This is the story of two political movements. As with any such movement, both eventually got to the point where they asked themselves the fundamental question of what they were attempting to achieve, and (more importantly) what methods they were going to use to accomplish their goals. This fork in the road can be summed up as: do we work within the existing system, or is the system itself so broken we should work outside the system in order to reform the workings of the system itself. One group chose one path, the other chose to head the other direction.

I'm speaking, of course, of the Tea Partiers and the Occupiers. Both groups started with a simple motivation: to "take the country back" from those who had hijacked it. Of course, both groups defined that statement in radically different ways, but the motivation was similar enough. Both groups started in disarray, without clearly defined goals (or, as the media demanded, "demands"), and with a healthy amount of suspicion for "the system" they were attempting to change.

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What with the attacks on Mitt Romney coming from Harry Reid this week, we thought we'd get into the spirit of London-tabloid-headline-ism: "No sacks of Romney tax facts?" "Harry: Mitt lax on tax!" "Reid backs max attacks on Romney tax lacks!" "Romney shellacks Reid tax attacks? Reid: No pax! Take an Ex-Lax!"

OK, maybe I had better just stop. Don't want to be lumped in with those particular hacks (ahem... OK, really, I'll stop now). For those of you wondering, we have officially entered Silly Season 2012. In fact, we've been getting rather silly all week long. Call it our own Silly Season 2012 torch relay, complete with a discussion of the weasel family. Which brings up a thought -- London missed out on the perfect opportunity to include a segment of the Olympic torch relay showing people doing Monty Pythonish "silly walks." Now there would have been compelling Olympic television! Ah, well, what "might have been...."

Getting back to Silly Season 2012 here in America, though -- this is, of course, the official time of year when all the politicians in Washington take (according to them) a well-deserved break from doing the job they're paid to do, to enjoy a luxurious five-week vacation. Because, as we all know, the nation's business has been so fully accomplished that there's really nothing more for Congress to do in August, so they might as well take the month off, right?

If only. The list of things left unaccomplished is actually monstrously big, starting off with the House's refusal to pass the farm bill which made it through the Senate. Because we all know the farmers are doing great this year, and won't mind waiting another month and a half (at minimum) for House Republicans to act. It's not like there's a drought happening or anything.

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Obama drops back

I have to begin today with two reminders. To regular readers of this column, you'll note that it is appearing on Thursdays and Tuesdays from now until the election, in a more abbreviated form. If Obama loses, then it'll probably continue on Tuesdays and Thursdays until next January, for completeness' sake. If Obama wins, this column will return to its prominent spot on the first possible Monday or Wednesday after the end of each month, and I'll likely have to come up with some better graphics after January.

For everyone, a reminder that what we examine in this column is Barack Obama's job approval rating as president. This is only tangentially related to the 2012 election. Mitt Romney is not mentioned in this poll at all, it's a simple "Do you approve of the way the president is doing his job?" question. For the election itself, we have begun our Electoral Math column series, and we should be getting another one of these out some time next week, if all goes well.

OK, with caveats firmly in place, let's take a look at how Obama did in July:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

July, 2012

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In today's modern and interconnected world, many avid sports fans enjoy the thrill of pretending to manage their own teams in virtual leagues dedicated to "fantasy football" or "fantasy baseball" and other fantastical and fun venues for outguessing the professionals. Every four years, in the parallel world of politics, the pundits, prognosticators, and various other species of wonk join in their own imaginary gamesmanship, in what is known as the "fantasy veepstakes." Indeed, it is obligatory to write at least one breathless column on the vice presidential selection per election cycle, or they will kick you out of the "Pundits, Prognosticators, And Various Other Species Of Wonk Club."

In order to keep my own membership in good standing, today I am going to take a look at Mitt Romney's possibilities for a running mate to flesh out his ticket. Well, actually, "flesh" is the wrong word to use, because rather than engage in the fantasizing over actual veep choices, instead I am going to look at running mate possibilities from the world of fantasy. These "veepstakes" columns are boring enough, as a class, so we'd thought it be more fun to imagine characters for Romney's ticket, rather than writing endless paragraphs about the likes of Tim Pawlenty and his relative strengths over Rob Portman's budget experience... (ZZZZZ)... oh, sorry, I seem to have put myself to sleep, there. Anyway, you see what I mean. The real choices aren't that exciting to write about, so let's travel to the Land of Make-Believe instead, shall we?

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We have today the first of our guest columnists who will be appearing in this space through the end of August. Today's column comes from ChrisWeigant.com member FedWayGuy, who describes his personal politics as: "I started life as a libertarian Republican, and as the political landscape has continued to move to the right, I now find myself a progressive Democrat. Go figure!"

If you'd like to write a response to this article, or have an idea for a different subject, use the Email Chris page to contact me or send in your submissions. I'm pretty open-minded as to subject matter, so write your column out and send it in! You might be the next to see your article appear here.

-- Chris Weigant

Let's Talk About Guns

Another madman, another massacre, this time in Aurora, Colorado. When will it end? The Supreme Court has guaranteed an individual's right to bear arms -- how does that end? Do we wind up with private armies, owned by rich individuals and corporations? Is that where it ends?

I think it's time to talk about guns.

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In its continuing search for relevance in the modern age, Newsweek decided to run with a cover story designed not only to be provocative, but also to hearken back to one of their previously-provocative headlines from two decades ago (that, assumably, sold a lot of magazines for them). In case you haven't heard, Newsweek is calling Mitt Romney a "wimp." Actually, they are themselves wimping out, because they don't even directly make this assertion on their cover, they instead speak of the "wimp factor," and then further obscure the charge by using the question format instead of a simple declaration: "Romney: The Wimp Factor -- Is He Just Too Insecure To Be President?" A much stronger headline, and more in keeping with the fifth-grade-playground nature of the insult, would have been: "Romney Is A Wimp, And Therefore Will Not Be Elected President." This is but a minor quibble, however, as the article itself does indeed call Romney not only a "wimp," but also a "weenie." We would respectfully suggest, however, that another "W-word" is far more appropriate in describing Mitt Romney: "weasel."

Using animal names for human insults and praise is, of course, an ancient tradition. The weasel family has members within it who are used for high purposes and low in this fashion; from denoting wealth and royalty (sable, ermine), to playfulness (otter), to outright insult (polecat). Some even have crossover uses, such as denoting both wealth and sexual prowess (mink). One was used -- even before the comic book anti-hero -- to represent both vicious fearlessness as well as the sports teams of the University of Michigan (wolverine). Ironically, there are even two weasel family members who are used as examples of digging out the truth via hard questioning (ferret and badger). One poor member of family Mustelidae even recently got kicked out, forced to form a family of their own, because nobody likes a skunk at the party.

Getting back to weasels, my dictionary informs me that using "weasel" as an insult (a "weasel word") stems from the critter's propensity to suck eggs. No, seriously: "the weasel's reputed habit of sucking the contents out of an egg while leaving the shell superficially intact." This is why weasel words are used "in order to evade or retreat from a direct or forthright statement or position." My dictionary is fairly old, so there was no actual photo of Mitt Romney next to this definition (ahem), but for the life of me I cannot come up with any better description of his candidacy. Indeed, Mitt has been evading and retreating from just about any direct or forthright statements or positions during his entire campaign.

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In a surprise announcement today, the International Olympic Committee has filed a lawsuit against Mitt Romney and his entire family. Not, as some might have expected, for his recent comments about the London Olympics, but rather because Mitt has been using the term "Romney Olympics" to describe a summer festival held at his palatial vacation home, up to and including this year. The I.O.C. is famously protective of the term "Olympics" and who is allowed to use it, and according to their press release, they are merely protecting their brand. No word on what financial penalty the I.O.C. will be seeking, as an I.O.C. spokesperson told us, "We're going to have to subpoena Mitt's tax returns before we can answer that." He also added, "Mitt's dancing horse will be disqualified from the dressage event, as well."

Well, not really. That whole previous paragraph was not in any way true. But one can dream, right?

I should warn everyone, if you're already sick of Olympic-themed nonsense, then you might want to skip this week's column, because that pretty much sums the whole thing up. That's right, we're going for the gold this week!

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OK, folks, so far this experiment has to be judged a failure. Tuesday, I threw down a challenge in an attempt to inspire people to submit their own columns to ChrisWeigant.com so we could feature them on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next month. So far, I have gotten none.

If I don't get any by next Tuesday, I'm going to start running old columns, just to fill up this space. Next Thursday is scheduled to be Obama Poll Watch day, but then there's nothing but empty slots for all of August.

Perhaps people are getting hung up on what to write about. If I were one of those snarktastic blogger types, I might take this opportunity to point out: "See? It ain't as easy as it looks!" Ahem. Being above that sort of pettiness, here's an idea for those of you perhaps wondering what would make a good column.

August is traditionally "Silly Season" month. So, what will this year's Silly Season obsession be? Go back and look at any one of my Hallowe'en columns over the years, and make a funny prediction, in a similar vein. Bonus points for outrageousness. Complete the following: "This year's Silly Season obsession will be..."

See? It's not so tough to come up with something amusing. Now, sit down, write it out, and send it to me via email. Posting it in the comments to another article doesn't count, because it defeats the purpose (because people will already have read it).

C'mon, people, we can do better than this! I swear, I will bust out the re-runs if I don't get any submissions, so help us all avoid this fate, and send me your submissions. Do it today!

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Welcome to that magic time of year when political junkies in the media get so frantic for stories they just start rampantly speculating on everything under the sun. This is a yearly contest to see who can come up with this year's "Silly Season" story that everyone else will obsess about for the entire month of August. What will it be this year? Mitt's "dancing horse" at the Olympics (as David Letterman has taken to calling it)? President Obama secretly plotting to (fill in the blank)?

Of course, while all that is going on, there will be serious stories with dramatic consequences in the political arena which will get short shrift (or no shrift at all) in the national media, as usual. One of the biggest of these non-silly stories this year is the trend towards voter suppression laws in states with inordinate amounts of Republicans in their state government. The comic Doonesbury has been brutally pointing this out all this week with a series of strips on a "Jim Crow tour" of America.

I'm not going to get into the main issue here, I should state. Voter suppression laws are a giant step backwards, and there are plenty of other commentaries out there which explain why. Instead, I'd like to focus on one aspect of the laws which everyone seems to be missing: who will be affected, and how this will affect the overall vote.

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Program Note:

OK, since everyone's getting so frisky in the comments section here, I am going to try an extended experiment -- in letting the inmates take over the asylum (so to speak... ahem). No, that wasn't the humor referenced in the title -- that comes after this program note, in a hilarious bit of satire from C.W. Cunningham.

As I did last year at this time, I'm going to cut back on my blogging for the next month or so. The reason now is the same as the last time around: to be able to devote more time to a book proposal I am currently writing.

Sadly, last year at this point I was confident that I could complete my book proposal by the end of August. This year, I am hiding behind the old chestnut: "Well, I didn't say which August, now did I?" Sigh.

Yes, this project has taken much longer than I expected. But you'll be happy to hear that the end of the tunnel is actually now in sight. I am preparing a final draft of the sample chapters to send out to agents and publishers, and I am targeting the end of August to achieve this goal. August is a slow political news month anyway, commonly called the "Silly Season" of politics in America. Plus, I am going to have a ton of things to do to get ready for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. So, from this point on, I will only be posting here on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, likely right up to the convention itself (right after Labor Day).

Which leaves two days of the week free. Now, I can just re-run old columns here, or I could leave the site un-updated, but that's kind of boring. So I am going to throw the door open to my faithful commenters to sit in my metaphorical chair and fill in for me. You write a blog post, and if I like it, I will post it here. Got something original to say? Well then, have at it!

I will not be editing the submissions (other than perhaps for minor grammar and punctuation problems), and my acceptance criteria will not include which side of the aisle you're coming from, but rather whether your submission is well-written and not too long or too short. It will be up to you how the work is credited: with your real name, or with the login name you use here (either way is fine with me, this will be completely up to you).

If this experiment crashes and burns, then I will stop taking submissions. If I am so snowed under by numerous submissions, then I may stop taking them as well (remember: this idea is supposed to save me time). If you start to see column repeats, it is because I am not getting enough submissions. Nobody is guaranteed to be posted, and I can reject any submission for any reason under the sun. But rather than be all reactionary in the comments, I would encourage you to try driving the conversation itself. Here's a hint: humor always catches my eye.

We'll see how it goes. Contact me privately via email (use the Email Chris page, if you have never done so before) with any questions or submissions (DON'T use the comments to submit something, because that kind of misses the point).

With that out of the way, we have our first example of a guest columnist. Today's article is a satirical news release from our old friend C.W. Cunningham (whom everyone might remember from his days as "house cartoonist" here). It needs no real introduction, other than to point out you've got to read the date at the top, for this news report to make sense. Enjoy.

-- Chris Weigant

Dateline: January 8, 2014

President Romney today announced that Sri Lanka has won the bid to represent the American people in Congress, having narrowly edged out both India and China with a spate of well placed bribes in the final hours of the race.

President Romney explained that this will be the most responsive Congress in American history. The Sri Lankans have vowed to show up four days each week -- a 68% increase over the previous session -- and since they won't be given any vacation time, they will be poised to pass any and all bills as quickly as lobbyists can type them up.

In keeping with the president's vow of "More jobs for more millionaires," the outgoing legislators will be retained, freeing them up to devote all their time to fundraising -- a 2% increase over the previous session. In an expression of the President's focused managerial style, each ex-legislator will be given a monthly quota, and those who fail to meet their numbers will either be laid off, or given a post in the Cabinet. Democrats will naturally be given higher quotas since they are well connected with latte-drinking elites, and are more likely to have George Soros' phone number.

In related news, President Romney announced that Offshore Investments for Freedom (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bain Capital) has once again won the bid to oversee the I.R.S. and the Congressional Budget Office. Though many have complained that these arms of the government have become less transparent and basically unaccountable since the Bain takeover, it's almost universally agreed that their reports are visually stunning, since they now use office products exclusively from Staples.

-- C.W. Cunningham

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant