Matt Yglesias points to Tim Fernholz on CEA Chair Christina Romer's speech (PDF) regarding the stimulus bill. This part of Romer's speech, excerpted by Yglesias, appears to raise as many questions as it answers:

The role of the Recovery Act is clearest in state and local spending. Sharp falls in revenues and balanced budget requirements have been forcing state and local governments to tighten their belts significantly. But, state and local government spending actually rose at a healthy 2.4% annual rate in the second quarter of 2009. This followed two consecutive quarters of decline, and was the highest growth rate in two years. No one can doubt that the $33 billion of state fiscal relief that has already gone out thanks to the Recovery Act is a key source of this increase.

(Emphasis supplied.) There is a certain DUH quality to this passage. It raises these questions - (1) why didn't the Obama Administration put in more state and local aid in the stimulus bill? (2) Why did they allow Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter and Susan Collins to cut out state and local aid from the stimulus bill? (3) Why did they allow them to include the non-stimulative AMT fix? (4) Why, in short, did the Obama team mishandle the stimulus bill?

Speaking for me only

Happy Birthday to President Barack Obama, who turned 48 years young today.

The LeRoy Neiman painting of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to President Kennedy is one I had over my fireplace for years. I loved picking out all the politicians in it, from Bobby Kennedy and Ted Kennedy (and Ethel) to Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird and Mayor Robert Wagner. Check it out below:

Steve Clemons seems to think so:

Bill Clinton has now secured pardons from Kim Jong Il for the two journalists who he has now met with -- but more importantly, Clinton has engaged directly with North Korea President Kim Jong Il and this may steady things in Northeast Asia for a bit. As one observer told me today, engaging Kim directly matters and prevents the complex filters around him from distorting and derailing earnest efforts to get the relationship pointed in a more constructive direction. Former Japan Prime Minister Koizumi learned this through two direct meetings with Kim, and the Chinese and South Koreans also have learned that direct engagement with the North Korean leader produces radically different results than dealing with the bureaucratic minions around him.

Clinton may have just given North Korea a "face-saving way" back to negotiations in the Six Party Talks -- and North Korea may have found a valuable informal back channel to both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton to partially sate its own yearning for direct bilateral talks with the United States that America can't endorse given other stakeholders in Northeast Asia committed to a six party process.

Interesting take. Not sure I buy it, but here's hoping.

Sam Stein writes:

The White House and allied Democrats are ramping up efforts to make belligerent anti-Obama town hall crowds -- and the media outlets that feed their resentment -- the face of opposition to the president's health care agenda, aides tell the Huffington Post.

Not a bad idea. It is the White House that can do this too. Hell, link them to the birthers. Here is the real question though - how do you treat the Media on this one? I have always been one who thinks that mau-mau-ing them always works.

Update - Here is Gibbs executing the strategy.

Speaking for me only

I'm not sure why CBS put this up since there is no sound (except for Joe Biden's laugh) but you can tell only Biden and Obama were enjoying themselves at today's Happy Hour on the White House lawn.

Apparently, there was no kiss and makeup between Crowley and Gates, as Crowley said afterwards, "he and Gates had a "cordial and productive discussion" in which they "agreed to disagree.."

I have never proclaimed to know much about health care and I think I have backed up that position by not writing much about it. That said, I have come to see the public option/individual mandates/taxing the wealthy to pay for it ideas as not a bad start to build on. But all of this seems in jeopardy now and there is a growing debate as to whether what is on the table now is actually counterproductive to achieving lasting and meaningful health care reform. Kevin Drum writes:

Scott Lemieux isn't happy with the compromise healthcare bill being put together in the Senate [--] "The normal justification for passing a compromise bill is that once a new system is entrenched it can be tweaked later. But I don't think it applies in this case. The public option is the core of the reform; a Blue Dog bill isn't so much half a loaf as a few meaningless crumbs. . . ."

. . . Ezra Klein disagrees [--] "What has kept health-care reform at the forefront of liberal politics for decades is moral outrage that 47 million of our friends and neighbors are uninsured. That medical costs are one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the United States. . . ."

Kevin himself stresses community rating. Lambert thinks the entire thing is a sham and that only single payer makes sense. So what do I think now? I'll tell you on the flip.

Via Sentencing Law and Policy, President Obama announced his first appointment to the U.S. Sentencing Commission....and she's a former Federal Public Defender, not former federal prosecutor. Great news and great choice.

The official press release is here.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, 38, is Of Counsel at Morrison & Foerster, LLP in Washington, D.C., where she has worked since 2007. From 2005 to 2007, she was an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the District of Columbia. From 2003 to 2005, Ms. Jackson served as Assistant Special Counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. From 1998 to 1999 and 2000 to 2003, Ms. Jackson was in private practice. Ms. Jackson served as law clerk to the Honorable Patti B. Saris (U.S. District Court of Massachusetts), the Honorable Bruce M. Selya (U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit), and the Honorable Stephen G. Breyer (U.S. Supreme Court).

President Obama will be speaking to the Nation on the issue of health care tonight at 8 pm.

Here is a thread to discuss the President's remarks and reactions to them.

Update (TL): You can watch live at CBS here. The feed is already live. (BTD) - Here are some of the prepared remarks.

(BTD) 50 minutes in - President Obama, politically speaking, has knocked it out of the park. Bully pulpit indeed. A bravura performance by a tremendous politician. For a contrary view, Kevin Drum thought Obama stank.

"Our strategy has been to allow this process to advance to the point where it made sense for the president to take the baton. Now's that time," said senior adviser David Axelrod. "I don't know whether he will Twitter or tweet. But he's going to be very, very visible." Another senior White House aide added: "It's time to raise the stakes on this."

Obama today:

A few weeks ago I stated that I believed Obama would go to the mat for health care reform. I think he is doing that.

Speaking for me only

You'll read stories like this and blog posts like this bemoaning this or that Blue Dog House rep or weak kneed Democratic Senator, but this is all beside the point.

President Barack Obama has it in his hands to say what health care reform will look like. Who are these Democrats in Congress who will stand up against him? There are not enough of them to stop the legislation he wants regarding health care reform.

It's fun to decry the irrational fetish for bipartisanszhip and to name folks Wankers of the Day, but make no mistake - health care reform is on President Obama. He gets the blame or credit.

Speakng for me only

As someone who has argued that there could be a sound, fair, constitutional and Geneva compliant preventive detention system, it seems that every day the Obama Administration takes positions that would shock even a "centrist" (snark) like me. Glenn Greenwald details the latest:

Spencer Ackerman yesterday attended a Senate hearing at which the DOD's General Counsel, Jeh Johnson, testified. As Ackerman highlighted, Johnson actually said that even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial.

Unbelievable. Now, if we are going to have preventive detention (and I have explained my view on how it could be done before), you can not place someone in preventive detention AFTER acquittal. This is just ridiculous. More . . .