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halfway mark of the schoolboy president’s junior year in office with a trip to Martha’s Vineyard. The vacation, in which Michelle and Barack took separate flights, cost taxpayers tens of thousands of unnecessary dollars. Michelle ordered up a separate military jet for herself and her entourage, arriving about four hours earlier than her husband, who flew in on Air Force One along with the family dog, Bo.
    This wasn’t the first time the First Lady and the First Kids had traveled separately from the president for no good reason. In December 2010, she left early for the family’s Hawaii vacation at an extra cost of $100,000 to taxpayers. 4
    Her Martha’s Vineyard trip capped Michelle Obama’s two-and-a-half-year, $10 million vacation spending spree that included five-star hotels, massages, and top-shelf wines and liquors. Calculations are that Michelle spent at least 42 days on vacation from the fall of 2010 to the fall of 2011. She’s been described as a “getaway junkie.” 5
    My listeners are on to Michelle Obama. Here’s what one of them wrote:
The one event that really did it for me was Mrs. Obama insisting on taking a separate flight . . . and all the cost that entails . . . to Martha’s Vineyard, which apparently only netted her an additional 4 hours more than if she waited and went on Air Force One with the president. If that isn’t telling the American public “Screw you, I’ll do what I want,” I don’t know what is. Of course she’s aware of the supposed austerity push going on, aren’t we all? Apparently Obama has no control whatsoever over her actions. I’ve always been curious just what she did as a hospital administrator that warranted her being given a $300,000 plus salary (by way of Valerie Jarrett) just before the election in ’08. The Chicago way, don’t you know.
    The First Lady is in good company. You remember Imelda Marcos, wife of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. She set the standard for lavish spending by a dictator’s spouse by owning 3,000 pairs of shoes.
    First Lady Michelle Obama is our own Imelda Marcos, keeping alive the tradition that dictators’ wives should spend the money collected from their citizens lavishly on things that demonstrate their superiority to common people but, like our foreign policy, have nothing to do with our national interest. It cost U.S. taxpayers more than half a million dollars to send Michelle and her daughters—who were listed as “senior staff” on the trip manifest—along with the first lady’s mother, niece, nephew, hairstylist, and makeup artists on an African safari that was billed as “government business.” 6
    Did you know that the U.S. is being sued over this secret “family outing”? The organization Judicial Watch—which has already demanded to know how Nancy Pelosi spent more than $100,000 on her own birthday bash—now wants detailed financial records and passenger manifests for the First Socialist Lady’s trip to Botswana. The government declined to hand over the information, so the organization has had to sue for it. 7
    About this trip, another of my listeners had this to say: “How exactly does a safari on a private preserve help poor, starving Africans? So they can see what a fat American African looks like? Is that the deal? So they can see a big jet filled with nouveau-riche poser criminals acting like potentates? Was that the plan?”
    The Obamas finished off 2011 with their most expensive vacation junket yet: a Hawaii trip estimated to cost nearly $4 million, a good chunk of which will be paid for by U.S. taxpayers. The president and the First Lady traveled separately, with Michelle racking up roughly $100,000 in personnel, travel, and security expenses while the president, flying in on Air Force One at a cost of $181,757 per hour, will have spent more than $3 million by the time he completes the nine-hour round trip. 8
    Beyond the irresponsible use of taxpayer money, there’s the first family’s