Free Republic

(excerpt) You don’t usually mention issues like climate change on the show, did you feel that you had to address it this time around? JC: Well, [Hammond and May] were dragging along the bottom [of the river], in the mud. We can’t say everything is perfectly all right because it obviously isn’t, but our job is not to run around, have school strikes, sail to America on a carbon-fibre yacht that cost £15 million, or shout at people which achieves absolutely f**k all. Our job is to simply say, there it is and move on. We’re just entertainers.

We now have the first acknowledgment from their side that the Clintons vastly overestimated their personal popularity and the public’s interest in hearing them talk about themselves. The Clintons and their stadium tour promoter are officially responding to the public’s refusal to show up in sufficient numbers for them to avoid embarrassment (and financial loss) at the level of ticket prices that seemed realistic when the tour was announced only two months ago. The UK Daily Mail noticed this offer on Groupon:

LONDON — Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama was in Greece Tuesday, bringing to Europe much sought assurances about the U.S. commitment to NATO under the presidency of Donald Trump. Before leaving the United States, Obama said President-elect Trump told him he intends to maintain America's core strategic relationships. Athens is the first stop on Obama’s last foreign trip as president.

Michelle Obama is taking her daughters on a Spring Break trip to Japan and Cambodia this month, the latest global vacation to share the world's culture with Sasha and Malia while giving the first lady a stage to promote education for girls. [Snip] Costs of the first family's trip have been controversial and this one is likely to be very expensive. The first lady's group, for example, spent $222,000 for just two days of hotel expenses during part of their China trip last year. Judicial Watch, the taxpayer watchdog group, estimated that the Obama vacation tab as of mid-2014 was...