Here’s the thing about the Navy: it needs more ships. And possibly more bayonets, so as not to offend the bayonet-Americans. But definitely more ships. This is self-evidently true according to presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who astutely observed the other night that our air force is “older than any time since 1947.” This is also self-evidently true! So the solution here is more ships, which you can use to attack Syria (a.k.a. “Iran’s route to the sea”) and if you get bored with that, you can sail on over to Afghanistan, which will be very helpful to our men and women and uniform. So yeah, more ships, says Romney, who is being advised by some guy who by coincidence just so happens to invest in ship-building companies. Does his opinion on navy ships have to do with these ties to ship-building companies? No, of course not, his opinion on navy ships just has to do with Keeping Us Safe.™
One of Romney’s most important advisers on Navy issues [is] John Lehman, an investment banker and former secretary of the Navy, [who] has strong and complex personal financial ties to the naval shipbuilding industry. He has profited hugely from the Navy’s slow growth in recent years — raising the prospect that he could make even more if Romney takes his advice on expanding the fleet.
[…]
Lehman invested in a government-backed “Superferry” in Hawaii — a business that ultimately failed, but not before boosting the standing of Austal USA, an Alabama shipbuilder that constructed the ferry service’s ships… Lehman continues to own shipyards that do lucrative maintenance work for the Navy. Even leaving aside the intricate ferry-and-shipyard series of deals, Lehman still stands a decent chance of profiting from the naval buildup he is helping to plan.
This is just a coincidence, of course, because gosh — Romney and Ryan, they just want to make sure America is strong. Militarily, that is. And the best way to make us strong enough to fight our enemies is MORE SHIPS.
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Yeah, that's a puzzler. I'd be willing to bet that the US navy's collective tonnage as of the debate considerably outweighed the old Navy Rmoney was referring to also.
Talking out of his periscope, as usual.
Not to mention, as Barack sadly failed to do, that in fact just on raw ship count (a measure that actual naval analysts say "doesn't pass the giggle test"), Romney is still lying – the Navy's active ship count in each of the four years of Bush's second term was lower than at any time during Barack's term. The number of ships ordered per year has also gone up under Obama compared with Bush's second term.
And yes, any one of our 11 carrier groups could certainly, with ease, sink our entire 1916 Navy.
I propose this modest suggestion.
Let's pave over the entire ocean and this way, a navy becomes irrelevant.
ASPHALT LOBBY
If you did that Mitt would start investing in companies that specialise in highway construction.
Jobs, baby
Money, baby.
Creating jobs for the irrresponsible 47% is just an unfortunate side effect.
But, but, but, Paul Ryan said the ocean is not getting smaller.
If the Navy of 1943 was enough to prevent Pearl Harbor from the Germans, it's enough to keep the US&A safe from Iran's extensive nuclear program. On planet Kolob.
Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer…dead."
Forget it, he's on a roll
Is John one of the Lehman Brothers?
I wonder how much money Willard has invested in Lehman's shipyards?
Might need more Dancing Horses for the Army.
Ha!
Five star General Rafalca?
Exactly http://industrialanatomy.wordpress.com/2009/05/25…
There is some weird shit for sale out there on the intertubes.
horses for the air force, sez i. back in the day when every enola gay was decorated with onions zzzzzzzzzz
Maybe Rafalca will be the first Romney to serve the military.
Romney – I never served in the military but I have friends who own naval shipbuilding companies.
Does Romney have any investments in blimps or personal jet packs?
Just wondering.
Mitt also said the Air Force needs more planes with windows that roll down,
All the better to spearhead his Mormon invasion of France.
"…invested in a government-backed 'Superferry'…"
Marcus or Lindsay?
Actually, I saw the Superferry back in 2008, Iirc. It was YUUUUUGE.
Then maybe he's heard of aircraft carriers!
This proves it: Mitt Romney is a Muslim.
In Virginia, they are working on transvaginal bayonets. Jerbs, people, jerbs.
Personally, I'd rather see the Navy (and other branches of the military) hire a few more computer geeks who could continue getting into Iran's networks and keep the computers at their nuclear facilities playing AC/DC rather than running the production of enriched uranium.
I'd suggest that they do similar things to North Korea's military facilities, but I suspect that that whole country's network consists of a satellite hook up so Kim Jong Un can watch Netflix movies and a single dial up modem for all military computer activities.
i like the way you think
I'm voting for Terry.
Well, duh. If he didn't have Netflix, how will he know which directors and actresses to kidnap?
Obama was going to announce exactly when and how we are doing that, with the full budget, key personnel and list of facilities from which we run our counter-espionage, but he ran out of time at the debate. He will probably casually mention it to the owner of a donut shop in Las Vegas, though.
Or off the record to a newspaper in Iowa.
and a single dial up modem for all military computer activities.
That, and the modem is hooked up to a Coleco Adam.
Mitt was asked by the ghost of David Broder if he knew about submarines, "you know, those long, hard, round things that carry seamen." And Mitt replied,"Lindsey Graham?"
has strong and complex personal financial ties to the naval shipbuilding industry
He used to blow welders at the Electric Boat plant in Grorton.
Didn't Mitt say he wanted to run our old Navy like a Banana Republic.
Yes and he will fill The Gap with horses and bayonets!
Each ship will have a J Crew.
Will he be recruiting on J Date?
Mom jeans, half off
Lehman was SecNav during my enlistment in the Navy. Dick then, probably dick now.
Don't tell anyone, but during my jarhead incarceration I worked a couple months for the Asst Sec of the Navy–Melvyn Paisley at some building with five walls. I can confirm your assessment–he was then and still is a five-star prick.
I can't do the Google-fu right now but wasn't he present during the Tailhoook party scandal, cavorting with strippers?
He wants one of those aircraft carriers that flies, like Nick Fury has.
All the GOPooh bears want some of that sweet, sweet government honey. Worker bees, unite!
So. Government *does* create jobs, then?
Would it have killed Obama to call Romney out on his two trillion dollar stimulus package?
Julia Roberts whored herself out so that one dude would have a change of heart and decide to build ships instead of breaking up the company. Do we really want that whoring to go to waste?
I think we need more Yangtze River gunboats. Maybe we would get more movies like "The Sand Pebbles" out of that.
The Yangtze is currently shallow enough to wade across in most places… boats aren't an option anymore!
So, it's okay for the guberment to create jerbs as long as said jobs ultimately line the pockets of your uber-rich friends. Got it.
I can haz alt-text now?
Here's mine: "Mitt and Ann take a cruise in the SS Fertility."
"Needs more boats."
I own all your Grey Poupon.
"All your yacht are belong to us."
I would say maybe Lehman could sell ships to Iran but since they have to go through Syria for a seaport maybe he could just sell them to the Soviet Union.
And the USSR and CCCP.
ALso, we need enough firepower to breach the Berlin Wall.
I'm also hearing some rumbles concerning Archduke Ferdinand, that guy should watch his back…
Why won't our Communist President address the fact that Navy hasn't won an NCAA football championship since 1926? That's the real threat to American strength.
Faux will get right on this story.
But haven't you seen the latest advertisements? The Navy is a Global Force for Good!!!
I didn't know that spreading gonorrhea was considered a global good.
It's not just a job, it's $98.76 a week!
Corrupt, Venal Hypocrite is corrupt. And venal.
You know what we'll get? Submarine aircraft carriers (an actual 1950's proposal), and flying flapjacks (look it up) and gold plated missle systems that can't pass the "strapped down chicken test." Fund them all then try to truck the deliveries across collapsing infrastructure.
Just as long as we maintain our great stockpiles of Quint Zed Rockets/Schwarzgerät/Imipolex G., America will be right as rain.
Hoping Marcus B. or Lindsay G. is the payload during test trials…
“Here's your first problem," he said, pointing at a sentence. "'Religion is the opium of the people.' Well, I don't know about people, but I think you'll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.”
G. Defoe
Where can you find pleasure, search the world for treasure, learn science and technology?
This doesn't sound like something Mittens wants.
Romney – "Who sunk my Battleship?"
He's mostly wondering why we don't have triremes anymore
Well at least one Lehman brother is solvent.
You know, I hate to break rank with my fellow Obots here, but I have to admit, one place where Obama is wrong is that the US military totally could use some more Bayonetta
Now we know what Sarah Palin has been up to.
Was disappointed you didn't go here.
Where do we need ships? Answer: EverydamnWhere!!!!
Explaination!: Commander-in-Waiting Mittens, from the bow of his thirty-five foot lake cruiser, can easily see that our largest inland sea, the Great Salt Lake, is UNPROTECTED!! Enemy battleships positioned there, could launch the most devastating attack on America since 9/11!!1!!
How easily you forget the naval invasion from the hedonistic evil empire to the west–trained on Lake Tahoe to divide and conquer the Mormon Empire.
In Utah they call that terrible day Reno 9/11.
And the Great Lakes. Largely unprotected from the socialist hordes. Defend the Northern Border.
It's the same reason he wants more coal, and more oil, and more gas, and more nuclear, and less bank regulation, less environmental protection, less tightening of tax loopholes. Mitt Romney is not a candidate – he's a fixer for his corporate friends and fellow yacht owners.
Nothing exemplifies American Patrician Privilege more than a boat full of Romney's.
Is it just me, or when a gaggle that big can't drink, I get nervous?
OK, let's review: "Government doesn't create ______________."
Discuss.
Boats?
Government cheese.
We need to address the Party Barge Gap ASAP!
Didn't Mittens head up the committee to expand the Utah Navy?
Hey Frank Luntz, here's one for you:
Lose ships, pink slips.
No charge, Radio.
Rmoney needs a bigger Navy to defend all the countries where he has his money stored. The fact that his good buddy builds ships is just icing on the cake.
That boat needs more ballast in the bow. Goddamn anti-bigamy laws.
I live in Iowa. No new battleship is going to keep me safe. Give me a good old American AK-47 any day.
American AK-47….I see what you did there….
Moar Great Lakes Battleships!! Dearborn, Michigan is Syria's gateway to the walleye!!
I for one am outraged that the US Navy has only one 36-gun, 3-masted frigate under commission. And no 3-deck ships of the line.
The United States Navy could take on the rest of the world's navies combined (and the vast majority of those foreign ships belong to our allies anyway) and likely not lose a ship. So the obvious solution is more ships.
Binders of ankle-biters on their own in the bow of a racing speedboat; what could possibly go wrong? At least they're wearing PFD's, so the bodies will be easy to recover.
When we lived on the water on Long Island, we always wondered about the peen size of a guy with a boat like that.
Prolly the same as a hummer-driver.
Here's an oldy but a goodie. An actual truth told my Romney *gasp*
Romney: "I'm a big believer in getting money where money is, and it's in Washington D.C."
http://youtu.be/5yR_Mn4Skt4
"…presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who astutely observed the other night that our air force is “older than any time since 1947.”
You're older than you've ever been
And now you're even older
And now you're even older
And now you're even older
You're older than you've ever been
And now you're even older
And now you're older still
Time is marching on
And time is still marching on
It's okay if this becomes public knowledge because it's just the usual corrupt republican politics, and after all there's plenty of money in the budget for a boondoggle or two
Ramming Speed!!!
Of course Romney would like to order more ships, to be built by his companies in China!
It's simple, the more ships we have on the high seas, the sooner we can find the Northwest Passage. I for one welcome this policy.
Global warming is taking care of this for us, with or without more ships.
mitt romney will create real jobs shoveling clean american coal to power our dreadnoughts in the coming campaign to liberate the Levant from the fiendish grip of the ottoman empire
Tell me he is not carrying the dog under that boat.
My stepdad works for Austal in Mobile. He worked on the Superferry, and now the LCS (Littoral Combat Ship), which btw are all catamarans or some funky thing. Does this mean I have to vote for Romney?*
*My stepfather is not voting for Romney. My mother is not voting for Romney. Me, neither. 'Cause, you know, these ships are getting built by Obama anyway, also too.
You said Littoral. I say Beach.
Jeez, with all this talk about Bayonet-Americans, Blahs and the You People, you'd think the Republican party was more inclusive than it really is…
Ho
"Big ships are sexy. Or lips." — Thuston Howell III & Ginger
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