I usually do these "talking points" sorts of things on Friday, but I have been simply stunned this week at the way the media has been covering the passage of the 2009 omnibus budget bill, and of President Obama's signing the bill into law. If I knew nothing about the subject but what I've seen on network news shows (not even cable, mind you, just the "respected" nightly news shows), then I would believe the following about the 2009 budget: (1) most of it -- say a good 70 to 80 percent -- was earmarks, (2) those dastardly Democrats put all the earmarks in, and Republicans fought and fought for fiscal responsibility, but couldn't remove them in the end, because (3) there was no bipartisanship at all in passing this bill, (4) passing this bill in the midst of the flood of other important legislation was really no big deal, happens all the time, and (5) President Obama broke a big campaign pledge he made to veto every earmark and signed the bill anyway, thus disappointing the American public by breaking his word.

None of these things, I must point out, is even remotely true. But that's the spin that I get from Brian Williams and Katie Couric on a nightly basis. I can just imagine what the hotheads over on the cable channels are saying about it.

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Representative Bruce Braley recently announced the formation of a new congressional caucus dedicated to the economic concerns of the middle class. The Iowa Democrat (as reported in The Huffington Post) unveiled the new Populist Caucus last month, and as its chair immediately set to work addressing their concerns in the stimulus package in the House. But since the term "populism" has been used for a variety of movements throughout American history, I thought I'd ask Representative Braley himself what the caucus is all about, and what they're trying to achieve. The interview below is a transcript of our conversation.

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Kathleen Parker is not my favorite Washington Post columnist. I just wanted to say that up front, to get my own biases out in the open. But I have to give her credit, for stating some truth last Sunday on not one but two Sunday morning news shows. She said almost the same thing on both CBS' Face The Nation and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show. Such honesty from the Washington crowd -- especially from someone many label conservative -- is rare. So I wanted to give her some credit today.

Here she is on Matthews' show, after being asked by Chris whether President Obama has "the political staying power to get through this terrible time we're in right now, push his agenda and still be politically successful?" [I edited out inane interruptions from Matthews in the middle of Parker's answer. See the full transcript if interested, although you may have to select 3/8/09 to see it]:

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a very powerful tool at his disposal, but (true to form) he's not even admitting it exists, much less threatening to use it. The tool is called "reconciliation" and means (as I have written about previously) that budget bills which go through a certain committee process cannot be filibustered when they reach the Senate. Democrats would only need 50 votes (and Joe Biden's tiebreaker, if they couldn't get 51) to pass budget bills. Senate Republicans would be denied using their favorite obstructionist tactic, the cloture vote (the modern equivalent of the filibuster). Which may be the only way to pass President Obama's budget without significant parts of it being removed by balky Republicans.

So why isn't Reid brandishing this weapon in his rhetoric? Why isn't he using the phrases "give us an up-or-down vote" and painting every single cloture vote as "massive Republican obstructionism," every chance he gets?

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If you're just browsing by for the Rush Limbaugh contest, you can just scroll down to the end, to talking point number seven. Because we're going to talk health care for a while first.

As lefty as this column can be at times (ahem, sorry about that), sometimes this column must adapt tactics which usually originate from the righties. Which means it is time for a pre-emptive attack on what appears to be the emerging Republican position on revamping our nation's health care system. Call it the number one contender for the anti-Obamacare position -- before "the Obamacare position" is even close to actually being defined. In other words, it's a pre-emptive strike by the other side. And it needs to be countered swiftly, logically, and decisively -- in order to cut it off at its figurative knees before it even has a chance to stand on its own -- by a pre-emptive strike of our own.

OK, even I admit that I'm now lost in the metaphors tactically deployed in the previous paragraph. I'll do my best to simplify the argument here, while refraining from such literary excess.

One of the most intriguing proposals for improving health care in America -- without dictating sweeping changes in the health-care insurance industry, mind you -- seems to be to let government compete with private industry.

That's it in a nutshell. And the mere concept is driving Republicans berserk.

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For all the terminology of the political world, all the divisions and divisions-within-divisions, there is no term which defies definition quite the way populism does. When we speak of conservatives or liberals or progressives or even libertarians, we pretty much all agree what the label means, and who it covers. Hyphenation and neologisms abound to adequately describe individual factions of the major groups; such as social conservatives versus fiscal conservatives, or neo-conservatives versus paleo-conservatives. But there's no disagreement with the general scope of what "conservative" means. The concept of populism doesn't have this generally-agreed-upon consensus among the public, however. Even historians define the term differently amongst themselves. And this is just within America's politics -- populism can mean even more diverse movements when talking about the rest of the world.

Newsweek magazine announced a few weeks ago that: "We Are All Socialists Now." While I leave it to others to debate this dubious assumption, I would counter with the question: "Are We All Populists Now?" Because the wide use of the term seems to be encompassing just about everyone now, with the possible exception of a few CEOs in the financial industry.

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A funny thing happened in Washington yesterday, and not many people noticed -- bipartisanship broke out in the Senate. While the chattering classes (and most Republicans) were fixated on whether Rush Limbaugh was the Republican Party's leader, the conservative movement's leader, or just leading them into the wilderness for 40 years (one can but hope); the Senate was taking care of some legislative business. In a bipartisan fashion. Almost one-fourth of Senate Republicans voted to move last year's budget along -- voting with President Obama and with the Democrats, and voting against the man who not so long ago was actually the leader of the Republican Party: John McCain.

Will anyone in the media notice? It's doubtful. Mere weeks ago they were all fulminating over the "failure" of President Obama's bipartisan outreach on his stimulus package, and pointing out over and over again how he "only got three votes out of over 200 congressional Republicans" in an effort to... um... well, I'm not really sure why they spent two weeks on this particular storyline, to tell you the truth. But obsess over it the media did, which would make you think they would follow up on the story if a large chunk of Republicans actually did vote with the Democrats and Obama on a large spending bill.

But then, I remind myself, this is the mainstream media we're talking about, so I shouldn't expect too much of them.

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President Barack Obama is taking another page from F.D.R. (which should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone) by attempting to "brand" his recovery program for America. Addressing the Department of Transportation today, Obama unveiled two logos which will be prominently displayed to show Americans that their stimulus package money is being well spent. The first of these is a generic logo for all projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA):

The second is specifically for transportation projects, and is a striped acronym which stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER):

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Today is apparently Dr. Seuss Day. Who knew? In the spirit of this not-so-solemn occasion, I considered writing today's entire column in Seuss-ian language.

It would have been fun, for instance, to rewrite the story "The Cat In The Hat." In the original, as we all should remember, the crazy cat invades a household with two bored children, wreaking havoc and destroying just about everything he and his henchthings ("Thing 1" and "Thing 2") touch. A fish serves as the conscience of the children, warning that Mom will be returning at some point, and there are consequences to wild actions, no matter how much fun they may be at the time. Magically, the house is cleaned up and repaired by the cat, who disappears just in time for said parental return.

Of course, you'd have to update it a bit to be relevant.

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We open today's column with a mental image -- a gigantic metal turtle-bot, inching its way along. Clomp, clomp, clomp... it moves forward so slowly you can barely see it move. Voiceover: "This is Washington." But wait! Barack Obama jumps aboard, and the robot transforms into a giant steamroller. It starts moving so fast, flattening issues left and right, until you can barely even see it and it becomes a blur. "This is Obama's Washington. Any questions?"

Barack Obama is moving Congress so fast, we're approaching warp speed. Consider the fact that neither presidents Reagan nor Clinton got their (much smaller) stimulus packages passed for over six months -- and Obama got his passed in mere weeks. And with Clinton and Reagan, that was a major party of their presidential legacy, whereas with Obama it is just the first item on a very long list of enormous changes to be made. Soon.

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