Gypsy Jan
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A Class Trip Meant Much to Mexico
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: March 22, 2012 NY Times
MEXICO CITY - "After weighing the risks of traveling to Mexico, the parents of one American teenager decided to allow her to join a school trip to
Oaxaca, where students volunteered at an orphanage, visited archaeological sites and sipped vanilla milkshakes on the honey-colored town plaza.
The fact that the parents were President Obama and the first lady, Michelle Obama, and that the teenager was their daughter Malia, thrilled Mexican
tourism officials, who are trying to redefine the country's image as it has struggled with drug violence.
"It's a compliment that the daughter of President Obama and her friends have decided to live the experience of Oaxaca," said José Zorrilla, the state
secretary for tourism and economic development, slipping into promotion mode.
Each updated travel advisory from the United States State Department is painted as an affront here. Especially galling to Mexicans was the spring
break warning issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety suggesting that Texans avoid Mexico altogether.
Plenty of Americans are ignoring the government warnings. Last year, Mexico reported a record year for foreign visitors, 22.67 million, and most of
them were American.
Malia, 13, attends Sidwell Friends School in Washington, which has been organizing trips to Oaxaca for years, said Ellis Turner, the associate head of
school, who pointed out that there was no State Department travel warning for Oaxaca.
Although the White House asked English-language media to remove articles about the visit from their Web sites this week, the visit was never a secret
in Mexico. "The reality is that Oaxaca isn't that big and it isn't that easy to hide 10 girls and that security," said Mr. Zorrilla, the tourism
official.
On Monday, the group sat down for lunch at Terranova, a family restaurant behind the porticos lining Oaxaca's central plaza. The headwaiter, José
Victoria, said they ordered bottles of water, vanilla milkshakes, pizza and spaghetti. Malia opted for cheese quesadillas, which he said she ordered
in Spanish.
Along with their work at the orphanage, which Mr. Turner did not identify, the teenagers trooped through all the tourist spots in Oaxaca, a handsome
colonial city set in a blue-green valley steeped in pre-Columbian culture. They toured Zapotec archaeological sites and visited nearby villages famous
for producing black pottery and fantastical wood carvings called alebrijes.
But what the group is most likely to take back may not be a souvenir but the memory of a strong earthquake that prompted the White House to lift its
news blackout, acknowledge Malia's trip and assure everybody that she was safe."
Karla Zabludovsky contributed reporting.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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MrBillM
Platinum Nomad
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IF EVERY Gringo
Or Gringa had the protection detail provided to the B.O. Baby, almost no place on earth would present a danger.
Still, Hillary DID wear a Flak-Jacket when she traveled there.
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BajaBlanca
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I bet they loved Oaxaca ....but what a bad time for the earthuake .... Murphy was having fun enforcing his laws that day ...
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durrelllrobert
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Why are all web sites talking about cost pulled down?
This trip will cost more than most Americans make in their entire lifetimes.
On “spring break” in Oaxaca Mexico , on your dime.
She took two jets and 25 secret service men.
A thirteen year-old?
Why haven’t you heard about it?
The Obama Administration has had the Secret Service scouring the web ordering that any website mentioning this be taken down because letting the
travel plans out could endanger the president’s daughter’s security.
Nonsense, the “royal couple” just want to hide the way they are ripping off the U. S. taxpayer
http://www.wtam.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html...
Stories of Malia Obama's spring break trip to Mexico disappearing from the web
The White House admitted to asking news organizations to pull the story.
UPDATE:
The White House has admitted to telling news agencies to pull stories on Malia Obama visiting Mexico for spring break, Politico reports.
From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not
with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these
girls.
Full Story at The Blaze.com
ORIGINAL STORY
(Erica Ritz) -- Have you heard that Malia Obama, the president’s daughter, is reportedly spending her spring break in Oaxaca, Mexico? Allegedly, she’s
jetting off with some of her classmates and 25 Secret Service agents to a country that the State Department has said all Americans should avoid. But
something is different about the latest “Obama vacation controversy:” references to it are disappearing from the Internet — and fast.
Around 3:00 EST, a Telegraph story reporting on the event was the first to vanish
Then, the related Huffington Post article was found to be linking back to a completely unrelatedYahoo News page titled “Senegal Music Star Youssou
Ndour Hits Campaign Trail.”
Read more: http://www.wtam.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html...
Only a few Canadian Web-sites still have it up, one was taken down while I was viewing it.
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/travel/Obama+daughter+spends+...
The Obama’s are laughing at the “suckers” who are funding their Imperial Lifestyle.
Bob Durrell
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AndyP
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I like this forum, but wtf is up with all the nutso political ranting like the above?
I'm in Oaxaca right now, and it's fantastic; one of the most beautiful cities I've been to. Some of the best food anywhere, too. I love Baja for
it's natural beauty and camping opportunities, but everyone should give the mainland a chance sometime also. The cities are way more interesting in
my opinion, and much better value for the money.
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BajaBlanca
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Oaxaca was amazing ... we went this year too.....the beaches .... the people ... the food .... the plants .... the art .....just spectacular. Have a
great trip.
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Woooosh
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"The reality is that Oaxaca isn't that big and it isn't that easy to hide 10 girls and that security" (he forgot to add... without people thinking it
was El Chapo passing back through to his southern home). 
I'm glad the President's daughter could visit Oaxaca and volunteer at an orphanage as part of her school-sponsored trip. It does take money and
manpower to protect the First Family. So what? It's a wise investment. The sons and daughters of US Presidents, without fail- become the outstanding
states-people and Philanthropists of their generation. You shouldn't shield them from the world; you want them to see and understand it. How can they
grow to have true empathy without having real life experiences like these? I'm glad she had a good trip and got to see how some of her Mexican
neighbors live. She ordered her food in Spanish and the waiter took note. Mexicans like that a lot. Me too.
[Edited on 4-1-2012 by Woooosh]
\"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing\"
1961- JFK to Canadian parliament (Edmund Burke)
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Bajahowodd
Elite Nomad
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I do agree that this thread should not be politicized.
However, given that the president is on-duty 24/7, and that whenever the president's relatives travel, they obviously required secret service
protection, does anyone really suggest that any presidential family ought to spend their entire term as prisoners in the White House?
Below is from a friend's blog. Just to keep it fair, I didn't criticize the Bush clan for their vacation time, either. Just seems that the current
president has a wider vista.
If anyone wishes to complain about taxpayer money being wasted, they ought to look at congress and the whole budget thing.
"Bush Spent 5 Times More On Flights To Texas Than Obama‘s Christmas Vacation Costs.
George W. Bush spent at least $20 million taxpayer dollars just on flights to his ranch in Crawford.
The right wing has been outraged at the four million dollar plus price tag for Obama’s family Christmas vacation, and they constantly hold George W.
Bush up as an example of how thrifty a president should be when going on vacation.
The problem is that W. wasn’t thrifty. He was the most expensive vacation president in US history. Not only did Bush spend more days on vacation than
any other president, but he used Air Force One more often while on vacation than any other president.
During Bush’s two terms, the cost of operating Air Force One ranged from $56,800 to $68,000 an hour. Bush used Air Force One 77 times to go to his
ranch in Crawford, TX. Using the low end cost of $56,800, Media Matters calculated that each trip to Crawford cost taxpayers $259,687 each time, and
$20 million total for Bush’s ranch flights.
If cost of the flight was the only expense involved to taxpayers Bush’s vacations would still seem rather economical, but there is more, much more.
Unlike the Obama’s $4 million Christmas vacation price tag, which includes the cost of everything from transportation to accommodations for the First
Family, the White House staff, and the White House press corps, Bush’s numbers only include the cost of flying the president to Crawford. The cost of
transporting and accommodating staff, media, friends and family is not included in Bush’s vacation numbers.
In response to growing criticism that the president was on vacation too much, the Bush administration adopted the Rovian tactic of scheduling, “work
events,” while the president was in Crawford so that they could claim that President Bush’s vacations were working vacations. During his infamous
pre-9/11 August vacation, the AP reported that, “Using the ranch as a base, he will promote White House initiatives in Rocky Mountain National Park,
Denver, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and San Antonio.”
Bush’s “working vacations” cost taxpayers a small fortune in travel costs because President Bush and his staff would make day trips on Air Force One
all across the country in order to counter the criticism that he was on vacation too often. For eight years, Bush essentially used Air Force One as
his personal vacation taxi service.
What was also not counted in Bush’s Air Force One mileage total were the vacations where Bush flew to Crawford from Camp David such as the following
via Media Matters:
In a December 27, 2001, Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel article (accessed via Nexis), national correspondent Jeff Zeleny reported “[a]fter
spending Christmas at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, the president and first lady boarded Air Force One to travel to their ranch
near the village of Crawford.”
And on December 26, 2007, The Associated Press reported that Bush took “Air Force One to fly from his Maryland mountaintop retreat to his Texas
ranch here to see in the new year.”
FactCheck.org was writing about the anonymous chain emails about Obama’s travel costs and noted in July that the stories about Obama’s travel expenses
are, “part of continuing pattern of false and misleading claims about the travels of the president and the first lady,” and that Obama used Air Force
One less in his first two years in office than George W. Bush did.
That same pattern of false information about Obama’s travel costs relative to Bush’s is also rampant on right wing blogs, websites, and Fox News. The
cost of Obama’s Christmas vacation is a good example of how right wing media can take a small fact like vacation costs or the number of Americans
paying taxes in a single year and build an entire misinformation campaign around it.
The total cost of Obama’s Christmas vacation may be $4 million, but George W. Bush spent exponentially more taxpayers dollars, because he used Air
Force One for political purposes in an attempt to distract the public from the amount of days that he was spending on vacation. In flights alone just
for himself, George W. Bush spent five times more money flying just himself to Texas than Obama is spending on an entire Christmas vacation.
It is likely that the Bush administration spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on vacations, but the false outrage machine is on overdrive
due to one Obama Christmas vacation.
By not including the cost of everything, the Obama bashers distorted the numbers to make it appear that Obama was lavishly spending taxpayer dollars
on vacations, but a look inside the numbers reveals that nobody knows how to waste taxpayer dollars quite like the GOP."
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