Sidney Blumenthal notes that one year after his re-election, President Bush governs from a bunker. "We go forward with complete confidence," he proclaimed in his second inaugural address.... But as he listened that day, Vice-President Dick Cheney knew the election had been secured by a cover-up.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110305N.shtml

The food stamp measure is just one of several provisions in an expansive Congressional budget-cutting package that critics say unfairly targets the poor and disadvantaged, especially poor children.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110305M.shtml

Senate Democrats led an effort Wednesday to strike language from a budget bill that would allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), but drilling opponents aren't expected to win.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110305L.shtml

The Democratic decision to bushwhack Senate Republicans this week with a surprise procedural maneuver reflected a larger political strategy to shift the terrain to issues that Democrats believe will play to their common advantage in the 2006 elections.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110305K.shtml

Bush's top advisers are considering whether it is tenable for Rove to remain on the staff, given that Fitzgerald has already documented something that Rove and White House official spokesmen once emphatically denied - that he played a central role in discussions with journalists about Plame's role at the CIA and her marriage to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110305J.shtml

by Bernard Weiner

Whenever I have a dream, I ask myself: “Why this dream now? What is happening in my life at this moment that would engender these particular images?” The same question has to be asked about Good Night, and Good Luck, George Clooney's powerful docudrama about the McCarthy era of the 1950s: “Why make this film now? Is there something happening in our society, our media, our politics that would make audiences resonate with a low-budget film, shot in black and white, about that era in America?”

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Weiner1103.htm

Part I

by Media Lens

Early last century, industrial technology allowed business interests to produce mass media at a cost that outclassed the capacity of non-corporate media to compete. As a result, radical publishers were marginalized and media diversity rapidly narrowed. To counter claims that society was being, in effect, brainwashed by this media monopoly, corporate publishers promoted the idea of “professional journalism.” For the first time, reporters would be trained in special “schools of journalism” to master the arts of objective, balanced reporting. Big business moguls would be in control but, as good democrats, they would see to it that their journalists were scrupulously fair...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/MediaLens1103.htm



Thought Control and “Professional” Journalism (Part II)
by Media Lens

In Part 1 we described how the notion of “professional” journalism was developed precisely to obscure the significance of the fact that corporate power had gained a monopoly over the mass media. “Professional” journalism accepts that powerful interests -- the political and economic allies of the corporate media -- should be allowed to set the news agenda. Reporters are to channel the words of officialdom without expressing their own personal opinions. To express criticism of the powerful in news reports is deemed “unprofessional” -- that is, “crusading”, “committed”, “polemical” and “radioactive”. Curiously, the myth of professional “objectivity” exists alongside the clear fact that expressing support for the claims and actions of the powerful is not considered unprofessional...

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/MediaLens1104.htm

by Mickey Z.

In a society where "support the troops" is little more than a euphemism for "support the policy," the concept of setting aside a day to celebrate military veterans has always been touchy for the Left. But here's an idea: what if we instead honored veterans of the anti-war movement? I mean those -- from Eugene Debs and Helen Keller to the Berrigans, right up to Cindy Sheehan -- who put their a... on the line to stop war...not wage it. To add a twist, how about military veterans who have since become veterans of the anti-war movement, e.g. Howard Zinn, Stan Goff, Ward Churchill, and Rosemarie Jackowski? Even better, if you truly want to acknowledge bravery in the line of fire, why not find more heroes like Hugh Clowers Thompson, Jr.?

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/MickeyZ1103.htm

Check out Rummy's response to a reporter's question about whether he and Vice President Cheney were in charge of a secret cabal to manipulate public policy for the Iraq War.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001055.html

by The Washington Note

Read Donald Rumsfeld's "aw, shucks" answer to a reporter's question about whether he and Cheney ran a secret cabal supporting the invasion of Iraq.

http://tompaine.com/#passiton

If Dems are to win in '06 and '08, they're going to have to propose a sustainable American Dream.

http://www.tompaine.com/uncommonsense/index.php#6629