It should be noted that since abdicating the position of Secretary of State, and the introduction of Clinton’s ‘fixer’, John “Skippy” Podesta, the White House -and more specifically the activity that flows from within it- is now a synergy of both President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s goals.

Yesterday some pundits and media looked strangely at the non-scheduled meeting between Obama and Clinton as if fodder for grand conspiratorial questioning.

As with most issues the answers are not as complex as they seem.

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(Via The Hill) White House press secretary Jay Carney is resigning as the White House’s principal spokesman.

President Obama announced the move in a surprise appearance during Carney’s briefing, and the same day he accepted Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation.

Carney will leave his job next month, and he’ll be replaced by his deputy, longtime Obama aide Josh Earnest. Obama hailed Carney as “one of my closest friends” and a “great press secretary”. (more…)

Then again….  The White House has odd definitions of transparency.  They’ll tell the world when they meet with the CIA Station Chief of Afghanistan but won’t mention the unscheduled meetings with Hillary.

PEOPLE's @sswestfall chats w/@HillaryClinton before her @WhiteHouse lunch. Hope she wasn't late for @barackobama! pic.twitter.com/6MAVgsXXzO

— People (@people) May 29, 2014

“The White House confirmed that Hillary Clinton had lunch with President Obama today after People magazine tweeted about the meeting – a tweet that has since been deleted.

“The President enjoyed an informal, private lunch with Secretary Clinton at the White House this afternoon,” a White House official said on background in a response to an inquiry from your pooler.  Your pooler also lodged a complaint about the lack of transparency on the meeting with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

The lunch was not on the president’s public schedule.” (link)

According to a whistle-blowing Op Ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal, doctors and residents in the VA system were prevented from providing care to patients if their actions were deemed to be “making federal workers look bad” :

…”Scott Barbour, an orthopedic surgeon and a friend, trained at the Miami VA hospital. In an attempt to get more patients onto the operating-room schedule, he enlisted fellow residents to clean the operating rooms between cases and transport patients from their rooms into the surgical suites….

Instead of offering praise for their industriousness, the Chief of Surgery reprimanded the doctors and put a stop to their actions. From his perspective, they were not solving a problem but were making federal workers look bad and creating more work for others, like nurses, who had to take care of more post-op patients.”

Imagine that!  Nurses having to take care of more post-op patients!  You’d think they were working in a hospital or something…. It’s not like they can adjust their census to account for that, or anything. /s/.  But, wait, there’s more ……

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There is a profound Irony at play. President Obama, and Hillary Clinton supported the hardline Islamist element within the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohammed Morsi who have now been dispatched in favor of a secular governance provided by El-Sisi. Meanwhile, next door in Libya, the U.S. administration and State Dept. are telling all Americans to evacuate the country as the U.S. supported government is under attack.

 CAIRO –  With nearly all ballots counted, Egypt’s former military chief has won a crushing victory over his sole opponent in the country’s presidential election, his campaign said Thursday. But the results were stained by questions about turnout despite a robust government effort to get out the vote.

Retired field marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi won more than 92 percent of the votes, compared with 2.9 percent percent for his sole opponent and 4 percent of invalid votes, according to a tally released by his campaign.

His victory was never in doubt, but the career infantry officer had pushed for an overwhelming turnout as well to bestow legitimacy on his ouster last July of Egypt’s first freely elected president, the Islamist Mohammed Morsi. (more…)

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…)

The House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing last night began at 7:30pm and ended around 11:30pm.   The hearing was held to cover the information contained within the Interim Office of Inspector General’s Report.

Here’s a sense of how it started:

Having watched the entire hearing personally, and listened to the insufferable responses from: Dr. Thomas Lynch, M.D., Assistant Deputy Under Secretary for Health for Clinical Operations, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Ms. Joan Mooney, Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Legislative Affairs, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Mr. Michael Huff, Congressional Relations Officer, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, I can tell you the committee has every reasonable right to express frustration. (more…)

OIG Interim Report: Review of VHA’s Patient Wait Times, Scheduling Practices, and Alleged Patient Deaths at the Phoenix Health Care System  (read summary)

[scribd id=226901940 key=key-tT3Iuv8nA0DRskm2lV4v mode=scroll]

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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…)