The new plan now grants one of the biggest items on the oil industry's wish list -- access to vast areas of the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling.

Obama is process-over-policy; with Clinton, it seems the policy was driving the process.

This is not a distinction without a difference, in my opinion; it's the reason why Obama is much more likely to fail on policy - to our detriment - and succeed on process - to his benefit - well, at least as long as "progressives" persist in believing that policy and process are interchangeable and mistake victories of process for victories of policy.

fight the same old battles over and over again.

What a disaster this is. I grew up in California during the years when Democrats were fighting to save our coastlines, not destroy them.

Lock-step Republicans have taken leave of their senses and abandoned themselves entirely to Bedlam-style meltdown. It discredits Obama to lay this country's ethos and function at their feet, attempting to please them.

And I'm beginning to have grave doubts about his much vaunted intelligence too, if he honestly judges the demands placed on this polity by the contemporary political left and right as being similarly inappropriate for this country's welfare.

I think it's pretty clear that the calculation has been made that the polity's fear will continue to drive majority support for Democrats while they rake in corporate cash rather than attempt to set the country on a wiser path. It may prove true. But the resentments will continue to grow and the pernicious effects of a jaded, over-strained public will continue to get more dangerous to the long-term health of this country.

1.  Iraq - maintain the Bush policy: timetables, strategy, headcount, etc.

2.  Afghanistan - triple the troop count and escalate the war in the name of domestic security.

3.  National security - ensure a near seamless continuity between the Bush policy over the last 4-5 year of his Presidency regarding preventive detention, surveillance, etc.

4.  Nationalize Romneycare only adding restrictive abortion language handing the pro-choice movement it biggest defeat in 35 years.

5.  Open up 50% of America's shoreline to offshore drilling.

6.  Bail out banks without a nationalized recap as Krugman suggested.  And please...DO NOT under any circumstances interfere with their bonuses.

7.  Stimulus plan that was too small (incremental) with 40% if it being tax cuts.

And I am serious.  Unless Obama faces a primary challenger (which will not happen), the Republican party is going to find it difficult to draw contrast between them and Obama.  The student loan reforms in the recon package are the only liberal policies he pushed for (Regan was more liberal than that).  Sotomoyer??? Perhaps Republicans can run against her (but even she was originally nominated to the court by republicans).

I guess my question for Booman, and the one I always have for Obama, is: if you believe in something, why are you willing to give pieces of it away knowing - knowing - that you are going to get nothing in return?

The answer is getting clearer for me.

First, I don't think there is anything Obama really believes in; have we seen any indication of anything he has refused to budge on?  

Second, the triangulation is not about getting the policy he wants, it's about getting the win he wants.

Third, he's going for legacy again - he wants to lay claim to being the first - and probably, last - president to pass "comprehensive" climate change legislation, even if it is neither comprehensive nor likely to positively affect climate change: the policy is not the important part.

Now, Booman is hopeless, but I suppose he is as good a barometer of where the so-called progressives are as anyone other than Chris Bowers.

Obama will not issue an executive order banning drilling off the West Coast or in U.S. Northeast waters, but those areas won't be considered in the next five-year drilling plan, the official said.

That will still allow future presidents, if they chose, to develop energy resources in those offshore areas, the official said.

The rhetoric is consistent with the actions.

Seems to me Obama is confounding the pigf&@kers. he has proposed allowing the driling, basically, in Dixie, the land of cotton, where old times are not forgotten. He says he will let them drill in front of the beaches of only the reddest of red states, which probably has your Boehners and assorted confederate pigf&@kers sh!tting themselves with rage, because they don't want oil drilling off their coasts, they want it way off in Alaska, f&@k the caribou and salmon and that sh!t.

Its kinda funny, the northern boundary that was proposed was the northern boundary of the State of Delaware, which marks a line sometimes called the Mason-Dixon line. he he he.

It seems it might be kinda reminiscent of Lincoln putting the union cemetery in General Lee's front yard?

My headline would be "Obama proposes allowing pigf&@kers to pollute their own beaches." You wanna drill, OK, f&@ker, I'll let you drill, in Myrtle Beach, and Savannah, and Ocracoke, and Hatteras, and Cape Fear, and Hilton Head, go ahead, you wanna drill so bad, go for it, tough guy."

for now,

Iraq, Afghanistan, detention, mandate on and on and on the campaign Obama who was pure progressive is faced with reality and is changing his tune.

One coudl also argue he's a sell out.  

I do know that this is yet another issue that Obama has changed radically on....

.

..when I'm president, I intend to keep in place the moratorium here in Florida and around the country that prevents oil companies from drilling off Florida's coasts.

The parrallels between Bush and Obama are becoming almost impossible to ignore.    Bush said he wasn't interested in nation building, was going to be post partisan blah, blah, blah.   Then he betrayed his conservative base by passing No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drugs and got us hopelessly involved in Iraq.

Health Care will be Obama's iraq.  He had good intentions but executed it poorley and no one really likes it.  Sure some of his base (like republicans with Iraq) pretend they believe in it but strip away the pure partisan support and you're left with a terrible policy that will become more unpopular as time drags on.   HC could ruin his presidency and he won the political battle just like Bush did getting his invasion.

We'll see.

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/the-quiet-revolution