From the Archives: Why Not Build Battleships and Sink Them as Jobs Program?

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – I have an idea.  Just imagine how cool it would be and what a great economy we would have if we built the battleship, sent it out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and then invited the North Koreans to sink it.  Talk about a great jobs program.  We won’t put any men on there, just enough to get the thing out to where it could be sunk.  Then we’ll give them notice they can take a lifeboat or helicopter out of there.  We’re not talking about any loss of life, but just imagine how cool of a jobs program that is.  We’ll have battleships built and we’ll invite the countries of the world that hate us to bomb it.  we’ll give them the location and say, “Hey, man, you want some target practice?  Sink this, we’ll build another one.  It creates jobs back at home, don’t you know?”  Why not?  If building it is such a great idea, just imagine how great it would be to build ten of them.  Well, we only need one, Mike.  Well, we’ll build one, sink it, rinse and repeat nine times and bam, there’s your stimulus. Check out more in today’s audio and transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  This all began again with a sick, twisted, corrupt collusion between government and business.  It always begins this way.  Now it has become a global policy.  [mocking] “We’ve got to keep the oil supply.  The world economy will collapse if there’s a war in the Middle East.”  Then why are you ginning one up?  If the world economy is going to collapse if there is a war between the Iranians and Israelis with us in the middle — ask the American public the question.  We’ve got to keep the military option on the table and $6 per gallon gas.  How about $6 per gallon gas?  How about instability there?  How about never-ending war and more of your sons and daughters over there embroiled in an imbroglio that is really, at the end of the day, none of our damned business?

The arrogance and conceit of we have to keep our military options on the table, says who?  Who said that?  Who said we had to?  We’ve got oil sitting off the coast of California if we need it.  There’s oil sitting off the coast of Virginia if we really need it.  There’s oil sitting off the coast of Florida.  There’s oil sitting off the coast of Louisiana that we can’t get to because our almighty federal overlords tell us it’s dangerous.  There’s oil sitting off Gull Island, Alaska, Prudhoe Bay.  Look it up.  There’s more oil than we could ever use.  The Canadians have unbelievable supplies of oil.  [mocking] “Yeah, but they don’t sell it all to us.”  Maybe because we don’t ask to buy it.

Why does the military option have to be on the table?  I want to give you a statistic.  For those of you that are big arrogant, jingoistic “USA! USA!” [mocking] “We gotta make the world safe, Mike, come on.  The Israelites are our biggest ally.”  Okay, what do you need an ally for over there?  Remember Washington and other founders counseled us against having allies because you inherit their enemies, but we’re not supposed to talk about that in 2012 in conservative circles because we’re all about bombing anyone back into the stone ages that crosses us because we have the big, badass military to do so.  That is not patriotism, my friends.  The patriot says, “Why does the military option have to be on the table?”  Are you going to be prudent and humble and actually have dialogue here and discuss this and discuss the rest of it?  We are king of $16 trillion in the hole.  Maybe this military adventurism has something to do with it.

I just want to share this with you.  Somebody called me on this on Friday and I said I’ll look the number up.  The last time I used the numbers, military expenditures planet-wide, universe-wide, was in 2006.  When I told you we could cut 90 percent of our spending and we would still outspend the next largest country on Earth, that was accurate 2006, 2007, 2008 numbers.  Through 2009 numbers, it is not accurate, but it’s still very close.  In 2010, the United States admitted that it spent $698 billion in military spending.  That is 43 percent of what the planet spent.  The nearest competitor was China at $119 billion.  After China, it was the UK at $59 billion and France at $59 billion.  If you shave 90 percent of it off, you’d still spend more than France and the UK.  If you shaved 85 percent of it off, you’d still spend more than China.  This number is posted in today’s Pile of Prep.

Let’s do digital media file, why didn’t Governor Romney mention getting out of Afghanistan in his speech?  David Gregory asked him that question, too.

[start audio clip]

Governor Romney: I find it interesting that people are curious about mentioning words in a speech as opposed to policy.  I went to the American Legion the day before I gave that speech.

David Gregory: You weren’t speaking to tens of millions of people, Governor, when you went to the American Legion.

Governor Romney: What I’ve found is that wherever I go, I am speaking to tens of millions of people.  Everything I say is picked up by you and by others, and that’s the way it ought to be.  So I went to the American Legion and spoke with our veterans there and described my policy as it relates to Afghanistan and other foreign policy, and our military.  I’ve been to Afghanistan and the members of our troops know of my commitment to Afghanistan and the effort that’s going on there.  I have some differences on policy with the President.  I happen to think those are more important than what word I mention in each speech.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  What are they?  Does he ever say what they are?  He just heckle Obama on foreign policy, [mocking] “He’s made these big foreign policy mistakes.”  Okay, where?  Which ones?

AG:  If you’re going to buy what Clint Eastwood said on the stage at the RNC, then the idea is that Romney would not give a drop dead date for the troops’ withdrawal, so therefore, conceivably in Eastwood’s mind, he could bring the troops back tomorrow.

Mike:  Which it sounded to me like what Eastwood was pining for.  What American isn’t hoping for that?  You people, those of you or some of you that remain unconvinced that the two-party system is the rot and corruption that creates the situation that we currently experience — and it does create the business monopolies as well.  It doesn’t break them up, it creates them.  The idea that regulating through the Dodd-Frank bill and through the SEC and all these other vainglorious bureaucracies that we have, that if they’re somehow shut down tomorrow, that will lead to thievery, crookery and robbery, the exact opposite is probably closer to the truth.  It will then force competition for actual gold and capital.  It will then force competition in between banks who will no longer have a government on their side that purports to regulate them by bailing them out and printing money for them to sell.  It doesn’t cost them anything to get the money.  The entire edifice is corrupt, totally corrupt.

You try to explain this and then try to explain that the corporate influences are what the corrupting influence is.  This applies to medicine, too, and the government’s involvement in medicine.  I’ve asked you people before on this show, those of you that so desire for my endorsement of Ryan-Romney, I’ve asked you a question over and over and over again.  I’m going to ask it again.  You tell me that the evil, despicable Pelosi and Obama tried to ram an individual mandate down your throat to buy health insurance that is not to be found in the Constitution.  Fine, I concur.  I’m going to play you a digital media file from Mitt Romney where he says parts of ObamaCare he likes, like the preexisting conditions.  Ladies and gentlemen, that is a corporate mandate.  Please show me, in the same document that prohibits and prevents the individual mandate, where you find permission for the corporate mandate.  It doesn’t exist, it doesn’t.  The same Constitution that [mocking] “We just need to get back to electing the right people, Mr. Church, we’re gonna save the republic.”  Save it from whom?  Listen to this:

[start audio clip]

Governor Romney: I say we’re going to replace ObamaCare.  I’m replacing it with my own plan.  Even in Massachusetts where I was governor, our plan there deals with preexisting conditions and with young people.

David Gregory: So you’d keep that as part of the federal plan?

Governor Romney: I’m not getting rid of all of healthcare reform, of course.  There are a number of things that I like in healthcare reform that I’m going to put in place.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  So repeal and replace, just as we’ve been predicting and talking about for two and a half years now, ever since ObamaCare passed.  This just opens the door for right-wing medical engineering now.  Isn’t that wonderful?  One more on military expenditure.  Someone has told the Romney campaign, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I know who it is, has told the Romney campaign that the American people and the independent voters out there love war, love bombing brown people and want more of it.  Otherwise, why would you say something like this:

[start audio file]

Governor Romney: This sequestration idea of the White House, which is cutting our defense, I think is an extraordinary miscalculation.

David Gregory: Republican leaders agreed to that deal to extend the —

Governor Romney: I think it was a big mistake.  I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it.  I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it.

[end audio file]

Mike:  We’re only going to spend a measly $648 billion in 2013 if those nasty sequesterers get their way.  Shudder the thought.  We’ll only account for 42 percent of the planet’s military spending.  Oh, but we got it lying around in a vault somewhere.  Don’t worry about that.  We’re not talking about that government spending.  That’s good government spending.  Oh, really?  There was a post by a leader of the Tea Party, Judson Phillips, I think.  Somebody sent me the link the other day where he was droning on about stimulus projects that involve building military hardware and how this creates good American jobs and puts the American people to work.  If building battleships puts American people to work and if that’s a great use of stimulus money that has been confiscated from productive people that have earned it, taken, stolen from them at the point of the IRS or an excise tax collector’s gun and then put into making a battleship and that puts the American people to work, that’s the exact same thing as Obama and Pelosi’s stimulus.  It’s just in a different industry.

I have an idea.  Just imagine how cool it would be and what a great economy we would have if we built the battleship, sent it out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean and then invited the North Koreans to sink it.  Talk about a great jobs program.  We won’t put any men on there, just enough to get the thing out to where it could be sunk.  Then we’ll give them notice they can take a lifeboat or helicopter out of there.  We’re not talking about any loss of life, but just imagine how cool of a jobs program that is.  We’ll have battleships built and we’ll invite the countries of the world that hate us to bomb it.  we’ll give them the location and say, “Hey, man, you want some target practice?  Sink this, we’ll build another one.  It creates jobs back at home, don’t you know?”  Why not?  If building it is such a great idea, just imagine how great it would be to build ten of them.  Well, we only need one, Mike.  Well, we’ll build one, sink it, rinse and repeat nine times and bam, there’s your stimulus.

Why don’t people think about these things in these terms?  We were warned about this.  Jefferson warned us, Madison warned us, Taylor warned us, John Quincy Adams of all people warned us.  We were also warned at the turn of the last century to get into this fake, jingoistic patriotism and invading countries simply because you can, because you have military superiority, you will rue the day.  This is the path that the Ottomans went on.  This is the path the Romans went on.  This will not turn out well.

End Mike Church Show Transcript