by Ira Tabankin
“Aye, sir. The orders have been issued to the flight leaders. They know to remain no more than four meters over the ocean.”
“Good, in ten minutes we will turn into the wind and launch.”
Two minutes later the first rounds from Missouri arrive. The initial six GPS guided rounds crash through the Liaoning’s flight deck exploding inside the pride of the Chinese fleet. The ship shakes and shudders from the six explosions. Dense dark smoke pours up out of the six holes on the flight deck. The flames inside the ship find one of the fuel tanks holding the planes fuel. The tank explodes ripping a huge hole in the side of the ship, the explosion spreads the fire through 80% of the ship. The Liaoning starts listing from the weight of the water pouring in. Planes that were on the deck slide into the ocean, additional explosions rock the interior of the Liaoning. Some of the Chinese planes that were waiting to launch are burning wrecks, their bombs cook-off from the heat, blowing additional holes through the deck. The Chinese damage crew isn’t as experienced as the US Navy’s teams. The fire spreads inside the Liaoning as the next six rounds from the Missouri arrive breaking the carrier into three pieces. The bow quickly slides under the waves, the stern follows within twenty minutes, leaving only the burning midsection. With the ship’s officers all dead, no one is available to give the abandon ship order. Even without the order, the crew starts jumping off the burning hull, trying to get as far away from it as possible. They don’t want to be dragged under when she goes down. Forty minutes after the first six rounds struck the Liaoning, she is no more, the Chinese lost over 3000 men, plus their only operational aircraft carrier and thirty-five modern jets. They lost their first line of air defense with the loss of their fighters. The US Navy’s attack planes are already in the air with a bone in their teeth. They want revenge for the attack on their carriers. The Missouri fires a full broadside of nine rounds aimed at the Chinese air defense ships. The massive rounds break apart each ship they strike. In the Chinese confusion wondering where the massive rounds that are tearing their fleet apart came from, the US Harpoon anti-ship missiles launched F/A18 fighters from the carrier arrive adding their destruction to the Chinese fleet. The Harpoons are slow, traveling at only 550 mph, they carry a 488-pound warhead which devastates Chinese destroyers. The F/A18s come in behind the Harpoons with smart bombs. As the US fighters are bombing the Chinese, the Missouri fires the last of her sabot rounds. Her commanding officer, Captain Jefferson orders, “Weaps, fire our Tomahawks.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Engineering, Captain, I want every ounce of speed you can squeeze out of the engines. I want to get into range ASAP to fire our normal 16-inch rounds.”
“Captain, I think I can get the old girl up to 34 knots.”
“Scotty, more power, get us into the fight before the air-dales sink all of the Chinese ships.”
“Aye, sir, I’ll get us there.”
The American carriers and their escorts held back while the Missouri led six destroyers towards the Chinese fleet. Captain Jefferson smiles thinking to himself, we’re three times their displacement and I’m still pulling ahead of the tin cans. They should never have retired the battleships.
As the US fleet draws close to the remaining Chinese fleet, they are surprised by a swarm of Mach three Chinese anti-ship missiles coming over the horizon towards the American fleet.
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I walk to our room holding Bianca in my arms, I’m tickling and nuzzling her neck, she’s laughing and squirming, trying to stop her beloved Papa from tickling her. “Lacy, look who I found while I was returning from the security room. I found her hiding, she’s all mine.”
Lacy smiled asking, “Honey, aren’t you going to share her with me?”
“Maybe just this once. Come over and kiss her, she’s so sweet.”
Lacy jointly hugs Bianca with me. She looks into my eyes smiling, there are tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “Honey, why are you crying? We’re safe here and I promise you, we’ll soon be home. We’ll soon be in our own home, I promise you.”
Lacy is happy to have her Jay home.
Chapter 4
John clicks the ‘talk’ button on the general loudspeaker which is used to give shelter wide announcements, “Listen up everyone, the feds are broadcasting every fifteen minutes on every station a special announcement, the President is going to address the nation tonight at 9:00 PM EST. He’s supposedly now ready to address the current financial situation and announce his plans to turn the situation around. Unless anyone has an objection, I plan to pipe his broadcast through the general speakers so everyone can hear what he has to say. I suggest we put the kids in the playroom where there are no speakers.”
Everyone in the shelter shares the same buzz for the rest of the day, all anyone wants to chat about is the upcoming speech. Tony stopped by to see Lacy and I, “Jay, you picked the perfect time to return to us. What do you think he’s going to say?”
Looking at Tony, I smile, “He’ll blame his predecessor like he always does, then he’ll spend half an hour telling us everything will soon be fine because he’s in the White House. It’s too late for him to do anything. When Greece defaulted and left the EU, they started the ball rolling that killed the dream of a united Europe. When the Euro failed, money flowed into dollars. Our fearless leader and Congress spent like drunk sailors on their first liberty in six months. Once the world realized America’s debt was also over 100% of our GNP and we’d never be able to pay off our national debt, the dollar collapsed. He could have saved us by doing any number of things. Calling China’s bluff when they demanded repayment wasn’t one of the smartest things to do.”
“Jay, are you suggesting we should have given them Hawaii?”
“Nope, I didn’t say that. I think Congress should have cut the federal budget and stopped borrowing. I wouldn’t have raised the debt level, I would have lowered it. Hell, if we had frozen each agency’s budget, ceased yearly inflation increases, we could have brought the debt under control and balanced the budget. If Congress would have actually figured out a real budget or if Congress would have looked into how each agency was spending their money, their budgets could have been cut without harm and we’d have gotten the financial mess under control. What can he do now? We have to start all over. The too large to fail failed because they were too large. The only way back is to begin anew.”
Fred responds, “We’ve already fallen over the cliff. What can he do? Can he make the rest of the world accept our dollars at face value? Can he put everyone back to work? Can he stop the lawlessness? Can he put us back in our homes? Tell me anything he can do which will have a meaningful effect on the current financial meltdown? In my opinion, he won’t do a damn thing. I bet he’s going to announce another tax increase and more wealth redistribution. He doesn’t know how to do anything else. He thinks if he spreads money around, everyone will have more to spend, hence when people spend it, the economy will reboot. He can’t come to grips with the philosophy that lower taxes and fewer regulations boost investments. The only thing he’s going to do is make the meltdown last longer. The ‘community organizer’ has never run anything, he’s stuck trying to make old failed theories work, which is impossible since they’ve always failed in the past. He’s blinded by his obtuse socialist philosophy, he doesn’t have the strength to change and try anything new. He’s been President for seven years, he’s overseen the longest period of zero job growth in our history. We had fewer jobs just before the meltdown than we had when he assumed office. He might be the last President of a United States. I’m not sure the country will ever fully recover from this mess. I think the country is going to break up into smaller countries.”
Tony sits down in one of our two folding chairs, “Fred, you sure know how to pour ice water on someone, don’t you? As much as I don’t like to admit it, I have to agree with you. There’s very little he can do. I’m hoping that just his speech will help. I’m hoping that his speech will at least do something about the lawlessn
ess, rioting, and looting. I worry and yet I also hope to hear him say he’s sending the military to patrol our streets.”
Lacy shakes her head, “Tony, you want him to use the military to patrol the streets?”
“Yes, because I think they may be the only ones who have a chance of returning some law and order.”
Lacy continues, “He caused this mess. What can he do? It’s going to take a massive change in almost all of the government’s policies to change the current situation. As far as the rioting and looting, did his speeches have a positive effect on Ferguson or Baltimore? Tony, do you trust the military to put the lawlessness to an end without also turning us into a police state? Do you want to see tanks sitting on our street corners? I don’t. Knowing the President’s history, his answer to the violence will be to call for the repeal of the second amendment, or he’ll just declare martial law and issue an executive order banning all guns. He doesn’t understand that banning guns only takes them out of the hands of those who follow the law. All he does is lie. Do you remember his lie that we can keep our health plan? Or he wasn’t going to have any lobbyists in his administration? Or how about the banks are too big to fail and they’ve all failed?”
We didn’t know Ricky was standing outside our door, listening to our discussions. Note to self, next time I design a shelter, make the rooms soundproof. Ricky stuck his head in, “Mind if I butt in?”
The four of us shake our heads no, I know I really wanted to say yes, we mind, go elsewhere, but it wouldn’t have been nice. Ricky stepped into our room. “I think the President can do a lot to change the current situation. I think it would solve most of the country’s financial problems if he promised every family a minimum livable income. Think about it, no one would be poor anymore. Everyone would be middle class. Every family would have an income of at least $50,000. People would have money to spend which would enable other people to go back to work, the economy will instantly pick up. Within a couple of weeks, we would be in a much better position. People will be happy, everyone will be able to afford to have enough to eat. This could be the best thing that ever happened to the country. Every other country will be envious of us. While they sink deeper into the world wide depression, we’ll be pulling ourselves up and out of ours. The cure to the problem of violence is to ban all guns. Without guns, there wouldn’t be the violence that forced us to live underground.”
Lacy looks at Ricky, “Where is the money going to come from to pay everyone $50,000 a year?”
Ricky looks proud of himself, he crosses his arms across his chest, “Duh! You even have to ask? It’s obvious, the 1% will pay for it. Call it their fair share, your fair share. No one needs millions. Jay, you and Lacy don’t need $20 million, it’s more than you can spend in your lifetimes. If you paid the government $19 million of your $20 million, you would be paying 380 families $50,000 this year. You personally would have a stake in improving the economy. I really hope he announces something like this.”
Tony looks at Ricky, “Son, do you have any idea what inflation is? Have you ever heard of hyperinflation? Let’s assume that there are 150 million people at or under the poverty line, 150 million times $50,000 equals, $7.5 trillion a year. That’s twice the amount the entire federal government was going to spend this year. You’re proposing tripling the amount of spending. The government’s debt of $20 trillion led to the collapse of the dollar, how is the economy going to cover $11 trillion a year? There’s not enough money in the world to pay that much.”
”Why $11 trillion? You're making up numbers out of thin air. I thought you said $7.5.”
Tony shakes his head from frustration, “$7.5 plus their normal spending of $3.5 trillion. If you added those two together, you get $11 trillion.”
Ricky sneers at Tony, “There would be enough if the world’s rich were taxed at 75-90% of their incomes, there would be more than enough money to cover the spending. It’s going to take everyone in the world, paying their fair share for us to get out of the mess the Right put us into.”
I look into Ricky’s eyes, “Ricky, if you taxed people at 75-90% you would remove their incentive to create wealth. Without any incentive, people won’t work, people won’t take any risk to form new companies, without the incentive to build wealth, overall tax revenues would actually decline. There wouldn’t have been an Apple Computer without the wealth incentive, nor would there be any venture capitalists who invest in the creation of new ideas and products. Without new companies, employment will go down. Small companies are the backbone of employment. Anyway, the President already tried that. Don’t you remember just before we had to move down here the feds were taxing income, assets, and bank accounts? The government confiscated personal precious metal holdings, they taxed everything we owned. None of those additional taxes did anything except help accelerate the collapse. They drained people’s disposable incomes, they stopped people from being able to buy things, which only increased the unemployment problem.”
“Honestly Jay, you’re so full of shit. Of course new technologies and products will be developed, that’s what the government does. They fund new developments. They launched the space program didn’t they? They developed all kinds of new and good technologies. The reason why their last round of tax increases didn’t work is they didn’t go far enough. They left you and Tony still very rich, I’m sure the 1% is still the 1% and even richer after the collapse than before. I’m telling you, the answer isn’t less taxes it’s more. The more the government has, the more it can share with those who have less. We need to end poverty once and for all. As to your comment on employment, once the government has your fair share, they can hire the workers. Employment will go up, everyone will have a good paying job with excellent benefits.”
Lacy shakes her head, “Ricky, have you ever read the Bible?”
“Of course, what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Didn’t Jesus himself say, there would always be the poor?”
“That proves he wasn’t God. If he were God, he could have ended poverty. He was nothing more than a wannabe. If there were a God, he wouldn’t allow all of the suffering there is today. This proves there is no God.”
Tony looks at Ricky with disgust on his face, “Ricky, there’s been a lot more suffering in history than there is now. America’s poor are envied by the rest of the world. Our poor have new iPhones, flat screen TVs, gold chains around their necks, most own a car and they eat three meals a day, sometimes at the ‘Golden Arches’ or Fried Chicken establishments, all on the working people’s backs. They have a home to live in, which they usually trash since they’re not paying for it. Their children get free schooling, usually with free breakfast and lunch (even during the summer months) provided by those of us who work for a living and pay our taxes. In many cases, the poor live better than the working middle class. The young of the poor don’t have jobs, most don’t want a job, yet they can afford to wear sneakers that cost $150 a pair. You’ve been successful in taking respect for authority away from entire groups and a generation of people. Do you know that the average welfare payment for a family of four was more than the average salary of those working? Welfare was never designed to be a lifestyle, it was designed to help tide people over till they got another job. We’ve had entire generations want nothing more than to go on welfare. Parents teach their children how to ‘game’ the system. Teenage girls have a baby to get a check, they have more babies to get larger checks. What happens to those children when they grow up in a house, not a home, a cold house where their mother had them, not out of love, but for a larger check? Your ideas bring additional pain and suffering to the people the programs were supposed to help. Welfare has created a new class of people who have no desire to give anything back to society. We’ve spent over a trillion dollars on the war on poverty, the result is we have a higher percentage of poor today than we had when the various programs started. You can’t just throw money at a problem. It’s like training wild animals to act cute to get fed, they soon
forget how to find their own food and can never be released back into the wild.”
Ricky smirked at us, “Tony, the problem is we’ve never allocated enough money to solve the problem and attacked it like a full fledged war. If we cut the military budget by 50 or 75% combined with new taxes on the 1% we’d have enough money to finally bring everyone out of poverty. Once everyone in the world comes together under a common set of laws, we won’t need a massive military. Everyone has to realize we have to work together and share resources. Everyone has to pay their fair share in order for the world to pull itself out of the current depression.”
I’m getting angry at my son-in-law, “Ricky, without the military who’s going to defend us?”
“From who? If everyone shared, if everyone were under one flag there would be no need for wars. There’d be no senseless wars and deaths anymore. The world would save trillions of dollars which could be spent improving everyone’s standard of living. We could turn this planet into a real utopia. We need to force the governments of the world to resign and turn governing over to the UN.”
I shake my head and feel nothing but disgust, “Ricky, when you find this mysterious utopia call me, I’d like to see it. You keep forgetting to factor human nature into your equations. You’ve become like the college professors who’ve never worked in the real world teaching how to solve the world’s ills without any experience. Human nature prevents mankind from ever becoming a utopia. You’re in your mid-thirties, haven't you learn anything about human nature?”