Michelle Obama Riverdances Through Dublin to the Tune of $7,921,638

breitbart

By Tom Fitton

When it comes to tracking the cost of Obama family vacations, there are two primary challenges. First, the Obamas are prolific jet-setters, so there are many details to track. Second, the Obama administration, clearly embarrassed by these lavish and frequent family vacations, stonewalls the release of records at every turn.

But we have been relentless in pursuit of this information. Our attorneys file the lawsuits and make our case, and our investigators pour through pages of records and crunch the numbers. And the information we’ve uncovered – information that would otherwise remain under lock and key – shows that the Obamas have a disturbing lack of regard for taxpayer resources.

Most recently, when reviewing the Obama family travel log, Judicial Watch obtained records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealing that President Obama’s June 2013 trip to Belfast, Ireland, including a Dublin sightseeing side trip by Michelle Obama, her daughters, and her entourage, cost the taxpayers $7,921,638.66. (Per usual, and owing to the enormous public interest in Michelle Obama’s luxury travel, our discovery earned quite a bit of press coverage.)

Here’s the breakdown from the two agencies.

• According to the Department of Air Force documents, the flights to, from, and around Ireland for the June 17 – 19, 2013 trip totaled 33.6 hours at $228,288 an hour, which comes to a flight expense alone of $7,670,476.80 (These records came in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information lawsuit filed on January 13, 2014.)
  

• According to the DHS documents, the total cost for “security and/or other services” for the Dublin side-trip by Michelle Obama and her entourage was $251,161.86, including $55,004.85 at the Shelbourne Hotel and $70,855.44 at the Westbury Hotel. Vehicle rental charges were $114,721. (These records also came in response to a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information lawsuit filed on January 13, 2014.)
  

Now I can hear the White House’s defense. This was a business trip. It’s all about diplomatic relations, etc. And while this might at times be true for the president, it is certainly not true for the other members of the First Family.

For example, after accompanying the president to a meeting with Northern Ireland youth on the morning of June 17, the First Lady, her daughters, and her entourage departed on their own, apparently aboard Air Force Two, for a sightseeing side-trip to Dublin. Though the White House claimed the trip was for diplomatic purposes, WashingtonDossier.com reported that the itinerary showed, “She and her daughters will visit the Trinity College library to explore President Obama’s Irish family roots, attend a performance by the world-famous Riverdance troupe, and visit the Wicklow Mountains national forest.”

Yes, someday we will all hail Michelle Obama’s grand diplomatic accomplishments during her “Riverdance Summit of 2013.”

And purpose of the trip aside, is it really necessary for the First Lady to drop $3,300 per night on her hotel suite for any reason at all when taxpayers are picking up the tab?

Because that’s exactly what her Dublin suite cost per The Washington Times: “First lady Michelle Obama is sparing no expense on her trip to Ireland, staying at a $3,300-per-night hotel suite in Dublin. Irish press reports Monday said Mrs. Obama and her entourage have booked 30 rooms in the five-star Shelbourne hotel. The first lady is said to be staying in the Princess Grace Suite…” According to the hotel’s website, the Grace Kelly Suite features two guest bedrooms, a living room, and a dining area, and measures 1,530 square feet. More space for riverdancing, I suppose.

And the Obama entourage? Well they followed the First Lady’s lead and spared no expense either.

The Secret Service documents obtained by Judicial Watch reveal that members of the Obama entourage also rented rooms at Dublin’s Westbury Hotel. The hotel’s website describes the “glamorous, iconic 5 star” Westbury as “a great social hub and Dublin's ultimate city address.” The Daily Mail estimated the cost of Michelle Obama’s two-day trip to Ireland, in addition to flight and security costs obtained by Judicial Watch, at around $5 million.

The American people can see through the “official business” lie used by the White House to justify the cost of this trip. The Obamas clearly abused the perk of the president’s official trip to the G-8 summit for a luxury European vacation at taxpayer expense. And this is far from the first time.

In February, Judicial Watch reported that the Obamas incurred $1,164,268.60 in flight expenses alone for the August 2013 family vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. In March, Judicial Watch released flight expense records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force revealing that the Obamas incurred $8,104,224 in flight expenses for their June to July 2013 official trip to Africa, and $7,781,361.30 for their 2013-2014 Christmas vacation to Honolulu – for a two-trip total of $15,885,585.30 in flight expenses alone. These numbers may seem astonishing, but remember they only skim the surface of the true costs of these trips.

The Obamas love to wax philosophical about the subject of transparency, but when it comes to covering up their abuse of taxpayer resources, their secrecy knows no bounds.

Bachelet’s Chile: moving closer to Venezuela? - Andres Oppenheimer

MiamiHerald.com

By Andres Oppenheimer

www.publimetro.cl

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet may turn out to be a better president than her predecessor Sebastian Piñera, but many pro-democracy activists in Latin America may well come to miss his recent views on Venezuela, Cuba and other authoritarian regimes.
Bachelet, a Socialist former president who returned Tuesday to the presidential palace for a second term, suggested during her campaign that her top foreign policy priority will be to improve ties with Brazil, Argentina and other Atlantic rim South American nations. Piñera, in turn, had stressed Chile’s ties with the more pro-free market Pacific Alliance, made up of Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile.
In her first press conference after her inauguration, Bachelet announced that her first foreign trips will include Argentina, and that Chile will pursue “a very strong Latin American agenda.”
Asked about Venezuela, she said that Chile will “accompany the Venezuelan people and government,” and added — in what some saw as a nod to the Venezuelan government — that Chile will “never support any movement that violently wants to topple a democratically elected government.”
The Venezuelan government describes the ongoing protests against its authoritarian rule as a coup attempt, and claims that it has arrested opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez for allegedly inciting violence. Lopez and other opposition leaders deny they are behind the violence, and international human rights groups say there is no evidence that they have done anything but exercise their right to criticize the government.
Bachelet also said that she will defend democracy and human rights in the region, but the big question in human rights circles is to what extent will she do that.
Asked about Bachelet’s comments on Venezuela, Human Rights Watch Americas’ director José Miguel Vivanco told me that he is not worried about it, because it is consistent with Chile’s past stances in support of democracy and human rights. He added, “Let’s judge Chile on its positions, rather than on its speeches, on Venezuela.”
In a recent interview before he left office, Piñera told me that Latin American countries should be much more forceful in their defense of fundamental freedoms and human rights in Venezuela and Cuba.
Piñera, who was the only Latin American leader who met with a Cuban dissident leader during a Jan. 28 Latin American summit in Cuba, told me that “all Latin American countries are committed by regional treaties to defend freedom, democracy and human rights, not only within our borders but also outside of them, and particularly in our continent.”
“Cuba undoubtedly has serious problems with freedom, with democracy and with human rights,” he said. “That’s why I used the occasion of my trip to Cuba to meet with the Cardinal of Havana, and with the leader of the Ladies in White, which is an organization that fights within Cuba for the freedom of political prisoners and human rights.”
Citing regional treaties of the Organization of American States, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and other regional institutions, he said that “in modern international law, it is not only a duty for each country to defend freedom, democracy and human rights within its borders, but also to protect them in all other countries.”
Asked what he would recommend Bachelet do about Cuba, Piñera said he would advise her to be “coherent and consistent, and that means to defend freedom, democracy and human rights, not only within our borders, but wherever they are being threatened.”
My opinion: To be fair, Piñera’s most vocal human rights activism came at the end of his government. As for Bachelet, she was generally a strong defender of democracy and human rights during her first term, except for some occasional blunders, such as when she happily visited Cuba — a dictatorship that officially censors books — to inaugurate a government-sponsored book fair.
I tend to believe that Bachelet’s vow to improve ties with Argentina and other populist authoritarian countries is part of her rhetoric to gain credibility among her pro-Venezuelan neighbors, and that it won’t mean a U-turn in Chile’s defense of basic human rights and democracy in the region.
Because of her personal history — her father was tortured and died during Chile’s 1973-1990 military dictatorship and she was forced to live in exile — and her past commitment to human rights, I doubt that she will follow the steps of the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador, among others, who are enthusiastically supporting Venezuela’s repressive government. It would be a real loss for the region.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/03/15/3995071/andres-oppenheimer-bachelets-chile.html#storylink=cpy

Escupen en el rostro a Michelle Bachelet [Video]

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