Loose Lips Sink Ships. I’ve talked about this before. The famous WWII injunction to keep quiet about all matters military is, I think, Lie One. The first in a string of lies which led us to where we are today.
They are called – by the liars, naturally – Noble Lies. Lies which are for the cause. But, no: lies are just lies. They never are anything but self serving. Loose Lips Sink Ships wasn’t about protecting Allied shipping – it was about keeping everyone quiet about the massacre of shipping right off the American coast in 1942.
It was absolutely horrible: starting with a mere 5 U Boats, and never involving more than a dozen at any given time, the Germans were able to pick off merchant ships pretty much at will. One fourth of all allied merchant ship losses in the Atlantic came between January and August 1942. So weak and unprepared were we for this that Americans along the coast routinely saw, day and night, ships burning and sinking right off the coast. And it wasn’t just a matter of not having enough escorts for the merchant ships…it was that the Navy didn’t take the steps which could have immediately lowered the risk of attack. It was months before the United States got its act together.
And the guy in charge of this debacle – Admiral King – was given a 5th star as a Fleet Admiral.
In our Civil War, there were lies told: but not many and those that were got exposed pretty quick. The reason for this was the American news media – and the American people – were unafraid to speak out. The various errors which repeatedly nearly sank the Union effort were rapidly exposed and the Lincoln Administration responded quickly to correct failings. Generally, after mid 1863, the Union made no grave errors in prosecuting the war. And those who had failed the test were cast aside in favor of those who could meet the challenge. That’s what must always happen if you are to have long term success.
In WWII, instead of addressing the failure, the government cooked up Loose Lips Sink Ships and the MSM went along with it. Why? I don’t know why. Love for FDR, I guess. The editor of the New York Times, after all, could see the massacre of shipping from his house practically. And, yes, reports were written but clearly not in a manner which exposed the complete incompetence of US Naval leadership. The only person who got the axe in the Navy was Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii. And, sure, he was caught with his pants down and the Navy is always supposed to be instantly ready for action…but in his defense, he was fed a line of double talk from DC about Japanese intentions. Nobody paid for that, either.
The worst part of it was that it got the American government into the habit of lying to the American people. Lies which were told because, allegedly, the American people couldn’t handle the truth. Expose King’s incapacity and people will lose faith! So the theory appears to have gone. So, cook up a lie so people can retain faith…in a guy who failed. Not sure I see the long term benefit of that.
After the war, the next series of lies were to cover up Communist penetration of the American government and obscure responsibility for losing China to the Communists. Prior to McCarthy it was known to the President and senior aids that the Soviets had installed spies all through the United States government starting in the 1930s. It wasn’t a mystery. The various people at the head of affairs, starting with FDR, had lazily turned a blind eye to Leftwing Democrats hiring their Communist buddies. It was these various hires who played a huge role in convincing the Truman Administration to give up on Chiang, thus ensuring Mao’s victory. Now, Truman and his people could have just leveled with the American people (the fault was mostly FDR’s at that point, anyway), cleared out the Commies and moved on. But to do that would require admission of error. Can’t do that! People will lose faith in their government if they knew the full story.
Terrified the heck out of them, make no mistake about it, when McCarthy picked up the gauntlet and started demanding answers. And the American people, by and large loved McCarthy. He was their champion: the fighter against entrenched interests. Even after McCarthy was destroyed in a sordid political hit involving the government and MSM, the people still supported him and especially his goal of removing disloyal people from the government. Well, McCarthy was forced out…and a couple overt Commies were ejected. But the real housecleaning never happened. Would have disturbed the American people, after all, if everyone compromised was forced out.
On and on it went. One lie piled on top of another and nobody daring to question the underlying assumptions and, after a while, everyone deeply invested in keeping the lies going. Vietnam was a welter of lying, of course, with the obvious way to win the war – take the port of Haiphong – rejected out of hand because the lie we used to get out of Korea was that our move into North Korea triggered Chinese intervention and it would happen again if we moved into North Vietnam. The real reason for Chinese intervention in Korea, of course, was because we essentially promised China that we wouldn’t allow Chiang to attack mainland China from Taiwan. Once our fleet was in the Taiwan straights, Mao moved his army to North Korea. Now, might Mao have intervened had we taken Haiphong in 1965? Anything is possible – but it wasn’t a for sure thing; in other words, the fear that if we physically invaded North Vietnam we’d get another war with China was just a guess and not based upon any known intention by China or desire by North Vietnam. We precluded ourselves from the one thing which would have won the Vietnam War because we had to sustain a lie that unless we held back, we’d immediately get WWIII and nuclear war.
I think that over the decades lying has become a habit. It isn’t even really thought about any longer. Whatever lie is needed to sustain whatever policy the government wants is just cooked up to order and then fed into the MSM by the intelligence agencies. Trump’s problem is that his policy wasn’t to lie and it wasn’t to go along with the established order. It terrified the liars…and so they worked over time to lie Trump out of office. Trouble was, they had so little actual dirt on Trump (honestly, we don’t even have any evidence that he was some great womanizing playboy, even when young: we have rumors and suppositions which may, in the event, have been planted by Trump, himself, to burnish his showman image). The trouble they had here is that when your bad guy isn’t evil, the lies you have to say against him are ridiculous. This didn’t deter them, of course, but they went so far in their lies that the whole edifice of lies started to expose itself.
To be sure, they had skirted the absurd before: the 9/11 Commission managing to exonerate Bill and the Benghazi hearings giving Hillary a pass were an amazing example of dishonesty. We all watched those and stood there, amazed, as one expert after another told us to ignore the evidence of our lying eyes and trust them. But it didn’t reach breaking point. There was still a fig leaf of plausibility to their story line. Until Trump – once we got to the Democrats saying Trump was a Russian agent installed by Putin via vote-switching in Michigan, the game was rather up. You either wised up to the lies, or became a functional idiot still believing what was obviously untrue.
And it is amazing the number of people who will idiotically believe obvious falsehoods. I know a man who will assert stoutly that he heard Trump, live on TV, say that all Mexicans are rapists. If you point him to the video and transcripts which show nothing of the sort, he will reject this. He knows what he heard. Of course, what he heard was a carefully served up bit in the MSM which made it seem like that…and then the accusation was merely repeated enough until, in his own mind, what he remembers is what he was told rather than what he saw. There are millions of people like this – and I think it is because the confront the truth is too terrible for them. They have believed the lies so long – and personally invested their own honor in them – that to reject them is a step too far. They just can’t do it.
But lies cannot be sustained. The USSR tried mightily to do so and for many decades it seemed to work. Not only did they lie about everything, but they made living impossible unless you subscribed to the lies. It seemed a perfect machine: Lie, and then instruct everyone to repeat the lie on pain of losing home, job, liberty and (if really necessary) life. And the people for the most part did go along, braying like assess whatever was spoon fed into them. But not all and not all the time. After all, it was hard to believe Soviet reports of bumper crops while you stood in line for two hours just to get a loaf of bread. Lies eventually commit suicide because they cannot forever sustain themselves: they always need a new lie to back up the previous lie and eventually the web of lies becomes so large and unruly that its contradictions tear it apart.
That is what is happening now in the United States, I think. And the enormously funny thing is that it looks like the web of lies might finally unravel because of Joe Biden: a senile old crook installed via a fantastic web of lies culminating in voter fraud so obvious that only Blue Check Experts could straight faced say it was legit. The withdrawal from Afghanistan might have pulled out the last support for the lies. It is simply stunning that Team Pudding Brain is seriously trying to blame Trump (they even floated on social media the idea that Trump set a trap for Biden in Afghanistan). Sure, the very stupid and the very venal can go along with the idea that the guy who last gave an order seven months ago is responsible for something ordered today, but most people see right through it. And also see that the whole pack of Ruling Class Experts is simply wrong, wrong, wrong. They don’t know what they’re doing. Sure, Trump might have gone off half cocked and certainly wasn’t deeply versed in the intricacies of government…but, on the other hand, people didn’t fall off planes in a panic when Trump was President.
We’ll see what happens. And it could still get very much worse before it gets better. But right now we are the functional equivalent of a Soviet waiting in the bread line in 1989 as the MSM tells him that all is well and the Leaders are doing just swell. We no longer believe them. And we’re just waiting to figure out how we get rid of them and their Age of Lies.
Blogs For Victory 
I think the Jenga tower of lies is going to need more than one piece pulled out of it before it topples, but the Left’s shortsighted hubris in saddling us with Uncle Gropey and Cackles II is offering us many areas of weakness, if we are just smart enough to actually DO something for a change.
A piece we can pull on: The Joe Biden of August 2021 is exactly the same Joe Biden fawned over and protected by a wholly dishonest Complicit Agenda Media, which is now trying to pretend it represents journalism when in fact it is and always has been merely the propaganda arm of the Left. This is our chance, should we choose to take advantage of it, to undermine the influence of the Agenda Media in the next two elections. Something like 15% of Biden voters said they would not have voted for him if the Agenda Media had not covered up the Hunter Biden laptop story—-and that just addresses the laptop, without going into what true journalism would have done with the information about Joe himself being deeply involved in the corrupt business dealings of Hunter. Clever discussions of this would no doubt bring out another 15% or so who will not want to admit they would have voted for him no matter what, just on the No More Mean Tweets platform.
Another area of vulnerability: Building on the blatant incompetence of Joe Biden is the fact we are stuck with him because the alternative is even worse—–a purely symbolic Vice President whose only qualifications are a uterus and dark skin. So the lapdog press hit us with a double whammy: A President Biden and an even worse alternative. (I used to call Biden “Prudential Joe” because he was like an insurance policy for Obama, guaranteeing that no one would try to get rid of Obama as long as Joe was the alternative. Now Joe has his own insurance policy—Kammy Harris.)
Every other vulnerability should come back to these two ugly facts. Going after Joe isn’t going to be very productive, for the reasons I just stated—–we knew all along he would be a disaster and now we are stuck with him because of Mattressback Kammy.
So we should go after the real support system, which is the Complicit Agenda Media—and we should link social media with them at every opportunity, tying them together so there is no doubt they are one and the same. Now is our chance to disable or at least damage this infernal power structure.
So it’s not just Joe, it’s everyone who lied about him and gave him cover. It’s not just the nearly infinite list of reasons Harris should never have been chosen, it’s the fluff job the press did to cover up her defects and promote her as a legitimate candidate for the office. It’s not just the shameful spectacle of our retreat from Afghanistan and its mounting toll of death and misery, it’s the media lies that covered up the inexorable journey to this point. It’s that too many people made decisions based on lies—and I would focus on the lies of the press, as they are the lies that put the people in government in the position to tell their own lies—and that anyone who now believes a word they hear from these sources is an idiot.
Let the morons who voted for Biden figure out for themselves that they are the ones we are really blaming, the intellectual lightweights who made the serious business of choosing the leadership of the country into a petty and frivolous choice of Not Trump.
Pull out the linchpin of the Agenda Media/Social Media collusion and I think it will all fall apart.
Example: from a black woman on Twitter
✨@LightItUpp_
I’m going to just say it… I REGRET voting for Biden 🥴 Definitely should’ve kept Trump in office. If I knew what I knew now, I would’ve voted differently.
If I knew what I knew now, I would’ve voted differently. And whose fault is that? That should be where we put the pointy end of the spear—jabbing poor senile Joe and Cackles is just playing Identity Politics. It’s the promoters and purveyors of the lies we need to take down.
So I am curious as to how many people buy into the lies surrounding the Covid narrative. Yesterday, MSNBC reported that there were no ICU beds available in Florida. All were taken by Covid patients. Of course there was no accompanying video of over run hospitals or verifications from “experts” but they reported it, and I am sure many mouth breathing Democrats bought it hook line and sinker.
Also reported this morning on MSNBC was that “masks and vaccines work”, and this was in response to the many Nurses across the nation who are choosing to quit their job rather than take the vaccine and of course the “health professionals” on MSNBC were questioning those Nurses “information sources”.
And never forget Brett Kavanaugh. The lies and malicious treatment that man received from the Left should be a warning to us all. The Media is currently the most imminent and dangerous threat to this country.
Oh and if you haven’t all noticed, the Media is doing their best to keep Pfizer and Moderna stock prices up by convincing mouth breathers that Ivermectin is NOT to be used against Covid, the following from the NYT.
Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug commonly used for livestock, should not be taken to treat or prevent Covid-19, the FDA said on Saturday.
Ivermectin is a long established, stable anti parasitic treatment that is inexpensive and widely available and use of it would negatively impact the bottom lines of Big Pharma.
The comment below from an established member of the Deep State should dispel any notion that we can form alliances with our domestic enemies:
Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden on Sunday said it’s a “good idea” to send unvaccinated Trump supporters to Talban-controlled Afghanistan.
They are liars and haters and on top of that, incompetent. No wonder this country is in such chaos.
Former CIA Director General Michael Hayden on Sunday said it’s a “good idea” to send unvaccinated Trump supporters to Talban-controlled Afghanistan.
I’d bet any random group of Trump supporters could have handled the pull-out in Afghanistan better than the people with whom General Hayden aligns himself. He’s entrenching himself deeply on the wrong side of history.
I saw one of the best, non-humorous memes I’ve ever seen this past weekend. I tried to find a copiable version but couldn’t. It had two pictures, an old log cabin with a slave family on the front porch, probably from the mid-19th century, and a photo of a modern, inner city housing project. The caption was, “There are two ways to make a man a slave: work him without pay or pay him without work.” Interestingly, both are products of the Democrat Party.
Great piece by Jason Whitlock at the Blaze this morning.
I don’t agree with Maher on much but he is spot on on this, and at least he is an honest liberal … I can respect that.
Also remember when the MSM was telling us that with the Biden admin. the professionals and experts were back in charge? I have been laughing about that all day
So I guess America is now conducting health care through polling. The following headline is from a local Fox network:
A recent poll finds that most American adults want vaccination mandates for those attending movies, sports, concerts and other crowded events; those traveling by airplane; and workers in hospitals, restaurants, stores and government offices.
So a majority of random people chosen by some “journalist” wants me to take a flu shot in order to attend events? And “doctors” are ok with this?? Medical tyranny at it’s finest.
I think one of the most depressing things we have to deal with these days is the loss of people we can think of as smart or competent. There has always been a sense of security in believing that our military leadership, our teachers, our doctors, are all pretty smart—and that is gone.
Can you think of a demographic more profoundly stupid than that of teachers? From kindergarten through post-grad, the entire profession seems to be populated with people so bone-deep STUPID you wonder how they dress themselves. I’m not talking about simply having a different political belief system, I am talking about what seems like a total lack of basic intelligence. (The profession also seems to be a magnet for a variety of pathologies but that’s a topic for another time.)
We’ve always had some crazies in the military, but at least they loved the country and were competent, albeit a little odd—McArthur, with his Japanese kimonos and long cigarette holders comes to mind. But at least they had the basics down—-fight to win, support your troops, love your country. I have no idea where so many of our current top brass came from, or why, given their antipathy toward the nation and its citizens, they went into the military in the first place. All I know is that having them in charge of our military makes me feel very very insecure.
And now I wonder about the IQ of many in the medical field. If it weren’t for the videos and TV appearances of some bright and dedicated and competent doctors I would think the entire profession is dominated by quacks and flacks and morons.
Can you think of a demographic more profoundly stupid than that of teachers?
No I can not, and I have seen many Facebook posts from teachers in my town that confirm this opinion. But teachers never have to worry about accountability or results, so we reap what we sow, and this is why many go into the teaching profession or into government … no accountability, ever.
There is also the “group think, mob mentality” dynamic at play and that is powerful force, even to educated morons. Casper once mentioned that he liked “being with the cool kids” and that is all you need to know about the Left’s mentality. If you go against the Democrat orthodoxy you risk being called a racist xenophobe and most people buckle under that pressure.
There is also the more malicious theory to this and that is the current leadership across all industries in America, including government, are actively trying to destroy federalism, the Constitution, and America as it was conceived in order to achieve permanence in power for themselves and their families. They are forming an Oligarchy.
“…trying to destroy federalism, the Constitution, and America as it was conceived in order to achieve permanence in power for themselves and their families”
This is the motivation behind nearly all such efforts, and everyone who is part of it sees himself as being, when the dust settles, at the top of the heap running the lives of those who have been conquered. The funny thing about this, if you can call it “funny”, is that they won’t be at the top pulling strings, they will be down there in the bread lines with the rest. There is only room for a few at the top, and nearly all of them will be at the mercy of the small handful at the pinnacle of power.
There is a saying about high-stakes poker: At every table there is a “fish” (or sucker) and if you look around the table and can’t figure out who it is, it is you. I see these hotshot narcissists like Zuckerberg and Comey and so on smug in their conviction that they will be sharing the pot at the end of the hand, but they are just tools being manipulated by the very small handful of anonymous lever-pullers behind the curtain of the International Left, and any status they gain will be tenuous, depending on how well they please their masters.
We have to remember a few things about this poll.
1. A poll asks a question and the respondent gives a quick answer. So it may not reflect what he would say if he took the time to fully consider the question and the ramifications of different answers.
2. We are told the conclusion of the pollster, not the way the question was phrased. As an example: in the Bush 43 years there was some controversy about his immigration regs. I thought they were way too lax, so when I answered a telephone poll the question was “Do you approve of President Bush’s immigration rules?” and I said “No.” I expected a chance to say they needed to be stronger, but that was it. And the eventual poll was that some big percentage didn’t like what he was doing, but not a word about whether they thought it was too much or not enough, with the implication in the context of the accompanying article that most Americans thought he was being too tough. So the question might have been something like “Do you think Americans should be vaccinated before…..?” and then the conclusion was that these people all thought vaccination should be forced upon us, when the respondents might have just thought it was a good idea to get the vaccination. Or “yes” for hospital workers but not for everyone else.
The wording of a poll is essential to know if it means anything or is just a mechanism to push an agenda.
Here’s a prediction … as soon as the virus stops being politically advantageous for Democrats, it will go away.
The problem is that that may be a long time.
Maybe. But if the article about “leaky vaccines” is right, by the time the Left has worn out Plague Panic Porn they may have been responsible for unleashing far more virulent and dangerous viruses upon the world.
I’m not saying I completely accept the leaky virus/leading to more dangerous mutations theory outright, but it makes sense to me. Remember, for years we have been hearing about drug-resistant bacteria, and the theory that they have developed because so many people have stopped taking antibiotics before the full prescription period has ended, therefore exposing bacteria in the system to the drugs but not enough to kill them, allowing them to develop resistance to them. That we have been vaccinating bacteria, so to speak, by giving them a non-lethal dose of a drug so they can develop resistance to it. We have also seen articles about people dumping antibiotics in toilets to get rid of them, getting those drugs into our water supplies, as well as the effects of eating commercially produced meats from animals treated with large doses of antibiotics, all leading to very dangerous and drug-resistant bacteria.
This is not a new theory. This has been going on, and becoming a serious health hazard, for years, and has been thoroughly covered by news reports in all media. So why shouldn’t we be concerned about exposing a dangerous virus to a drug (“vaccine”) which has the ability to allow the virus to do the same kind of mutation, into possibly truly lethal forms?
So right now I am concerned about a political system, which evidently controls the medical profession, choosing to continue what might be a dangerous strategy of promoting vaccinations to a degree that would make them mandatory to function in our society. I personally would prefer to stop doing this, to start telling people that if they want to take the vaccine it is available (though I think most who want it already have gotten it) and to back off. I’d like to see the focus shift to both better treatment modalities and a major media push to inform people of these treatments. And I’d like to see something positive about the fact that the millions of people who have had the virus, whether they knew it or not, probably have better immunity (or at least resistance) to Covid than those taking the artificial drugs.
I have no problem seeing a future in which it is the vaccinated who are pariahs because they are part of the rapid evolution of even more virulent viruses—or at least of history looking back at the vaccination hysteria as the root cause of a disastrous and truly dangerous flood of more lethal viruses. And—to carry that a step farther—one in which only those with natural antibodies have any protection.
Just looking at all the possibilities here, something our medical “professionals” don’t seem to be doing, much less the people in charge of protecting the nation.
As for medical “professionals” I just read about a bunch of “doctors” in South Florida walking out in protest about having to treat non-vaccinated people. So much for the Hippocratic Oath. Someone should send them the biography of Father Damien.
I just read about a bunch of “doctors” in South Florida walking out in protest about having to treat non-vaccinated people.
I wonder if they’re complaining about having to treat the 50,142 people who have been hospitalized as a result of complications from the vaccine, or the 72,699 who have ended up in urgent care as a result of complications from the vaccine, or the 98,761 who have had to go to their doctor’s office as a result of complications from the vaccine, or the 5,617 who have experienced anaphylactic shock as a result of complications from the vaccine, or the — well you get the idea.
When I see the millions of deaths from this virus worldwide, many of which were probably preventable if timely treatment had been available instead of telling the patient to go home and only go to the hospital if he or she got REALLY sick, I’m reminded of the many comments from the old website TheGreenAgenda.com. It’s finally been taken down, and I wish I had gotten a screenshot before it disappeared. The gist of many of the comments, largely from members of The Club of Rome, was that the population of the earth needed to be drastically reduced if the planet was to survive. Some called for a reduction from the current nearly 8 billion to 500 million, or a 94% reduction. I think many of them see COVID 19 as the first small step. We’re dealing with an almost unimaginable level of evil.
re: The “doctors” in Florida who don’t want to treat Covid patients who have not been vaccinated. Maybe someone should clue them in on some inconvenient facts.
The majority of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients in an Israeli hospital are fully vaccinated, including those with severe disease, according to one of the hospital’s doctors.. On Aug. 5, Dr. Kobi Haviv, medical director of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, said in a Channel 13 TV News interview, “95% of the severe patients are vaccinated.”
………………………………………
The first report on the spread of COVID-19 in vaccinated people is based on an outbreak of 469 cases in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, where 74 percent of cases occurred among vaccinated people.
…………………………………….
More vaccinated people are dying of COVID than unvaccinated people, according to a recent report from Public Health England (PHE). The report shows that 163 of the 257 people (63.4%) who died within 28 days of a positive COVID test between February 1 and June 21, had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
…………………………………….
…and so on. We are told such a wide variety of things, there is no way to know what is really true, other than simple numbers. There is a lot of excuse-making by the True Believers. For example, if you note that it is odd that hardly anyone died of the flu while the numbers of alleged Covid cases was so high, the response is that this is proof that “masks work”. So we also hear things like “Well, so a lot of vaccinated people get Covid too but the cases are really mild because they were vaccinated.” The Israeli finding that 95% of the severe patients are vaccinated are dismissed, as are the statistics from the UK that More vaccinated people are dying of COVID than unvaccinated people.
I think if it is proved that the current vaccination drugs do not create the “leaky vaccine” problem, which I find to be of great concern, and if the negative reactions to the vaccine are truly minimal and rare and not what the VAERS statistics show, then it’s great and people should consider getting the vaccine. (The VAERS is, BTW, part of the government’s Health and Human Services agency.) But I am very skeptical, and therefore resistant, when it comes to just accepting what this administration and this government agency are selling because I know there are salient facts they are either not discussing or are actually lying about.
And one of the things that raises a huge red flag for me is the determination to simply ignore the reality of natural immunity conveyed by having had the virus. This is important information that the public should be told, but it is politically inconvenient so is either ignored or covered up with lies such as the “need” to get vaccinated even after recovering from the virus. Why is it so important to this administration to ignore the connection between the numbers of people diagnosed with the virus and the number of people gaining natural immunity to it in the future? I think the answer to that is obvious—natural immunity does not allow for the expansion of power and control.
Some called for a reduction from the current nearly 8 billion to 500 million, or a 94% reduction.
How many of them offered to lead the way?
I didn’t think so. It’s a version of the Left’s beloved “Let’s you and him fight” only the more sinister version, “Let’s you and him die”.
But in this case, while I doubt there is much grieving over the dead, I think the real goal started off as first using the virus as a weapon to defeat Trump and then moving into the long-term agenda of taking control over the country—that is, the economy and every other aspect of life, such as travel and education. I think the death toll has just been part of the Leftist calculation that it’s fine if millions of people have to die to achieve the goal of dominance over who survives.
If decimating the population was the goal, I think they would have let the virus run its course, but that would not have conveyed the control aspect the Left craves. The Left needed/needs the control over the economy, the control over freedom of movement and speech, the physical and emotional and psychological control they have been exerting.
Media spin can be subtle. For example, a headline at Newsmax says Poll: 40 Percent Less Likely to Travel If Airlines Stop Requiring Masks. Wow. No airline wants to take that big a hit, right? But then the article admits that …Thirty-five percent said they would be more likely to fly if masks were not mandatory, and 25% declared the issue moot…
I can quickly determine that 60% of respondents would either prefer to have no masking required, or simply don’t care. But what will be cited when maskers are making their arguments? 40 Percent Less Likely to Travel If Airlines Stop Requiring Masks
The poll by Finance Buzz said Almost 60% consider the coronavirus transmission rate of a potential travel destination when deciding where to go on vacation yet an AP story also cited in Newsmax said Airline officials say they haven’t seen bookings suffer because of the delta variant. So is fear of the virus slowing down travel or not having an effect? Maybe not. Despite rising numbers of coronavirus infections fueled by the delta variant, the U.S. set another recent high mark for air travel Sunday, with more than 2.2 million people going through airport checkpoints, according to the Transportation Security Administration.
So who to believe? I’d say to ignore most polls. It’s one thing to toss off a quick response to a phone poll, quite another to make a decision and act on it.
But my point is the emphasis a medium chooses to put on a poll. The headline I cited would convince some people that mask requirements on airlines are necessary for the airlines to make money.
And of course this, like all masking controversies, simply refuses to address the fact that if you truly believe that a mask will protect you then you should feel secure behind your own, no matter what other people are doing.
When you think about it …. the Taliban and the Democrat Party have a lot in common. A rigid ideology that demands conformity. The only difference is hygiene.
The only difference is hygiene.
Well, and the goat fu*king thing,
LMAO
Come on, Spook—don’t be coy. Tell us what you really think.
BTW the whole goat thing got quite a lot of air time on Gutfeld the other night.
Here’s a summary of what is wrong in America: In an article about San Francisco District Attorney and rabid Left-wing activist Chesa Boudin, son of two domestic terrorists, there is this paragraph.
Bronson Stocking of Townhall noted, “After his parents killed the cops,(1) Boudin was sent to live with two other terrorists, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.(2) Dohrn declared war on the United States and was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.(3) Ayers bombed the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol building, and the New York City Police Department (4)before he and Dohrn became fugitives and went into hiding. The pair eventually came out of hiding and settled in as university professors.(5)”
Let’s look at this single paragraph.
(1) Boudin’s parents killed cops—and his father just got clemency from outgoing Governor Andrew Cuomo, while Boudin is dismantling the legal system in San Francisco, refusing to arrest criminals and/or releasing them from jail.
(2) Terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn later became good friends with Barack Obama, having his formal introduction into politics at a party in their home in Chicago, and remaining friends and advisors to him even when he was President of the United States. Ayers is suspected of ghost writing Obama’s two “memoirs” and Dohrn traveled to India when the president went there on a state visit, not officially a member of the presidential party but associated with it, and while there gave virulent anti-American interviews to the local press.
(3) Dohrn was suspected of murdering two police officers and J. Edgar Hoover called her “the most dangerous woman in America.” She laughed about the torture of 8-months-pregnant actress Sharon Tate, who was stabbed in the belly with a fork during the murderous rampage of Charles Manson followers, prancing around holding her fingers to illustrate the tines of a fork and making stabbing motions while gloating “Dig it! First they killed those pigs and then they put a fork in pig Tate’s belly. Wild! Offing those rich pigs with their own forks and knives, and then eating a meal in the same room, far out! The Weathermen dig Charles Manson!”
(4) Ayers plotted the effort to bomb a police station, planning the bombing to take place during shift change so there would be the maximum number of officers in the building, and actually did bomb the Capitol Building.as well as the Pentagon. It is interesting that when the Left claimed that people entering the Capitol Building on January 6 constituted “the worst attack on Capitol” in, like, forever, blah blah blah they never mentioned that Barack Obama’s good friend Bill Ayers actually bombed the Capitol. He admitted it. When his wealthy father got all charges against him dismissed on a technicality, Ayers bragged “guilty as hell and free as a bird”.
(5) This pair was actually, somehow, accepted as university professors and also somehow passed security clearances to be able to continue to associate with the President of the United States—while the compliant and complicit Agenda Media never uttered a word about it.
I think this paragraph is only one example of the disintegration of our rule of law and sense of decency and is a prime example of the depths to which this nation has plunged.
Liking Jim Banks a lot.
His tweets:
The Taliban doesn’t get to draw red lines or set deadlines to the United States of America. Only we do! Any President who kow-tows to the Taliban is unfit to be Commander in Chief!
………………….
Just walked out of the Congressional briefing on Afghanistan. One thing is painfully clear. The Biden team says one thing behind closed doors, admits mistakes, knows this is a shitshow and the President is lying and telling us something different from the White House. Shameful!
His statement:
“Let me be clear if any American is harmed, injured, or killed and not safely evacuated out of Afghanistan or if any of these weapons or this military equipment is used to harm, injure, or kill an American now or anytime in the future, the blood is on Joe Biden’s hands,” Banks said at a press conference.
Yeah, I think we in Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District have a winner. I first met him in 2010 before he was elected to the Indiana State Senate. He’s just a genuinely nice guy. He’s on the radio right now talking to the local talk guy who comes on after Dan Bongino.
Does it matter what kind of mask you wear to protect yourself from Covid-19 and the Delta variant?
Dr. Anthony Fauci says “just wear a mask.”
Whatever. Cloth, medical, Kleenex, whatever. Because the virus will recognize that you want to stop it, and will give up, just like it will give up and go away if enough people get vaccinated.
Just like the flu does every year.
Just like the common cold does.
There is this:
Most blue surgical face masks used by many during the pandemic are not enough to avoid people from being infected with COVID-19, an alarming new study has found.
The article goes on to tout the N95 or KN95 masks, saying they“…did the best job in containing aerosol droplets from the wearer’s mouth. I think the key words here are “from the wearer’s mouth.”
The article has a cute little graphic illustrating how the mask keeps the droplets from spreading from the wearer’s mouth so does that mean that people wearing these masks are really concerned about spreading their own droplets to other people and not stopping the infiltration of droplets from others? Does this mean that mandatory masking will include the use of the N95 mask, so all of us are blocking our own exhalations?
If so, there has to be a system for compensation for the price of these masks, as mask protocol demands that they be replaced every time they are removed, and even if left on can only be used for one day. And even then the N95 was only able to filter “over 50% of aerosol droplets”—how much “over”? 51% ? 59% ? I’m guessing this refers to properly fitted masks, worn correctly. In other words, there is no magic bullet to keep our exhalations from entering our environment, not even those fancy hospital masks,
But fear not, because it turns out that the silly masks aren’t really necessary. According to the same article, even ‘moderate ventilation’ matches the best of masks in terms of protection against COVID-19
That seems to say that in airplanes, where the airlines constantly brag about their ventilation systems, the airflow would “match the best of masks” in terms of protection. And large spaces, like grocery stores, would be even better, while outdoors ought to be very safe indeed. Yet I still see people masked up while riding bicycles, even one guy on a motorcycle, as well as pumping gas, walking dogs, etc.
The gullibility and silliness of humanity is on constant display.
Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins has been at the forefront of trying to get science-based advice to the public. He’s one of the few medical guests that talks about naturally acquired immunity, noting that over 100 million Americans probably already had and recovered from the infection, which bodes well for herd immunity given the vaccination rates.
You had to know that this was coming.
There seems to be conflicting information.
“Free of Charge” are the key words in that paragraph.
I think the key words are “new uses for it are continually being found.”
The FDA had a very thoughtful and professional-sounding statement about ivermectin the other day:
“You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it,” the FDA said in a tweet on Saturday.” Gotta love it when the FDA lets its high school interns post on its Twitter account.
Having said that, the “experts” have a point but are too clumsy to make it. That is, the stuff you buy in feed stores is probably not food grade for humans, and is calculated to treat animals that weigh a thousand pounds or more. When I buy ivermectin dewormer for my horses the tube has gradations for dosing animals up to 1250 pounds, and the whole tube is less than a quarter of an ounce, and its concentration is 1.87%.. It’s not straight ivermectin, as it’s full of stuff to make it into a paste and to hopefully taste good to the horse. (BTW, that taste thing doesn’t work very well. After deworming 30 horses I have ivermectin paste all over my face and hair and clothes as the critters try to spit it out and rub their mouths on me to get rid of it. While I am parasite-free through osmosis, I wouldn’t think of eating the stuff.)
So animal grade ivermectin is very concentrated, very strong, and probably not very pure.
There is a liquid ivermectin which requires a vet prescription, and it at least doesn’t have all the junk in it that paste does, but I don’t know the strength or the purity. Medical ivermectin is, presumably, food grade or better, and precisely measured for dosage.
As my personal philosophy is to stay as healthy as possible, try to avoid Covid only by being as healthy as possible and boosting your immune system and not worrying if you get the virus, these panicky efforts to head it off strike me as more dangerous than the virus itself. As I have told friends who worry, go see your doctor, talk about how you want to be treated if you develop symptoms, and then go out and live your life. If you are assured that your doctor is up on the latest treatment modalities, and will use treatments you are happy with at the earliest onset of the disease, you should be comfortable about living a normal lifestyle.
While I am parasite-free through osmosis, I wouldn’t think of eating the stuff.
Apparently a lot of people are, and there could be a couple reasons for that. Either they’re incredibly stupid, or their doctor wouldn’t prescribe it AND they’re incredibly stupid. I’m reminded of a meme I got the other day. It said:
IF YOU THINK YOU ARE SMARTER THAN THE PREVIOUS GENERATION…
50 YEARS AGO THE OWNER’S MANUAL OF A CAR SHOWED YOU HOW TO ADJUST THE VALVES. TODAY IT WARNS YOU NOT TO DRINK THE CONTENTS OF THE BATTERY.
I think a lot of the “stupid” is linked to, if not based on, blind panicky fear.
I have a neighbor who won’t go out of her house except to go to the doctor, and she won’t let her husband go grocery shopping but has groceries delivered to the house, where he has to disinfect everything before bringing it inside. She is probably not technically stupid, as she is a retired pharmacist, but she believes that Covid “liquifies your organs” and is totally paralyzed by fear, a prisoner in her own home and her own paranoia.
Look at the eyes of most masked people. Those who wear masks because they have to have different expressions than those who wear masks out of fear. Their eyes look haunted. They won’t make eye contact, as if the deadly lethal fatal virus can fly through the air on invisible beams from one eye to another.
I’m not stupid, and I’m not a risk taker. But I am rational. If I had not already had Covid I doubt that I would get the vaccine anyway, based on what I have been able to learn about it. I would have done what I have recommended, researched treatment modalities, found a doctor who has a good grip on how and when to treat the virus and then hoped I’d get a mild case so I could self-vaccinate. I would pay attention to the real science, which says the virus is spread as an aerosol, not from touching surfaces, and while practicing good hand washing practices I wouldn’t be sanitizing everything. I am a white knuckle flyer, but I still take planes to go places, because I believe in the statistics. I think I am probably in more danger on the highway than from Covid, and I drive a LOT, usually at about 80 MPH—but I am a safe and rational driver, I avoid driving in bad conditions, I avoid certain times of day and certain roads and I try to be prudent without isolating myself.
It breaks my heart to see so many people living in blind panicked terror, but it enrages me to see our government and its agencies callously fomenting this panic as a means to gain control and power.
We may be on the verge of a hostage crisis that will make the 1979 Iran hostage crisis look like a day in the park. All thanks to the expert class.
If American continues to elect Democrats in any significant numbers after this clusterf*ck, then we deserve what we get.
Well, we’ll probably keep campaigning against people instead of against systems, so we’ll probably keep losing a lot of campaigns we should be winning.
I think every Dem Town Hall should have at least one questioner ask the Dem candidate “Do you think it is wise to consolidate power in the hands of a few elites?” and if s/he answers “no”, as any intelligent person would, the response should be “Then why are you a Democrat?”
It’s not rocket surgery, folks.
Just curious of course after watching America media … is cancer still a thing? How about heart disease? Parkinson’s? Alzheimers? Drug addiction? Alcoholism? And did ICU unit’s even exist before Covid? I am wondering too … is it possible Democrats can save us all from dying? Asking for a friend.
Yeah, isn’t it funny how deaths from all the conditions you list simply diminished so dramatically? From the CDC: Flu activity was unusually low throughout the 2020-2021 flu season both in the United States and globally, despite high levels of testing. During September 28, 2020-May 22, 2021 in the United States, 1,675 (0.2%) of 818,939 respiratory specimens tested by U.S. clinical laboratories were positive for an influenza virus. Note the comment that they kept testing and testing and testing and by golly they just couldn’t find many cases!
Here are a few numbers to sum up the 2020/2021 flu season, running from October 1, 2020 to April 1, 2021. Mortality – The PIC mortality rate is the rate of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza, or COVID-19. This year, the majority of PIC deaths were due to COVID-19. 646 deaths were attributed to the flu. This essentially admits that cases that otherwise would have been attributed to pneumonia or influenza were instead attributed to Covid, with only 646 cases admitted to be influenza.
Yet in the previous flu season, 2019-2020, CDC estimates that influenza was associated with more than 35.5 million illnesses, more than 16.5 million medical visits, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths during the 2018-2019 influenza season.
(Scientific American) reports approximately 600 deaths attributed to influenza during the 2020-2021 flu season in the United States, which typically peaks between December and February. Compared to previous years, where the numbers in the 2019-2020 season saw roughly 22,000 deaths, and the 2018-2019 season had more at 34,000 deaths, 600 is a 97 percent drop. So why is that happening? Are the typical flu deaths being categorized as something else?
Why Are Flu Deaths, and Cases, so Low?
Nope. The numbers are so low because the flu isn’t around. “There’s just no flu circulating,” Greg Poland, a researcher who has been studying the flu for the Mayo Clinic for decades, told Scientific American. Because of the measures in place for COVID, including increased handwashing, wearing masks, and staying home when sick, no one is out there spreading the flu either.
“It turns out if you drastically reduce global travel, close public workplaces and schools, and promote mask-wearing and handwashing, you’ll cut off opportunities for common pathogens to spread,” AXIOS wrote.
Nice spin, Axios—but if all this is so effective at stopping one version of the flu, why doesn’t it stop the Kung Flu? “Because of the measures in place for COVID, including increased handwashing, wearing masks, and staying home when sick, no one is out there spreading the flu” but even with all these efforts, going back to the beloved CDC, COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause of 345,323 deaths during 2020 and evidently influenzas are territorial and the Covid virus chased the other influenza viruses right out of town—because suddenly “There’s just no flu circulating,”
As for the ICU panic, there have been several letters and articles by medical personnel pointing out that an ICU unit in a hospital doesn’t just sit empty till Covid patients come in. They have patients all the time, and when a Covid wave hits and some of its patients end up in the ICUs they are not the only people there. But to hear the Agenda Media tell it, if a hospital has a 10-bed ICU and five of the beds are filled and then five Covid patients are admitted, THE ICU IS OVERFLOWING WITH COVID PATIENTS.
Maybe I should stop calling them the Agenda Media and start calling them the Chicken Little Media, as to them the sky is always falling
is it possible Democrats can save us all from dying? They don’t want to save us ALL from dying—just Democrats. They want the rest of us to die soon, die fast and hopefully die painful agonizing deaths while realizing this is what Trump supporters deserve,
Thank God the homeless are exempt LMAO
The new mandate does not apply to children under the age of five, the homeless, people engaged in competitive sports and those delivering an outdoor speech or performance.
Just take a minute and look at this woman, and then listen to her. How in the world would anyone vote for that? Listen to that? Or even look at that? She may be one of the most unattractive, mind numbingly stupid people I’ve ever encountered, yet for some unknown reason, those are qualities that Democrats promote. We are being governed by the kids we use to beat up and laugh at during school. Maybe it’s time to beat them up again lol
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9924291/Oregon-state-reintroduce-OUTDOOR-face-mask-mandate.html
Maybe it’s time to beat them up again lol
I personally know several dozen people who would agree with that, myself included.
Some things just make me feel ancient.
For example, in a recent article about the passing of Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones there was a photo from 1968 with the caption Julian Lennon and his father John Lennon (of the Beatles) To the person writing this caption, the person of interest is Julian Lennon (a child in the photo) and John Lennon has to be identified as both his father and a member of the Beatles.
It reminded me of the time a young person and I were talking about music, the band “Wings” was mentioned and, referring to Paul McCartney, he said “Didn’t he used to be in another band?” What can you say? “Yes, the band that changed popular music forever.”
Or the time a young woman, probably not totally stupid as she was in school to become a pharmacist, in a discussion about the disappearance of John F. Kennedy Jr., asked “Wasn’t his father famous or something?” I couldn’t let that pass and said “Well, when his father was president of the United States a lot of people DID know who he was…”
I always hated it when older people started a sentence with the statement “When I was young…” but dammit, when I was young we had cultural context. We knew something about what had happened a few years earlier, we had some idea of events and people who had shaped the world we lived in. Maybe my musical world was the Beach Boys and the Beatles, but I knew who Frank Sinatra was, and the Rat Pack, I knew about movies like Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, I knew about the Depression and Woody Guthrie and Grapes of Wrath. My world even as a teenager was full of historical and cultural references far outside my little personal bubble in my little farm town. I work with a lot of teenagers, and their cultural context goes back maybe three years. In a world with such vast amounts of information available 24/7 literally at the touch of a finger on an always-present handheld device, there doesn’t seem to be any intellectual curiosity about anything not immediate and on Facebook.
According to the US Department of Homeland Security, these received top billing on potential terrorist threats.
1.) Opposition to COVID measures,
2.) Claims of Election Fraud,
3.) 9/11 Anniversary and Religious Holidays
When you cannot argue the facts, lie. When pressed about the lies, forbid any discussions what so ever and label such talk as a terrorist threat with the underlying potential of prosecution of retaliation. If any US government agency can make blatant threats against the 1st amendment, then we’ve lost the republic. They are not simply shunning such talks, they are openly targeting all political opposition. This is a significant step towards totalitarianism. When Trump was elected, they realized they only way to prevent anything like this from happening again is to create a de facto dictatorship. If they are able to push thru their agendas outside the constitutional law to control our lives, do people really believe we can regain some sense of (real) law through political means? I guess we’ll know in 2022 and 2024 but I’m not holding my breath. If they can steal the presidency then nothing seems outside what they’ll do/try.
There’s talk of instituting different measures in order to pressure people into getting the COVID vaccination. I read France has already instituted restriction of access to large grocery stores (over 20,00o sq ft) if you do not have a vaccine passport or can show a negative test in the past 72 hours.
1. Get tested daily at their own expense,
2. Docking people’s paychecks,
3. Charging students nonrefundable quarantine fees,
4. Denying medical care at hospitals,
5. Canceling private insurance or raising premiums by thousands of dollars a year,
6. Suspending gun permits and driver’s licenses,
7. Denying access to loans,
8. Withholding government assistance and federal benefits like Social Security, VA benefits, subsidized housing and pensions
Typically I’d view thigs like this a nothing more than bluster from petulant media and politicians, but with the onslaught of irrational comments and actions, just verbalizing or writing comments like these make me realize how far they’re willing to go to justify the end game. Some people won’t care about several of these, but to use these tactics to pressure people into getting an experimental vaccine(?) that has been shown to have many negative effects is nothing short of criminal. I wonder how many people would actually give up their gun permits or driver’s licenses if such a law was passed? My guess is they’d have to release all the real criminals to jail everyone breaking a law like this (not that I put it past them to try).
Isn’t that list just a campaign script for Republicans in 2022?
If we give the government the ability to do things like deny health care because of a different point of view, we are agreeing to establish a tyrannical dictatorship akin to that of the old USSR or Hitler’s Germany.
One way to fight this is to emphasize the dangers of creating such a powerful Central Authority that it can, at will, decide who gets paid or who gets medical treatment or who gets loans or who gets earned benefits like Social Security.
Along with this we have to find a way to communicate the reasons some people don’t want to get the vaccine, and erase the lie that this is just because they don’t care about making people sick. That would involve talking openly, and a lot, about the advantages of natural immunity and the direct relationship between the numbers of people testing positive and the growing numbers of people who then have this superior immunity. That would involve talking openly about the Big Secret of so many negative reactions to the vaccines, especially the potential dangers of vaccinating people who already have natural antibodies. That would involve a discussion of the possibility of the vaccines leading to new strains of drug- and vaccine- resistant strains of the virus that might be more deadly.
Basically, that would involve providing enough information to make getting vaccinated an informed decision, not a guess based on partial information.
The combination of information about the vaccine and its alternatives and the dangers of letting fear push us into giving up our freedom ought to be a winning strategy
After listening to the news tonight (which I rarely do anymore) LA, San Fran and Afghanistan all sound the same.
Actually America is worse … while our genius “expert” ruling class just armed and outfitted the worlds largest terrorist group and gave them their own country from to which to operate, they are at the same time arresting American high school kids for not obeying their mindless decrees.
Victoria, a junior, and Drew, a senior, were banned from ever attending Springs Charter School. They were ask to either comply with the mask mandate or leave the classroom, but the situation escalated when Victoria refused to do either and school resource officers were called. The school released a statement saying there are no religious exemptions for mask mandates in school settings in the state of California. Their parents (right) were called to the school and the police explained why their children were being forcibly removed
Is that the sound of a massive lawsuit circling over Springs Charter School? I sure hope so
So AZ local news just reported a drug bust in Phoenix. Nothing to be alarmed about; some cocaine, some meth, and oh yea enough Fentanyl pills to kill the population of AZ, but nothing to see here folks, please wear your masks and be sure to get your flu shot …. oh I mean vaccine
You keep forgetting to look on the bright side—no more mean tweets
And after all, isn’t this all a small price to pay for that?
I suppose lol
Founded in 2015, its followers aim to establish an Islamic caliphate across Khorasan (hence the initial ‘K’) – a historic region covering Pakistan and Afghanistan along with parts of Central Asia, writes GUY ADAMS. The terror group is now such a threat that fear of an attack by Isis-K is being used to justify the US’s refusal to delay its withdrawal from Kabul Airport after the August 31 deadline set by Joe Biden. In a statement released on Tuesday night, the US President claimed: ‘Every day we’re on the ground is another day we know that ISIS-K is seeking to target the airport and attack both US and allied forces and innocent civilians.’ The White House seems to believe ISIS-K (who regard the Taliban as dangerous liberals) is about to organise a wave of attacks in an effort to destabilise its efforts to form a government.
So Obama was responsible for ISIS, or the JV team as he liked to call them, and now his demented understudy, China Joe is responsible for ISIS-K … and I think these guys are the Varsity team.
You can always depend on a Democrat to royally f*ck things up.
Victor Davis Hanson, speaking on Glenn Beck’s radio show this morning, came up with an apt description of our current state of affairs. He said Democrats are committing cultural suicide.
A couple days ago the Biden Administration was asking the media to give them “props” for the successful evacuation of Afghanistan. In one of the most epic examples ever of be-careful-what-you-wish-for, I hope they get the credit they’re due.
Mass American casualties in Afghanistan as a direct result of The Biden Admin lunacy and not one of those motherf**ers have the balls to speak to the nation. Where the f**k is that loser Joe? How about Que Mala?
IMPEACH 46
For my entire adult life, the anchor of my philosophy has been “slow to anger, quick to forgive.” I’m being forced to re-evaluate that philosophy, as I’m angrier than I’ve been in a long time, and the thought of forgiving those responsible for this deadly clusterf*ck is the furthest thing from my mind.
I’m with ya
The really sad thing is that you know the mindset in the administration is not, how can we fix this, but how can we spin this. We’re dealing with disgusting pieces of human debris — a level of evil and incompetence that has rarely, if ever, existed in our government.
This is unforgivable I agree, and every American should be questioning our governments competence and dedication to this country because I think too many of them have allegiances elsewhere. I think Biden is a wholly owned subsidiary of China. Funny how there has never been any media inquiry into that possibility.
Another scary thing to be considered now … violent terrorists now have much more capability to attack than ever before. We gave 7th century thugs, 21st century weaponry. And that is directly the fault of Democrats, Facebook, Twitter, and the complicit Media for stealing an election from the American people and installing the most incompetent and stupid man in America … all to assuage their juvenile and fragile emotional state. These people are not critically thinking adults.
IMPEACH 46
My only concern is what would happen next. For one thing, people are saying both Joe and Que Mala should go, but who would replace them? Does anyone think for a minute that Schumer and Pelosi wouldn’t be elbowing everyone out of the way to be named? Who on the Dem side would be any better? I can’t think of a single Dem who could handle the job. Not one. But look at who would be considered. Warren would be at the top of their list, Maybe Bernie.
This is system defect as much as it is a Biden defect.
I say hold off on getting rid of Joe till we control Congress, because anyone named to be vice president has to be approved by Congress
On the bright side, Biden’s streak of being on the wrong side of every major foreign policy decision is intact.