Free Republic

The Obamas looked like ultimate tourists in Bali, as Sasha, Malia and Michelle covered up in bright yellow sarongs to visit Tirta Empul Temple, armed with cameras to document their family vacation. It’s an Obama family vacation! Former President Barack Obama, his wife, Michelle, and daughters, Sasha, 16, and Malia, 18, were spotted taking in the sites in Bali on June 27 as they visited the Tirta Empul Temple. The Obama family reunited for their summer vacation, a 10-day trip to Indonesia. While we’re used to seeing the fashionable Obama women rock a slew of stylish frocks, on this occasion...

Former President Barack Obama is under fire from his Democrat base for taking never ending luxurious vacations since leaving office. Obama continues to embark on his endless mystery tour of millionaire and billionaire hotspots and retreats around the world. Ex-Presidents should go on vacation, but Obama seems to be flaunting a type of luxurious post-presidential lifestyle that would make the Kardashian’s blush. Democrat strategist, Pat Caddell, a former adviser to President Jimmy Carter, commented that Obama’s “trips are like the lifestyles of the rich and famous” and said that Obama’s vacations are “unprecedented, and a far cry from how Carter...

UBUD, Indonesia (AFP) - Barack Obama has kicked off a 10-day family holiday in Indonesia that will take in Bali and Jakarta, the city where he spent part of his childhood, officials said on Saturday (June 24). The casually dressed former president arrived in the resort island of Bali with his wife Michelle and their two daughters, a local military commander said. "They arrived late last night and went straight to the hotel in Ubud," a local military commander, I Gede Widiyana, told AFP. Obama woke up early and did some exercise in the lush green riverside resort, Widiyana said,...

Former US President Barack Obama will visit Milan in May, where he will be a keynote speaker at a summit on innovation in the food industry. Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala announced on Monday that Obama would be taking part in the Global Food Innovation Summit between May 8th and 11th this year. Together with his White House chef Sam Kass, Obama will hold a conference on the impact of technological innovation on climate change and food. The event will take place on May 9th, confirmed Sala, who first announced that Obama had been invited to the summit last month. […]...

For the last time, taxpayers are paying for a Hawaiian Christmas vacation for President Obama and his family, an annual luxury getaway that has cost the Treasury easily more than $35 million over eight years. Golfing on oceanside courses, dining at high-end restaurants and frolicking on stunning white-sand beaches where security guards keep other tourists at bay, the president and his family are in the midst of a 17-day holiday that requires dozens of Secret Service agents, military personnel and other government employees to guarantee their safety and ease of travel around Oahu. The Obamas are once again renting a...

Poor Michelle Obama, the highly praised and highly partisan First Lady, complained to Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview that she has lost hope. Mrs. Obama said that her husband did deliver on his promises of offering hope to the American people, but that now “we are feeling what not having hope feels like.” Of course, Mrs. Obama is hopeless these days because Donald Trump will become our nation’s 45th President and demolish the odious Obama legacy. The First Lady and her husband joined the entire leadership of the Democrat Party to vigorously campaign for Hillary Clinton to become our next...

According to Judicial Watch – the Obama family vacations have cost taxpayers more than $85 MILLION.    And, guess what?   They royal family is off to Hawaii again for their annual Christmas vacation.   Aloha! The Washington Times reports – It’s travel time for both President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump this weekend, but for widely different reasons. Mr. Obama departs Friday for his Christmas vacation in Hawaii, the last while he is in office. Judicial Watch recently revealed that, to date, the first family’s personal travel expenses have totaled more than $85 million. Last year’s jaunt to Hawaii cost $4.8 million,...

On Monday when Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani visits Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland will once again serve as the venue for important geopolitical negotiations on seemingly in­trac­table issues, a role it has played for more than seven decades. But as Secretary of State John F. Kerry and other Cabinet members host the Afghan president, one major U.S. figure will not be present — President Obama. The president’s absence is just one signal of how the role of the cloistered compound in the Catoctin mountains has changed under this president, a city dweller who prefers gym workouts and golf...

How many vacations have you taken in the last six years? Have you taken six? I doubt most Americans have been able to do that. For families, it might be even tougher. Do you know how many Barack Obama has taken? 38. That’s right. That’s more than six vacations per year – all expenses paid by you the taxpayer. And these are not your routine week-at-the-beach excursions. These would almost all be vacations of a lifetime for even very wealthy Americans. He and the first family, God love them, are living it up on your dime. And because presidential family...

As President Obama gets ready to interrupt his vacation for two days of meetings at the White House, here’s a look at how he spent the past week on Martha’s Vineyard: During NINE days of vacation, the president played SIX rounds of golf on TWO courses with 11 different partners, spending roughly 29.5 hours on the links. He made TWO family outings to the beach, spending roughly SIX and a HALF hours soaking up the sun and surf. [Snip} He ... delivered TWO public statements on TWO different topics, Iraq and the situation in Ferguson, Mo. [Snip] He went for...

 As of August 12, 2014, Obama has taken 20 "vacations" lasting 2 to 15 days. He has spent all or part of 129 days on “vacation.” And the president has made 33 visits to the official Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, totaling all or part of 84 days. (Knoller does not count Camp David trips as “vacation.”) Obama’s morning round of golf on Tuesday brought his total since January 2009 to 186, with 22 of them on Martha’s Vineyard. At this point in George W. Bush’s presidency, he had taken 58 trips to his Prairie Chapel ranch near Crawford,...

The Bidens are arriving today in the Hamptons to start their third vacation in a month. "Vice President Joe Biden is arriving to spend a week in the Southampton area before leaving next Tuesday," News12 reports. It's not known if he'll meet up with two other big Democrats staying in the Hamptons this week. Hillary and Bill Clinton are already in Amagansett." The official guidance from the White House is a little less direct: "The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden will visit Long Island, New York. There are no public events scheduled," the vice president's schedule reads. Last week...

President Obama must really be teed off. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his once-loyal secretary of state and his likeliest successor, has gone rogue, criticizing his foreign policy as too timid.

What Obama Said About Taking Vacations in 2008 Almost Made the Internet Explode

The White House says President Barack Obama will make a statement on Ukraine before he departs Thursday for a day of events in Florida. The statement is scheduled for 11 a.m. Eastern time on the South Lawn. The U.S. imposed sanctions earlier this week against several Russian officials for their role in the crisis in Ukraine.

Late last night, the White House cancelled the whole trip, sending Secretary of State John Kerry in Obama’s place instead: President Obama has cancelled the rest of his trip to Asia next week, pulling out of summits in Indonesia and Brunei because of the ongoing government shutdown, the White House announced tonight. “The president made this decision based on the difficulty in moving forward with foreign travel in the face of a shutdown, and his determination to continue pressing his case that Republicans should immediately allow a vote to reopen the government,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in...

Well, it's that traditional time of the year again when the president goes on vacation and the conservative world ridicules him for taking time off with his family because of the disarray of our country or the enormousness of expenditures in his doing so. But is there really nothing redeemable or commendable in a father and husband's spending extended time with his family away from home and office, even when it's the Oval Office? Don't misunderstand me. I have very little in common with our current president, and I think it's ludicrous how much is spent for the first family...

Watchdog group sues for transparency on Michelle Obama vacation expenses 9:51 AM 06/06/2012 A government watchdog group has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Secret Service in an effort to obtain records detailing Michelle Obama and the Obama daughters’ February 2012 President’s Day weekend ski vacation to Aspen, Colorado. The lawsuit is a more aggressive followup to Judicial Watch’s February 21, 2012 FOIA request with the U.S. Air Force — seeking all records mission taskings, transportation costs and passenger manifests — and the U.S. Secret Service — seeking all records...

The Obama campaign is floundering before our eyes, even if the Obama media won't characterize it that way. From the thousands of empty seats at the Ohio campaign kickoff on Saturday and the mystery burka woman ejected from the follow-on Richmond event to today's embarrassingly incompetent press release, the Axelrod PR machine is a shadow of its 2008 mastery. Reminding the American people of the Obamas' penchant for his & her luxury vacation travel via government jets is an unforced error on Team Axelrod's part.According to report by ABC News and MSNBC, the Obama campaign took umbrage to statements made...

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters. “They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that...