Michelle Obama's lavish expenses? If not why? On point...
June 2015 to the UK and Italy, vacation with daughters, and mother. cost tax payers $240,495.67 mind you this is only flight expenses.
(FOIA) Freedom of information act requested records filed on June 22, 2015 flights to London, Milan, Venice and Vicinza Italy, for June 15 - 21 2015
20:35 hours at a cost of $11,684.00 per hour. Bringing flight expenses to $240,495.67 according to Air Force records.
Air Force records for March 19 - 26 for Michelle her mother and daughters in China $362,523.53
The Obama's New York date night, followed the next day by Obamas golf and Michelle, her mother and the two girls go on to Africa and Honolulu cost. $15,885,585.30 flight expenses only.

I will at this time remind everyone again the $numbers are for flights ONLY!
During the 2013 G8 conference in Belfast Michelle and her entourage took a side trip to Dublin, booking 30 rooms in a 5 star hotel and her suite alone 1500 square feet, bigger then most American's homes at the cost of $3,500.00 a night. Cost to tax payers for Ireland trip $7,921,638.66 Not sure what the flight cost is on this one. However; between Obama and Bidens travel expense exceeded $57 million tax payers dollars.

Michelle, her daughters, and mothers. Aspen and Spain vacations as of December 7, 2016 have not been printed.

Ref: Numbers collected from, Newsmax

I believe that everyone of this trips/vacations should be reimbursed to the American people. Along with the total cost of the vacations cost it's self, and not just flight cost.
Along with these I also believe that the American people should also be reimbursed for the secret service that has been with the Clinton's since they left the White House. They are only entitled to that service when in high office.

I am very interested in what the people have to say about this.

Sincerely;
SheenaB

Repairs completed. Plumbing = $800. Insurance deductible $1000. I'm moving in next week to get back to town. Renting the acreage on the farm to the neighbor and the farmhouse a young family screened by my new Property Management company!

Retirement should be easier!

Oh yeah, it was just water! The smell was coming from an unnoticed camping toilet left by a former tenant in the basement apartment! He left precipitously. Once the commode was disposed of and the space aired out, all was well. That was a real relief following six weeks or so of worry about the condition of the pipes!

Now, packing.... Moving.... Unpacking....

"During the 21 days I was there ... I plead with the medical staff, the senior medical staff, to increase his meds so his bandages could be changed," Parker said. "I was met with a stonewall for much of that time."



I don't see what increasing his medication has to do with his bandages being changed. Bandages should be changed regularly.

An overzealous federal agency is targeting Florida cats in a pest removal operation and it’s becoming a huge problem for pet owners.

Throughout the ages, cats have held a high place in society. Scholars commonly hold that felines were first domesticated in Egypt 4,000 years ago due to their ability to police dirty, disease-carrying rodents that plagued the land. This heroic role made cats so revered in ancient Egypt that some worshiped the animals as deities.

If a person were to kill a cat, even accidentally, the act was punishable by death. Upon their death, cats were often mummified and left to lay with their trophies: dead rats. However, times have changed for the once-renowned species.

The Smithsonian recently published an article titled: “To Save the Woodrat, Conservationists Have to Deal With an Invasive Species First: House Cats.” This is the latest entry in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s cat fight with residents of Key Largo, Florida, and their beloved pets.

In 2014, the Fish and Wildlife Service implemented a pest management plan designed to trap cats that the agency perceived as a threat to the Key Largo woodrat. The furry targets of this sting operation were accused of trespassing on federal land, which is a woodrat habitat, and doing what cats do best: hunt and kill rats.

Instead of focusing only on the large swaths of feral cats that pose the primary threat to the rats’ survival on the island, the Fish and Wildlife Service went overboard. Resident cat owners complained that agents set baited traps adjacent to the private property of the owners who live next to the federal park.

Then, Fish and Wildlife Service agents trapped Rocky, a pet cat to Spencer Slate, a Key Largo businessman who runs a scuba diving center. According to Slate, the traps “were all about 50 feet from [his] property” when Rocky was lured in one night. As a result, Slate said that “Rocky’s face was so bloodied by the trap’s spring-shut door that he did not recognize his pet.”

Slate discovered this after a Fish and Wildlife Service agent showed up at his business to serve him with a written citation threatening jail time for allegedly allowing Rocky to enter federal land. When delivering the citation, the agent neglected to return the captive kitten, instead depositing Rocky at an animal shelter nearly 15 miles away.

In the face of agency abuse, Slate refused to roll over, taking his case to a federal judge who dismissed the citation after the scuba captain demonstrated that the Fish and Wildlife Service had set the trap that captured Rocky outside of federal land.

As Mark Miller, managing attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Atlantic Center in Florida, explains, “when [Fish and Wildlife Service] agents prowl off of federal land to trap private citizens’ cats on private land, these agents’ actions implicate a number of constitutional clauses” that could make the agents’ actions unlawful.

Furthermore, the fact that Slate was threatened with jail time for the instinctive response of his baited cat is a gross misuse of government power. This tactic represents the phenomenon of overcriminalization, the use of the criminal law and penalties to punish every mistake and to solve every problem—including a pet cat wandering around Key Largo.

One would hope that after Slate exposed this injustice in court, the government would start leaving pets and their owners alone, but this is not the only example of federal regulation of domestic animals.

For instance, it is a crime to “allow” a pet to make a noise “that frightens wildlife” on land administered by the National Park Service. It is also a crime to walk your dog in a national park on a 7-foot leash, 36 CFR § 2.15(a)(2) and 36 CFR § 1.3. Keep Lassie close or she could put her owner in the slammer.

Over the years, courts too have weighed in on animal treachery. In 1926, the English Court of Appeals held in Buckle v. Holmes that a cat owner is not responsible for the damage caused by his trespassing pet.

Even earlier, in 1890, a Pennsylvania court held in McDonald v. Jodrey that a cat owner is not responsible for the “predatory habits” of the species, but can only be held liable for the “known mischievous tendencies” of a particular pet.

The judge in Slate’s case is not the only judge who would likely view the adoption of a wildlife conservation strategy that encourages federal agents to confiscate pets as an alarming government overreach.

Adding the threat of jail time for property owners who are mere bystanders to government conservation efforts and the natural instincts of orderly pets is all the more unjust.

Legend has it that Pope Gregory IX denounced cats as an incarnation of Satan in the 13th century. This led to the mass extermination of medieval felines.

With cats no longer present to stand guard, Europe experienced an explosion in the rat population, which spread the ravaging bubonic plague throughout the land. Scholars estimate that the Black Death killed one-third of Europe.

The Fish and Wildlife Service ought to heed this historical warning and leave the cats of Key Largo alone.

The early signs on comments made by Trump on his agenda which could change tomorrow who knows.
But Trump was never for the poor or middle Class and his voters ignore what he is about to do. He already said he is going to cut taxes for the rich while raising taxes on everybody else. He going to take away healthcare and dismantel SS and Medicare. All this to make America great Again.
He is telling you the economy is bad that he will bring jobs back but Obama created an addition 175,000 jobs last month to drop unemployment to 4.6% deficit spending has continued to decrease now for the last 12 months, middle class wages are increasing.

Policies Republicans are proposing are wrong they will trigger a Trump recession. The republicans and Trump are about to pull a George Bush and then they can blame the Democrsts again.
But Trump is whining and complaining how he is taking over a terrible economy only to be able in the future to blame the democrats.

Alec Baldwin has Trump by the short and curlies and Trump is totally helpless to do anything about it. What kind of president do we have when he is so easily manipulated by the action of others--an actor the like of Alec Baldwin? Just remember that you voted for him Conservatives--Trump is where he is because of you!!! Remember that every time he is re-tweeting some 16 year old idiot at 3:00 in the morning....

http://www.ifyouonlynews.com/humor/trump-threw-a-tantrum-during-snls-savage-mockery-so-alec-baldwin-finally-made-him-an-offer-video/

Hours after a Green Party-backed campaign dropped its case in state courts they announce a change to their strategy to force a statewide recount of Pennsylvania's Nov. 8 presidential election, won by Republican Donald Trump, and said late Saturday night that it will seek help in the federal courts, rather than the state courts. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/12/04/green-party-switches-strategy-in-pennsylvania-recount.html

The recount in the battleground state could potentially cost taxpayers upwards of $12 million, according to Michigan Republican Party leaders. http://insider.foxnews.com/2016/11/30/jill-stein-michigan-election-recount-could-cost-taxpayers-12-million

Curious you mention him. This point has bothered me and perhaps you can help. Entrenched and unassailable views are not taking usually on any possible merit but rather scorned for their adamancy. "Here is the extreme preposterous outlook and let's get real and look for something reasonable." But maybe it isn't. Not a lot of luck by Congress looking to compromise, but the whole idea of compromise may be flawed. There may be no middle or approximate middle. The extreme may not be the extreme but simply what is right. Looking for the middle undermines that choice, defeats real change.

I am 44 and have loved being in my Forties almost from Day One. Something seemed inexplicably different when I awoke on 3/23/2012. Still can't put my finger on it. Very strange. Yet being in my Forties has been truly wonderful. Somehow my whole perspective on life shifted on its own. Always a little up tight with people, finding people "a problem" I had to figure out and quickly, I was suddenly at total ease with myself and others. Wonderful and unnerving at the same time. How did this happen?

After a few weeks of introspection and no results, I had to ask myself why question. Grace, age, a stroke: who cared? I was free from the small, safe world I had confined myself to. My heart had grown. I was big with everyone I met. Not boisterous or rowdy but just big, really out there in generosity and friendliness. My defenses had drastically shrunk. Mistakes were okay. I could just live without the fear and constant vigilance. No way, again, to account for this radical change. I had done nothing to "work on myself." No gurus, self-help groups, or therapy. Went to bed the wallflower and woke up the room. Perhaps this change had been steadily and subconsciously working on me for a while, sick of being so out of sync and sad and scared most of my life I burst. Ended up a few months in therapy not to change but to find out...hmmm, to find out if this was real. Could my therapist account for such a radical transition? She told me that I had had a fear of success that was overcome by a realization I was more than competent at my job and life. Funny. I found scant evidence of that. My only guess was the shock I was Forty. Life was passing--too quickly.

Four years into this life-changing experience and a fourth in this bizarre election cycle, I found a voice for politics. My parents were blue-color and always voted Democrat, in effect for unions. My dad was a high-rise steel worker. The sides were simple. Go Union...or lose. With Trump and Hillary and all that has gone on with president Obama, the complexity and nuances have grown exponentially. I do not see any clear Left or Right path. Trump is not really Conservative and too Conservative. The middle ground only seems like chaos. A Centrist betrays everybody in this atmosphere. I definitely need to learn more. Thought to be independent, yet in this climate today I am a worm to be tread upon. A voice scoffed at and dismissed. "Pick a side or shut up!" appears the message from both parties. I will read more on here and see.