Florida steps into Oceana fray, offering defunct base (Bush's Payoff??)

[maxrandb]

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=90159&ran=92418

For those of you that don't know, there has been a great deal of rumbling here in VA about the Oceana Naval Air Station. It was recently placed back on the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) front burner as a possible base to be closed. Without getting into the weeds, the government closed Cecil Field in Florida several years back and moved the jets and personnel to Oceana. Due to encroachment, jet noise, safety, etc., there has been talk of closing Oceana (12,000 jobs gone from Va Beach).

Well looky here. The pretzeldents (base closings will not be political) brother has stepped into the fray and offered to suck it up and take those 12,000 jobs from VA.

I'm sure there is no nepotism, despotism, or cronyism going on here. I'm sure * meant it when he said base realignment would "not be political". He does after all "say what he means and does what he says" :sarcasm:

"WASHINGTON — Florida officials are making a late but energetic bid to offer Cecil Field, a major naval airfield near Jacksonville that was shut down in 1999, as a replacement for Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach.

With a federal base closing commission set to hear testimony today in Washington on Oceana’s future, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has asked for a chance to make the case for Cecil Field during a hearing next week.

“Cecil Field is the last site on the Eastern seaboard capable of accommodating the NAS Oceana mission and personnel,” Bush wrote.

A return to Cecil Field would be a dramatic turnabout for the Navy and the Pentagon, which decided in 1993 to give up the Florida base, in part because of the environmental “encroachment” issues now bedeviling Oceana. The closure occurred six years later."

[crikkett]

1. Wow, where I come from... (nitpicking here)

Quote:
“Cecil Field is the last site on the Eastern seaboard capable of accommodating the NAS Oceana mission and personnel,” Bush wrote.

This statement would carry the implication, "this is the last site {on earth} capable of accomodating..."

and the subsequent understanding, "this is the LEAST QUALIFIED site on the Eastern Seaboard capable of accomodating..."

...just stricken by the ironic semantics. Doesn't VA have a Democratic Governor?


{edited to swap out square brackets that made my whole point disappear}