on C-Span2 just to get the voting results of three area facilities to use for local newscasts.

I want this week back, even if Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and D-FAS Loring didn't get the ax and people here are happy they're not losing their jobs and stuff. Brunswick Naval Air Station got screwed, though

Anyone having big bases shutdown in their area?

we should shut down these bases if we don't need them and we shouldn't keep them open just to satisfy the voters

but anyways - there aren't any military bases of any size in OR.

MD is not only keeping their bases, but expanding them to take on the extra responsibilities, which has people around here pretty stoked. Both Aberdeen Proving Ground and Fort George G. Meade are going to pick up thousands of personnel.

yeah they should have closed a lot more of them.

Can anybody fucking believe they are CLOSING WALTER REED?!!??

You people know fuck all about the military, and what many of these bases mean to local economies and local identities.

how about fuck those local economies and local identities? when times change you're forced to adapt, period. go tell it to flint.

agreed 100 with chase on this one. tell that to the timber workers, fishermen, miners, and a dozen other business that are basically non-existent now.

the government is very good at keeping things going when it goes against all economic sense; see - ag subsidies.

As I understand it, a new, state of the art facility will be built that will take its place, not in the same physical location, but somewhere in MD.



The largest of 3 Naval bases closed in my hometown in 1999. There was certainly a short-term hit, but the doom and gloom forecasts about the long-term impacts were grossly exaggerated.

Cleveland could use some subsidies.

i heard that they were expanding the National Naval Medical Center and re-naming IT Walter Reed.

I have only been monitoring this to see if they close Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City, SD. I personally think they should close it, since it essentially houses obsolete aircraft or aircraft that is already being held at much larger bases. Governor Rounds is having a cow about it being closed, as is freshman Senator John Thune. I don't think the economy would take much of a hit, since most of that area is more reliant on tourism than it is an AFB.
Offut AFB and SAC in Bellevue/Omaha, NE is expanding due to these closures so I can't be to pissed or oppose them.

You are correct, sir. From CNN:

"Part of that effort was closing Walter Reed -- the crown jewel of U.S. military hospitals -- and moving much of its staff and services across town to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, which will be updated and expanded. In a nod to the Army hospital's century-old heritage, the expanded facility will be renamed Walter Reed."

either way i have my suspicions that this is gonna result in a pretty sweet hospital, and not some kind of Patient First bullshit.

I would if I were Thune. After all the water he's carried for Bush, and defeating Senatorial Enemy No. 1 Daschle in November '04, a little gratitude would be encouraged, if not expected.

I swear this wasn't in the thread when I posted, yet we're 20 minutes apart. Dammit, I feel so unoriginal now.

They saved Ellsworth AFB in Rapid City. That should prevent Thune from ever joining the Hagel/McCain camp.

thank god for that, I just don't feel american unless there's a fucking ton of mustard gas just across the Sassafras from my parents. and more A-10 tank killers scaring the shit out of every piece of protected wildlife on the eastern shore.

I bet you spent the time watching "Roger and ME" alternately thinking how bad it was the big bad corporations would do that to those poor innocent auto workers/jacking off thinking about the rabbits that bitch was raising.

If this had nothing to do with the military you Z-GRADE liberal cry babies would be crying about the fucking offshoring of all these damn ol jobs.