Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) put on the spot...by a teenager

Doing the job "professional" journalists can't / don't / won't do...

Susan Rice: NSA Officials Didn’t Lie...

...they “Inadvertently Made False Representations.”



“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” 
― George Orwell, 1984

What the president didn't know...

...and when he didn't know it.

It's kind of shocking, especially since he's been regularly touted by media boosters as "the smartest occupant of the Oval Office -- ever."

The following is a "fun" little list of things President Obama "wasn't aware of happening" -- until long after the fact:

"Obama 'Unaware on Investments"--headline, Albany (Ga.) Herald, March 8, 2007

"Obama 'Unaware of Illegal Aunt' "--headline, BBC website, Nov. 1, 2008

"Obama Unaware of Tea Party Protests"--headline, Examiner.com, April 15, 2009

"Obama Unaware of Backroom Deal, White House Says"--headline, Dallas Morning Newswebsite, June 4, 2010

"Blago Judge: Obama Unaware of Seat Exchange Bid"--headline, Associated Press, May 16, 2011

"Sebelius: Obama Unaware of ACA Website Glitches Before Launch"--headline,CaliforniaHealthline.org, Oct. 23, 2013

"Obama Reportedly Unaware NSA Spied on 35 World Leaders"--headline, ABCNews.com, Oct. 28

And that's just the short list!

(h/t: James Taranto/WSJ's "Best of the Web Today")

What does the president know...

...and when does he know it?



P.S. This may be one of the worst non-answers by a presidential press secretary...ever.

Do Obama and Biden disagree over government surveillance?

It would appear so...

Yeah, about those claims...

News item: "The head of the National Security Agency said U.S. surveillance programs had helped disrupt more than 50 possible attacks since September 11, 2001, as sympathetic members of Congress also defended the use of the top-secret spying operations."

"You can't win 'em all"...right?

Approved reading materials...

If you're wondering which books your little ones need to read this summer, stop your worrying.

Here at The Bliss Index, we've got you covered.

Without further ado, here is our suggested (NSA approved!) reading list.

Enjoy!

(Sources: multiple)

"We can absorb a terrorist attack"

Veteran journo Bob Woodward's latest book, "Obama's Wars," won't be released until Monday, but it's already raising eyebrows.

Among the revelations in the book (according to the Washington Post):

-- [President Barack] Obama told Woodward in the July interview that he didn't think about the Afghan war in the "classic" terms of the United States winning or losing. "I think about it more in terms of: Do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?" he said.

-- The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.

-- Obama has kept in place or expanded 14 intelligence orders, known as findings, issued by his predecessor, George W. Bush. The orders provide the legal basis for the CIA's worldwide covert operations.

-- A new capability developed by the National Security Agency has dramatically increased the speed at which intercepted communications can be turned around into useful information for intelligence analysts and covert operators. "They talk, we listen. They move, we observe. Given the opportunity, we react operationally," then-Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell explained to Obama at a briefing two days after he was elected president.

-- A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here "a potential game changer." He said: "When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that's one where you can't afford any mistakes."

-- Afghan President Hamid Karzai was diagnosed as manic depressive, according to U.S. intelligence reports. "He's on his meds, he's off his meds," Woodward quotes U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry as saying.

--By the end of the 2009 strategy review, Woodward reports, Obama concluded that no mission in Afghanistan could be successful without attacking the al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens operating with impunity in Pakistan's remote tribal regions. "We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," Obama is quoted as saying at an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009. Creating a more secure Afghanistan is imperative, the president said, "so the cancer doesn't spread" there.

Bob Woodward...

The part that bringing the most attention/criticism has been this: "Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, 'We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger.'"

So, is this about "acceptable losses" or is it justifiable pride in the nation's strength and resiliency? The biggest criticism against this line of thinking is that "the best defense is a good offense." Chiefly, there are those at the Pentagon, Langley, Foggy Bottom - heck, even in the administration - who think there is no such thing as "acceptable losses."

The quote does ring a familiar bell...

General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
President Merkin Muffley: You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!
General "Buck" Turgidson: Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

(via IMDB)