First Lady's Fairy Tale of Struggle......(Ooookay)...

First Lady Michelle Obama’s pitch to voters last night relied on the
premise that she and her husband understand what it is to struggle to
make ends meet. She spoke movingly about their early years–about how a
young Barack Obama drove a car that was “rusted out” and found his
furniture “in a dumpster,” how they both came from families that had to
“scrape by.” Her fairy tale–however well-delivered–was one great, big,
colorful lie.

Both Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama began their adult lives with a
leg up on the rest of America. They attended elite schools: Michelle
went to Whitney Young, the public magnet school for Chicago’s upper
class, while Barack attended Punahou, the private prep school for the
top stratum of Hawaiian society. They were accepted to Ivy League
schools despite undistinguished credentials, and both attended Harvard
Law School.

“[B]elieve it or not, when we were first married, our combined
monthly student loan bills were actually higher than our mortgage,”
Michelle said. That sounds like a raw deal–but in fact reflects their
fortunate circumstances. They had both just graduated from a very
expensive law school, and their combined income from cushy law firm jobs
dwarfed the repayments. Barack also soon enjoyed a second salary from
the University of Chicago.

They had expensive tastes, reflected in the $277,500 two-bedroom
condo they bought in 1993–a high price even by today’s standards.
Several years later, they moved into their $1.65 million mansion in Hyde
Park–with the help of fraudster Tony Rezko. Barack often told a story
of hardship on the campaign trail in 2008 about having his credit card
declined–once. The fact that he thought this counted as real hardship
speaks volumes.