My friend in college used to shoplift, mostly for sport. I never really understood it, and it doesn't really matter why he did it. What struck me was how he did it.
My buddy would walk into Walmart, grab a flatbed shopping cart, go right to the electronics department, have an employee to help him put it on the cart, and he would roll it right out the front door, acting as if he just bought it. I asked him why he would ever shoplift this way. His answer was simple. He did it this way precisely because no employee would ever think a person would be so brash as to walk right out the front door with a $300 tv. None of the employees thought a person would be capable of acting in such a way.
Oddly, this presents an analogy to the Bush Administration's media manipulation. In every detrimental news cycle, a new terror tape, threat, color color change mysteriously surfaces. And they get away with it every time. The reason? Exactly like the Walmart employees and my friend, the media and everyday citizens do not think our President is capable of doing something so sinister as to manipulate terror warnings and threats to mitigate political fallout.
Just as a clerk noticed my friend once too many times "buying" a new tv, we all are noticing the Bush Administration's media manipulations via terror red herrings. Sure, there have been many grumblings among us, but there hasn't been, to my knowledge at least, anyone standing up and calling the Administration on it -- loudly.
With the tsunami of bad news about to drop, we can only expect the same ol' trick. Bush is already stepping up the terrorists-are-about-to-kill us routine, and NYC's subways were almost certainly going to be reduced to rubble.
The moral? On your toes Kossacks -- my buddy is about to come through with another TV. We have to call him on it.