Reader Harv sent me this stupidity:
Olympia, WA –U.S. Navy SEALs have temporarily stopped training in Washington state coastal parks while a legal challenge seeking to ban them permanently winds its way through the court system.
Five of the state’s coastal parks have been utilized for special operations exercise and cold-water training for SEALs for over three decades, according to Coffee or Die Magazine.
Between 2015 and 2020, the Navy conducted a total of 37 training events in Washington state parks, Overton told Coffee or Die Magazine.
Navy SEALs Pause Water Training At Washington State Parks After Public Outcry – The Police Tribune
So what happened? Did a Seal go berserk and molested puppies and kitties? Or maybe a team stepped on some flower bed owned by some guru? Or children were scared when they came face to face with painted warriors?
None of the above:
He said there have never been any problems between Navy personnel and park visitors in the past.
So why the opposition? As somebody commented:
“We use our parks for peace, solitude, getting back to nature, getting in tune with our family and ourselves. There is no need to use these spaces. Stop, just stop. This is a terrible idea,” one resident wrote.
This is not just an idea, it is something that has been happening for a while now and probably 99% of the people now complaining about, did not have an idea this was happening because that is one of the ideas behind the training.
Another commenter said the Navy has destroyed homes, wildlife, communities, national parks, and the environment with “toxic jet noise and war games” and urged the state to “say no to the Bullish Toxic Navy.”
And that is where you get the sneaky suspicion none of the complainers have seen the inside of a park, much less really worry about its condition other than say they are “Green.” This is just political bullshit emanated from the deep fountains of the Left Anti-War movement (Specially if it favors the defense of the USA. They don’t care if China or Russia invades other nations, they have a right to do so because reasons.)
Same old shit, different generation.
So who at the Navy Department thought it was a good idea to stop training just because some nitwit morons in WA filed a lawsuit?
Remember, the enviro-nuts in WA own the courts.
Sure, but why would the Navy care, if the people running it still had balls?
Reminds me of some things that happened up near Sears Point, in Sonoma, CA. (Now Infineon Raceway or some such.)
Whenever there was a motor-sports race – car, motorcycle, whatever – the local PD and government would get a slew of phone calls complaining about the noise of those darned racers.
Apparently, on at least one occasion, the event was cancelled at the last minute for whatever reasons. But the volume of complaints remained the same. Funny, huh?
Oh please, please, pretty please, let the commies in the Pentagon bow down to all of the environmental commies in and pull every naval unit out of Washington state and close all the bases. Every. Single. One.
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is the largest employer not only in Kitsap County but on the entire Olympic Pennisula. It’s one of the largest single employers in the state. It’s also listed on the National Historic Register & May still be a superfund sure, so good luck developing it to be anything other than the massive, filthy, slightly radioactive housing project for wharf rats that it already is.
Naval Air Station Oak Harbor is the largest single employer on Whidbey Island & in Island County.
Everett Naval Station isn’t the largest employer in Snohomish County (that would be Boeing) but between the base & the associated Marysville annexes (housing at one, the NEX & commissary at the second) they are important to the county.
Let’s not forget Submarine Base Bangor, once again in Kitsap, or Jim Creek up in Snohomish. Or the recreation area out by Ocean Shores.
Take a look back at every round of BRAC closures that we’ve done since ever & find a single one where closing even a moderately sized military installation didn’t rip the economic heart out of the surrounding community. Show your work. I’ll wait.
You want to crash the economy of the Puget sound area? This is a great way to start.
Here’s a free look at internal WA state politics. What this is really about is Ault Field on Whidbey Island. It’s the training runway where the aircraft stationed at Whidbey practice their touch & go landings. Ault field has been around forever, I used to go there with my Dad when I was still single digits & watch the Intruders do touch & goes. No one batted an eye.
Southern Whidbey has unfortunately been overrun with rich Boeing retires & tech & retail sector millionaires who have run out of rural real estate to buy & develope on the south end & are creeping ever closer to the Oak Harbor area. When the locust invasion reached the Coupeville area they started hearing the jet noise & decided they didn’t like it. They’ve been trying for about 15 years to have Ault Field shut down so they can buy up all the farmland & turn it into McMansions or subdivision but no one wants to buy a house underneath airspace where pilots use full military power. So instead of an honest conversation about jet noise you get passive-aggressive enviro-feminists who know they’ll be told to get fucked about closing an airfield start looking for a fight they can win. This is the result.
The other side of this is cui bono? If they close Ault Field what developer gets the contract to turn it into low income housing?
Like the morons that move ‘out to the county’ then bitch about the smell of cow shit from the dairy farm that has been there for 75 to 100 years..
Used listen for the jets in E. Wa when working up at some microwave sites.. Hear the noise, then quickly jump outside and watch them go by… BELOW ME in the shallow saddle between two peaks..
Always cool.
Wife did get really pissed once though.
One (A6 I think,) rolled up out of the Columbia gorge by Vantage and over flew over I-90. Scared the shit out of her. She called McCord and lit into someone who poo-pooh’d her. ‘Oh no mam, they aren’t that low…’
So she started describing the decals on the side and the color scheme on the pilots HELMET, and the conversation quickly went to ‘Oh shit, mam…’
It also helped to tell them we were volunteer fire / EMS in the area too, and were USED to them making low altitude highspeed runs down the canyon…
Had an A-6 and a pair of A-7s do the same thing to us betimes when we were hiking through Joshua Tree, when they were undoubtedly practicing at 29 Palms. Had to change our shorts, but to show no hard feelings (the cleared us by at least 50 feet, maybe even as much as 60), they waggled their wings after they blew by. Once we got our undies back outside the pucker, we were laughing about it.
That’s the sound of freedom, baby.
Don’t military jets fly low as a normal training practice? That’s what MTRs are all about, as I understand it.
Some 25 years ago we lived in Wilton, NH, about 2/3 way to the top of a small hill. One morning we’re in the kitchen looking out over our back yard when we hear a noise. Next thing we see a C-130 coming right at us from out of the valley, passing over the house at maybe 100 feet AGL.
Our reaction: “NEAT!”
It was almost as good as the C-130 doing a full power pass at 20 feet up above the runway of our local skydiving center, as a “thank you” to the people there after a day of training they did on that (civilian type) DZ. We did not hear what Farmer McNasty next doors had to say about it. 🙂
I was stationed at NAS Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, in the mid 60’s. I’d watch the USAF C-130 unit there practicing touch and go landings. NEAT! One of their pilots would hold the plane’s brakes and firewall the throttles to get up a head of steam(?), then release the brakes and ascend to about 100′ off the deck. When he reached the end of the runway he’d pop a hard left, standing the wings vertical.
Damn! Those birds were built right.
I was running north on I25 in Wyoming back in 1980, when I looked out the left window to see down into the valley. I looked down on a B52, coming straight at me while climbing to get over the mountain I was on. Unreal, look down on a BUFF!!! Does the military hand out BIG brass balls in leather pouches?
Betcha there are half-a-dozen states in The Redoubt, that would affirmatively welcome those bases.
Dear Washington (state as well as DC): FYVM.
You sure about that? I saw some “conservatives” getting into a tizzy over Robin Sage exercises this year, despite it being a decades-long tradition.
“I saw some idiot jackholes getting into a tizzy over Robin Sage exercises this year…”
FIFY.
Morons are morons.
They have no political party, any claims from them to the contrary notwithstanding.
I was walking through the ruins of Silchester Roman Town in England, and off in the distance there was some British military helicopter doing something. It was a huge one, two sets of blades, like a Chinook, and it was going up and down and up and down, sometimes pitching at what looked like a 45-degree angle. It was making an incredible amount of noise, “disturbing” the peace of the park.
But I loved seeing it.
All you can see of SRT are the tops of the walls — reinforced in stone by the Roman army — and the amphitheater.
The British military practicing in the same region is just 2000 years of the island defending itself. It didn’t ruin the experience, it put it in context.
More than welcome in Alaska, as long as they stay away from the leftist stronghold of Juneau.
Plenty of cold water places to train on. Not a lot of sandy beaches, but there are enough. Western Kodiak Island is a good place for that.
This is easily solved:
If they do any such thing, cancel all contracts with Washington state companies for anything. Fire all local employees. Cancel all liberty and passes in WA state UFN, and require all personnel and dependents to stay on the base, 24/7. Ship in everything from Oregon and Idaho. Stop all recruiting in the state, and make it off limits for liberty or leave, even for former residents.
Then call Boeing up, and tell them no government contracts will be awarded or paid for any aircraft manufactured in WA state, nor any subassemblies from there.
The resultant hue and cry will rise so fast, those whiners will be seen heading south at a high rate of speed, two steps ahead of the mob with tar and feathers, and the two WA senators and their congresscritters will sponsor the legislation to declare those leftards as domestic terrorists, and the local CoC members will hunt them down personally, and deliver their severed heads at the local federal office building inside of a week, as a peace offering.
And that will be the last you hear of that nonsense.