Palomino Bites Man

I know this will come as a shock to many readers, but Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has been caught lying. About Obama and Israel, to narrow things down. At the Weekly Standard, William Kristol writes:

Daniel Halper has called attention to Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable interview with Al Hunt on the topic of Barack Obama and Israel. I’d note one comment in particular: Pelosi’s claim that President Obama “has been there [Israel] over and over again.”

Wow. I’m involved with the Emergency Committee for Israel. We have an ad up in several states calling attention to the fact that President Obama, who’s been quite the world traveler, has never visited Israel as president. Did we make a terrible mistake? Were we unjust to President Obama? Do we have to pull down the ad?

No, no, and no. Contrary to Pelosi’s apparent claim, President Obama hasn’t been to Israel over and over again. He’s never been as president, which is certainly what Pelosi implied. Well, maybe he visited Israel “over and over” before becoming president, and that’s what Pelosi meant to say? No. When he was senator, Obama went on two trips to Israel, once with several other freshmen members of Congress, and then as a presidential candidate. And he’d never been interested enough in Israel to visit as a private citizen. So much for the notion that Obama’s been “over and over again.”

Shades of the Obama-boosters at Newsweek in the fall 2009 trying to claim that Obama had already been to the Berlin Wall as president.

While Pelosi’s interview with Hunt is the gift that keeps on giving, think of the tax consequences of that gift, Jennifer Rubin writes at the Washington Post:

In a pot-stirring interview with Al Hunt, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that Jews who oppose President Obama’s treatment of Israel are faking concern over the Jewish state. The comments are bound to stir anger among pro-Israel advocates. Pelosi argued that “many of the Republicans are using Israel as an excuse, what they really want are tax cuts for the wealthy.”

Click over for the quotes from Pelosi’s interview, to which Jennifer responds:

On Saturday a Pelosi spokesman tried to walk the statement back, saying, “She’s not saying that members of Congress don’t care about Israel. What she was clearly saying here is that if you as a Republican are going to attack the president’s record while refusing to look at the facts, they’re ignoring what the president has done even in a bipartisan way on this issue.” No apology was offered for saying it was a ruse to keep Bush-era tax breaks.

Th Romney camp refused to comment on the remarks while Mitt Romney is traveling abroad. But once Romney returns to American “soil,” don’t be surprised if this becomes a contretemps. Whatever disagreements exist over Obama’s Israel policies, this is the first time such a prominent Obama surrogate has accused pro-Israel critics of the president of being in it for the money.

Elsewhere at the Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper spots James Carville no longer spouting 2009-era platitudes of 40 years of uncontested Democratic rule in Washington:

In a fundraising email sent out by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Democratic strategist James Carville has a serious warning: “We’re gonna have to go through hell and high-water to win this damn thing.” The remedy, according to Carville, is to donate more money to the Democratic group.

Maybe another is to minimize the cringe-inducing quotes from Obama and his surrogates, which can’t be inspiring confidence in Obama’s base. Speaking of which, after firing all of his bullets in the preseason, as Moe Lane writes, “What the heck is Obama going to run on after Labor Day?”