China Blossom

President Obama’s peripatetic wife, Michelle Obama, is off on a seven day cultural-exchange trip to China with her two children and mother … see: New York Times Story. This is just a few short days after returning from a long-weekend family vacation in Key Largo, Florida (this time with Barack) and two months after an extended five weeks of sun and fun in Hawaii … two weeks of it by her lonesome.

This is, of course, is just another plutocratic expense that these many family junkets are costing the American taxpayer. But then she did just suffer through the trauma of losing the White House pastry chef … who refused to omit butter, sugar, milk and flour from his postprandial creations. So a few extra million federal dollars is clearly justifiable solace.

I think that, rather than report when our First Lady is gone from the White House, it would be a lot simpler if our national media just told us when, on those rare occasion, she was so ensconced.

Afterward: Its been pointed out that I forgot that Michelle, et alia spent the long  Presidents' Day weekend on the slopes in Aspen.  Oops, it does seem like almost two months in Washington between Hawaii and Key Largo was too large a burden for our ever-entitled First Lady to endure.

Fun in the Sun

President Obama is on top of things. Despite the Ukraine being squeezed to death by the Russian bear, serious delays in Syria destroying its chemical-weapon stockpiles, and 239 Malaysian airline passengers apparently being blown to smithereens by terrorists, he is deeply involved. He has called Vladimir Putin of Russia two times for long conversations. How do we know this? Because we see pictures of him on the telephone. And he is also talking to many world leaders about these many crises. How do we know this? His administration says so in a brief talking point … see: The Hill Story. 

Not to mention his plethora of serious domestic issues: the Obamacare sigh-up deadline rapidly approaching, the President’s budget proposal being dead-on-arrival in Congress, the administration’s gutting of our military, little or no White House attention to tax reform, our continued national economic lethargy, etc.  Is Obama concerned with all these domestic failings? It must be so … for there is no wringing of hands on the nightly news.

So all must be roses … for our President is hitting the links once again in Key Largo in sunny south Florida.  This time his playing partners are a former basketball great, Valerie Jarrett’s cousin, and a former football star. Why isn’t he in the White House Situation Room with his key advisers mapping out administration actions to all these issues?  Beats me. I guess fun in the sun trumps the serious business of governing … particularly after all that nasty cold weather in Washington.

Yes, President Obama is on vacation again … just two months after an extended three week stint in Hawaii.  In fact, he is on vacation so often that he hardly has time for all his many Democrat fund-raising trips. Do the U.S. ever-alert media make a point of highlighting these derelictions of duty (see: AWOL)? Do we ever hear a tsk-tsk from his many cable-news sycophants? Does Saturday Night Live run stinging parodies about his lack of focus on world and domestic events?  Does an arm-waving Jon Stewart on the Daily Show mock this inattention?  Get serious!  It’s a wonder that we even know he is playing golf in Florida.

And I do ponder what message this sends to Putin?