Michelle Obama's Luxury Spanish Vacation - On The Tax Payers Dime... Again!

[Warph]

Michelle Obama's luxury Spanish vacation
Ralph Alter

When Marie Antoinette was told the peasants had no bread, her famous rejoinder was the suggestion to "Let them eat cake."

Pampered on the our tax dollars with a staff whose salaries exceed $1.6 million annually, Michelle Obama has not been unwilling to take maximum advantage of the perks of an unlimited expense account as first lady.

The latest report on Obama extravagance indicates that Michelle Obama will take a summer break with one of her daughters "in the company of old friends" on the Costa del Sol in Spain:

Michelle Obama has reserved 30 rooms for herself and her daughter, their friends and bodyguards at a five-star hotel in Benahavis near Marbella, hotel sources said.

How does anyone need 30 rooms for a mother-daughter trip?

Add this latest extravagance to the non-stop White House concert series that has included such pricey entertainers as Bob Dylan, Tony Bennett and Paul McCartney among very many others. Even were the stars to perform gratis,

Professional equipment needs to be brought in-sound engineers, stage lights, etc... Even small scale performances by these artists can be very expensive.

Add booze, food, security, invitations, social secretaries, wait staff and hangers on to the tab and the price for one of these events could top $75k. With over 27 concerts hosted thus far, the cost to the taxpayers is in the millions of dollars.....it has been estimated that the Obama White House spent at least $10 million dollars on "drunken White House parties" in 2009 alone.

Whether its $250,000 spent on a date night in New York, ordering carry-out pizza for 120 people from 850 miles away,or flying the family dog on a separate jet to join the Obamas on their 8th vacation since taking office, this time in Maine, it's clear that Barack and Michelle are living very large at the taxpayer's expense without so much as a second thought.

If either of them would settle down and actually do something productive for our nation they might have less time to spend blowing our money.

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The question really is: when is it an "official trip" and when is it a vacation disguised as an official trip?

I think a lot of taxpayers are wise to the game the Obamas play.  Mooch-mooch--mooch!!!

Michelle Antoinette will justify the lavish, expensive vacation and grab it on the taxpayers' dime by meeting with the king of Spain and therefore making the trip "official business."  This isn't the first time this has happened with the Obamas.  The Grand Canyon vacation was also on our dime.  Barry and Michelle made up a lame excuse to justify it.

Thirty rooms at a 5-star hotel is not a trip with minimal staff.

The Obamas need to pay for their own vacations just as everyone else does.  This is a disgrace when so many average Americans can't afford even modest vacations this year.

Shame on Michelle Obama!

.....Warph

[Roma Jean Turner]

Maybe Shadows thread explains all the vacations.

[jarhead]

Why Roma Jean, are you implying that if the "ol cow" can't get serviced at home, that she is going to Spain to hook up with a "fighting bull" ?

[Roma Jean Turner]

Or maybe she just needs to get away from all the ""BULL".   

[greatguns]

You should read "Spoken From the Heart"

[Roma Jean Turner]

It is on my list,  I'm a fan of Laura Bush.

[jarhead]

Roma Jean,
I wish I had known you were a fan of Laura Bush. In June I went to K.C. for a "reading / book signing" for one of my Lt's from Nam who wrote the novel "Matterhorn" . Later the same book store was having Laura Bush. We thought about going but forgot until it was too late.

[greatguns]

It is a very good book and does include all her travels, even her annual trips to Grand Canyon with her girlfriends.

[Warph]

Thu Aug 5, 6:43 pm ET
First lady under fire for her glitzy Spanish vacation
By Holly Bailey

As  her husband celebrated his 49th birthday in Chicago with Oprah (and at the infamous "Bath House, no doubt), first lady Michelle Obama was halfway around the world, on vacation with her 9-year-old daughter, Sasha, in Spain. The two are traveling on what the White House has described as a four-day "private trip" with several Obama family friends along the country's ritzy southern coast.

Of course, no first lady's life is truly ever private, and already plenty of drama is swirling  around Michelle Obama's foreign jaunt. Some critics have laid into the trip's price, while others are highlighting an apparent diplomatic gaffe between the United States and Spain.

Fox News reports that prior to the first lady's arrival, the State Department had issued a travel warning to Americans advising that "racist prejudices could lead to the arrest of Afro-Americans who travel to Spain." The wording was reportedly removed from the State Department website Monday, ahead of Michelle Obama's arrival in the country Wednesday.

Yet the bigger public furor concerns the cost and appearance of the trip. In a scathing editorial published Thursday, New York Daily News writer Andrea Tantaros trashed Michelle Obama as a "modern day Marie Antoinette" for taking such a glitzy vacation while most of the country is struggling to make ends meet.The Obama entourage is staying at the luxury Hotel Villa Padierna, a Ritz-Carlton property often described as one of the world's top 10 hotels. Rates range between $500 and $2,500 a night. It's not clear that the Obama delegation picked this hotel specifically, or if the Secret Service — which often gets final say over where a protectee stays — made the accommodations call.

Either way, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that the first lady will pay her personal expenses — as will the friends who are traveling with her. But that only covers a small part of the ultimate expense, given that she has full-time Secret Service protection and has to travel with an entourage of staff. That cost, as well as her travel on board an official Air Force charter plane, is covered by taxpayers.

As the Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet reports, by the end of the summer, the first lady will have taken eight vacations. That includes a June trip to Los Angeles, where she and her daughters attended the NBA Finals, as well as an upcoming trip to the Florida Gulf Coast next weekend and a 10-day visit to Martha's Vineyard later this month with the president.

Michelle Obama is hardly the only first lady to travel overseas without her husband. Laura Bush and her daughters, Barbara and Jenna, traveled to Africa in 2007, where they went on safari. Yet her trip was regarded as an "official" visit and included several public events. According to the White House,  this  trip is entirely private, save for a photo-op with the Spanish royal family, who has invited the first lady and her daughter for an official visit.

[greatguns]

"Official" or not it does cost MONEY.  Warph, who pays for the official visits?