Entries associated with the tag "Sam Smith":

Cato on the Republicans: "The fact is, with the exception of Rep. Ron Paul who trails badly in the polls, none of the GOP candidates has a consistent record of standing for small-government. Sooner or later someone needs to point out that being a conservative means more than being anti-abortion or tough on terrorists."

Sam Smith on the Democrats' front-runner: In a recent poll, "Democrats favored Hillary Clinton to deal with health care by a two to one margin over Obama and Edwards combined -- an absurd judgment given her previous health care legislation that was laughably incompetent and confusing as she attempted to conceal its gifts to the insurance industry.... By 52% to 39% Clinton beats both Obama and Edwards as the one best able to deal with Iraq, even though she is clearly the one with the worst record of doing so this far. By the same margin, she is the one who Democrats think best represent the core values of the party. This may be tragically true in contemporary terms, but before her husband took office the party had dramatically different --and better -- values.... This is a party that doesn't need a candidate; it desperately needs a therapist."

Most Americans have figured out by now that W isn't just an annoyance, he's a disaster. But that doesn't mean he's the only disaster, and long-time DC observer Sam Smith of Progressive Review, as usual, is ahead of the pack. Last week he pointed out 11 ways in which the mainstream media (which he insists on treating as singular) are stage-managing, filtering, and otherwise rigging the 2008 presidential race.

If you have links to counterexamples, bring 'em on; so far even the blogosphere doesn't seem to have produced much commentary on this. Smith, who's a Green Party member, has been unrelenting in his criticism of both the Clinton and Bush families, and so as far as I can tell he isn't welcome in either echo chamber. His MSM indictment:

"It created the Barack Obama myth out of whole cloth. A political lightweight from the Chicago Democratic machine with a virtually non-existent record has been turned into JFK II.

"It has steadfastly refused to report on the numerous scandals associated with Hillary Clinton's past, sending years of corruption, dissembling and abuse of power down the Orwellian memory hole.

"It has not done much better with the true history of Rudolph Giuliani, creating a heroic myth based largely on behavior on one particular day, 9/11, that might have been expected of any mayor of a major city.

"With both Clinton and Giuliani it has particularly avoided their extraordinary connections with criminal figures. Whatever the ultimate import of these relationships are, the voters are entitled to know with whom their candidates have consorted.

"As we have demonstrated with our headline survey, John Edwards has been consistently blacked out of the news coverage despite being ahead of Obama in more than a half dozen states.

"When covered, Edwards has been trivialized or criticized in a manner used on no other major candidate. For example, his wealth has been targeted in a way that John Kerry's never was and Hillary Clinton's
isn't. While it is fair ground to tell about his $400 haircut, it is not
fair meanwhile to censor Obama's parking tickets in Massachusetts that
were left unpaid from college days until he decided to run for
president. Even when Elizabeth Edwards criticized Ann Coulter for her
hateful attacks on her husband, she was later said by major media to
have "defended" her remarks as though standing up for her husband was
beyond the pale.

"The media has bought into the Fred Thompson myth, despite the fact that Thompson - like Obama - has virtually nothing on his resume to recommend him for the job.

"The media has made little efforts to help voters understand the real differences between the candidates as opposed to the variations in their iconic and fantastical spin. 

"The major media has almost totally ignored the GOP vote caging scandal uncovered by Greg Palast.

"The major media has consistently treated majority American positions on the war and healthcare as out of the mainstream.

"And it has largely ignored the ever growing evidence of failure and corruption involving the use of electronic voting machines."

Sam Smith at Undernews asks the unaskable: why is the military sacred? He prefers the teachings of Jesus Christ and midwestern socialist Eugene Debs, who said, "I would no more teach children military training than I would teach them arson, robbery, or assassination."

George Schmidt may be a ranter, but you would be too if you knew what he knows: "Problems are festering or growing at every general high school on the west and south sides right now. And the cause of the increase in those problems, this year and for the last three school years, has been the school-closing and 'Renaissance' policies of CPS." All the details are at the District 299 Chicago Public Schools Blog.

"Give everyone a personal carbon ration. If you run out, buy it from someone else," says Treehugger, summarizing the strong global-warming medicine prescribed by George Monbiot the UK Guardian.

Alon Levy of Abstract Nonsense tees off on libertarians who cling to a 60-year-old scripture: "When Hayek said in The Road to Serfdom that the growth of government spending was a threat to freedom, he had an excuse: at that time there was no evidence to the contrary."

Dudes, I swear he means it as a compliment!  Bill McKibben on the new WorldChanging book: "Their book, a compilation of their work over the last few years, is nothing less than The Whole Earth Catalog, that hippie bible, retooled for the iPod generation."

Orac at Respectful Insolence calls the Chicago Tribune's Sunday story on alternative medicine full of a "little too much credulity." For one thing, personal testimonials, "with few exceptions, do not constitute useful data regarding the efficacy of a therapy."

Some welcome additions to my (burp) overstuffed RSS feed:

• As other see us. Ellen Perlman of Governing magazine visits the McDonald's Cycle Center at Millennium Park: "It's NICE."

• The last word (I wish) on the mommy wars, from Redneck Mother: "You know who I like to read on the topics of children and mothers? Mothers. Why? Because we know what we're talking about, because we share a common language despite our many differences, and because we are practical. We mothers are busy people. As much as I'd like to put in my two cents whenever a childless blogger holds forth on parentude, I often simply don't have time. And I've learned that hubris is best cured not by a lecture but by the direct experience of parenting. As my sister-in-law says, 'I was a great parenting expert until I had children.'"  In particular, don't assume that "mothers are deluded souls who need a wake-up call from others to throw off the shackles of their oppression."

• Why writing a negative book review is fun. Sam Harris on Francis Collins's attempt to move from science to religion: "To say that he fails at his task does not quite get at the inadequacy of his efforts. He fails the way a surgeon would fail if he attempted to operate using only his toes."

• Why does Barack Obama repeat the bogus Republican talking point that Democrats are always against wars? Ilyayavitz at SoapBlox Chicago: "It seems Democrats believe they can increase their popularity only by criticizing unnamed and confabulated elements within their own party. It reminds me of members of my family who tell Jewish jokes to their goy friends in order to curry favor with those who are not Jewish.  It also recalls the tragic and predictable manner whereby my gay friends attempt to gain recognition with heterosexuals by complaining about stereotyped behavioral traits heterosexuals assign to gay men." Dude, it totally doesn't work and it's not even funny.