OK, I took Monday off, playing hooky in the warm summer sun.

Regular column service will resume Tuesday.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

A bright, shining ray of hope beamed upon the world of political wonkery this week, but then NBC dumped rain all over this parade by issuing denials of the rumor that David Gregory would be replaced as host of Meet The Press. Now, NBC actually has a few intelligent and serious political journalists on its staff who would likely do a pretty good job of hosting the Sunday morning chatfest, but as we've all known all along, Gregory is simply not one of them (neither, for that matter, is Brian Williams). So, like I said, we were all very hopeful when the rumor that NBC was thinking of getting someone with enough brains to ask a followup question to host their flagship MTP program, only to later be disappointed by NBC's denials. But who knows, maybe the rumors are true and the denials are fake. One can always hope.

One sad fact dawned this week in the media world, though. Before there was Futurama, before there were The Simpsons, there was "Life In Hell" -- a weekly comic by Matt Groening that helped a lot of folks cope, all through the Reagan years. Sadly, Groening has announced the comic's 34-year run is now at an end. We heartily agree with the NPR story which highlights a fitting quote from the comic as an epitaph for Binky, Bongo, Akbar and Jeff and all the rest of them, and which also sums up our feelings perfectly: "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."

Now, sadly, the ice weasels cometh for "Life In Hell." We'd like to offer up a moment of silence in loving memory. As we frantically try to pry pieces of the snowmobile off, to use as weapons in the gathering dusk, so to speak.

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Since it's the day after a mid-week holiday, we're going to take it easy today, and run a photo sent in by one of our faithful readers, for everyone's enjoyment.

After losing a bet made in these very pages, "Michale" humbly wore the following shirt all day long at his place of business:

Wear it with style, Michale, and in the future be careful making such rash bets...

Heh.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The name "Romney" has historical significance in Massachusetts, but the story goes back a lot further than just a recent ex-governor. In fact, a "Romney" played a significant part in the American Revolution -- on the British side. The name, however, does not refer to a man, but rather to a man-of-war, the H.M.S. Romney, a 50-gun British ship that sailed into Boston harbor in 1768.

The Romney was there for a specific reason -- to help the British government enforce the Townshend Acts. It was a show of force, for the benefit of those unruly Americans who were resisting Parliament's new decrees.

The presence of the Romney was irritating from the very start. Following the custom of the times, the sailors forcibly began rounding up men to serve on the ship -- a practice known as "impressment," back then. Today, it might be referred to as being "Shanghaied." An informal version of a military draft, the sailors would just grab any warm body they found dockside and drag them back to the ship where they would become members of the British navy, whether they liked it or not. The citizens of Boston didn't take too kindly to the press gangs from the Romney, and they began fighting back by attacking the sailors, to thwart these attempts at kidnapping people off the streets.

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Absolutely even

Before we begin here, a quick program note is in order. Astute readers will note that today is Tuesday. These columns usually run on Mondays or Wednesdays, and are thus posted on Huffington Post and Business Insider as well. But, for the next five months we're phasing out widespread coverage of this column, and phasing in our Electoral Math series in its place. Because the presidential election will be the overwhelming story from now until Election Day, the head-to-head polling between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will be much more pertinent and newsworthy than our monthly look at how Obama is doing in the "job approval" polling. We don't want to overwhelm and confuse people by running too many charts, to put it another way. During this period, the ObamaPollWatch.com site will host both column series, so you can look there for the most recent of either. And, every month, we'll still be running the Obama Poll Watch columns, it'll just be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, that's all.

With that out of the way, let's take a look at how Barack Obama is doing in the job approval category. For the first time ever, we have an exact tie, at 47.8 percent. Here's the chart:

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

June, 2012

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Happy Second of July, everyone! Happy Independence Day!

Now, you may be thinking: "Has Chris gone bonkers? Why is he jumping the gun, two days early?" The answers to these important queries are: No, Chris has not gone any more bonkers than usual; and, in fact, the rest of you are celebrating a fictitious event on a fictitious anniversary date. So there.

I quote from the illustrious John Adams, writing to his beloved wife Abigail on July 3, 1776:

The second of July 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.

"But..." I hear you say, "...but July 4th is when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and that's what we commemorate." Well... no. Sorry.

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Well, that was a pretty stunning week. Lots of other things happened politically, but in truth it was a one-issue type of week, so this is going to be a one-issue type of column.

I must admit being personally stunned at the Obamacare decision -- not so much what it said (stunning enough), but who said it. Before the ruling, I would have given odds on two or three possible permutations: a 5-4 ruling with Kennedy being the swing vote (either way), or quite possibly a 6-3 ruling upholding Obamacare and the mandate, with Roberts joining Kennedy and the liberal wing (likely because Roberts would realize he needed to be on the right side of history on this one). But I don't think I ever even considered the possibility of a 5-4 decision with Roberts as the key swing vote. I don't feel too bad for missing this possibility, because everyone else in the entire media/political/legal universe also missed it.

Which was why it was so stunning. It was as if Lex Luthor suddenly decided that fighting next to Superman for truth, justice, and the American way was truly the right thing to do. Roberts may have prompted this last sentence (I admit) with his comment about where he's heading on vacation (to Malta, which Roberts joked was an "impregnable island fortress")... where maybe he'll seek some solitude, perhaps...?

All kidding aside, though, it certainly has been fun to see the other side spin. As a child's reader might put it: "See GOP spin. Spin, spin, spin! So sad, the spinning."

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As is my wont, I'm going to circle the edges of the political bombshell John Roberts just flung into the arena. Maybe by tomorrow, it'll have percolated through my brain enough to intelligently attack the main issue, but I just haven't reached that point yet, so you'll have to forgive me.

To begin my amble around the periphery, there's the title of this article. If you haven't seen it already, there's a great retouched photograph making the rounds today, which is downright hilarious, so check it out. More on this in a moment.

The image comes from two "news" networks (scare quotes are mandatory, today) -- CNN and Fox News Network -- who jumped the gun and ran with "Mandate struck down" headlines. Whoops! In their feverish rush to get the news up a full ten seconds before every other news network in the universe had the same news, these two flat-out got the news wrong. They blew it. Big time. They looked for a "scoop" where none was ever going to exist. Insert your own moralizing here about insta-news.

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You'll have to forgive me for opening with a joke, but there's been a "song" running through my mind all week. It's from an old comedy routine I heard decades ago, so I have no idea which comedian to credit. The comedian was suggesting new lyrics for our National Anthem, with a practical interpretation based on when we usually actually sing it. So, everyone sing along with me, in your collective heads:

"As we stand here waiting / For the ball game to start..."

Don't know why that's been running through my head... heh. Actually, that's a lie. I'm just as interested as the next pundit in what the Supremes are going to say tomorrow about Obamacare, but I just don't think it's worth talking about here until it happens, that's all. Instead, I'd like to take a summertime flight of electoral fancy.

Once or twice per presidential election, I like to engage in the sheerest of blue-sky speculation about possible interesting outcomes which could happen. Four years ago, I engaged in idle speculation about a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. This time around, the scenario I've been hearing bandied about is that Barack Obama wins the Electoral College vote, but Mitt Romney wins the popular vote. Barring Supreme Court cases, this would mean a second term for Barack Obama, of course.

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[Program Note: I'm having computer problems today, so couldn't manage to get a new article out. I wrote the following a few months ago, and it seemed like a good week to revisit it.]

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