The haze is beginning to disperse...

Apparently voters are slowly staggering out of the poppy field and are beginning to realize that the Great and Powerful Oz is merely a man behind the curtain attempting to fool the masses into believing that he's a benevolent ruler.

For the first time in his presidency, Bush was rated negatively by voters in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll on being "honest and straightforward".

Well, duh! Progressive bloggers have been trying to point this out for years, only to have the message fall on deaf ears connected to brains that have been programmed to accept anything put forward by their righteous "values" party, which has used this blind obedience to further their own causes and those of their campaign contributors.


But now Karl Rove, Bush's closest personal advisor and architect of most of his political victories, has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He exposed a covert CIA agent in an attempt to discredit her husband, who had the audacity to question the administration's judgement in fabricating evidence to support attacking Iraq back in 2003.

At the time, Bush said he'd fire whoever was involved in leaking the information. Now that it's turned out to be his buddy, his spokespeople refuse to comment because of the ongoing investigation, even though they had no qualms about commenting about it before Rove was named as the source.

Bush, however, has suprised his supporters by not publicly stating that he trusts Rove. His spin machine is in overdrive as it attempts to paint Rove as an innocent caught in the crossfire. The fine point between innocence and illegality balances on whether Rove knew she was undercover at the time. So now Karl Rove, who masterminded the theft of two presidential elections, is unaware of political realities, and accidently breached national security because he was focused on something else - namely discrediting the husband of the person he exposed, but knew nothing about. All to protect his boss's facade of a threat to America that didn't exist.

Oh sure, Saddam was a bad guy. But the real enemy at the time was Osama bin Laden (who still remains at large, by the way). And rather than commit our dedicated service members to finding and eliminating that threat, they chose to move the "war on terror" to a new front, with fabricated evidence that led the American public to believe that Iraq was somehow connected to 9/11, and that they were manufacturing weapons of mass destruction in massive quantities that threaten us on our home front. When in reality Iraq was way behind the curve, and could barely pose a threat to their nearest neighbors who already shared their beliefs and therefore were not likely to be attacked anyway.

But I digress. Although the GOP desperately wants Bush to say "Karl Rove is a patriot, and I will stand by him no matter the circumstances", Bush has attended three press briefings where he's had the opportunity to express this, but he goes off message.

"This is a serious investigation," the president told reporters after a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, where Rove sat just behind him. "And it is very important for people not to prejudge the investigation based on media reports."

The spinmasters responded that Bush really supports his friend, but was not directly asked if he supports Rove, although that's never stopped him before from not answering a reporter's question and going off on a tangent of his own. This sent the spin machine into mega-RPMs, and has caused all of the big hitters in the GOP to say that Bush really does support his friend, but just forgot to say it.

So now we have both Bush and Rove playing stupid. I've long suspected that Bush just pretends to be an idiot, with all the "nucular" and good-old-boy stuff. But I've never believed that Rove, one of the best behind-the-scenes players in Washinton in decades, would be capable of an oversight as simple as not doing his homework before attempting to destroy the credibility of a critic.

Bottom line: Rove knew what he was doing, but never thought he'd be caught because of the political atmosphere at the time. But now, that atmosphere has changed, and people are beginning to notice the smell.

And it appears that Bush is showing his true colors and quietly cutting his ties to Rove. Just as Tom DeLay has distanced himself from Jack Abramoff when he became a liability.

One can only hope that this is a trend. Because is smacks of rats deserting a sinking ship, and if this ship sinks before it does permanent harm to America, it means there's hope for us yet.