Flowers For Socrates

The Iranian mock-up of a US aircraft carrier, when first viewed from satellite pictures, did confuse intelligence analysts, because it could have been more than a photo-op tow target for a military exercise, but it did seem pretty stupid to think the Iranian navy, even its contingent of wacko Revolutionary Guards, would ever build a working ship or a movie prop like the one in Deadpool.

Even more stupid would be to build more such ships to be deployed so closely and with battlefield commanders given more operational autonomy …. oh wait.

Submarines and targets – another symbol of Trumpian naval gazing on MIC procurement. Put Trump’s name on a white water elephant.

POTUS45* loves his (four-and-a-half acre) real estate and showed up to rattle sabers after a joint address to Congress that even bamboozled liberal commentators. The event was meant to spike the ball (bearings) on MIC budget matters. Then those Russian connections appeared and the 530am tweet-storm happened on Saturday.

Agent Orange promised more construction because that’s what he’s all about, shovel-ready stuff for ribbon-cutting ceremonies or being fiscally responsible by whining about the costs of the F-35, because “taking charge” of that product makes sense to the future non-US customers, and maybe even sell a few more F-18s elsewhere in the bargain. Win!

Worst of all, RWNJs invented a CT about lack of US aircraft carrier deployment by PBO prior to the 2017 inaugural by ginning up something, something “secret Muslim”. So much for media disinformation in the service of crypto-fascism.

Orange shitgibbon really wants a ship named after him and like branded skyscrapers, it should be an aircraft carrier. Unlike JFK, DJT is pretty shallow draft and naming ships for presidents tends to either submarines (Jimmy Carter) or targets like aircraft carriers, although now GW Bush, Bill Clinton, and even, ZOMG Barack Obama, would precede Lord Dampnut in the naming queue, unless there’s a significant historical military event, assuming that there will be shipyards after WW-III.

• U.S. Navy ships are named by the secretary of the Navy—under the direction of the president—according to a 2012 Navy report to the Congress. But within the Navy there are two warring camps—“orthodox traditionalists” who believe ship names should rigidly follow naming conventions, and “pragmatic traditionalists” who are more flexible.
• Naming conventions for aircraft carriers and for other ships have changed over the years, but the current unofficial convention was adopted in 1996 with the 104th Congress. The Republican-dominated Congress demanded the Democratic President Bill Clinton name the next carrier after President Ronald Reagan. Clinton acquiesced after a compromise was reached—CVN-75 would be renamed Harry S. Truman after the thirty-third and Democratic president, instead of being called United States.

“Can we think of a photo-op as stupid as 2012’s Romney (alternative service, France) introducing his vice presidential running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (civilian, P90X), in Norfolk, Va. on the USS Wisconsin?”Then there’s all those Russian connections and Sessions choking on what should be some disturbing revelations on crony capitalism and kleptocracy realized at the Commander-in-Chief level.

The only pivoting since then has been the continuing strategy of tension criminalizing entire ethnicities and religions to distract from some hard realities of why Bannonism will get everyone killed,… because winning.

Even a junior ex-officer like Steve Bannon can appreciate that an ASCM (anti-ship cruise missile) or a super-cavitating missile/torpedo launched by a cheap third-world sub will make all those Argo fantasies of Benghazi revenge go south. But maybe that’s what they want, or what Putin wants.

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