Meet The Pirate Catcher

(hat tip to SG for emailing these pics w/ text)

Ain’t she sumthin’….

Here’s a look at the U.S. Navy’s New Pirate Catchers!  This is the U.S.S. Independence (LCS-2).  It is a Triple Hulled, Weapon-Laden Monster.

There have been rumors about the U.S. Navy’s speedy new triple hulled ships, but now they’re for real.

She’s at 43 knots here running at half power.  Note the absence of a bow wave.

Turns tightly, allegedly this was done at 43 knots… and from the look of the small bow wave, she’s still in the turn.

And then we have the massive helo deck big enough for a CH-53.  Last time I talked with the SURFPAC guys years ago, this was the LCS they liked because of the huge storage capacity under that flight deck and the size of the flight deck

Note that there is very little spreading wake. In fact, it does not look like a wake at all, just foamy water from the water jets.  Somehow, at 40 knots, you’d think there’d be more wake.

Here it is under construction….

The U.S.S Independence was built by General Dynamics. It’s called a “littoral combat ship” (LCS), and the tri-maran can move its weapons around faster than any other ship in the Navy. (Ironic that with all that high tech built in, the ship reminds us of the Merrimac ironclad from Civil War days.

Littoral means close to shore, and that’s where these very ships will operate.  They’re tailor-made for launching helicopters and armored vehicles, sweeping mines and firing all manner of torpedoes, missiles and machine guns.

These ships are also relatively inexpensive.  This one’s a bargain at $208 million, and the Navy plans to build 55 of them.

This tri-maran is the first of a new fire breathing breed, ready to scoot out of dry dock at a rumored 60 knots.. It’s like a speedy and heavily armed aircraft carrier for helicopters.

Pirates Beware!!!

So, what do YOU think?

Citizen Wells published this yesterday.

The Rev. James David Manning has taken some hits for daring to say what he believes to be the truth about Obama’s secretive background.

Whatever your opinion of the man, he is asking questions that Americans deserve to have answered of The One who occupies our Oval Office.

Watch Manning’s latest video and see what you think.

The Saudi connection.

Why Obama bowed so low to the Saudi King?

Why Obama attended Jeremiah Wright’s TUCC church.

Why Louis Farrakhan attended TUCC church.

Why Wright and Farrakhan traveled to Libya and met with Moammar Kadafi (Ghadafi).

Why Obama did not take Federal matching funds.

How Obama stole the Democrat primaries and caucuses.

How Obama was able to utilize so many Internet and other resources to steal the 2008 election.

Why Obama traveled to Pakistan in1981.

Why nobody remembers Obama being a student at Columbia.

Why Khalid al-Mansour and the Saudis paid for Obama’s Harvard education.

Why Syrian born Tony Rezko made contact with Obama while at Harvard.

Why Obama wanted Gitmo closed and Muslim terrorists given US Constitutional Rights.

Why the Saudis paid for Obama’ grandmother, Sarah Obama to fly to Mecca.

Why the Fox network will not touch Obama’s eligibility issues.

Obama is a Muslim.

And the biggest why of all….

Why Obama has employed a legion of private and government attorneys to avoid presenting a legitimate birth certificate and college records.

***

Third party politics spell peril?

Dr. Paula Gordon has done extensive research and created an all encompassing catalogue of the Obama eligibility issue at her site Eligibility Questions.

She listened to last Monday’s The Andrea Shea King Show radio program during which we talked with political writer JB Williams about Obama’s personal history.  What she came away with was the discussion about third party elections, and why that would be a dangerous idea in the upcoming November election.

Following that, she posted her obervations on World Net Daily’s online forum under her moniker Key Eligibility Question.

Dr. Gordon addressed points brought out during the interview that dovetail with the post I wrote about it in “Beck benches ‘Question With Boldness’; while US Congressman asks boldly”.  That post, by the way, is so far, the most read post (by better than two to one) on this site for the second day in a row.  It has also garnered a respectable number of comments, for this site anyway.

Here’s what Dr. Gordon took from the JB Williams interview (reprinted here with her permission).  If you haven’t listened to the show and would like to find out what all this is about, she has included the link below:

JB Williams re working within the two parties
Posted by Key Eligibility Question on Jan 09, 2010 15:03

JB Williams has some fascinating things to say about the problem with Third Parties in his recent interview with Andrea Shea King that can be heard at
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/askshow/2010/01/05/the-andrea-shea-king-show

He says that trying to compete as a third party would be like trying to field a baseball team against a football team and expect to make it to the Superbowl.

He also talks about the initiatives that are well underway by Freedom Force and The National Precinct Alliance and their initiatives that could result in a conservative win in the Superbowl.

It seems to me that there is a great wisdom in simply running as Republicans (or if a Democrat as a conservative Democrat) and defeating the traditional party member when there is one in the primaries. I think there is greater assurance of winning the State races as well as the Superbowl if that approach is followed. With the momentum that is growing for conservatives and Constitutionalists, that would seem to me to be the best fastest way to bring common sense back to governing America.

JB Williams has a new piece up at Canada Free Press.  This will get you started:

So as not to offend any of his Muslim brethren who paid for his college education and much of his presidential campaign, Obama rejects “terror profiling” the very common traits of Middle Eastern men most likely to travel with a bomb in their shorts in favor of the TSA treating everyone at an airport like a potential terrorist.

And although the intelligence community did its job, and the fact is, it was Hillary Clinton’s State Department, which sat on the knowledge that a Yemen member of Al Qaeda was about to board a commercial flight for Detroit with a bomb in his underwear, Obama uses the Christmas Bomber opportunity to take another swipe at the CIA – a swipe that Leon Panetta was fast to rebuff.

Yo, Algore… Lissen up

A message to all you Algore Global Climate Warming freaks from my local weatherman here on the Space Coast:

There is a chance the winter of 2010 will not stop at record cold and frequent freezes along the Gulf Coast and the possibility of snow for the Sunshine State this weekend.

There now appear to be two opportunities for snow in the central and northern counties of the peninsula this weekend. That’s right, peninsula, and not panhandle.

A storm which will be mostly rain Saturday could become mixed with or change over to wet snow later in the day or during the evening in Central Florida. A second shot at snow could come Sunday as cold air pours across the peninsula in an unstable fashion. The result could be snow showers, the winter equivalent of the more usual Florida showers or thunderstorms.

Snow events even in the Florida Panhandle are rare; however, the white stuff is almost unheard of farther south. There are only a handful of incidents with snow in the “Sun shine State.”  During the winter of 1899, there were gulf-effect snow showers over the peninsula. On Jan. 19, 1977, flurries flew on Miami Beach, as well as many other areas of the state. A bit of snow fell more recently at Daytona Beach on Jan. 24, 2003.

Will this weekend yield snow in Orlando, Tampa, Melbourne, Jacksonville and Cape Canaveral? This weekend offers the best chance of snow in years, if not decades, for these locations. And the way this winter is going, it may not be the last opportunity. It’s a good thing the Daytona 500 is over a month away.

You hearin’ this Al Gore?