Lloyd: What the hell are we doing here, Harry? We’ve got to get out of town!

Harry: Oh, yeah? And go where? Where are we gonna go?

Lloyd: I’ll tell you where. Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. Where beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I’m talking about a little place called Aspen.

Sounds nice, right? Never mind that Lloyd had Aspen all wrong. The point is, sometimes you just have to get away and Aspen’s as good a place as any to do it. If you’re the First Lady, though, you regularly have to get away and Aspen’s as good a place as, say, Hawaii or Spain or Martha’s Vineyard. For her sixteenth vacation in three years, Mrs. O chose to hit the ski slopes in Colorado:

In the midst of a recession, Michelle Obama and her two daughters are spending Presidents Day on the slopes at the star-studded resort of Aspen, a source who is a longtime ski instructor at the mountain confirmed to the Daily Caller.

The Aspen Daily News first reported the vacation.

The source told TheDC that the Obamas are there with their young children and two female friends of the first lady. The group is staying near Buttermilk Mountain, at the “huge private home” of Jim and Paula Crown — the family that owns Aspen Skiing Co. There are a large number of Secret Service agents with them, and the Crowns have reportedly relocated to Little Nell Hotel until things quiet down.

This trip hits taxpayers, but, at this point, it hardly seems worth it to be outraged. Michelle Obama is gonna do what she’s gonna do. If she’s willing to take a 17-day trip to Hawaii that cost taxpayers $4 million, why wouldn’t she be willing to take another weekend trip wherever she likes, whenever she likes? All along, I’ve completely sympathized with her desire to give her girls a “normal” life, and I’ve never thought the First Lady should have to spend her every waking moment “performing” for the public. But (a) these vacations aren’t normal and (b) the Obamas are independently wealthy enough to be able to afford extensive travel after they permanently vacate the White House. If Michelle didn’t want the girls to miss out on traveling during these four years of their lives, then she should have discouraged her husband from running for president until Sasha and Malia were out of the house.

Eh. Maybe someday we’ll be able to say of the First Lady as Harry said of Lloyd, “Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly be any dumber, you go and do something like this … and totally redeem yourself!”