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This morning on ABC’s “This Week,” Nancy Pelosi tried to diminish the idea of offshore drilling by stating it wouldn’t affect prices for a decade, whereas a release of some of the 700+ million barrels of oil in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve would have an impact on price within 10 days.

When it comes to the impact on pricing, she is correct (though, in my neck of the woods the price of a gallon of gas has already dropped 25-30 cents from its peak). But otherwise that idea is entirely wrong.

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Though I have to admit my current thoughts lean in the same direction, this edges into a dangerous zone:

Never will a campaign predict a landslide, but if only, say, half of the assumptions that guide Obama’s general election strategy are true, his campaign is, in essence, preparing for a landslide in the popular vote.

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I’ve stayed away from this topic as long as I can bear. Sort of like when some drunken fan runs onto the football field hoping to get on TV, the best thing you can do is put the cameras on the announcer’s booth and ignore the attempt to steal the spotlight.

But, I, and many others, see a political party being taken hostage. It bubbled up as a result of comments earlier this week:

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No matter how far we may have come as a society, there’s always a local yokel to remind people, “we’ve still got a ways to go”:

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ’08” scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

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And so we awake to another Groundhog Day. Or as I said on twitter back in March, “It’s Weasel Day: the weasel came out of his hole this morning, saw his shadow, and predicted seven more weeks of Democratic primary inanity.” The weasel now says he’s not coming out of his damn hole ever again. Like Round 15 in a Rocky movie, it would appear this could go on forever.

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Apparently, being a liberal female author and screenwriter, like Nora Ephron, gives one license to engage in what might be considered sexist racist talk about people who look different from you:

This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don’t mean people, I mean white men.

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I know you’re very busy, but I felt the need to respond since you said something about me the other day:

“My take on it is a lot of Senator Obama’s supporters want to end this race because they don’t want people to keep voting,” she told CBS affiliate KTVQ in Billings, Mont. “That’s just the opposite of what I believe. We want people to vote.”

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Though the Pew Research Center headlines the article, Fewer Voters Identify as Republicans, this said something different to me:

In 5,566 interviews with registered voters conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press during the first two months of 2008, 36% identify themselves as Democrats, and just 27% as Republicans.

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In what probably should have been a predicted development, political weblogs are mirroring the campaigns they write about and advocate. In other words, it’s ugly and divisive blue on blue action, and portends what could be coming this fall: no matter who wins, a large portion of the Democratic party may decide to take their ball, go home, and stay there:

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This feels a little like making a post to be certain that “you do know the sky is blue, don’t you?” But it has come to my attention that not everyone pays attention to the things that seem obvious to me.

For example, if you get a poorly formatted mass email sent to you and dozens of others, that claims things like “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim” ... “ALSO, keep in mind that when he was sworn into Office he DID NOT use the Holy Bible, but instead the Koran” and other seemingly scandalous claims, consider this: Hillary Clinton is seeking any half-assed angle she can scrounge to get back in the race, and if those things were true, don’t you think she’d be hammering on that daily? Yes, you know she would. The fact she isn’t ought to be one clue.

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Take a candidate who is already a Senator, whose spouse is the most popular living figure within her party, who has a team of highly experienced operatives from her husband’s campaigns and her own, then raise $175 million over the past two years, and what do you get?

Eight losses in a row in states where the Clinton campaign did not have any resources, and made no effort to change that.

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I stayed up too late last night waiting for West Coast election returns, but even today, it’s clear you could have stayed up all night and not gotten any additional real resolution. Though nearly half the country voted yesterday, the Democrats are a virtual tie, and McCain was unable to fully grab a dominating lead, though he did end up positioned a lot better than the other Republicans.

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You can wedge a day between Super Sunday and Super Tuesday, but that does not guarantee it will be anything but another Monday.

Just the same, that was quite a game last night. Especially if you skipped the first three quarters of it. In a way, it reminded me of the NBA ... there’s often no real reason to watch until the last few minutes. But I have to say, in the NFL’s “Memorable Moments,” Eli Manning’s scramble and throw followed by Tyree’s “helmet catch” for 32 yards ranks up there with Franco Harris’ Miracle Catch. One I’m glad I did not miss (YouTube Video, in case you did miss it).

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Boy Howdy, if I was a Floridian, I’d be most peeved that my vote only counted for half if I was a Republican, and hardly counted at all if I was a Democrat, given the penaties the state received from the national parties for busting line in the primary schedule.

But as it turns out, Florida is where candidates go to die. A verb, a noun, 9/11, and “the Florida firewall” strategy turned what was once Conventional Wisdom’s presumptive Republican nominee into a political joke. And Rudy’s withdrawal brings a sigh of relief from many.

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Imagine someone born in 1967. They are 40 years old today, in the middle of the demographic bell curve, about one half of the electorate younger than them, about one half older.

They have never, in their entire life, had the opportunity to vote in a Presidential election where one of the names on the ballot was not Bush or Clinton. Where the winner was not a Bush or a Clinton.

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