The black guy's playing golf again!

Give us the good news first, The Washington Times!

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 multimillion-dollar oceanfront home in Kailua, a town on the northeast side of the island where houses in the neighborhood fetch around $10 million. It’s near golf courses and a Marine Corps base where the president goes for morning workouts at the gym.

Well, that can't be fake news. It has verbs and objects and adjectives, and -- Christmas comes early! -- lots of things that look like actual facts. Still, it has a couple of features that help the larger project of distinguishing the People's Right to Know from the People's Right to ... best two out of three? We were so close that time.


First is the question of facts and what they mean. One of the joys of being an editor is getting to say "so what?" a lot. When someone says "Chicago 7," your job isn't to say "OMG CHICAGO 7 !!!!!" It's to ask: Seven of what? Are you a baseball score (Chicago 7, Detroit 4), a road sign (Chicago 7, Schaumberg 37) or a headline (Chicago 7 to face trial)? Much like the Great Pronoun Meme, the endless golf stories* rely on your ability to be shocked at the sheer numbers, without asking how much vacation most American heads of state take, or whether the black dude with the scary name uses FPS pronouns more or less frequently than his predecessors, or much of anything like that.

We have, of course, a familiar source:

The first family’s Christmas vacation in 2015 cost taxpayers more than $4.8 million, according to the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which obtained Secret Service records after filing Freedom of Information Act requests and a lawsuit. Multiply that cost by eight years, and taxpayers have paid in the range of $35 million to $40 million — at a minimum — for the first family’s tropical vacations.

... and a familiar concluding theme (the "apology tour" is just too big a hit not to play): 

Mr. Obama will mix in some business during his last Hawaiian vacation. On Tuesday, he will host Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for a visit to Pearl Harbor to honor the more than 2,000 U.S. service members killed by Japan’s attack in December 1941, propelling the U.S. into World War II.

... When Mr. Obama made a historic visit to Hiroshima, Japan, in May to visit the site of the world’s first atomic bombing, Mr. Trump tweeted, “Does President Obama ever discuss the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor** while he’s in Japan? Thousands of American lives lost.”

Mr. Abe will not apologize for the attack 75 years ago, saying his trip will be “a visit to soothe the souls of the victims. We should never repeat the ravages of the war.”

Mr. Obama likewise didn’t apologize for Hiroshima, although some in the U.S. viewed the visit itself as a symbolic apology.

The second point too isn't about whether anything in the story is true. It's about how everything else on the page goes into setting your priorities. The brain is a pretty amazing tool, but there's a limited amount of space it can devote to managing political news while it's handling all the other distractions of daily life -- say, not being run into on the Beltway. Whether the golf tale is true or false in its particulars, it's holding down one of the limited slots available on the issue agenda.

That space might, for example, go to "the economy," as in the top brief deep inside the local daily. If you had spent the summer cowering at the likelihood that a continued Democrat-Islamofascist regime would result in annualized GDP growth of 2% or less forever, this might have come as a bit of relief. It's not all that interesting; if you've been paying attention for the past five or six years, you've probably noted that the economy has been growing steadily and generating nonfarm payroll jobs with some consistency. But an economy that's doing OK isn't the sort of story the Times wants you to think about. You might be reminded that, on the whole, the federal economic statistics are reliable and valid indicators of what they claim to measure, and that the polls weren't rigged, and all sorts of other stuff that wouldn't do at all.

The Times, as we've noted before, isn't above fabricating a story when the Party demands it. But the agenda-setting effect here is brought about by stuff that's -- technically -- true, and the way to start curing that is with an endless stream of ridicule pointed at the party press.

One more thing? If you're a Times reader or Fox watcher whose first response is "it always has to do with race doesn't it LOL", let's let the commenters do the talking:

No wonder Moochie is out of hope. No more taxpayer funded vacations.

But is she proud to be an American now?? Probably not, just too much "racial tensions" yet (which her hubby has made considerably worse). Shhhhhhhhhh, don't tell her, she'd be offended.

I get the point about the Secret Service being overworked, but that's been a by-product of the Obama's in the White House, other presidents haven't abused the travel privileges like them and I don't anticipate presidents in the future doing it either. Of course, had Hillary been elected, what with her world record travel as Secretary of State, the nightmare travel abuse might well have gotten worse, not better. Entitlement, that's been the problem the past eight years.

It was worth the price if you ask me. The more time Obama spends distracted by his golf game and vacations, the less time he spends coming up with more ways to damage this country.

Just one more example of affirmative action entitlement from the half-negro. Awaiting the destruction revealed after he leaves office, as it won't be too late to charge him with treason.

It will be so wonderful when Obama is gone and President Donald Trump demonstrates how the job is supposed to be done. While Barry played golf Donald Trump was building 11 golf coursed. Barry plays, Trump builds.
 
An Executive Order is in order, ordering the Dindu Obama to make restitution.
 
That little punk fool and Mooch cost us a lot more than that!

The Obama's have taken advantage of the privileges granted to them, even during a recession without one balanced budget in eight years. You could almost compare them to a couple of very modest means wining the lottery with no sense of propriety. On the other hand, Trump has said he will not take a salary, and will probably be too busy working on policies that will strengthen our national security and our economy to have time for as many vacations as Obama. The world is a far more dangerous place than when Obama took office.
 
Odumbo needs to play a round of skins against Trump.
 

Dear droolers: No, it doesn't "always have to do with race." But the racist ones? Yes, they have to do with race. 

* Yes, the same author had a Black Guys Playing Golf piece on 1A two months ago.
** On the bright side, he didn't barf on the prime minister.