Heavy is the Head that Wears the Crown

Despite four or five multi-million dollar vacations or junkets per year ... at the taxpayer expense, Michelle Obama apparently has suffered greatly as our first lady. She recently spoke at the graduation ceremony at Tuskegee University and bemoaned the travails she has had to tolerate as the first black woman in the White House ... and before  ... see: Christian Science Monitor Video. She earlier had been mistaken for "help" at a party ... she has had many sleepless nights as first lady ... she has been called President Obama's "Baby Mama" ... she has been depicted on a magazine cover as a terrorist ... but she then told the rapt audience, "to succumb to feelings of despair and anger means that in the end, we lose."

The above video of this address has gone viral with both good and bad results. The quote above was a good message ... but, what is it with many black people who still play the victims of oppression? This was the bad part that went out to these graduates and to blacks across the nation. There are, of course, many blacks who don't play the victim game ... Condoleezza Rice, Dr. Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, and many others ... but when our pouty first lady dons sackcloth and ashes to a group of college graduates, it does nothing but perpetuate such destructive self pity and demands for special treatment.

This "we vs. them" meme is why we have rioting in Baltimore and cops around the country being targeted. Michelle Obama, you really ought to know better.

Open Wound

It seems that the black deaths in Ferguson and on Staten Island have given President Obama an opportunity once again to pull the scab off of the wound of racism in the United States. In the current issue of People magazine both Barack and Michelle Obama recount what they have seen as racist encounters in their past lives ... see: People Magazine Teaser. I'm not saying that these things didn't happen. I'm sure that they did. However, I know I have been socially slighted in the past and I suspect that most people of all races have had such tactless incidents. But when a black person sees every possible faux pas as a racial slight, then I think we are in for a very long process before our racial wounds over-heal.

And this is particularly true of our president and first lady. President Obama promised, with his election, to usher in a post-racial society. Instead, he has taken every opportunity to escalate any conflict involving a black person into a federal case. Can he not see that many of the demonstrations and riots of these past months are as a result of his two-faced rhetoric? No wonder that the race-baiter extraordinaire, Al Sharpton, is his close advisor and a frequent visitor to the White House.

One can only conclude that the degeneration of race relations we are currently experiencing has been a real goal of our president all along. So sad ...

Afterward: For equivalent perceptions on this same subject see: Powerline Blog.

The Real Hillary

A Retrofitted Hillary

They say you can judge a person’s character by how people subservient to this person are treated … those who cannot respond to abuse.  The following squib reminded me of such behavior … and contains the following quote:

As bad as it sounds, Kessler points out that there is one detail that [Secret Service] agents despise even more than having to view Biden in his birthday suit. That would be having to protect former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Here is the source of the quote: Breitbart Squib

And here is the memory that this quote engendered … many years ago a high-level White House insider during the early years of the Bill Clinton presidency related the following incident to my wife and myself. Apparently one quiet Sunday morning Hillary and Bill were being driven to church by the Secret Service in the presidential limo. The poor agent driver (one asked to take a bullet for her) made a wrong turn and, during the time it took for him to correct this miscue, he was assailed by the First Lady with a stream of invective that would have embarrassed a longshoreman. It was also the case that much of the staff serving Hillary in the White House would cower in their offices if it was known that Hillary was on her way down the hall. (Perhaps, in Hillary's case, the "lady" part of First Lady needed some rethinking.)

I have also heard very flattering things said about Hillary from her peers … those who could possibly benefit her. But I wonder, if she runs for president, more such stories of how she mistreats those beneath her will be reported?

Michelle, Ma Belle

Michelle Obama

Is there trouble in Paradise?  Four recent developments seem to indicate that there may be problems abrewing for President Obama and the First Lady:

1)      Michelle Obama, it appears, will be spending considerable time away from the White House this summer … “vacationing” with her daughters at Martha’s Vineyard … see: White House Dossier.

2)      In his recent summit meeting in California with President Obama, Chinese President, Xi Jinping, was not accompanied by his wife.  The reason – Michelle Obama decided not to attend this tete-a-tete, a bit of a diplomatic insult since the Chinese leader’s wife is quite a celebrity in China and was preparing to make a splash at this meeting … see: Telegraph Story

3)      Michelle Obama has exhibited unusual testiness of late … witness her ungraceful handling of a heckler at a recent New York fundraising … see: Christian Science Monitor Story

4)      In America, hairstyles seem to take on unusual significance, so Michelle Obama’s recent buzz cut (see above photo) and her wearing of black “helmet” wings in public tells this commentator that she has decided to alter her former lifestyle … to what end, it is unclear.

What does this all indicate?  To most Americans, not a bagatelle.  But the confluence of these events tells me that there is a change … maybe a sea change in our First Lady … and that there might be more interesting revelations waiting in the (White House) wings.

Frugal Is as Frugal Does

Michelle Obama is on another of her obsessive missions.  This time it is to save the U.S. taxpayers money.  This Spring break, instead of taking her daughters (Sasha and Malia) and an entourage of friends to Spain (or the equivalent) at a cost of (at least) a half a million dollars (like she did last August … see: Huffington Post Story) she, because she had $4,000 per night room coupons, sent her daughters to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas (see: Breitbart Story).  Then, because these coupons were only good for four nights, she had them flown to Sun Valley, Idaho to finish out their vacation (see: Breitbart Story ... I would have referenced a main-stream media story if I could have found one) in a discounted $184,000 per week ski chalet.  And to further exhibit her frugality, she sent them both on the same Presidential jumbo jet.  (They will return to Washington next week in the same penny-pinching way.)  It is thought that she was going to accompany them, but she, because of government regulations, was forced to take a duplicate plane.

The reason that Sun Valley was chosen for this ski trip was that their previous junket to Aspen, Colorado a little over a month ago was not to their liking.  The people at Aspen were not willing to close off the Panda Pipe area for their exclusive use (see: New York Post Story).  In Sun Valley, for an undisclosed, but discount-bundled amount, they were given exclusive use of the mountain. Moreover, at both locales, Michelle had the White House chefs and food tasters flown out there too to save the cost of eating at the expensive local bistros. These chefs then could prepare their favorite waygu beef sliders and other apres ski snacks.  She also had White-House staff flown in to lay out their (cut-rate) designer ski wardrobes.

Now, aren’t we happy that our First Lady is so sensitive to the government spending sequestration and the current economic crunch in which we find ourselves … and is willing to cut back on non-essential  luxuries like the rest of us?
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