One of the few moments in the debate between Republican Joe Biden and Democrat Sarah Palin (follow the link) when I raised my eyebrow and said, “That sounds off” from either side - on the whole, there were only a few exaggerations during the evening - came when Joe Biden mentioned the the idea that both he and Obama had warned against the Bush administration’s support for an election in Israel. I assume that he is referring to the municipal elections in 2005, the first elections held in Palestinian territories in 30+ years: details here.

As far as I can find with initial searching (I asked a friend to plug it in to Nexis), I don’t see anything from Obama on this subject. But the reason it seems off to me is that the timing’s all wrong: the election Biden is talking about happened in 2005, right after Obama was elected to the Senate. He had to have been in office for mere days when it took place (correction: during the first round, he hadn’t even been sworn in yet), and it’s doubtful he made any statement on it. If he did, it is not on his own site, nor is it available on the normal search methods, nor is it in the Congressional Record as far as I can see.

Can the campaign produce any evidence that Barack Obama took this prescient opinion on the elections in Israel? If not, will Joe Biden retract his claim?

Update: Glenn Kessler at the WaPo notices it as well.

One of the few moments in the debate between Republican Joe Biden and Democrat Sarah Palin (follow the link) when I raised my eyebrow and said, “That sounds off” from either side - on the whole, there were only a few exaggerations during the evening - came when Joe Biden mentioned the the idea that both he and Obama had warned against the Bush administration’s support for an election in Israel. I assume that he is referring to the municipal elections in 2005, the first elections held in Palestinian territories in 30+ years: details here.

As far as I can find with initial searching (I asked a friend to plug it in to Nexis), I don’t see anything from Obama on this subject. But the reason it seems off to me is that the timing’s all wrong: the election Biden is talking about happened in 2005, right after Obama was elected to the Senate. He had to have been in office for mere days when it took place (correction: during the first round, he hadn’t even been sworn in yet), and it’s doubtful he made any statement on it. If he did, it is not on his own site, nor is it available on the normal search methods, nor is it in the Congressional Record as far as I can see.

Can the campaign produce any evidence that Barack Obama took this prescient opinion on the elections in Israel? If not, will Joe Biden retract his claim?

Update: Glenn Kessler at the WaPo notices it as well.

Plenty of late-breaking thoughts on the first debate around the sphere today, including my own minor submissions. But the one that’s worth your time to read is Pete Wehner’s thought process on the overall challenges the McCain campaign faces - here’s his third point, but you should read it all over at Commentary:

What helps a campaign immeasurably is when the charge it makes seems to fit the person against whom the charge is being made. So, for example, the Bush strategy in 2004 to make John Kerry appear to be a flip-flopper and haughty was aided by the fact that it played to a pre-existing (and largely accurate) view of Kerry.

The difficulty Senator Obama presents is that his demeanor and countenance seem to act as a shield against the charge that he is, in terms of his policies and political philosophy, quite liberal and on the extreme end of the political spectrum. Senator Obama’s voting record certainly shows that to be the case. But the way he carries himself — combined with his post-primary, head-snapping shifts in policy — are designed to make Obama appear as a centrist. I don’t for a moment believe he is; Obama’s political career, taken in its totality, makes him the most liberal presidential candidate since George McGovern. But Obama has shown himself to be a nimble candidate, against whom it is difficult to land clean blows.

In addition, Obama came across in the debate as mostly agreeable, repeatedly saying “I agree with John” on this or that. I think that was an effective tactic; it gave Obama the patina of being bipartisan and a man ever in search of common ground. In fact, Obama has complied, in the words of Joshua Muravchik, “one of the most partisan of all voting records.” But once again, his style and manner send a different signal.

Potentially, the most lethal political charge against Obama is that he is a deeply liberal/ideological figure who has associated with radical individuals in order to advance his political career. The question is whether Obama’s countenance and personal style make those charges seem far-fetched; or whether the McCain campaign can convince voters that Obama’s appeal is at its core fraudulent and his new-found centrism a mirage.

I have some sympathy with the task faced by Team McCain; telling a campaign what needs to be done is much easier than actually carrying it out. That’s why it would be useful for more commentators to actually have had some experience in governing and political campaigns, which tend to be more complicated and difficult than pontificating.

I’m no fan of Congressman Roy Blunt, but purposefully lying about what any Congressman says is pretty low, especially when it’s of the “let’s cut out the first four words and last eight words of this television quote to make it seem like he’s saying the opposite of what he just said” variety.

Which happens to be what the Obama campaign just did:

REP. ROY BLUNT: Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing.

“Congressman Blunt just confirmed what’s been clear since John McCain rode into Washington at the eleventh hour – Senator McCain’s political theatrics succeeded only in stopping a bipartisan deal. During the most serious economic crisis of our time, we don’t need erratic posturing, we need steady leadership to protect American taxpayers and put our economy back on track,” said Obama-Biden spokesman Bill Burton.

Here is the full quote from MSNBC:

REP. ROY BLUNT: I do think that John McCain was very helpful in what he did. I saw him this morning, we’ve been talking with his staff. Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing that no House Republican, in my view, would have been for, which means it wouldn’t have probably passed the House. Now, Democrats are in the majority. They can pass anything they want to without a singe Republican vote, but they don’t seem to be willing to do that. I’m pleased we can have negotiations now that get us back towards things that we think can protect the taxpayers better, create more options, and frankly be better understood in the country than the plan—the path we were on a couple of days ago.

Yeah, that’s kind of…you know…the opposite.

Note: Head on over to FRCAction to view streaming video of this weekend’s conference.

You want proof about how successful the Sarah Palin pick has been in coalescing and motivating the socially conservative base of the GOP? Look no further than the subdued schedule today at the FRCAction Values Voter conference in Washington, DC.

A year ago, the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit propelled Gov. Mike Huckabee to unforeseen heights among grassroots evangelicals. This year, both Barack Obama and John McCain were invited to speak - the word is that organizers expected a video from Obama, and a speech from McCain or his running mate - but neither is expected to appear now. It’s instead a schedule with the odd (Lou Dobbs), the apolitical (Joe Gibbs), the political (Michael Steele), the aging (Phyllis Schlafly - surprisingly chipper), and the hilariously ironic (Newt Gingrich - sorry, smart as he is, his presence at Value Voters events brings on laughter for me).

The funny thing about social conservative conferences is how completely unnecessary they’ve become in the post-Palin universe. These rooms are populated by the grassroots heads of a hundred different organizations whose role has been significant when the Republican Party needed to sell a lackluster ticket or a less than appealing policy to a depressed evangelical base - many of these folks had to sell Harriet Miers against people who swore they were vile tools of Satan, and Lord knows that wasn’t that fun. But that’s all unnecessary in the aftermath of the Palin choice. Her stickers and buttons are everywhere - I don’t see a McCain sign in the whole place, but everyone’s wearing “Palin Power” or “I heart Palin” buttons; young and old, they’re smiling, they’re eager, they’re exuberant.

(Gratuitous plug: I still haven’t seen any PalinFacts.com gear, but I did hear people quoting them when I was on the escalator. If you want some yourself, head over to the Little Known Sarah Palin Facts store.).

Whether McCain wins in the fall or not, these people have found their new inspiration for the next generation of political activists. Barack Obama could’ve come here himself today, with a light shining down from heaven, and he wouldn’t make a dent in this crowd.

Give these people a champion, and reap the immediate political benefit. Had McCain chosen, say, Joe Lieberman, today’s conference would’ve been a huge event - you’d have had to convince all the folks in this room to be on board with a pro-choice Democrat on the national ticket, that the possibility of an Obama presidency would be just too much for them to bear. Had Palin fallen on her face on the national stage, they might have needed it, too.

But not any more - especially not in the wake of attacks from the media horde that makes these folks circle the wagons faster than you can say Clarence Thomas. These aren’t people who need selling - they’re full bore for the woman. No wonder McCain wants to travel with her, as the hardworking Anne Kornblut reported today: he’s smart enough to realize a good thing.

Well, time to tour the place to find some fun Christian swag. The celebrities here are random and confusing, unless Robbie George counts. I’ll let Leon tell you his Stephen Baldwin story, I just can’t match it. Too bad I’m busy tomorrow - missing out on Shohreh Aghdashloo. I hear if you pronounce her name correctly, she won’t destroy your soul with one look of her cavernous eyes.

One of the most pointed accusations Sarah Palin lodged against Barack Obama was the fact that, despite not authoring a single significant piece of legislation, he’s found the time to write two memoirs.

But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state Senate.

Annenberg’s FactCheck.org, who I find to typically be quite fair in their judgment, steps in to defend Obama. On this point, they write:

Palin’s accusation that Obama hasn’t authored “a single major law or even a reform” in the U.S. Senate or the Illinois Senate is simply not a fair assessment. Obama has helped push through major ethics reforms in both bodies, for example.

In advancing this argument, FactCheck.org oversteps in a significant way, and one that I believe they ought to reexamine in order to justify their argument - or failing that, to retract their point entirely.

The truth is that Sarah Palin’s statement is absolutely correct: neither Barack Obama nor the staffers in his employ (like speeches, remember, they tend to be written by others) have authored a single major law or reform.

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“My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – [my campaign has] a budget of about three times that just for the month.”

“This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word “victory” except when he’s talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the roar of the crowd fades away … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger … take more of your money … give you more orders from Washington … and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world. America needs more energy … our opponent is against producing it.”

A week ago, from far and wide, the followers came to the mountaintop to glimpse Barack Obama in his moment of glory. And the New Adonis did not disappoint.

The event was an act of soaring political grandeur, inspiring the devoted flock to call out in hallelujahs. Yet in the speech itself, try and find it you may, but there was no phrase particularly memorable, no quotable line.

Do not hold that against his speech. It is not what Obama said that mattered.

The lasting image of Obama’s speech will be the spectacle itself: a Super Bowl halftime show without a game score to go with it (unless it is New Democrats 0, Neo-Old Democrats 1). No one is prompted to such an equivalent force of emotion, the tears of joy, at the idea of President McCain. At least, no sane person. But sanity itself is an act of rebellion in a civic universe where the political pageantry surrounding a man who has accomplished such meager political crumbs and done so little in life is enough – more than enough – to carry a candidacy based on the unassailable purity and goodness and untapped power of that one man all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania.

What Sarah Palin came the Twin Cities to say tonight mattered. It mattered because it proved she was not merely chosen for her gender, for her looks, for her style, or for the historic mark she represents for the Republican Party. She was chosen because of her beliefs - because she’s taken on the hordes of corrupt bureaucrats and pork swilling politicians, even those in her own party, to achieve what she believes is right. It’s because on the most crucial test for any politician - will you stand up, despite all the forces arrayed against you, for what you believe to be right? - Sarah Palin passed, and Barack Obama has that nagging Incomplete.

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Jake Tapper, hardest working man in the 08 cycle, continues his coverage of the ever declining mental faculties of Joe Biden, Senator. For all the coverage given the family affairs of Governor Sarah Palin, precious little has been given to the rambling, bizarre statements of Smilin’ Joe Biden since his convention speech. And there’s so much good stuff here, too! Just the other day in Florida, for example, where he went on a 75 minute riff:

The evening was full of Biden-isms, including the inevitable Obama/Osama slip, made when Biden was discussing the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border “where Obama, Osama Bin Laden lives, and Obama wants to go to get him.”

Look, we know you want to keep pretending Biden is going to stop flubbing this, but he’s not. He may keep doing it all the way into the second year of an Obama term. And a lot more, too:

At another moment, he said, “when I hear people say, ‘Hey Joe, geez, I understand your values. I connect with you. But I don’t know about that other guy.’ Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. If Barack Obama grew up in my neighborhood in Scranton or Claymont or Wilmington, Delaware, he would have been the guy who had my back. If Barack Obama had grown up in my neighborhood, he would have been the same guy he is now.

“I’ve got to tell you, I’m tired,” Biden continued. “Let me tell you. If you’re looking for a very sophisticated, Harvard graduate who went to Columbia undergrad and was president of the Law Review, he’s totally intellectual. Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This guy is steel. This guy is steel, and I assure you that.”

Tapper makes the obvious point that Obama-Biden isn’t exactly in need of solidification of the people who want a sophisticated Law Review Harvard-Columbia intellectual in the office. That already exists. You might have heard of their party.

At another point, Biden riffed on being the older presence on the ticket, saying, “my role in this campaign is I’m the old man. I really thought I was still in pretty good shape. But I watched when they, when Barack, as they say, ‘rolled out,’ his, his, Vice President nominee. Half of the people in America thought I was going to get ‘rolled out.’ I don’t know. And I was listening to one of the news broadcasts after we had that great event in Springfield, Illinois, and there…was a runway to get up to the, to get up to the microphone from the door we came out. And I came out, and it was a long way away, I didn’t want to hold people up, so I started jogging. Next morning, I listen, I think it was Gwen Ifill, who I love, Gwen Ifill said, you know, something to the effect that, ‘It was a great speech, but Biden shouldn’t run.’ I thought, What are you talking about I shouldn’t run? What do you mean I shouldn’t run? So, you know, I don’t like young guys anymore.”

I don’t have any idea what the last part means.

Well, that’s one way to rebut a rumor.

The 17-year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband, Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, the Palins said in a statement released by the campaign of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, McCain aides said.

As blackhedd posted earlier: The foul denizens of Obama’s online base, who find the very idea of Sarah Palin as a strong feminist conservative mother absurd, engaged in the worst kind of putrid mudslinging over the past few days, suggesting in no uncertain terms that her daughter was the mother of Trig Palin. Of course, those of us who laughed at the baseless suggestions of the child-hating left (she’s not fat enough! they shriek) now know that to be impossible. We also know that McCain himself knew of Bristol’s pregnancy - which had to have made this past 48 hours all the more frustrating for the campaign. For all these reasons, it’s good to have this announcement come now.

We’ll see how the media inevitably bashes this young woman for her choice in the coming days, in the wake of covering up the John Edwards love child for 2+ years, and botching the story when it came out as they bent over backwards to avoid criticism. Nah, that wasn’t bias.

But it’s fitting that in this moment, one of the toughest a young woman can face, Bristol Palin has chosen on her own to take the right path. This baby is not a “punishment,”, as Obama so famously said; it is not an object to be destroyed, as Obama argued for in the Illinois State Senate; he or she is a human life, one worthy of receiving the love of a mother and father. And we rejoice in the knowledge that a family will receive this blessing into the world.

Have no doubts about this: Bristol Palin is brave. Braver than any of the hideous bloggers, hiding in their anonymity, who throw muck at her mother and who will doubtlessly revile her decision. Braver than the foes of the right to life who would offer her a knife and a vacuum to end this minor inconvenience. Brave enough to know that it’s not enough to talk about doing the right thing - it’s doing that right thing when the moment calls for it the most.

We thank her for making this choice now - her child will thank her forever.

We send our strongest prayers and best wishes for Bristol Palin, for her future husband, for her child, and for the entire Palin clan.

[addendum by haystack] If Barack Obama had his way, the news would be about the loss of another innocent life rather than this nonsense and child-like “journalism” being spewed from the likes of the Washington Post about “shotgun weddings.”

There’s crass, and there’s class. Here’s Sarah Palin’s comments from the same WaPo article:

“We have been blessed with five wonderful children who we love with all our heart and mean everything to us,” said Sarah and Todd Palin in a statement. “Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows she has our unconditional love and support.”

Sarah Palin is class personified…and she is 1/2 the reason Obama has already lost this election.

Jeff Emanuel has a full rundown of Obama’s attempt to photoshop himself into the West Wing, and it struck me as I was reading it: I wonder if the set designer in question has ever been to the White House?

The funny thing about the cinematic depiction of the White House and the West Wing is that it’s always so grand and impressive. In reality, the White House is a rather drab place, overused and stretched to bursting by staff, with cramped hallways and faded carpet. The facade itself is quite small when viewed up close. So when Obama steps in front of this fake West Wing tonight, it will be a far more impressive picture than it would ever be to have him standing in front of the real thing.

The New York Post reports:

But the set is designed to evoke the White House and the Lincoln Memorial, not the Acropolis, said staging supervisor Bobby Allen, a Spears set vet.

“We’ve done Britney’s sets and a whole bunch of rock shows, but this was far more elaborate and complicated and we had to do it in far less time,” said Allen, of RDA Entertainment.

Of course it was. Nothing less than Britney’s best can be acceptable for the biggest celebrity on earth.

h/t Goldfarb.