JD Vance, the vice-president of the United States, said this weekend that he considers aliens to be “demons”.

As the war in Iran continues, petrol and grocery prices soar and chaos continues at US airports as a partial government shutdown endures, Vance appeared on the conservative Benny Show podcast, released Saturday, to promise that he would spend time looking into what he called his “obsession” with UFOs and extraterrestrial visitors.

Johnson, who bills his show as the place for “cutting, behind-the-scenes insight into the global conflict for freedom”, wondered if Vance, who has been noticeably quiet about Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East that he is said to oppose, had yet looked at any of the files about unidentified flying objects – known these days as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) – which the president has promised to release.

“I actually haven’t,” Vance replied, mustering significantly more enthusiasm than for any previous question about the US-Israel military strikes on Iran.

“I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.”

The God-fearing vice-president’s fixation, it was further revealed, extended to the question of the existence of extraplanetary beings, and where they might fit into a wider conversation about religion.

“I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion,” he said.

  • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The IG departments really need to be given full clearance and taken away from the executive. The parties have also almost completely broken checks and balances at this point, the orange turd is of course abusing it, but in general too much power has been given to the parties, and our checks have been badly eroded by a lazy and weak congress.

    • Sculptus Poe@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I guess there isn’t a good answer. I think parties should be outlawed anyway. The VP should have his own election, independent of the President. The congress needs to have a tighter rein on war declaration and the definition of “war” needs to be broadened to include all engagements. The re-definition of “war” to whatever nonsense they use now is the source of many problems. Once somebody gets into the top tier of the government: Supreme court, Senate, President, they need full clearance for everything. There shouldn’t be things hidden from those lawmakers. Also, as you say, IG departments need to have full clearance, and they need some kind of whistleblower protection from sitting presidents. I actually like that the President holds the leash on the military, mostly because you can’t trust the military not to blow the world to smitherines out of convenience. All the new evidence shows that the military pretty much railroaded Truman into letting them drop the bombs on civilian cities, and they wanted to continue and wipe out every city in Russia if the president didn’t finally get a hold of them and nix it.

      I’m not optimistic at all that anything will or even can be done to fix the problems. Of course that goes for every government on the planet, so any other governments weighing in with their two cents are usually hypocrites.