(Cross-posted at Ecoble.com)

You may well be wondering - why the heck is Nancy Pelosi pushing through a bill that allows for offshore drilling? Isn't that against everything we're supposed to stand for? Is this another example of business-as-usual betraying core Democratic principles?

Alas, sometimes green areas fall in grey areas. Here's the scoop:

Where's the fire? Why rush it through now?

The offshore drilling ban, in place now for decades, has a "sunset provision". It has to be renewed every few years.

Unless a bill is passed, the ban expires on September 30. At which point... Bush could immediately hand out leases anywhere he wants to.

So, we need a bill, and a bill that can pass, by September 30....

There's more...

I was watching Edwards on CSPAN last night, delivering a speech in Ames, Iowa.  At first I was pretty impressed.  He was strong, forceful, his rhetoric sharper and more pointed than I've seen before, and although there he was a man worth 54 million dressed like a Union member it all was working.  Then he got to health care,  and tried to put down the idea of negotiating with the drug companies, suggesting you can't negotiate with them, that you need to fight them, and then said something like, "when I was a lawyer if I came up to the big corporations and said I want to negotiate with you they would laugh in my face.  You got to fight them, and that's what I've done..."

There's more...

My fellow Americans, I am writing to inform you that Barack Obama is running for President (of Illinois). I was truly enthralled by his latest ad airing in Iowa about his pragmatic history doing good for the country.

There's more...

David Broder is a champion of the so-called middle way, this imagined bi-partisan nirvana where everyone just gets along and the people's will is done. To Broder, of all the potential presidential candidates, Michael Bloomberg represents the best promise for the fulfillment of this governing philosophy.

As Broder said on Sunday's Meet The Press:

There is such a distaste out there among the people for both these parties, and what the Democratic Congress is doing to destroy the reputation of any Democrat who comes out of Congress, as all of the major candidates do, and what George Bush has done to destroy the credibility of any Republican running as his successor leaves it wide open, if not for Bloomberg, then for somebody else to come down the middle.

Yep, that's right, the Democrats in Congress have done just as much to increase political incivility in 6 months as Bush and his Republican congress did in 6 years. It's a good thing Bloomberg is here, he has just the solution. As he said as he announced his departure from the GOP last week:

We do not have to accept the tired debate between the left and the right, between Democrats and Republicans, between Congress and the White House.

Nope, sure don't, who are these Democrats and Republicans anyway? Broder expands on this theme in his WaPo column:

...there is a palpable hunger among the public for someone who will attack the problems facing the country -- the war in Iraq, immigration, energy, health care -- and not worry about the politics.

Wow, it's become all so clear to me now. "Not worry about the politics," just like Bloomberg when he switched to the GOP just to run for mayor and Schwarzenegger when he tacked left to survive his re-election last year! Nope, no politics there.

To be fair, I can see why Broder would like Bloomberg and Schwarzenegger. Their popularity has come about by actually representing the voters who elected them (i.e. Schwarzenegger's advocacy for stem cell research and capping carbon emissions and Bloomberg's support of gun control and his plan to transition all taxis to a hybrid fleet by 2012) and yes this was achieved, technically, through bi-partisan consensus. But one glance at the issues that Broder correctly identifies as most important to voters -- Iraq, immigration, energy, health care -- and it's clear that only one party is addressing them in any meaningful way. Not only that, it is the Democratic Party that increasingly represents the majority opinion, whether it be withdrawal from Iraq, a path to citizenship, a reduction in our dependence on foreign oil and and increase in investment in renewable energies or expanding affordability and access to healthcare. Yet Broder refuses to acknowledge this. Nope, the Democrats are the problem. Again from Meet The Press:

The Democrats have taken the position that they now will do the nation's business and if they're not doing that business, and clearly the immigration issue is very much on people's minds, I think they will suffer the same consequences that the Republicans suffered a year ago. People are fed up with seeing Washington bickering, fighting, in-fighting and never dealing with the issue.

Worse yet, the Democrats seem to believe it.

There's more...

Note: This is a notification -- not a full diary entry -- published as a service to the MyDD community.

Good news...

A new political strategy has been published on Our Karl Rove.

-----------------

Democrats,

Despite your newly regained power in congress, there continues to be a serious problem: the Iraq debacle.  While you have come out strongly against the administration's "surge" strategy, there are two major problems with your approach that need to be addressed now.

Please visit Our Karl Rove now to learn more.

-----------------

There's more...