I don’t know what it is about Barack Obama, but he attracts supporters whose motives one almost immediately suspects. We here at Pensito went through the whole machinations thing here a couple months ago (you know: “They’re trying to get people to vote for Obama so he’ll beat Clinton because he can’t beat McCain.”), and it gets more convoluted than Rush Limbaugh’s moral compass.

But we have been trained to think this way by a government that spies on us and lies to us: “Should I believe what I’m told or the opposite? But maybe they are lying to me to get me to think the opposite, which is what they really want me to think. Maybe.”

I dunno, it’s twisted days, my friends. Anyway, when he stopped by the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital Conference for a bull session, Rupert Murdoch (who owns the WSJ) was in rare form. He had some good things to say about Obama, but put in the context of his other utterances, for instance on U.S. energy policy — ”We didn’t buy Alaska to save a couple of elk” — one is left to wonder:

The biggest news may have been the News Corp. chairman’s hints that he sees Sen. Obama as having a good chance of winning the November election. Noting that respect for politicians and Washington DC is at an “all time low,” Murdoch described Obama as a “rock star” and “fantastic,” saying his Republican opponent John McCain is “unpredictable” and “doesn’t know much about the economy.” While he is a “patriot” and a “decent guy … he doesn’t know much about organizing a campaign it would seem.”

Murdoch added that he wasn’t backing anyone, saying he wants to know more about Obama’s plans and the people around him. But he said he was involved in the New York Post’s decision to endorse Obama in New York’s Democratic primarily earlier this year.

A major issue in the election will be the economy. The “average American today is really hurting financially and that bodes well for” Obama, he said.

Crazy or canny, you make the call.

The latest revelation from Scott McClellan’s book proves what has long been suspected: Despite earlier statements professing ignorance about the conspiracy among his top officials, including Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, to betray a covert CIA program tracking the international black market for weapons of mass destruction, Bush knew about it all along:
The White House deftly distracted public attention away from the true scandal here — the treasonous acts of the president’s men — by focusing on the vivid personalities of the covert agent, Valerie Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson.

McClellan recalled a day in April 2006, when the unfolding perjury case against Libby revealed that the president had secretly declassified portions of a 2002 intelligence report about Iraq’s weapons capabilities to help his aides deflect criticism that his case for war was weak. Some of the most high-profile criticism was coming from Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The president was leaving an event in North Carolina, McClellan recalled, and as they walked to Air Force One a reporter yelled out a question: Had the president, who had repeatedly condemned the selective release of secret intelligence information, enabled Scooter Libby to leak classified information to The New York Times to bolster the administration’s arguments for war?

McClellan took the question to the president, telling Bush: “He’s saying you yourself were the one that authorized the leaking of this information.”

“And he said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ And I was kind of taken aback,” McClellan said.

Let’s look back at two of Bush’s statements to the press about this treasonous betrayal of a U.S. covert operation.

On Sept. 30, 2003, in response to a question from a reporter about his administration’s, George Bush said:

BUSH: I want to know the truth. If anybody has got any information inside our administration or outside our administration, it would be helpful if they came forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true and get on about the business…

I don’t know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action.

On July 18, 2005:

BUSH: We have a serious ongoing investigation here. (Laughter [from reporters].) And it’s being played out in the press. And I think it’s best that people wait until the investigation is complete before you jump to conclusions. And I will do so, as well. I don’t know all the facts. I want to know all the facts. The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who’s spending time investigating it. I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.

The Bush team and their enablers among Republicans in the Congress and the media deftly distracted public attention away from the true scandal here — the treasonous acts of the president’s men who revealed the identity of the secret agent in charge of the CIA WMD program — by focusing on the vivid personalities of the agent, Valerie Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson.

As much as one might admire the Wilsons, this has never been about them. It is about a power-crazed cabal in the White House who abused their power to go after their political enemies without giving a thought to the potentially catastrophic results of their actions. We’ll never know whether the next terror attack could have been prevented if Plame’s program had not been exposed. We’ll never know if any, or how many, of her operatives around the world have been killed or tortured because of the White House conspiracy.

If there ever was an act by a president that was prima facie impeachable, this is it.

H/t: Americans United for Change

Just last week, the Los Angeles Times poll on an initiative being floated for the November ballot that would force an amendment onto the California constitution that banned gay marriage found that 54 percent of voters were in favor of the initiative while 36 percent opposed it.

Now a new Field Poll has produced the opposite results:

The Field Poll survey found 51 percent against approving a possible November ballot measure to prohibit gay marriage, with 43 percent in favor. A slightly differently worded question on the same issue found 54 percent opposed and 40 percent in favor.

The poll follows a state Supreme Court decision this month that barring homosexuals from marrying violated the California Constitution. [A majority of the justices who ruled in favor of gay marriage were Republicans.] Opponents of same-sex marriage have intensified efforts to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot in November.

The poll found a strong generational gap on the issue, with those aged 18-29 approving of gay marriage by 68 percent and those 65 or older disapproving by 55 percent.

The poll found that in recent decades a growing number of Californians have approved allowing same-sex couples to marry, with 51 percent of those polled now approving, up from 44 percent in 2006 and 30 percent in 1985.

It’s hard to parse the meaning of the seesawing between these two polls — perhaps the Field Poll sample was younger. Still, the ballot initiative is being paid for by out-of-state conservative political operatives whose real intent is to gin up turnout for John McCain in November. They will spend lavishly on advertising this fall.

Supporters of gay marriage in California should not relax until these numbers stabilize, with opposition to the initiative polling in double digits in every poll between now and November.