A reason Obama should accept the helicopters:

[Are_grits_groceries]

The helicopter the president has now does not seem perfectly adequate to me. It was built in 1975! It costs a fortune to operate because of the stupendous maintenance required for its aging innards. Really, it’s kind of like sending your commander in chief whipping around in an airborne Plymouth.

New presidential helicopters are being built even as we speak. But Obama wants nothing to do with them, even though we the taxpayers have already spent $3.2 billion on them. This is because he does not want to appear wasteful

Let’s follow this story. After 9/11, the Bush administration ordered up a new generation of presidential helicopters that would be able to whisk the chief executive away from the White House in a crisis. The new choppers were supposed to be less vulnerable to attack, carry more people and have efficient communications with the outside world. All of which seemed supremely reasonable.

Lockheed Martin won a $6.8 billion contract to build 23 helicopters, which are known as the VH-71. But as so often happens in these matters, things went badly. There were overruns. Specification changes. The Bush administration wanted a helicopter capable of delivering the president to an unspecified safe retreat a little less than 300 miles from the White House. The ability to fly that far without refueling came in conflict with the need to have a helicopter that’s small enough to land on the White House lawn without knocking down trees. (There had been an experiment with a larger helicopter during the 1970s, with unfortunate consequences to the nation’s First Foliage.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/opinion/14collins.html?ref=opinion

After I read it all I began to wonder. If all of this is true, they probably should build the first plan. It will never happen because of the shitstorm it would cause.

[dkf]

1. He can't take it because he's not letting the banks do this sort of thing either.

The banks had to pay for a lot of the cancelled events. If they said "but its already paid for" there would have been outrage outrage and more outrage.

Democrats have always had a harder time being hypocritical than Republicans.

[Schema Thing]

2. the presidential helicopter is not in any way analogous

to bank's private planes.

[dkf]

3. Obama deemed it a luxury before anyone even mentioned it.

It would be hard to take back now.

[brendan120678]

4. It's probably been "explained" to him since that time...

from "top levels" of the Navy (the procuring agency) and Marine Corps (operators of HMX-1) that he needs these new choppers. The old ones are...well...too old!