While Obama hit an all-time low in one recent poll which made a few headlines this week, he's actually not had that bad a month, relatively. In fact, his monthly average job approval number rose for only the second time in his second term. Obama had good news and bad news battling it out this month, and his polling reflected this tension. But the news for Obama in October was a lot better than you might think.

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Tomorrow, some of the country will vote on various things and people. Immediately thereafter, pundits will begin reading too much into "what it all means," especially in relation to the 2014 and 2016 elections. I'm personally going to remain rather skeptical, though. Because I don't think there really are any true trends which can be read into these contests, which are all local and somewhat personality-driven. Especially this year.

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To put this another way, while most focused on one broken promise from President Obama this week, he actually made good on an earlier promise -- which is nothing short of astounding and deserves a lot of attention.

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Even though it took a long time to get to this point, it was an effort worth making. Which is why the nations of the world should now start a new conversation in some internationally-neutral city, with the expressed purpose of defining what is and what is not allowable for the future of warfare (and spying). Three major topics of such an agreement should be: passive cyberwar (spying on communications), active cyberwar (virus and other attacks), and robot warfare (drones and other automated weaponry).

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"I will not yield to this monkey court!"

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The hearings have started on Capitol Hill, and there will likely be plenty of fodder mined by Republicans over the awfulness of the Obamacare exchange launch for weeks to come. That much is certain, at the very least. But I can't help but wonder what the future will look like this time next year, especially on one key question: will "red" states begin to set up their own state health insurance exchanges, or will they continue to allow the federal government to run their exchanges for them?

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Wouldn't it be great to have a place where children and adults alike could learn about the sordid history of how American politics really works? If Bruce Roter has his way, visitors to New York's state capital will indeed have this opportunity, at the "Albany Museum of Political Corruption" -- which he hopes to locate just down the hill from the state's Capitol building. Adults entering Roter's political corruption museum will be charged a reasonable "bribe" as admission, with children under the age of 12 entering for half price (although "parents are encouraged to lie about the age of their children").

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Gallup just released a poll showing a large majority -- 58 percent -- of the American public now thinks marijuana should be fully legalized for adult recreational use. This is somewhat stunning news. The "somewhat" part is that this is really only a continuation of a decades-long trend towards acceptance in public opinion. The "stunning" part is how quickly it is now happening. In fact, it might be fair to say that we may only be a year or two away from marijuana legalization reaching a political "tipping point" from which there will be no going back. I wrote earlier this year that gay marriage can now be seen to be over this "tipping point" -- it's hard to now imagine going back to the days of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense Of Marriage Act. Legalizing marijuana hasn't hit this point of no return yet... but it certainly can be glimpsed on the horizon.

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I don't know about anyone else, but the image that popped into my head this week was Ted Cruz drunk in some dive of a karaoke bar, doing his version of "I Fought The Law, And The Law Won."

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It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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