This is one of those “where do we start?” days. So let’s start with Trump unveils a new class of Navy battleship named after himself at WaPo.
Trump, speaking alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, said the new warships will have “guns and missiles at the highest level,” along with hypersonic weapons, electric rail guns and lasers. The first battleship, to be called the USS Defiant, will be part of a broader effort to build a modern “Golden Fleet” of warships, Trump said, indicating that he will play a leading role in the program.
“The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a really aesthetic person,” Trump said.
The Navy said in a news release after Trump’s announcement that the vessel “will be the most lethal surface combatant ever constructed” and triple the size of a current Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which is about 505 feet long and weighs about 9,000 tons. That would be smaller than existing aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, vessels that commonly carry Marines at sea.
A logo unveiled for the new ship class depicts Trump in the moments after a July 2024 assassination attempt, fist held high.
I swear, you can’t make this shit up. But I’m betting the “golden fleet” will never set sail.
But whether the nuclear missile is actually built and included on the ship is beside the point, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser in the defense and security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He questioned whether the vessel itself ever would be built, noting that its significant size will saddle the battleship with similar limitations and vulnerabilities as the nation’s other large warships. The Navy for decades has emphasized a smaller and distributed fleet as a way to counter evolving technologies such as drone warfare.
“There’s going to be a lot of ink spilled over this ship — but this ship is never going to sail,” Cancian predicted. “It’s going to take four, five, six years to develop a ship this large that is so unlike current designs.”
This deserves a musical accompaniment.
Maybe somebody should persuade Trump it would be really cool to reconstitute the horse cavalry. A horse cavalry would be just as useless but less expensive, and cavalry have the best hats. It’s worth clicking on the WaPo link above and going straight to the comments, especially under the “recommended” tab. They’re hysterical.
The DoJ dumped a bunch more Epstein files overnight. I’m not paying that much attention. The DoJ is not going to release anything that incriminates Trump. But some people are paying attention. See Kate Riga, The Epstein Files Keep Trickling Out. Here Are 5 Points on What’s Happening at TPM.
The Supreme Court has rejected Trump’s deployment of National Guard in Illinois.
“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the high court said in an unsigned order released more than two months after the administration asked the justices to weigh in.
This seems to suggest that the Court may reconsider if Trump’s lawyers can find a better excuse.
The spiked 60 Minutes segment has been leaked. You can watch it here.
Will the battleship go up to eleven?
HAHAHAHA!
"I have the very best guns. No one can beat my guns"
PEW PEW PEW .
Remember my shitbomber, it ended 72 wars all by myself.?!
“The DoJ is not going to release anything that incriminates Trump”
Maybe so or maybe not. I’d say it’s a coin toss.
And I agree with you that the DoJ won’t release incriminating documents intentionally.
I’m betting they are so inept that they do it by accident.
Regarding the Epstein dump, it appears that much of the redaction on thousands of documents can be removed with a simple cut and paste, 'display all' set of commands. This is Keystone Cops buffoonery on a digital level.
The USSC decision is potentially crucial, though not the final word. Trump HAS to be able to deploy troops to suppress free speech, freedom of assembly, and probably the right to vote. I want the USSC to decide that the US military is not the private security firm of one Donald J. Trump, but in the final throw, Trump will try it anyhow.
Regarding the new "Trump Class" battleship, I want to know if it will have "Plaid Drive?" The suggestion of a new battleship is so cheesy, Wisconsin wouldn't build it. I'm a Navy vet, worked on the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. I can tell you that the Enterprise relied on air power for defense as well as offense. BTW, there was a pre-WWII debate about whether an aircraft carrier was more potent than a battleship. Pearl Harbor ended the debate. The "defiant" is, of course, the name of a ship from Star Trek DS9. The idea of a huge gunboat without an air-based defensive screen sounds suicidal. But it may have been a ploy to talk about anything else.
I've never heard of rail guns, even theoretically, having the range to project offensive power over the horizon. Missiles, yes, but you don't need a 1500-foot platform for what a moden guided missile destroyer can do for a lot less money and a lot more stealth. An attack sub can also and it's close to undetectable. I'm aware that an aircraft carrier may be vulnerable to a sub attack. May. So would the bad joke Trump proposed, but the Trump proposal lacks the air-to-sea sub warfare component.
Without a LOT of development, there's no way Congress will appropriate money for this. If the weapon systems get out of development and are proven, then a new class of ship might be developed but unless there's a reason that it has to be big, the first version(s) will be small.
Did I miss something? When did "aesthetics" become a design criterion for a warship?
"All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why."
– James Thurber
"because I’m a really aesthetic person"
You should look in the fucking mirror!
CNN has a story that they obtained an email from the DOJ that they are looking for people to work the holiday to "review and redact" documents related to the Epstien Files. I can't decide if this is more incompetence or more shit against the wall so everything stinks? It's pretty obvious to me that Bondo has made the decision to purposely fuck this whole release up so the magats can rally around the fact that the whole process sucks so lets just move on already?
Merry Christmas mahabloggers, this is a real gem, there might be a commercial just hit the skip!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1J2OkCPqk8&list=RDN1J2OkCPqk8&start_radio=1
Thanks for the link!! Great performance… love the Kinks. Unfortunately I missed a chance to see them live back in the day. Have regretted that since years later came to appreciate them.
Maybe somebody should persuade Trump it would be really cool to reconstitute the horse cavalry.
Yes, but giant horses. Horses two, three, four times the size of existing horses.
Of course it would take decades to breed horses this large that are so unlike current horses. So maybe we'd never actually see a new giant horse cavalry.
But that's beside the point.
"A strong America needs the Dirigible"
– my favorite bumper sticker from Reagan era
Battleships are a common fetish among right-wing types of Trump's generation, correlated with man-cushes on Patton & MacArthur (it's all about those Big Guns). They cheered when Reagan spent a $B unmothballing some old WWII Battleships to lob a few shells into the hills of Lebanon. Trump's blather about the 'aesthetics' of warship design it the real tell.
OTOH, Battleships really can 'project power' without ever firing those Big Guns. Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet wowed a lot of people around the world, announcing the USA's entry into the Great Power club. No other warship can compete for innate psychological power – no wonder Trump wants them.
OTOOH, 'Battleships' really are obsolete; in a Real War (with 'peer competitors'), they would all be sunk quickly. OTOOOH, the same is probably true of our Aircraft Carriers (though any politician with the guts to say that out loud would never win another election).
The big problem for the US Navy is that we can't make Ships anymore (exception: 200-ft yachts for Zillionaires). 'Offshoring' manufacturing to China means we just don't have the industrial base to do it; perhaps worse, we somehow can't seem to even design useful warships these days. And even if we could design and build, the Pentagon is so sclerotic that it takes years to set basic specs for any new Ship class, so any new Ship is obsolete by time it hits the water (see: LCS 'Little Crappy Ship').
For good – non-political – perspective on this, check out Sal Mercogliano on You Tube:
The United States Announces the Return of the Battleship [or the next Large Surface Combatant]
….Maha: "and cavalry have the best hats"
made me laugh out loud. Thank you, Maha…laughter is the best medicine
re. the supposed "aesthetics"…
Current POTUS equates lethality with beauty.
Is their any better or more succinct expression of his sickness?