Amazing what a difference a month makes. Andrew Sullivan, at long last, pulled his head out of the sand and did the absolute bare minimum of research about Obama’s marijuana policy before writing about it. Just last month Sullivan praised Obama for somehow helping to advance the cause of marijuana legalization despite the fact that Obama has waged a very aggressive multi-agency war on marijuana. To quote Sullivan, “Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels.”

A pattern is clearly forming. The Obama administration is using multiple federal departments to curb or significantly cripple the medical marijuana in the states were it was legalized by the voters. This recent move is not only another direct violation of Obama’s campaign promise to respect state’s medical marijuana laws, but the Obama administration’s is now more aggressively anti-medical marijuana than even the George W. Bush’ administration ever was.

Now that the head of Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid and the head of his American business daily flagship have both resigned, with the titian-haired one under arrest in Britain, is it time to look at the man GHWBush calls “our man Ailes” and his techniques that FOX News Channel may have used to make the news?

By now, many of you have probably read Frank Rich’s inaugural piece for New York Magazine. Freed from the bean counters and word counters of the New York Times, Rich pours forth pages (and pages) on what he calls “Obama’s Original Sin.”

I am not going to say that Rich is not being tough, per se, just that he isn’t as tough as he thinks.

Little Davey P is busy lying to the people in Washington again. This morning, Nice Mike Hastings had a very interesting article at Rolling Stone. He described how Bad Billy C and Screaming Greg B made Lt. Col. Holmes do mind tricks on important Washington people who were visiting Afghanistan. Mr. Jim explained it all right here and told us how Bad Billy C was probably doing this because Little Davey P wanted him to.

But now, Little Davey P is acting like he had nothing to do with the mind tricks and is calling for Bad Billy C to be investigated.

Caldwell wanted to use a small part of the resources the Congress provided him, a $6 million psy-ops team, on Congress to in turn convince Congress to provide him with even more resources. While outrageous, this is basically just a very small scale version of how defense contractors in the military-industrial complex use political donations in the expanding growth spiral.

Building on the success of his “The Runaway General” article that led to President Obama firing Stanley McChrystal, Michael Hastings returns to the pages of Rolling Stone with “Another Runaway General“, where he exposes information operations, or Psy-Ops, on dignitaries including US Senators as they visited Afghanistan on “fact-finding” trips. What should not be missed when contemplating the illegal and immoral aspects of this information operation directed against the citizens of the country and high level government officials is that it is just one more instance in an ongoing pattern of information manipulation and outright deception on the part of the military in recent years. A few recent examples include the use of retired generals posing as independent military analysts to spout information coordinated by the Pentagon, intentional deception to cover up Special Operations troops digging bullets out of the bodies of pregnant women they killed in a night raid and the more recent claim by General Petraeus that parents intentionally burned their children in order to exaggerate injuries received in a US attack, to name just a few.

A far more productive thing that President Obama could have done with those ten minutes he spent berating his supporters: He could have used his power as Commander in Chief to suspend discharges related to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” effectively ending a horribly discriminatory practice with the stroke of a pen.

But all of this “hippie punching” isn’t about turning out voters. To do that, as Obama well knows, you have to inspire them. Notice that nobody actually running for office is wagging their finger at voters and scolding them like a bunch of children.

No, this isn’t about GOTV. It’s about setting up a narrative for who will take the blame for a disastrous election. And once again, the White House doesn’t care if they make matters worse in order to deflect responsibility from Obama.

Rolling Stone has a big new article in this month’s issue about the push to legalize marijuana in California and across the country. The title of the article may sound familiar: it’s called “Just Say Now.” And our campaign gets an impressive plug.