In her New York Times op-ed, Michelle Obama attacks the GOP-led Congress for what she sees as attempts “to undo so much of what we’ve accomplished on behalf of our children,” citing proposed tweaks to the Women, Infants and Children program, known as WIC.

She accuses the GOP-led House of wanting to “override science” by mandating that white potatoes be included in a list of foods women can purchase under WIC if they choose.

(by YTZ4Mee…) “Potato Council Debunks First Lady’s “Science” Claims….

“…updated government data show women and children aren’t consuming nearly enough potatoes…”

How dare the extremist republicans allow women to choose their own nutrition !

The United States GDP shrank at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the first quarter of 2014, according to the second estimate released by the Commerce Department.

(Via WSJ) The U.S. economy contracted in the first quarter of 2014, the latest stumble for a recovery that has struggled to find its footing since the recession ended almost five years ago.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, contracted at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.0% in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Thursday. It was the first time economic output contracted since the first quarter of 2011, when it declined at a 1.3% pace.

Government economists had previously estimated GDP slowed to a 0.1% growth rate in the first quarter as harsh winter weather disrupted work sites, curtailed foot traffic at retail stores and snarled transportation networks across much of the U.S. The newly revised estimate incorporates additional economic data released in recent weeks. (more…)

(Via WFB)  CNN’s international correspondent Jim Clancy called the West Point response to President Obama’s meandering foreign policy address “pretty icy” Wednesday.

Clancy said it was “not really a great speech to give at the U.S. Military Academy,” and the address has drawn bipartisan criticism.

“It was a philosophical speech,” he said. “It was not a Commander-in-Chief speaking to his troops. And you heard the reception. I mean, it was pretty icy.” (link)

(more…)

Sometimes you only need to read one paragraph to know how quickly the blood pressure cuff will explode off your arm if you continue:

“The bottom line is that 10,000 troops is not enough to deny al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan,” one U.S. intelligence officer told The Daily Beast. “As a result, they will come back. We have decided as a political leadership that we can live with this.”  

You can continue reading HERE.

I cannot.

HatTip WeaselZippers – (Via The Hill) Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), a former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has been placed on the ballot for re-election by a federal district judge in spite of universal agreement that he didn’t meet the plain-language election filing requirements.

Judge Matthew Leitman ordered that Conyers be put back on the August ballot last week after the Michigan secretary of state had denied the congressman’s appeal earlier in the day.

The dispute stems from the failure of Conyers — who has been in Congress for almost 50 years — to submit enough petition signatures to qualify for the ballot under Michigan law. No one disputes that Conyers did not meet the legal requirements to be on the ballot, but Leitman ruled that “There is evidence that their failure to comply with the Registration Statute was the result of good faith mistakes and that they believed they were in compliance with the statute.” (more…)

WASHINGTON – The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

The disclosure marked a rare instance in which a CIA officer working overseas had his cover — the secrecy meant to protect his actual identity — pierced by his own government. The only other recent case came under significantly different circumstances, when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was exposed as officials of the George W. Bush administration sought to discredit her husband, a former ambassador and fierce critic of the decision to invade Iraq. (more…)

USA TODAY – It also follows intense criticism over the treatment of veterans at VA hospitals, including reports that officials are trying to cover up evidence of long wait times and that some veterans have died while awaiting treatment.

In his weekend radio address, Obama said the nation must work harder to ensure that military veterans get the benefits they’ve earned.

“They’ve done their duty,” Obama said, “and they ask nothing more than that this country does ours.”

The president is not scheduled to meet with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, with whom the president has had a difficult relationship.

Air Force One landed at Bagram Air Field on Sunday night, local time, after a secret overnight trip that began Saturday night in Washington, D.C. (more…)

For those of you following along, this is yet again MORE CONFIRMATION of Denis “The Fixer” McDonough being the origin of the construct. 

•  7:28pm Denis McDonough is in oval office updating POTUS and VPOTUS on Benghazi attack (Mindset: it’s a State Dept / CIA issue – their operation)
•  9:11pm White House Emails Google about UTube Video. (CC: State Dept mail list – Author Unknown ? [Ben Rhodes Communications Director])
•  10:30pm Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Talk
•  10:35pm State Dept gives public statement blaming Benghazi Attack on video.

(Via ABC)  A still-classified State Department e-mail says that one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the “ramifications” of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The memo suggests that even as the attack was still underway — and before the CIA began the process of compiling talking points on its analysis of what happened — the White House believed it was in retaliation for a controversial video.

The subject line of the e-mail, which was sent at 9:11 p.m. Eastern Time on the night of the attack, is “Update on Response to actions – Libya.” The e-mail was written hours before the attack was over.

[scribd id=225718331 key=key-arGsec43DfkuSSDcSI7J mode=scroll]

Issa has asked the White House to declassify and release the document. In the meantime he has inserted a sentence from the e-mail in the Congressional Record.

[Issa’s full statement HERE]

“White House is reaching out to U-Tube [sic] to advice ramification of the posting of the Pastor Jon video,” the e-mail reads, according to Issa.   (read more)

(more…)

If Eli Lake leaves the Daily Beast you will see this level of exposition stop immediately.  Despite his leftist leanings on the subject of Libya and Islamic extremism Mr. Lake is perhaps the most accurate of all reporters on the specifics.  We  give him props for swimming against the tide of his colleges and outlining the falsehoods present in the Obama ‘head-in-the-sand’ hypocrisy around Islam.  -SD

(Via Eli Lake – Daily Beast) In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run.

But some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought hard against that assessment, which amounted to an official pronouncement of the American intelligence community’s collected wisdom. Flynn and his faction won a partial victory, striking the judgment that the terrorist group no longer posed a threat to the homeland. “Flynn and others at the time made it clear they would not go along with that kind of assessment,” one U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the al Qaeda file told The Daily Beast. “It was basically: ‘Over my dead body.’” (more…)

As you read this, and absorb the implications, ask yourself: “what do you think the White House is doing with the communication flow of the GOP, Congress, and Congressional opposition”? The IRS and DOJ James Rosen scandal alone provide all the substance needed to let you know the White House is gaining all of the communications from any party or entity they want. So what do you think the administration is doing with that information ?

(Via Ladar Levison) My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company’s network.

My company, Lavabit, provided email services to 410,000 people – including Edward Snowden, according to news reports – and thrived by offering features specifically designed to protect the privacy and security of its customers.

I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the US government access to all of the messages – to and from all of my customers – as they travelled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet.

But that wasn’t enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company’s private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords – which were sent securely – so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company’s encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my “noncompliance”.) (more…)