http://www.americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/03/news_you_wont_be_hearing_about_michelle_obamas_china_junket.htmlMarch 20, 2014
News you won't be hearing about Michelle Obama's China junket
Thomas Lifson
Evidently the White House realizes that Michelle Obama’s expensive and luxurious family junket to China, accompanied by her mother and daughters, looks like a colossal waste of taxpayer money. That’s the logical explanation for unusual restrictions on media access. No reporters are accompanying her. Even the Obama sycophants at the New York Times are noticing:
"Mrs. Obama is drawing scrutiny for her decision to travel with her mother and her two daughters, who are on spring break, bringing to mind a vacation she took to Spain in 2010 with her daughter Sasha and some friends. She and her entourage paid for their lodging and entertainment. But the security cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, and the trip was criticized as lavish.
The UK Daily Mail reports on the unusual restrictions on media access for those reporters in China who want to cover the junket:
First lady Michelle Obama will not take questions from reporters or give interviews during her tour of China that begins today, and members of the press corps who usually follows the first family everywhere can't travel with her entourage.
And although she will make a few speeches with reporters in the room, the picture is largely one of an expensive, taxpayer-funded tourism exercise for Mrs. Obama, her two daughters, and her mother – not the official trip the White House has projected.
White House press officials haven't comment on the record about whether a reported ban on question-and-answer interviews applies equally to American journalists and international reporters.
And limited information made available to MailOnline suggests that only two out of 22 scheduled events on the trip will afford journalists a chance to do any significant reporting – including a solitary speech – but still without interviewing Mrs. Obama.
Both of those events, the White House says, will afford 'limited' space for the press.
Even more outrageously, Michelle is giving a stiff-arm to human rights activists in China. Whitehousedossier reports:
First Lady Michelle Obama will not meet with human rights activists during her upcoming trip to China, according to White House officials, focusing instead on gauzy, feel-good kids issues that should be PR gold for the oppressive Chinese leadership.
While avoiding dissidents and anyone suffering under the regime, Mrs. Obama will cozy up to the wife of China’s ruler, Peng Liyuan, a former singer who has a reputation for being beautiful and fabulous and who sang for the martial law troops who had massacred protestors in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Those banquets might be a bit less lavish if Michelle made a point of meeting with dissidents. Can't have her girls and her mother inconvenienced. Michelle is getting as much as she can out of her husband’s job, and we get to pay the bills for a fantastic family vacation. This woman enjoys living large a bit too much.
