There has been a relentless drumbeat behind the scenes here at CW.com, in the form of emails I get from readers astonished that I have no presence on Twitter (or Facebook, or whatever...). So I figured today was the day to address these publicly. Mostly because this will be the last "live" column for a few days (more on that at the end), so the comment thread will have many days to remain open before I get a chance to read it.

The question, letting my natural hamminess speak (hamminess... let... ham...let?), I put it to you thusly: "To tweet, or not to tweet?" That is today's question.

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The term "silly season" is a lot older than I thought, reaching back into the 1800s. It refers to late summer, when governments go on massive taxpayer-funded vacations all over the world. Silly trivia: the "silly season" is known, for reasons obscure, as "cucumber season" in many other languages (you just can't make this stuff up).

Here in America, of course, we take our silly pretty seriously. August, in recent political history, was when the infamous "swift boat" ads ran, which contributed to the destruction of John Kerry's campaign for president. Kerry contributed to this as well, mostly by staying on vacation and not responding to the attacks, which (in retrospect) looks pretty... well... silly.

But this year's season could produce a bumper crop of silly. The silly, it seems, is just bustin' out all over. And it's only the beginning of August, when our elected representatives all take off work for five weeks. Who knows how silly things are going to be by the end of the month?

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Is yelling a smart political tactic? That's an abstract sort of question, but it's going to become more and more concrete in the next few weeks, because there appears to be a coordinated effort to use the tactic of shouting everyone down to disrupt "town hall" events by Democratic members of Congress in their home districts during the August recess. My question is whether this tactic is going to be effective or whether it has the possibility of backfiring.

Of course, since the ones doing the yelling are interested not in doing anything constructive, but rather obstructing legislation they don't approve of (healthcare reform), yelling may be more effective than one would normally assume. But the real question is how they will be portrayed in the mainstream media -- as forehead-vein-throbbing lunatics, or as passionate fighters for their cause. Because not a whole lot of people actually show up to town hall meetings with politicians, and most Americans only become aware of such events if the media covers them (such coverage is usually relegated to local media, and is usually pretty boring). But people screaming at politicians may rise to the level of the national media, which means the way the media portray the screamers will be key. And the mainstream media, of late, has not exactly been doing a shining job of separating lunacy from political discourse (see: "birthers"). So it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

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It's the beginning of a new month, which means it is time again to take a look at President Obama's poll numbers. The news this month for Obama fans is not particularly good, as Obama has definitely ended his "honeymoon" period (which virtually all first-term presidents go through). The downward trend to his numbers was expected, but the increase in the curve downward is slightly worrisome at this point -- but not yet what I would call a cause for alarm.

After we take a look at Obama's numbers, we'll also compare him to George W. Bush's first term poll numbers, continuing our series of comparing Obama to past presidents. We really should have started with Bush, to keep things in order, but we looked at Clinton's numbers first because the data were easier to format into charts.

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I thought about titling today's column "Sausage Making, Interrupted" in (dis-)honor of the House of Representatives scarpering off on a five-week vacation without finishing their work on healthcare reform (the Senate, it should be noted, is reportedly planning on doing exactly the same thing next week, to their equal shame). Then I thought I'd riff on the old doctor joke: "The operation was a success... the patient died on the table, though." But when I sat down to write, I decided I was sick of the entire process. Meaning there was only one sane and healthy thing to do.

Hold a contest!

We haven't run a really good contest in a while, so I thought we'd open up the betting on what the outcome of the healthcare reform push will likely be, rather than write yet another column of seething frustration at the lack of progress from our belovéd Congresscritters.

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For a while now, I've been using the metaphor of a baseball game to describe the progress of healthcare reform legislation trundling its way through Congress. And I have to caution everyone, we are still in the middle innings of this "game" (no disrespect intended, I know it's a serious subject -- I'm just talking metaphorically here) Which means that, no matter what the bills look like when they come out of the recalcitrant House and Senate committees, there will still be a lot of fighting before this is all over. I say this not to discourage healthcare reform advocates, but to keep everyone focused on how far we have to go.

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California voters may soon get a chance to weigh in on whether marijuana should be legalized and taxed by the state. If enacted, this may help the state's budget by providing revenue from a brand new source, while also freeing up money that previously went to enforcement efforts against marijuana growing. Of course, marijuana would still be illegal under federal law, but this may be a turning point in the legalization movement -- the point where politicians desperate for tax revenues see dollar signs instead of prison bars when looking at the cannabis plant.

And make no mistake -- this is not medical marijuana we are talking about. From the wire service report:

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The White House has, of late, been quietly expressing a bit of confidence that the economy is going to pick up in the last two quarters of this year. They aren't shouting it from the rooftops, exactly, but they have been publicly predicting that the recession will officially be over in the next six months or so. Which raises the question -- since the Republicans have pretty much doubled down on Obama's failure, what are they going to do if the economy gets better next year? When the midterm congressional election season gets under way in full force, what are they going to run on if people are happy with Obama's policies at that point?

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There's a relatively recent political metaphor that is about to become a reality, and become etched in the history books much like the ring left on a wooden table by a sweating cold glass. President Obama is about to become the ultimate president "you could sit down and have a beer with." What this means for the future of our great nation has yet to be determined, but it's worth a look as to how we got to this point.

By which, I mean a look into the concept of having a beer with the president, and not delving into the facts of the case. The Massachusetts police officer and Harvard professor who are about to travel to the White House for the privilege of tossing down a frosty-cold one with the president each have their own version of the incident (which provoked the president to say what he did at his press conference), and without all the facts, it is simply sheer speculation to paint what happened with any kind of broad brush. My suspicion is that race may have had less to do with the professor getting a ticket, and that it was more likely a case of what those in the legal business call an "attitude arrest" -- in other words, showing "attitude" to a police officer sometimes gets you arrested. This -- right or wrong -- is a fact of life in America (and, I strongly suspect, just about everywhere else), but those who have never had interactions with the police may not be aware of it. But even having said that is saying too much, because it is sheer speculation on my part since (as I said) I don't have all the facts. So in the case of the professor and the policeman, I simply cannot say who was in the right, and who was "acting stupidly" (as the president put it), so I choose not to interject myself into that particular debate.

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Before I begin with the serious stuff, I'd like to indulge in a little gratuitous media-bashing first. If that sort of thing isn't your cup of tea, just skip to the next section now. You have been warned.

A few weeks ago, because of firing Dan Froomkin and selling access to their reporters and in general for their op-ed priorities, I wrote that the Washington Post had reduced itself, in terms of being a trustworthy outlet for news, to a cartoon (Tom Toles' editorial cartoons, to be exact -- about the only thing left worth reading on their op-ed pages). But now it's looking like this is a deeper trend than just one seriously annoyed blogger. Because, with Walter Cronkite's passing, the title of "most trusted newsman in America" now passes to... Jon Stewart? The glaring problem with this is that Jon Stewart is not a journalist! He's a comedian. He readily admits that what he does is "fake news." And yet, even with this admission, he is trusted more than the big three network news anchors to deliver facts to America. That is a sad, sad, state of affairs, people.

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