Plenty of conservatives are peeking at this morning’s grim GDP numbers, as well as the downward revisions to previous years, and concluding that the stimulus clearly must have failed. “But remember,” snarks James Pethokoukis, “no matter how bad the economy is, Obama stimulus still created 3 million jobs, right?”

That’s one way to look at it. Another is to dig a little deeper into the new GDP numbers, which tell a different story. As Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi told me this morning, the revisions suggest that the recession following the financial crisis was much, much more severe than we’d thought—the economy actually shrank at a 7.8 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009, not 5.9 percent as originally believed.

Then, Congress passed the stimulus bill, the fall in growth dwindled to 0.7 percent in the second quarter, and, by the third quarter of 2009, we had 1.7 percent growth. “We went from negative to positive at precisely the time that the stimulus was providing maximum benefit in terms of tax cuts and spending increases,” Zandi says. “The numbers actually reinforce the importance of the stimulus in jump-starting a recovery.” What the stimulus didn’t do, however, was raise employment to the levels that the White House had predicted — partly because the economy was in worse shape than anyone, even the official data-crunchers, knew.

Of course, the stimulus only lasted two years, winding down in the end of 2010. And what happened then? As Dean Baker, an economist at the Center on Economic and Policy Research observes, “The downward revision to the first quarter data coupled with the revision of the fourth quarter growth to 2.3 percent from 3.1 percent, suggests that the winding down of the stimulus has seriously dampened growth.”

via What the new GDP numbers tell us about stimulus – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post.

As many noted at the time, the stimulus was too small to do the job. It was too small because Republicans insisted it be that way and weighed it down with 40% tax cuts.

I thought this might be a promising approach that lends itself to bipartisan support:

I meant to write about this the other day, but Peter Orszag’s proposal for medical-malpractice reform is pretty clever. As I read it, in fact, it’s not primarily a malpractice-reform proposal at all. It’s a proposal for spreading evidence-based medicine through a vehicle that conservatives and doctors find congenial…

… Instead of protecting doctors from lawsuits by capping damages or limiting the ability of plaintiffs to sue, you could protect them by charging the American Medical Association or the Institute of Medicine with creating standard lists of best practices and then providing immunity to doctors who can show they followed them. That’s easier said than done, but if you could manage it, it would give doctors a reason to follow the best practices and, in theory, drive down overall health-care costs. That would be much more effective than just attacking malpractice suits, which aren’t a large contributor to spending and are often quite warranted.

As Ezra mentions the GOP hated the very sound of  “evidence based medicine” during the health reform debate. I guess it smacked of too much pointy headed book learnin’ gettin’ in the way of good ol’ fashioned faith healin’. Praise Jeebus! Anyway, giving real incentives to physicians and surgeons to follow scientifically derived standards of practice, rather than the “seat of the pants” method that’s stood since Hippocrates sounds like an improvement that has the potential to improve care and lower costs.

Why does this make me sad? Because it’s hard to see the country prospering when one of its two major political parties is this economically illiterate. McConnell isn’t some backbencher. He’s Senate minority leader. And he thinks there’s “no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue.”

There’s an ontological question here about what, exactly, McConnell considers to be “evidence.” But how about the Congressional Budget Office’s estimations? “The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for almost half — 48 percent — of this $539 billion in increased costs.” How about the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Their budget calculator shows that the tax cuts will cost $3.28 trillion between 2011 and 2018. How about George W. Bush’s CEA chair, Greg Mankiw, who used the term “charlatans and cranks” for people who believed that “broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue.” He continued: “I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don’t.”

It’s like arguing with 3 year old, there just isn’t any point Ezra.

h/t to Ezra Klein who points out that no one who voted for the programs that drive the deficit (Bush Era tax cuts, Medicare Part D, two unfunded wars, financial bail out and the regulatory environment that made the former necessary) can call themselves a deficit hawk now. It’s just smoke for the marks…

The Senate is trickier. But the conference report can’t be amended. It can’t be changed, or held up in committee. It can be filibustered, and it can be voted against. Those are the options. If three Democrats opposed the legislation and wanted to kill it, they would literally have to filibuster it (this is assuming that Democrats have 60 votes, which is not certain given Kennedy’s health). That would be a very hard thing to do at that stage in the game. It would isolate the obstructionists, ensuring funded primary challenges and the enduring enmity of the Senate leadership and the White House. Kent Conrad can say that there aren’t enough votes for a public option and imply that he’s just protecting the final bill from defeat. But is he willing to be one of those “no” votes? Is he willing to filibuster? That’s a different game indeed.

The White House has worked hard to imply to its liberal supporters that they need to be patient with the disappointments of the Senate process but confident in the outcome of conference committee. On July 20, Obama spoke to a group of liberal bloggers on a conference call and articulated the strategy quite explicitly:

“Conference is where these differences will get ironed out. And that’s where my bottom lines will remain: Does this bill cover all Americans? Does it drive down costs both in the public sector and the private sector over the long term? Does it improve quality? Does it emphasize prevention and wellness? Does it have a serious package of insurance reforms so people aren’t losing health care over a preexisting condition? Does it have a serious public option in place? Those are the kind of benchmarks I’ll be using. But I’m not assuming either the House and Senate bills will match up perfectly with where I want to end up.”

This strategy, of course, relies on a lot of trust, and that’s not something the White House has these days. But that’s the administration’s argument: Phase one is not a negotiation, and you can’t demand a perfect product out of both chambers. In this period, the White House will do whatever is necessary to clear a bill out of the Senate, and if that means bargaining away the public option, so be it. Phase two is a negotiation, and you should trust the White House to produce a good piece of legislation. And phase three, well, that’s the easy part. That’s passage. Hopefully.

via Ezra Klein – When Health Care Does Become a Negotiation.

So the President to hold the course and wait for things to progress to the conference committee and trust that Sen. Reid will stack the Conference committee with liberal leaning Senators, plus the required committee chairs, to iron out the final version. Then we’ll see if the Blue Dog Democrat types in the Senate have the stones to vote against cloture on a certain Republican filibuster.

If all this parliamentary maneuvering seem unfamiliar to you, perhaps you should review some old School  House Rock:

This is an interesting debate about the relative virtues of “strong” vs “weak” public plans and the interaction with insurance exchanges. I was in grad school for an Masters in Public Health at Emory, specifically looking at the role on insurance on the delivery of health care in the US, when the Clinton health care reform crashed and burned. I was disillusioned about how special interests (with allies on the Hill) killed it.

For once I’m not with Ezra, I’m with Kuttner, single payer is the way to go. It slices away layers of administrative bullshit directed at eliminating people who might actually use health insurance, denying claims and paying profits to stockholders. It can set global payment levels and allow providers decide how to allocate funds.

Anything else continues to allow insurance company stockholders to profit from the suffering of others. We’re the only western industrial nation that’s allows this type of looting (at great cost) while getting so much less in return. It’s national tragedy, crime and a shame all rolled into one

EzraKlein -MY FAVORITE BUDGET EVER

It’s reads like what would happen if The Onion put together a budget. “Area Man Releases Proposal for 2010 Federal Spending Priorities.” (Though, to paraphrase William F. Buckley, it turns out that I’d prefer a federal budget written by an area man than the first six names on the House Republican Leadership roster.)

Bush, famously, described his first budget by saying, “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” Indeed it was, and did. This isn’t. There are no numbers. Let me repeat that: The Republican budget proposal does not say how much money they would raise, or spend. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “budget” as “an estimate of income and expenditure for a set period of time.” This is not a budget. It talks about balancing the budget but doesn’t explain how. It advocates tax cuts but doesn’t estimate their costs. It promises to cut programs but doesn’t name them. The threat going around the Capitol is that some impish Democratic chairman will ask the CBO to try and score the Republican proposal.

Ezra riffs on good ol’ Grover Norquist, heh.

Ezra defends Andrew Sullivan by way of an actual real world example of interrogation techniques that work, as opposed to the Reuel Marc Gerecht fantasy created whole cloth from episodes of 24. Important points to note:

1. Torture and abuse at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib was a prime motivating factor in recruiting terrroists.
2. American lives were lost because of the policy.
3. Torture does not work.

Any questions?

EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect
As a president, he has been monstrous, responsible for the needless deaths of, at least, tens of thousands. As one of those rare individuals who had the opportunity — indeed, the power — to do great good, he has been negligent in a fashion that’s borderline sociopathic. He left a world largely united in its contempt for America and a country largely united in its revulsion for him. History will, and should, judge him harshly.

Indeed. Remember which party thought this was all a great idea and brought you George W. Bush. Vote accordingly.

Op-Ed Columnist – The Endorsement From Hell – NYTimes.com
John McCain isn’t boasting about a new endorsement, one of the very, very few he has received from overseas. It came a few days ago:

“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.

The endorsement left the McCain campaign sputtering, and noting helplessly that Hamas appears to prefer Barack Obama. Al Qaeda’s apparent enthusiasm for Mr. McCain is manifestly not reciprocated…

…Yet the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him.“From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.

An American president who keeps troops in Iraq indefinitely, fulminates about Islamic terrorism, inclines toward military solutions and antagonizes other nations is an excellent recruiting tool. In contrast, an African-American president with a Muslim grandfather and a penchant for building bridges rather than blowing them up would give Al Qaeda recruiters fits.

(emphasis mine)

Ezra Klein thinks that it’s not receiving much press because it doesn’t neatly fit into the exisiting narrative about the candidates:

American political events are covered in a weird way where the actual “importance” of the event matters much less than its relationship to existing narratives. For instance: News that members of al Qaeda are privately discussing how best to ensure the election of one of the major candidate’s would, in theory, seem like a big deal to someone cognizant of the basic contours of recent American history. But because the terrorists were interested in electing John McCain, who is considered “tough” on terrorism and whose patriotism is beyond reproach, it’s not a big deal. If they had been talking about Barack Obama, who is considered less “tough” on terrorism and whose patriotism is considered more tenuous (the media could not explain either belief, incidentally, but both are deeply held, and important in coverage decisions), it would be a very big deal indeed. Sometimes, however, various media personages miss the weekly meeting and go off-message, as Nicholas Kristol did this weekend

Perhaps so, I’m tempted to stand outside of one of the local early voting sites with a sign reading “al Qaeda (heart) McCain Ask me why”

EzraKlein Voter Fraud Fraud | The American Prospect

CNN has been running a story about bogus voter regsitrations by ACORN today. They emphasize invalid registration forms without balance. ACORN, or any organization that assists voter registrations, must turn in every form. This includes incomplete and obviously bogus forms. ACORN separates and labels these problem forms before turning them in. Republicans then scream about bogus registration forms without noting that turning them in is required and that they were labeled. It’s an attempt to attack the legitimacy of the election and the subsequent administration that arises from nasty turn the polls are taking against the GOP. It’s part and parcel of the usual election year voter suppression tactics so beloved by Republicans. Also, note that the registrations do not constitute election fraud in the first place. An illegal vote has to be cast before election fraud can exist.  The point is to leverage these accusations into a new round of voter requirements that would disproportionately impact likely Democratic voters. Cases of actual voter fraud are very few, against tens of millions of votes cast in federal elections. The DOJ reports that only 24 cases were brought from 2002 to 2005 after they claimed that voter fraud was a high priority. There’s a better chance of being struck by lightning.

Update: Josh Marshall at TPM ties all the voter fraud nonsense to the US Attorney firing scandal. The point of the firings were to get people in place who would prosecute non-existent voter fraud claims and further GOP vote suppression efforts.

EzraKlein Archive | The American Prospect
John McCain’s contention is that Wall Street has, for years, been rotting in a toxic mixture of greed and overreach and corruption. Simultaneously, a 70-year-old regulatory structure has proven inadequate at checking the institution’s excesses. This is, in other words, a crisis composed of trends, rather than a singular, unpredictable, catastrophe.

Three years ago, John McCain signed on to George W. Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security. He surveyed Wall Street and decided that it was a stable enough institution to entrust with the nation’s pension funds. Three years ago. And this wasn’t just an attempt to cozy up to Bush: McCain was arguing for privatization in 1999. So McCain’s argument is that Wall Street is built atop an unstable regulatory foundation and is shot through with most of the seven deadly sins. That the situation has been allowed to fester so long is evidence that “people were asleep at the switch.” Even so, McCain has consistently argued that much of Social Security should be turned over to…Wall Street. Either he wanted to tank the nation’s pensions funds or he was one of the people asleep at the switch. But those are really the only two options here.

I added the emphasis. You think his seat on the Senate Commerce Committee gave him any influence over the outdated, lax regulatory environment? Maybe he was too busy inventing wi-fi and blackberry cellphones to be bothered.

Perhaps this should be viewed as a good thing for the prospects of true systemic health reform, given of course you personally don’t die of cancer or become disabled by MS because you can’t afford the drugs to treat the illness. When the middle class begins to feel the bite of this kind of profit before people policies forced upon them, perhaps they’ll be a real, broad-based coalition for reform. Insurers and drug companies may have just gotten a little too greedy and I don’t think Montel Williams’ TV commercials will save them.

Jonathan Cohn has the same idea

Ezra wonks out on tier 4 drugs

EzraKlein | The American Prospect – National Health Care Saves Money
The bottom line is that the Hacker structure covers just about everyone and saves huge amounts of money. At the start, bringing the changes to the system and the broad expansion of coverage to 46 million (or so) Americans means total federal spending increases by about $50 billion, but employer spending decreases by $10 billion, families save $22 billion, and states save about $20 billion. So it evens out.

But that’s only on day one. Then, over time, the new system does quite a bit to cut costs through “restricting provider payment increases, negotiating deeper drug discounts, and simplified administration.” The bottom line of the report is that “under these cost controls, total national health spending over the 2008 through 2017 period would be about $1.04 trillion less than under current law over that same period.” That’s $1.04 trillion in savings even with 47 million more Americans covered and far less economic insecurity for the rest of us.

Hmmm, take that with a big grain of salt. Advocates will tend to exaggerate benefits to get reform passed in Congress. Even if it cost slightly more than the current plan at first, I’m OK with that because of the benefits of extending coverage and reducing the economic loss attributable to forgoing health care.

Clinton targets pledged delegates – Roger Simon – Politico.com
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination.

This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides.

What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right?

Wrong.

Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first ballot. This has been an open secret in the party for years, but it has never really mattered because there has almost always been a clear victor by the time the convention convened.

But not this time.

UPDATE: Ezra brings it all together here

I strongly agree with Ezra’s post. Job one: Close Guantanamo. No dallying around thinking about it. Scrap the military tribunal kangaroo court. Put them in a Federal maximum security facility and start civilian trials. The issue will be that evidence gained through torture won’t be admissible, and it shouldn’t be in any country that claims to be civilized. Deport them if they can’t be tried because BushCo sanctioned the use of illegal interrogation methods methods.

When it comes to racism, I’ve been somewhat surprised to find that I was wrong. Very little of the narrative around Obama’s run has touched on race; very few of the attacks on him have been coded racism, and those that have — the occasional mention of his drug use, the links to his “madrassa” — have come off as unspeakably crude and sunk like a stone,registering only in the fever swamps. If anything, the perception of Obama as “post-racial” (yes, I know there’s no such thing) has been an asset, almost an insulator. (Expect that to change, obviously, if he makes it to the general. Jonah Goldberg’s “the coloreds will riot!” post of last week is a preview.)

On misogyny, though, I’ve been shocked in the other direction: it’s been more overt, more odious, and more unashamed that I could have predicted. The serial depictions of Clinton in the media (and yes, in blogs and op-eds both right and left) are a veritable hit parade of stereotypes about women: She’s humorless. No, she cackles. She’s a cold robot. No, she’s a hysterical crybaby. She wears ugly pant suits. No, she’s showing too much cleavage. Virgin, whore. Ballbreaker, weakling. Chris Matthews has been the standard-bearer here, but he’s just the leader of an astonishingly large chorus of crude gender resentment — a chorus that lamentably contains quite a few women.

I occasionally catch a few moment of Tweety’s inane chatter as I wait for Olbermann to start. It nearly always leads me to wonder, “why in God’s name does this twit have his own show?”

A new report from the Campaign for America’s future tabulated the number of cloture votes — essentially, votes taken to break a filibuster — in recent Congresses. The results are startling. The Republicans have broken the record only halfway through the term. They are on track to not only blow past the historical high, but actually double it

What I’d like to know is why the Democrats have failed to frame this as GOP obstructionism? Can’t they hammer home the notion that the Republicans refuse to allow yes or no votes? We don’t they start blathering about the nuclear option often discussed when Democrats were blocking the Bush agenda half as often? Come on boys and girls, grow some god damnned gonads and turn the same rhetoric back at them already! What are you waiting for? I read that Congressional approval ratings are at an ALL TIME low, you have absolutely nothing to loose at this point.

THE NEW REPUBLIC | Blogs
The conservative health care strategy works like this: endorse subsidies in theory, since it would seem unacceptably heartless to simply say that people who can’t afford medical care shouldn’t get it. Then, whenever anybody proposes a plan to actually implement subsidies, vehemently oppose it without offering any alternative plan to expand coverage. (Which is what California Republicans are doing.) In other words, let states experiment–except when they actually do.

h/t Ezra Kelin