Whatever happened to "boxgate"?

[0rganism]

Remember when bush* did his rousing campaign act in a UPS warehouse (IIRC), and had all those relabeled "made in the USA" boxes stuck out in front of his podium? And they were really "made in China"? No? I'm not surprised if you don't, the whole carrier-banner-speach thing just reminded me of it, for some reason.

So now it's called "bannergate". Last month we had "traitorgate". Will it be "stonewallgate" next month? Every few weeks, a potentially delicious new scandal wanders onto the stage to strut and fret its hour. We happily cavort in the hopes that "this will be the one that brings him down". Sometimes the media sinks its teeth in, as if to see whether this new thing is the tasty meat. Yet nothing seems to stick to the moron. It's like each fresh new outrage displaces the one before it, and nothing is ever resolved. By this time next year, will we remember anything about the jackass-in-chief delaying a carrier's arrival in port by a day for the shrub's campaign photos?

And these are REAL PROBLEMS, not just the frivolous bullshit the rightwing tried to pin on Bill Clinton throughout his presidency (remember the haircut that allegedly delayed LAX flights by 1/2 an hour?) These aren't failed real-esate dealings from a decade before he took office. Bob knows shrub's pre-presidential past is shadey enough that we could find scandal fodder there if it were needed. No, these are outrages and crimes perpetrated by a sitting president in "real time". But the memory hole is generous beyond belief to shrubby, despite the fact that minor speaches by Gov. Dean from 10 years ago can somehow be scrutinized with a fine-tooth-comb for any sign of rhetorical inconsistency.

Liberal Media, where is thy sting?

[0rganism]

1. one kick before this slides into the memory hole

Seriously. What DID happen to boxgate? I seem to recall that re-labeling those crates is actually a mail crime of some sort. Yet there was no prosecution that I know of.

[Karenina]

2. Wherdy go?

I remember reading the account of a Manhattan dweller who was asked this question by his 3 yr-old son as they surveyed the damage of L/MIHOP.

WHERDY GO??? Good question.

[eleny]

3. Stonewallgate? Perfect!

That's the umbrella that covers them all for President Stonewall.

[tom_paine]

4. In the absence of a Free Press and a Free People

The Busheviks have discovered that the best way to answer being caught in a lie is to tell six others.

The lies come so fast and, given the exigencies of Corporate TV Pravda (not including Mockingbird and other Bushevik infuences which have built over the last decade, fuinctionally parasitizing these organizations) to get it fast make it big lurid sexbloodsexbloodsexblood! these stories about the casual Orwellianism of the Busheviks, though they truly represent a fundamnetal tectonic shift towards Tyranny Through Constant Lie-Telling in Imperial Amerika, could never fly.

And of course, the absence of a Party-Loyal Left-Wing Sub-Media to counterbalance the Party-Loyal Right-Wing Sub-Media is quite terrifying, because it has become clear that, without one, stories acnnot be kept alive, even real stories of significance.

Frightening on so many levels. If you had told me 4 years ago that one day I would wish that Amerika would have a Party-Loyal Left-Wing Sub-Media, I would have laughed at you and told you to go read "Animal Farm" and the history of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

But so much has changed since the Last Days of the Old Republic.

Bottom Line: There is no "liberal media". That was a half-truth at BEST in the 70s, now it is an Orwellian grotesquerie of a lie...

[0rganism]

6. Heh, speaking of the Old Republic...

Something about the "Last Days of the Old Republic" phrase rang a distant bell, so I looked up the prologue from the original Star Wars book:

"Once, under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the Jedi Knights, the Republic throve and grew. But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match. So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from outside.

"Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic. Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.

"Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions."

George Lucas: filmmaker, author, visionary, prophet?

[tom_paine]

7. Prophetic in that history just keeps repeating and repeating and

repeating.

The Propaganda Startegies may be different. The National Character, and thus the nature of the Totalitarianism required to subjugate it, may be different.

But the BIG PICTURE remains the same.

George Lucas was just retelling a very old story that we never dreamed we'd be living through.

But we are.

And, no, the use of the term "Old Republic" is NOT unintentional.

[0rganism]

12. I remember when Joseph Campbell was much intrigued by Star Wars

because it was a vivid retelling of the hero myth, opposing archetypes of the life force to those of a mechanical death force.

It's become painfully apparent, especially watching the 1st and 2nd prequels, that Lucas had envisioned an equally-intricate political scenario worthy of Machiavelli. The point in the much-maligned episode 2 where insider-sponsored terrorist attacks are used as the nominal justification for a widespread crackdown certainly resonates as much with our situation as it would with the Reichstag fire that set Hitler up for absolute control.

Can we wake up in time to avert the next logical steps? Or is it too late?

[tom_paine]

13. It might be too late, but that is NOT going to cause me to give up!

I will go down fighting like a good Jedi.

[SoCalDem]

5. Every "gate" is but a piece of the 2000 piece puzzle

Until someone actually starts to put that puzzle together, they will never know how many pieces are "missing"..

The unravelling of * will take more than a 15 second soundbyte tossed in as a pundit show goes to commercial..

The flaws, failures, and frauds of this presidency would need a 4 part , 2hr per episode miniseries , just to scratch the surface..

As angry as it makes us, there will be no indepth investigation of ANYTHING he has done, or has failed to do. He will skate because he was "lucky" or foresighted enough to have all branches of government in his pocket.. He is having a charmed presidency. Undoubtedly, he will not be re"elected" in 2004, but that does not mean he will actually leave office. I have NO doubt that the groundwork is being/has been laid for a Diebold Miracle for him and his cronies.. They have grown bold, and it would take a different kind of miracle to defeat them..

Until the democrats start to take this stuff seriously, and go out on a limb to expose him, he will stay right where he is..

The shakespearean phrase about how ...if you attack the king, you must "kill" the king...applies here.. Our side is playing this like a game of tag.. they attack for a short time, and then line up like good little doggies, so they can take their turn at smelling his butt, and rolling over to show their bellies, so he knows they were "just kidding"..

The republicans play hardball...our guys play whiffleball..

Guess who wins???

[tom_paine]

8. Couldn't agree more, socaldem

They are trapped in the paradigm of the Old Republic. They are nearly as weak and ineffectual as the German Social Democrats of 1933 werew in opposing Grandpa Prescott's Business Partners.

They just couldn't visualize that soemone like Hitler or the Busheviks would have such utter LOATHING for democracy/republic and would view such ideals as compromise and honest journalism as Liberal Weakness.

And so, failing to grasp the New Order, they were incapable of fighting it using the Old Ways. Thus they were destroyed.

I hope I am wrong.

[Stephanie]

9. I have those pix saved but no way to upload

Happy to email them to you if you like.

[LeahMira]

10. Heck, whatever happened to...

... anthrax gate? On the morning news they were telling that the Post Office in New Jersey that is the sorting "hub" for a lot of the east coast is only now reopening. We still don't know where that anthrax came from, do we? And why not?

[tom_paine]

14. You know the answer to that question, don't you?

Because the people that are investigating are closely related to the one or ones who sent the anthrax.

Even if Uncle Dick or Uncle Karl or Heinrich Ashcroft didn't personally order the assaults, which I would not rule out, it was most definitely a Bushevik attack.

Look at the targets:

1) The tabloid that printed pictures of the Imperial Daughters drunk and falling down.

2) The "Liberal Media" (oh that there was such a thing!)

3) The two most powerful Democratic Senators, just as they were pursuing 9-11 documents and demanding answers on the unPATRIOT Act.

Oh yeah, that's a random choice of targets. Couldn't have been better selected if the Busheviks planned it, eh?

Those Busheviks always get the lucky breaks, eh, from the deaths of the Kennedy brothers to the deaths of Wellstone and everything in between.

They are just some REALLY lucky mothers, eh?

[Dr Fate]

11. The media is "not allowed" to report it, and DEMS are too chicken...

...to use it against Republicans they way they would if it was Clinton, because, well, the media is "not allowed" to report it, and they do not own media outlets that are "allowed" to report it...