White House On Family Obama's $100 Million Africa Trip: 'Great Bang For Our Buck' 

• Michael Miller
• On June 14, 2013
• http://mikesright.wordpress.com/

From the You Can’t Make This Stuff Up department: Family Obama’s trip to Africa this month will cost taxpayers as much as $100 million. And how does the White House describe it? “A great bang for our buck.”
$100 million. Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, who made it a point to say that the White House doesn’t determine the cost of security (as if that somehow justifies or excuses the obscene appearance and timing of the trip), argued that traveling to the region would help the U.S. in the long run:

“Frankly, there will be a great bang for our buck for being in Africa, because when you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you can have very long-standing and long-running impact from the visit.”

(Yeah, Ben – I wonder if it will “help the U.S.” as much as Obama’s trip to the Middle East did?)
So what does $100 million get you in the way of travel these days?

• Hundreds of Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.

• A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.

• Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks carrying bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the Obamas will stay.

• Fighter jets will fly in shifts to provide around the clock coverage over the Obamas’ airspace.

Lest anyone forget, sequestration reportedly forced the Secret Service to cut $84 million from its budget earlier this year, and this spring the agency canceled public tours of the White House in order to save $74,000 a week in overtime. (In case you’re wondering, $100 million would fund 1,351 weeks – or 26 years – of White House tours.)
The Obamas had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of their vacation great bang for the buck trip official visit, which would have required a special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could take out cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, but the White House cancelled the safari Wednesday. (I wonder if it was because Mishy couldn’t bear the thought of seeing animals wasted before her eyes – or, if even the Obamas themselves finally realized how over-the-top this whole thing is?)

Anyway, I don’t know whether $100 million for the Family Obama’s African vacation is a great bang for the buck or not – but I do this: While Barack, Mishy and the girls are eating sosaties and thiéboudienne, dancing the sabar and singing Shosholoza, tens of millions of ordinary Americans will still be struggling to make ends meet – just as they have done for the last 4 1/2 years