Oh, drats, someone in my family line, in Scotland, sent me this link as an example of, paraphrasing, great American stick-to-it gumption, superiority and bad-ass imperialism.
Quote: “No wonder the Iranians want this ship (aircraft carrier) out of the Persian Gulf. This is a great example of United States of America technology, teamwork and strength in action. Hang on for the ride!”
Yep, this is the export of America, North America, that is — a nuclear powered, $4.5 billion dollar junk-killing-droning-child-wedding party-bombing-human death toll creator.
Note the stats:
The teamwork is so well displayed, you know, American (sic) ingenuity. We have this pile of death for the price of 80 percent of our 315 million population in the USA having 7 percent of total wealth in a country that lauds and whose eyes tear up when considering the incredible power of these USS Capitalism Pushers in dominating the world’s resources, the world’s countries, 80 percent of planet earth. Whew, only the Alexanders write the history books, no?
We can’t even plow our cities’ roads, can’t house our cities’ homeless in good times let alone during the fury of flurries. We can’t educate our cities’ children well, and we can’t keep the thugs of finance away from a great city like Detroit. We fail to render medical-dental-psychiatric care for our cities’ lower middle and lower poor classes. We shrug collectively, when the media are complicit in illegal wars, illegal theft of our nation’s future, complicit in the big lie of the big shots running capital and the industrial military-prison-chemical-energy-IT complexes. We cut taxes for the obscenely rich, fire teachers, cut food security (AKA, food assistance program), cut social welfare programs for the 2.3 million now in jail, another 1/6th of the population that will be in the hands of the law somehow in any given 10 year span. We can’t fix bridges, can’t create public transportation that works, can’t even go back to the future and build rails for us, people movers, that is, and for the goods to build a nation.
But we gush over the Navy-turds, the men and women wearing white and those silly Ice Cream/ Creamery hats. These are the nation’s finest, trained to kill, trained to rationalize every drop of blood spilled or vaporized as their duty to god, country, and family.
We can build a military, throw billions at rotten liars and crummy commanders. We are laughing stocks in our own hearts, even as we tear up at a football game when the Blue Angels fly overhead or when the marines push themselves in wheelchairs to the podium to get a free bag of Doritos for life, every single day.
We look like deer caught in the headlights of corporate military industrial complex fascism. This Aircraft Carrier, USS John Stennis, is a wet dream of the industrialists, the lobbyists, the rotten political class, the One Percent. Well, if you watch the video, brought to us by that warped Channel, Discovery, we see that the average age of folks working on this death machine is 19 years old? Nice little cross-section of humanity as ambassadors of the continuing criminal enterprise of DoD, DARPA, NSA, WB, Mercenaries r’ Us, et al.
Amerika — I can’t believe anyone in their right mind would prop this evil ship up as some great testament to USA ingenuity. We have failing children by the millions (in a privatized education system that wants functional illiteracy for the consumer age), an obese population, a poor population, 50 percent unemployment of youth, black youth. We have idiots who make idiotic movies, TV, junk, obsolete-tech-stuff-before-leaving-assembly-line who control 93 percent of the public wealth, commons, and goods. This naval machine is an embarrassment to humanity, to everything these Christian soldiers believe their Christ could and might have been.
Talk about upsetting the money changers and merchants of death. Ya think old Jesus would just go out and christen one of these galleons of genocide?
This machine costs us how much just in dollars? Around $1.45 million per day. Forget about the bad-will this machine exports. Blowback, anyone?
- $160 million per year just for the personnel
- add aircraft fuel and maintenance parts, and you’re looking at closer to $400 million per year
- add the cost of the carrier ($4.5 billion) and divide it over its lifetime (about 40 years) and you’re looking at about $530,000,000 per year which is close to $1,450,000 per day.
- Carriers launch on average 18 times (with 18 recoveries) per day including time in port and time in shipyads.
- That means each carrier launch costs $80,600.
Note that there are 10 of these in the USA’s little arsenal. Doing McDonald’s napkin math, well, what’s that: $14.5 million a day to run these things?
Displacement: 103,300 long tons (115,700 short tons)
Length: Overall: 1,092 feet (332.8 m)
Waterline: 1,040 feet (317.0 m)
Beam: Overall: 252 ft (76.8 m)
Waterline: 134 ft (40.8 m)
Propulsion: 2 × Westinghouse A4W nuclear reactors; 4 × steam turbines; 4 × shafts; 260,000 shp (194 MW)
Speed: 30+ knots (56+ km/h; 35+ mph)
Range: Unlimited distance; 20-25 years
Capacity: 6,500 officers and crew (with embarked airwing)
Complement: Ship’s company: 3,200
Air wing: 2,480
Armament: 2 × Mk 57 Mod3 Sea Sparrow; 2 × RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile; 3 × Phalanx CIWS
Armor: Classified
Aircraft carried: 90 fixed wing and helicopters
Aviation facilities: catapults: 4; aircraft elevators: 4