At Fiscal Responsibility Summit, McCain Suggests Cost-Saving: Cancel the President’s New Chopper

Comrade Obama.. what a joke

The whole event had a stagey quality of giving major faces some teevee time … without one single word of substance being said, that I heard.

Fiscal Responsibility Summit. “I swear I’ll quit tommorrow.”

What a farce. The helocopter was ordered by Bush and McShame said nothing about it before or during the campaign. If he was really worried about wasting money, why did he run back to Washing DC to push for the passage of the TARP funds…you know the money Bush gave freely to the banks with no strings attached. At least we now have a President who is willing to ask questions, or cancel a project (the helocopter) if needed. Then again, there will still be those negativites who will say Obama is a failure, or a socialist, or whatever, more because of there hatred for anything that smacks of change than anything else. It must be hard to breath with their heads in the sand….

McCain is a sore loser and will never get over it.
People are tired of the partisanship and I foresee many GOP’ers losing their seats in the next election if they don’t try to be team players.

Mesquito – how hard is it to understand that Obama HAD to spend this $800B?
Without it, there would be a huge sucking sound due to the loss of $1T per year in demand in our economy.
As can be seen over the 3-4 months, the private sector wasn’t putting any dollars to fill the gap, and the tax cuts under Bush over the last several years did nothing to help salaries or create jobs.

By the way, Jake. In my opinion, you should be pointing out that these Helicopters were ordered under Bush.
It’s called journalistic integrity… since it’s such a key component to framing the discussion and the optics around the issue.

i dont remember bush or his administration EVER asking for a democratic opinion on ANYTHING…
what a refreshing breath of change (for the good) this man is… the usa (for all,not just for the rich and elite) might just survive this republican/moron bred fiasco after all.

“Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel at a “fiscal responsibility” summit.”
If every person in the country were to watch the remarks of these guys, it’s hard to imagine how ANY of them, supposed Democrat or supposed Republican, would dare to show up to govern anybody EVER again.
Along with the White House and Congress, the teevee talking-heads stable is in DIRE need of mucking out: What the heck does Jesse Jackson have to say? what about the decisively-disappeared John Edwards?

January 28, 2005
The Department of Defense announced today that the team led by Lockheed Martin Systems Integration, Owego, N.Y., has been selected to build the new presidential helicopter (VXX) based on its U.S. 101 medium lift helicopter.
This $1.7 billion, cost plus award fee contract will launch the VXX programs system development and demonstration phase during which the program will integrate a system of systems with a modern, in-production aircraft to provide the president with safe and reliable helicopter transportation.
Todays announcement is a significant milestone that caps an exhaustive and deliberative source selection process that carefully followed the Federal Acquisition Regulations, said John Young, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. The determined effort, long hours and hard work by both the VXX government team and the two industry teams will ensure a high level of quality and safety for future presidents, as well as a timely, efficient and effective program execution.
This decision truly reflects the best value and capability for the American taxpayer who is funding it, the Marines who will operate it and the future presidents who will fly in it, Young added.
The fleet of helicopters that currently supports the presidential mission includes 30-year old aircraft that were designed in the 1960s, fielded in the 1970s and no longer has the growth capability to incorporate the equipment necessary to provide suitable presidential support in the post 9-11 environment.

“John McCain is still blowing smoke.”
They were ALL blowing smoke, no one more than faux-”boyish” Obama, whose look-at-me drama is beginning to grate.
Nice event the Blue Dogs engineered. If there were any Democrats LEFT in the Democratic leadership, they’d take the Blue Dogs out behind the barn.

We cats have forecast during the democratic primaries that the biggest plan of PB0′s, then CBO’s, is to creat a common wealth, a commune, of “fairness”, and the best way of achieving economic and financial equality is to tank the stock market.
When the Dow goes down to zero, the poor and rich are fully equalized, and PB0′s good friend Buffet has essentially the same value as you have (well, depending on how much solid god he has under his bed).
Now, PB0 has helped achieving his goal of economic equalization in the US by 65% since he started talking.

I agree with McCain on this one. Obama should reduce his travel costs and try telecommuting to save fuel. All government officials should also pack a sack lunch like Ron Paul does to save the taxpayers money. No more expensive lunches with lobbyists.

Funny how they GOP is suddenly fiscal conservatives. They let the last administration run amok with no question as to how money was being spent. McCain is a hypocrite. I am glad I decided not to vote for that moron after Hillary lost the primary.

What is really funny here is that Americans are suffering because of these Wall Street CEO’s and Defence contractors in Iraq that bilk the Citizens of America. These people are bleeding America dry and the Republicans are not even trying to help. They are stone walling even as more Americans are receiving pick slips from every political party. My company laid off 33 employees on Friday some of them employed for over 18 years, not that this is a lot compared to other companies laying off but it is painful just the same. Americans need people who will work as a team, to help America grow again and to put it’s people back to work. It is not a them VS us issue, it is the United States of America, and anyone trying to use the them VS us is a traitor to the American People in my book

Of course, you do not know anything about the military and its equipments, including your own personal ride. More importantly, you sent 17000 troops to a country to fight, your war now, before you even talked to the President of that country.
You have had Zero, O, experience, and 0 experience creates no confidence when it is for real.
Posted by: skinny dog | Feb 23, 2009 5:46:05 PM
Since when do you ask the leader of a country can you send more troops? Did Bush ask Saddam before he invaded? These 2 wars are on Bush not Obama. He is doing what he needs to do to make sure that we don’t get into another quagmire like Iraq.

I noticed two tax cheats at Obama’s summit–Rangel and Geithner.
I thought BHO didn’t want to send a message that there are two sets of rules in his administration–one for them and one for us.
How can BO talk about fiscal responsibility and expect us to trust him when he allows his own administration to break the rules?

Any member of an elected office that is not trying to help America and the people of American is a traitor. Put your politics aside and work to help us now!!!! So we all have a better tomorrow and our future generation have an America to be proud of when they grow up.

Jwench,
You are as brilliant as Comrade PB0 is, who are both so deep and thoughtful. This skinny dog did not know PB0 was sending troops to invade Afghanistan and then catch and hang President Karzai, just like GWBush did to Iraq and Hussein.
Posted by: skinny dog | Feb 23, 2009 5:59:22 PM
What’s your point? He is sending them to Afghanistan to make sure it doesn’t get any more out control than it is.

“Also, as healthcare gets nationalized, it should be put to a general vote whether or not Congress should retain it’s own gold-plated health plan, or if they’ll participate in the nationalized, state-planned healthcare system like every other citizen. It’s only fair.”
If Congress doesn’t pass something similar to HR 676, by which EVERYBODY would be covered more or less AS Congress is, we should turn this Congress out, and replace most of them with Get Real independents who AREN’T wholly-owned by corporations.

jwench….Yes that’s right, when Obama does it he is being helpful..when Bush does it, it is called an invasion….LOL

fempharoh,
You Smartest Clueless Leader supporters. The point is not costs. $1.5B may seem a lot to you, but it’s nothing, really nothing, compared to the DoD budget. The point is PB0′s hypocrisy when he came out finger wagging at the real hard-working mayors and governors, while he understood nothing and set a set of rules only applying to others, not his administration and himself.
Perhaps, Pb0 learned something lately – and maybe he thinks really if he does it it is not against the law.

The US budget for Iraq in FY 2007 came to $4,988/Iraqi. This is triple Iraq’s per-person GDP. It’s like spending $121,000 per person ($484,000 per family of 4) in the US. Why not just bribe the whole country? (I’m saying how it must seem to Iraqis. Think how it would be if some other planet invaded the U.S. and spent $121,000 per American per year to straighten out our country. We’d say—Just give us the money and we’ll do it ourselves.”) See spreadsheet for details.
Before the war, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay estimated the cost at $100 to $200 billion. So the White House got rid of him and “re-estimated” the cost at $50 to $60 billion. It’s now over $500 billion.
The neocons, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, etc. were just totally unrealistic. “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” – Wolfowitz, March 28, 2003.

Thanks, Jwench. You sounded trying to prove PB0 is as clueless as Bush is.
You were as not in the first clueless prez’s head as you are not in the new clueless prez’s head. But, at least Bush was “honest” about his cluelessness, while PB0 pretends to be smartest.
Posted by: skinny dog | Feb 23, 2009 6:24:14 P
I would have responded sooner but my computer froze. How are either of these wars blamed on Obama. Enlighten me. Obama is being responsible in the way they are drawing down in Iraq. Tell me exactly what you expect him to do in 30 days.
I want both wars to end just as much as the next person and yes it will affect by job security when that happens.

Why Is Mccain still Senator? Taking Tax Dollars for his Pay, Isnt Mccain and Cindy very Wealthy 7 Houses 13 Cars Mccain Retire already and stop taking Peoples Tax dollars For your Salary

These copters were ordered because maybe they were needed? The President, the Vice Pres and their families travel in these and they need to be safe!
=======
That’s why McCain brought it up in the context of procurement reform.
Yes, they were selected and designed for good reason. The problem is the cost skyrocketed after more and more changes were made.
The cost of the program went from $6.1 billion to $11.2 billion.
McCain wasn’t saying Obama can’t have his helicopters. He even said it was a good idea. He was saying they need to change the procurement process to better control costs before they spiral out of control.

I would have responded sooner but my computer froze. How are either of these wars blamed on Obama. Enlighten me.
Posted by: Jwench | Feb 23, 2009 6:49:09 PM
====
Man, your computer just did, by stopping you!
Do you recall the phrase or something like it “we are going as carefully to get the troops out as we are careless to get them in”, some kind of mumble jumble I never see can be paralleled.
PB0 is doing exactly carelessly getting the troops in, without a strategy, without a clear definition of success, without a timeline of getting out, without a sense of costs, without even talking to the person he is supposed to help.
Nobody is blaming PB0 for starting a war, although he is sucking troops in.
He committed 17,000 troops before you saw a single soldier coming back.
Every time he rants, the stock market tanks 1-5%. If anything, if you prefer, he should just keep quiet so that the Dow might forget about him for a day or two so that your dad’s retirement funds could come back a pinch.
You selected an inexperienced smartest clueless phony – don’t say you were not warned.

Posted by: skinny dog | Feb 23, 2009 7:19:59 PM
Why do you think he upped the timetable from 6-16 mos? Just because he could? He is gathering information from the people who are there. The responsible thing to do. We won’t win in Iraq even if we stay there 100 years. IF McCain had been elected the debacle would have continued in Iraq. Who care is if we win as long as we pull out RESPONSIBLY.
Our military is spread so thin, where do you suggest we get the people needed to control Afghanistan?
The only phonies I see are the GOP and their crackpot following. Bush sold us down the river in so many ways and the same people moaning about Obama let him.

In my last post I don’t think all of the GOP followers are crackpots but there seems to be quite a few. Just so my statement is not misunderstood.

I can see the media didn’t fall down laughing when Obama called for fiscal responsibility in Washington, but the rest of America is rolling their eyes at him.
If he was truly serious about fiscal responsibility, he’d get rid of the pork in the (anti) stimulus package.
Of course, jwrench will come along any moment now and tell us that it’s a right wing conspiracy that there’s any pork in the spending bill. Those DNC talking points are coming in good for something.
Apparently it hasn’t occurred to him that if Republicans were lying about the pork in the spending bill, the mainstream media would be quick to point it out. But since the MSM is reporting all the pork, in exquisite detail, it’s hard to take those DNC talking points seriously.

Obama promised not to hire any lobbyists and immediately turned around and hired over 17 or more.
He didn’t promise not to hire tax cheats, but apparently we should have expected that this Chicago pol would only know tax cheats and other low lifes.

Was anyone else a little sickened to hear Obama lecture us today that business travel was a waste?
We are watching the most expensive learning curve in American history.

Wow.
Lots of newspaper article talking about Obama with this sort of sentence:
President Barack Obama pledged on Monday to dramatically slash the skyrocketing annual budget deficit as he started to dole out the record $787 billion economic stimulus package he signed last week.
So we’re broke and we’re going to spend more money. That makes sense only to someone deliberately trying to destroy the American economy.

Obama must really hate older people.
His $14/week little tax break for working people gives nothing to seniors who aren’t working.
Add that to his rationed healthcare plan, even for seniors who pay for their own insurance but are also forced to work with the federally funded Medicare (it’s a requirement at a certain age), and we can see that he really feels like older Americans, who have paid into the system and paid taxes all their lives, are worthless.
Hmmm. I smell a big age discrimination lawsuit coming on.

Chris Matthews, ubber Obama lover, is fed up.
CNBC tonight was a hoot. Even Chris Matthews is mad at Obama’s fumbling of the economy.

Thank goodness that, for the first time in EIGHT YEARS, we finally have a president who is interested in helping someone besides the elite. Maybe this time Americans will recognize the hypocrisy from the very wrong right wing and won’t let the republicans equivalent of a “Harry and Louise” ad derail the assistance that will benefit the average taxpayer.

Obama will try to convince the American people on Tuesday night that he is going to cut the deficit in half while he actually increases it.
Even if you put all the blame for last year’s deficit ($454 billion) on President Bush, ignoring the fact that Democrats controlled Congress, it is dishonest to blame him for the deficit projected for this year ($1.3 trillion).

Yes, Comrades. This is the plan:
We’re broke. So we’re going to spend more money.

Now, Peach, be fair. President Obama’s stimulus package DOES do something for the older americans who aren’t working any more– they each get a $250 one-time payment. Whoo- whoo! Party hearty!

Moderate – I had reason to be at our local hospital today and the seniors are furious.
Some of them told me they believe he’s doing this deliberately and I had to hold myself back to not say “duh”.

DayDay-Where was the outrage when the republican controlled White House, Senate and House stripped Americans of their rights, squandered an incredible surplus
_____________________________________
DayDay-
you mean the republican congress left bush with a surplus when he entered the white house and the democrat congress left Obama with a worse deficit.
also, cite a bill that the democrats propsed to Bush in the last 2 years that they were in control of congress to 1)help regulate Fannie and freddie 2) cut the deficit in half.

so Peach, that explains why Obama sent the bust of churchill back to England.
how can he pursue his socialism agenda with Churchhill in his office.
Posted by: jaj | Feb 23, 2009 10:01:01 PM
*************
you mean without Churchill in his office. Yes. You’re right. I’d forgotten about that.

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures consumer confidence on a daily basis, fell two points on Monday to 55.5. That’s the lowest level of confidence ever recorded in the seven-year history of the Consumer Index, and the fourth time a new low has been set this month.

All concern regarding the perfectly acceptable Obama-copter aside, using Popular Mechanics as a reference is NOT good. They and thier hit piece against the fact and evidence based 911-truth movement left me in permanent revulsion of all Hearst publications.

Anyone want to bet whether Obama will allow the helicopter contract to be executed. I’ll give you 20 to 1 that the helicopters are built and the annointed one will proudly ride them everywhere. Someone with an ego as large as Obama’s will NEVER turn down something like a fleet of new helicopters, regardless of how much he talks about cost cutting. He may even have his Obama logo put on the side of the choppers instead of the US stars and stripes. He is the new leftist messiah and he wants all of the trappings.

How’s this for fiscal irresponsibility:
Obama’s current spending proposals will cost more than the US spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the general war on terror and Hurricane Katrina in the last seven years. And that’s before you throw in the $2 trillion fiscal stabilization plan.
Posted by: Peach | Feb 24, 2009 6:38:05 AM
So, did you ever come up with page numbers for those pork projects from yesterday?

And we couldn’t buy a US made chopper?

So, did you ever come up with page numbers for those pork projects from yesterday?
Posted by: Jwench | Feb 24, 2009 7:53:21 AM
**********
Jwench, it’s so touching that you believe the DNC instead of ABC’s Jonathan Karl.
Thanks for giving me an opportunity to repeat what he said.
Last night on ABC, Jonathan Karl said he has reviewed the anti-stimulus bill and it is filled with thousands of earmarks.
ABC says there are so many thousands of earmarks they can’t count them all.

I was trying to refrain from posting, but, that was total pwnage by the President to McCain, Cantor, and that other fool crying that he hasn’t been fed and burped by Nancy Pelosi. The greatest part of it was the setting. He was the teacher, and they the pupil. The President…yes he’s the President, Senator Bunning (even if you’ve PERSONALLY not verified his birth certificate) is showing what competence in governing looks like. What we’ve witnessed for the past 35 years has been complete buffoonery by our representatives of both parties.

Didn’t Senator McCain look awful? Oh, Lord, I thank Thee that he’s not our President. You answered the prayers of the righteous in delivering his defeat.

“ABC says there are so many thousands of earmarks they can’t count them all.”
The $3.8 billion in the bill for legislative projects known as “earmarks” is down about 5% from the $4 billion in fiscal 2008, House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Kirstin Brost said.

The President has solved the economic crisis. The DOW is up 134 points right now. Yesterday’s economic summit was the answer. Go America!!!

Obama has barely had time to wipe his shoes off at the White House door and has been confronted with the most nastiest of all problems, courtesy of George “intellectually incompetant puppet of Conservative Republicans” Bush. Folks ought to give Obama some time to get a real grasp of all the damage that Bush allowed to happen to this country. Doubt anyone as a new President would have a total game plan so quickly to fix everything. This country got into this shape over a long period of time, folks expect Obama to take like 5 minutes to get things fixed, get real. America is now facing the full benefit of the Bush legacy. What hemmoraghing does Obama stop first?

Skeetz, I’d be glad to give President Obama time to catch his breathe. In fact, I would implore him to slow down and catch a breathe, because he is exhausting me. There was some urgency attached to the stimulus package, but not as much as those rushing the package through before anyone could get a close look at it would have had you think. (After all, once it rushed through the two chambers, it was okay to wait four days to have a grand signing ceremony, as I recall.) Some deliberation is called for and I am not among thus urging the president to do something, anything, immediately, even if it is wrong.
I would remind you, however, that Obama has known since November that he would be occupying the office he now holds (and with his ego, I suspect he was pretty sure that was going to be the case months before that). He had several months of transition time during which the Bush administration, as all the news media would attest, was remarkably open and helpful in getting his people in place and up to speed so they could, if need be, hit the ground running. Still, as you say, let the man take it a bit slower. Some calm reflection is called for at this point before he leaps to solve yet another “crisis,” in my opinion.

what a joke Mr McCain. If you were in you would get rid of Marine One or buy two for Sara

The new helicopters are expensive, yes. But the old ones are 30 years old. And do not have the same armor and anti-missile defense as the old ones.
It sounds like a lot of money. But we spend money on all kinds of things when it comes to keeping the President safe.

There are a large number of helicopters
in the presidential fleet. The current plan is the buy 28 new helicopters which
why the cost is so high. Security concerns
require a large fleet as presidential helicopters alway fly in groups of up to
five aircraft so there are always decoy
ships in the mix. When the president travels, groups of helicopters must be
prepositioned at every stop and even a fairly simple itenarary may require a
dozen helicopters flown in and distributed at the planned stop points
along the president’s route. Presidential travel involves complicated and expensive logistics.