Conservative Blogger
Monday, January 9, 2017
Navy, Trump planning biggest fleet expansion to deter Russian, Chinese threats
BATH, Maine – With President-elect Donald Trump demanding more ships, the Navy is proposing the biggest shipbuilding boom since the end of the Cold War to meet threats from a resurgent Russia and saber-rattling China.
The Navy's 355-ship proposal released last month is even larger than what the Republican Trump had promoted on the campaign trail, providing a potential boost to shipyards that have struggled because budget caps that have limited money funding for ships.
At Maine's Bath Iron Works, workers worried about the future want to build more ships but wonder where the billions of dollars will come from.
"Whether Congress and the government can actually fund it, is a whole other ball game," said Rich Nolan, president of the shipyard's largest union.
Boosting shipbuilding to meet the Navy's 355-ship goal could require an additional $5 billion to $5.5 billion in annual spending in the Navy's 30-year projection, according to an estimate by naval analyst Ronald O'Rourke at the Congressional Research Service.
The Navy's revised Force Structure Assessment calls for adding another 47 ships including an aircraft carrier built in Virginia, 16 large surface warships built in Maine and Mississippi, and 18 attack submarines built in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Virginia. It also calls for more amphibious assault ships, expeditionary transfer docks and support ships.
In addition to being good for national security, a larger fleet would be better for both the sailors, who'd enjoy shorter deployments, and for the ships, which would have more down time for maintenance, said Matthew Paxton, president of the Shipbuilders Council of America, which represents most of the major Navy shipbuilders.
"Russia and China are going to continue to build up their navies," he said. "The complexities aren't going to get any easier. The Navy, more than any of the services, is our forward presence. We're going to need this Navy."
Many defense analysts agree that military capabilities have been degraded in recent years, especially when it comes to warships, aircraft and tanks.
Even when Trump takes office, no one envisions a return to the heady days during the Cold War when workers were wiring, welding, grinding, pounding and plumbing ships at a furious pace to meet President Ronald Reagan's audacious goal of a 600ship Navy.
The Navy currently has 274 deployable battle force ships, far short of its old goal of 308 ships.
Lawrence J. Korb, a retired naval officer and former assistant defense secretary under Reagan, said the Navy's request isn't realistic unless the Trump administration is willing to take the budget "to levels we've never seen."
"You never have enough money to buy a perfect defense. You have to make trade-offs," said Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
But investors apparently are betting on more ships.
General Dynamics, which owns Bath Iron Works, Connecticut-based Electric Boat and California-based NASSCO, and Huntington Ingalls, which owns major shipyards in Virginia and in Mississippi, have both seen stock prices creep upward since the election.
"To the generic military shipbuilder, it's a bull market right now," said Ronald Epstein, an analyst at Bank of America's Merrill Lynch division.
In Bath, the 6,000 shipbuilders aren't going to count their eggs before they hatch.
"A lot of people are hopeful that it'll happen," Nolan said. "But they're taking a wait-and-see approach. They've heard it before and then seen it not come to fruition."
Trump's Cabinet nominees get their day before Senate, as partisan wrangling intensifies
Confirmation hearings begin this week on Capitol Hill for Alabama Sen. Jeff Session as U.S. attorney general and other Cabinet picks from President-elect Donald Trump -- amid increasing partisan threats about derailing nominees and calls to keep politics out of the process.
The most recent exchange began Saturday when Democrats called for a delay in the hearings -- including at least seven this week -- because several of Trump’s nominees have purportedly failed to complete ethics reviews to avoid conflicts of interest.
Democrats called for the delay based on letter this weekend from the Office of Government Ethics to Senate leaders stating that some of the nominees scheduled for hearings have yet to complete their ethics review process.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday the complaints are merely “procedural” and are being raised by Democrats frustrated about him and fellow Republicans now controlling the House, Senate and White House.
"I understand that. But we need to sort of grow up here and get past that,” the Kentucky senator told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We confirmed seven Cabinet appointments the day President Obama was sworn in. We didn't like most of them either. But he won the election.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the ethics review is to ensuring wealthy Cabinet members work for the American people instead of "their own bottom line and that they plan to fully comply with the law."
Republicans are intent on getting as many Trump nominees through the arduous confirmation process before the incoming Republican president takes the oath of office on Jan. 20.
Several of Trump’s picks are wealth Americans with far-reaching business connections -- Republican mega-donor Betsy DeVos, for education secretary; ExxonMobile CEO Rex Tillerson, for secretary of state; Billionaire private-equity investor Wilbur Ross, for commerce secretary and former Goldman Sachs executive Steve Mnuchin for treasury secretary.
Despite all of the wrangling ahead of the Senate confirmation hearings, Trump’s nominees will almost certainly get enough votes in the chamber's GOP-led committees. However, they could run into delays when both parties cast final votes on the Senate floor, despite needing only 51 “yeahs.”
Democrats could use procedural moves to extend the debate on each of the nominees. But they don’t have the power to use the filibuster to block the nominations, because in the last Congress they changed the threshold on such filibusters from 60 to 51 votes.
The hearings begin Tuesday with Sessions in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the same panel that in 1986 denied him a federal judgeship, following allegations that he had made racist remarks and called the NAACP "un-American."
Still, Session, an immigration hawk and the first U.S. Senator to endorse Trump, a fellow Republican, is expected to be confirmed without much delay or fight.
Still, civil rights groups are urging a thorough vetting of Sessions. Last week, NAACP President Cornell William Brooks and other group members were arrested after a sit-in protest in Sessions' Mobile, Alabama, office, and could do something similar on Capitol Hill.
The two-day hearing includes a day for Sessions to address the committee, and a day for rebuttal witnesses from those opposing his nomination.
Session will be followed Tuesday by retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, the nominee for the post of Homeland Security secretary.
Tillerson’s hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to run the State Department, arguable the most important and high-profile Cabinet post, could be the most contentious.
His job leading oil giant ExxonMobile, which included deals with Russia and connections to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is raising concerns, especially after a recent U.S. intelligence report stated both meddled in this year’s presidential election.
However, the expected showdown with Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain -- who last week suggested he’d vote for Tillerson when “pigs fly” -- appears less likely.
McCain said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that still has questions but that a meeting last week with Tillerson eased concerns.
“Every president should have the benefit of the doubt as to their nominees,” he said. “So there has to be a compelling reason not” to vote for him.
Democrats and others argue that Ross, who founded the private equity firm WL Ross & Co., is the type of Wall Street tycoon that Trump has vowed to keep out of Washington.
But Ross' record has so far shown no potentially damaging conflicts of interest.
Schumer and other Democrats have purportedly targeted DeVos, Sessions and Tillerson as well as Mnuchin and South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney, for the Office of Management -- whose hearings have yet to be scheduled.
“If Republicans think they can quickly jam through a whole slate of nominees without a fair hearing process, they’re sorely mistaken,” Schumer said last week.
One of the committees that hasn't yet received the ethics review forms is the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which will hold the DeVos hearings.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee said it had also not received the forms for Ross, though a spokeswoman said they expect them soon.
Committee aides said they have received ethics forms for Sessions, Tillerson, Treasury Secretary nominee and retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis and Elaine Chao, for transportation secretary.
The Government Ethics office did not list which of Trump's Cabinet choices hadn't turned in their disclosures.
Other confirmation hearings next week include Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, for director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Ben Carson for housing secretary.
Trump pick for secretary of state to face tough scrutiny over Russian ties
Tensions over President-elect Donald Trump’s favorable Russian views and the upcoming Senate confirmation hearing for prospective secretary of state Rex Tillerson is expected to boil over in the days ahead.
Top Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that they plan to continue with new sanctions on Russia despite the potential to possibly alienate Trump and his ideas for warming ties between the U.S. and Russia.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump and his top aides have planned to downplay Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election which was pointed out in a U.S. intelligence report released Friday. The Russian divide in Congress would certainly get Trump’s presidency off to a rocky start.
Concerns over Russia are expected to come into the light during Tillerson’s confirmation hearing. Graham and McCain both agreed that they still had questions about Tillerson even after so-called “positive meetings” with the Exxon-Mobil executive. Tillerson’s Russian ties are expected to be scrutinized heavily.
“Mr. Tillerson has got to convince me and I think other members of the body, that he sees Russia as a disruptive force, that he sees Putin as undermining democracy all over the world, not just in our backyard,” Graham added. “He has to realize that the Russians did it when it came to the hacking and that new sanctions are justified.”
Trump has yet to accept the intelligence briefing that pointed at Moscow for interfering with the presidential election. He said in a series of tweets Sunday that it wasn’t bad to have a relationship with Russia.
“Only ‘stupid’ people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We have enough problems around the world without yet another one,” he added. “When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD!”
Should Tillerson’s confirmation be rejected, it wouldn’t be unprecedented. The Journal noted that only three potential cabinet picks have been rejected in the 20th century. The last rejection came in 1989 during George H.W. Bush’s presidency when his secretary of defense pick was rejected by a Democratic Senate.
A Republican-held Senate would need three total dissenters to possibly vote down Tillerson as the pick, if Democrats hold united. Graham and McCain would have to lure another senator onto their side.
With a showdown looming in the Senate, a fight over Russian ties isn’t going away.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter told “Meet the Press” that Russia didn’t help U.S.-allied forces in Syria one bit in the fight against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Carter said that Russia had promised to help fight extremists and help end the Syrian civil war. Instead, he said, Russia “doubled down on the Syrian civil war.”
Meryl Streep, Jimmy Fallon and more use Golden Globes stage to slam Trump
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| Idiots |
During a night that saw "Moonlight," "La La Land," "The Crown" and "Atlanta" win big it was the next president of the United States that got the most attention.
Just minutes into the show, host Jimmy Fallon used his time on stage to take digs at Trump after he was forced to improvise for the first few minutes of the show due to a broken teleprompter.
Once his script was up and running, Fallon called the Golden Globes "one of the few places left where America still honors the popular vote." That, though, isn't quite true. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a collection of 85 members, has its own methods of selecting winners.
TECHNICAL GLITCH MARS JIMMY FALLON'S GOLDEN GLOBES MONOLOGUE
Fallon often used the President-elect as a punchline, even comparing him to belligerent and cruel "Games of Thrones" King Joffrey, but Meryl Streep changed the tone of the evening when she launched into a somber speech about Trump.
Streep said Trump's behavior "sank its hooks in my heart" and she slammed what she called Trump's "instinct to humiliate." She asked for a "principled press to hold Trump [accountable]" and to call him out "for every outrage." Her comments were met with applause, tears and support by her fellow actors in the audience. Actor Chris Pine called her speech the "best message of tonight."
Hugh Laurie, accepting his award for best supporting actor in a limited series or TV film for "The Night Manager," speculated that this would perhaps be the last Golden Globes ceremony.
"I don't mean to be gloomy, but it has the words 'Hollywood,' 'foreign' and 'press' in the title," Laurie said, explaining his pessimism about the awards surviving the Trump era. He added that some Republicans don't even like the word "association."
He accepted his award "on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere."
The night's top winner was Damien Chazelle's lauded Los Angeles musical "La La Land," which took home seven awards. Ryan Gosling won for best actor in a musical or comedy, and "La La Land" composer Justin Hurwitz won best score and its lyricists, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, won for best original song, "City of Stars."
Meanwhile, "Moonlight" won the award for the best motion picture drama.
Casey Anthony won best actor in a motion picture drama for "Manchester by the Sea," and Isabelle Huppert won best actress in a motion picture drama for "Elle."
Viola Davis won best supporting actress for "Fences," and British actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson took best supporting actor for his performance in Tom Ford's "Nocturnal Animals."
2017 GOLDEN GLOBES: SO HOT OR SO NOT?
On the TV side, "The People v. O.J. Simpson" took home the best miniseries award, as well as an award for Sarah Paulson.
Donald Glover looked visibly surprised when his FX series "Atlanta" won best comedy series over heavyweights like "Veep" and "Transparent."
Other winners were Tracee Ellis Ross ("Black-ish") and Billy Bob Thornton ("Goliath").
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