterint­elligence community figure that out,” he said. “I haven't ruled out anything." Not ruling anything out is a dangerous game these days.

Rabid social media users and abusers took that as confirmati­on it was aliens. If they aren't ruling stuff out, I preferred to go for mutant dolphins growing arms and building aircraft to hunt birds.

Best not to say you’re not ruling anything out. Resources are stretched enough without doing a limb check on the world’s dolphin population.

General Glen, however, wasn’t done with blurring the lines adding: "We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason.”

Presumably the reason was that they weren’t balloons, but he refused to go into detail.

Thankfully we were spared any more of General Glen’s clarity when the White House jumped in and reassured the public that these objects were definitely terrestria­l.

Though the make up of these floating craft is not clear due, one presumes, to the fact that warplanes have blown them to smithereen­s.

One individual who can count himself lucky is Sam Smith. The singer landed at the Brit Awards this week sporting an inflatable latex costume that defied logic.

Had the singer unveiled the ludicrous garb in the United States of America, few would have blamed the Pentagon for launching F16s to dispose of what can be best described as an offensive violation of airspace.

In fact, on a second look at Sam’s lamentable garb, it’s an attack that would be positively encouraged.

And, for fear of being cancelled, I’m not really encouragin­g the US Air Force to launch a military strike on Sam Smith.

They can simply send in Navy Seals armed with pins. Well, it is ‘pop’ music after all...

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 ?? ?? This image provided by the U.S. Navy shows sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recovering a high-altitude surveillan­ce balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., Feb. 5, 2023. (U.S. Navy via AP)
This image provided by the U.S. Navy shows sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recovering a high-altitude surveillan­ce balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., Feb. 5, 2023. (U.S. Navy via AP)

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