PRESIDENT OBAMA ON COLOMBIA TRIP:  President Obama seems to be caught up in another controversy, this time for telling a panel at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena (site of the prostitution scandal rocking the U.S. Secret Service) that part of his job there was to scout out locations for a future vacation with First Lady Michelle Obama.

Um, that’s just two days after he gave a sharp response to Larry Conners, news anchor at KMOV in St. Louis, who asked him about Americans who “get frustrated and even angered when they see the first family jetting around  to different vacations and so forth.”

President Obama told Conners: ”But the fact of the matter is, I think if you look at my track record, I’m raising a family here,” said Obama. “When we travel, we’ve got to travel through Secret Service and Air Force One. That’s not my choice. I think most folks understand how hard I work and how hard this administration is working on behalf of the American people.”

Well, I would say that Obama was trying to be funny in his response in Cartagena, but on a serious note, they have taken 16 vacations and that sends the wrong message, considering that we are still grappling with high unemployment and foreclosure rates, as well as high gas prices. I am sure other presidents and their families have taken a lot of vacations and it may be a little hypocritical to just call Obama and his family out, but if the economy weren’t in such dire straits, then I suspect most people wouldn’t care.