Posted on 03/21/2012 5:04:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Edited on 03/21/2012 5:08:32 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
We normally wouldn't bother writing about the president's daughter, but the story of Malia Obama's spring break deserves mention if only because it's troubling on so many levels.
First you have to wonder about sending a 13-year-old to drug-war-torn Mexico to frolic with her friends. It doesn't strike us as the wisest move, given the potential risk to her and those around her.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
...maybe the school's Spring Break related.
Can't believe Mooch didn't make the trip down a day later with another 25 Secret Service agents.
That photo should show sheep, not dogs.
The trip was the call of the parents. Further, I believe the SS men would take a bullet for any of the the young ladies in their charge. The costliness of the trip may be a legitimate story, though.
Zero sent his kids there with a platoon (maybe a company) of federal agents.
They were and are as safe as babes-in-arms.
He did that to show us, in the brave new Socialist USA, that he and his elite friends can run around anywhere in complete safety and consummate luxury, and we can only dream of going to these places.
Connected as he is, and has been, his whole life, Obama and the elites have grown accustomed to the royal lifestyle... just like his Soros friends, Hollywood friends, etc., etc.,
WE are the ones who still have to worry about crime, safety, etc., but never do these people worry.
This is precisely the class structure that he is installing in the US.
It was insane that the lapdog media obeyed the democrat masters as quickly as they did. They must fear, respect and agree with them. That is dangerous to us and to the media. I wish they were not so stupid that they don’t realize it.
Wouldn't want to be punished with one. PARTY ON!
Note the pug will not sit up
It’s a Sidwell Friends school trip. The spring break trip is an ongoing tradition. We know one of the other girls on the trip; it’s a routine Sidwell thing.
well, this admin does send free condoms to 12 year olds...
“We know one of the other girls on the trip; it’s a routine Sidwell thing.”
So can you verify to me that there are adult chaperones along, aside from the SS agents?
And, btw, if it is so routine why the panic over the news stories?
well ex-cUUUUUuuuuuUUUUUUse us!
Alot of people have “routine” trips and business in Mexico that they have had to suspend given the cartel war.
I could care less about obama’s daughter and her prissy classmates. I don’t any reason to risk the lives of Secret Service agents so Sidwell can keep it’s “tradition.”
It’s a school trip. I don’t know the details, but I assume they go with faculty sponsors. I have no idea if parents come along.
Sidwell is a name brand school with tuition in the $30,000 range. (Out of our price range, for sure.) We know several current and past Sidwell families, some at church, some through soccer, and some at work. The ones we know are comfortably upper middle class but not wealthy; some of them are even Republicans. I suspect many of them are getting scholarship assistance at Sidwell, although I don't ask.
On this as on several other threads on this topic, there seems to be a lot of generalized hostility towards Sidwell as an elitist school. Some of it is so over the top that I think DU trolls are sneaking in. Sidwell is a great school with a well-earned reputation for excellence. Yes, it is expensive, and academically selective. So what. In any city in this country, the business and professional elites have access to these kinds of schools. That is their prerogative. The goal ought not to be to tear down Sidwell, and places like it; the goal should be to open access to such schools to more families (vouchers, anyone?) and to raise many more schools to this level of excellence.
We have two daughters in the Catholic system and have been paying the DC private school tax for ten years. Our oldest is heading to a very good Catholic high school that is substantially less costly than Sidwell, but expensive by most other standards of comparison. But as I point out to Democrat friends, if DC would voucher school tuition, we could pay full freight for our daughters' "elitist, expensive, upper class" educations, and have cash back. The DC public system is MORE expensive than virtually all the Catholic schools, including all but a couple of the very top academic magnets.
The issue isn't that parents who can afford it choose great schools for their kids. The issue is that DC public schools spend over $18,000 a year per student to run a disaster (and I've seen estimates as high as $25,000 if you really dug through the budget for hidden costs).
A handful of DC public elementary and middle schools, and now two high schools, have broken through and are winning broad middle class acceptance. We also have a large number of public charter schools, some of which are doing very well. Thank goodness for the democratizing influcence of sports: my daughter has soccer friends (not all on her current team) either attending or entering next fall at Washington Latin, Wilson, Whitman, and Walls (public) as well as Sidwell, Georgetown Visitation, Georgetown Day, Bullis, Maret, Holy Child, Washington International, St. John's, and I'm sure I'm leaving a few out. These are all outstanding schools. Plus there are several soccer friends who live in the near suburbs and go to some excellent public schools in Fairfax and Mongomery Counties.
For most of the families we know, paying private school tuition is a substantial sacrifice, which we weigh against the alternative, which is a brutal commute. You get used to the idea that if you live in the city, schools are one of the things you'll pay dearly for. The fairly recent breakthroughs achieved by a couple of the DC public and charter schools are great news; the options are broadening. Walls (public) attracts a lot of applications from private school kids, but it has become very difficult to get into; there is a widespread suspicion that Walls is reserving most of its slots for kids who have come up through the public system, thus discriminating against private school kids who are trying to jump back into a (free) public option at the high school level. I wouldn't be surprised if this surfaces as a public issue in the near future. Signs of progress.
So ... an elite prep school sponsors a trip abroad during spring break. Big deal. As I pointed out on another thread, my old southern Indiana high school (public, and not selective; it's the only high school in town) nowadays sends the Latin and French clubs to Europe. Why in the world do some people get flustered if students get on an airplane from time to time? It would be surprising if top academic magnet schools, public as well as private, did NOT do this.
An afterthought: the amount of money academic magnets spend on this sort of thing pales in comparison to the expenditures of many public school systems on athletics. A question of priorities, I suppose.
Come off it. Quick mental inventory: I think I know seven current Sidwell kids (including a couple of sibling pairs). None of them are in the least bit prissy. Two of them are current alter servers at our chuch, and they are the nicest girls you will ever want to meet. Two more are on my daughters' soccer team; they are pretty hard nosed soccer players, and nice girls off the field.
The boys are also into sports, although as Sidwell football players, they get beaten up pretty badly. I'm told that Sidwell refuses to recruit for athletics, and gets destroyed by prep schools that do. If I'm recalling this correctly, the Sidwell football team got whipped a year or two ago by a Virginia team of homeschooled kids; Sidwell tries manfully to find teams at a reasonable (i.e. low enough) level, but it's hard. Football apparently isn't a Quaker sport.
>>So ... an elite prep school sponsors a trip abroad during spring break. Big deal.
The “big deal” part is going to a country with multiple travel advisories in which serious drug wars are ongoing, necessitating accompaniment by a whole platoon of Federal Secret Service agents for security at public expense.
So: should a president's kid be allowed to go on class trips, or should he/she stay at home because of the added cost of security? Forget the Obamas; think of this as a policy call for future reference. There would be a Secret Service detail at ANY destination, not just Mexico. I don't know if the number mentioned in the article is unusually large or not. They're escorting a large group, and they have to be on duty around the clock. Are you arguing that president's kids should just stay home?
I would expect the detail for Mexico to be substantially larger than if they were going to, say, Italy or Germany.
Kidnapping for ransom is a major sport in Mexico.
Obama the Fascist is down in Mexico arranging for his 5th column drug dealing brown shirts to do the dirty before Novembers election. Beware Arizona!
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