The BP economy

Sam Smith There is no reason not to be angry with BP and its CEO Tony Hayward, but contrary to most news reports, the oil spill is far from the greatest catastrophe of the moment. It is vastly outweighed by an economic spill that will kill far more people, destroy far more of their jobs, …

The metaphor spill

Sam Smith - The establishment is struggling to gain metaphorical control over the BP oil spill. It feels entitled to control metaphors just as much as it does oil drilling policy and doesn't it like when the non-establishment comes up with its own. Thus Chris Matthews goes berserk when anyone refers to the present government …

WHY PEOPLE CALL OBAMA A SOCIALIST. .. AND WHY IT MATTERS

Sam SmithIn trying to figure out why so many people think Barack Obama is a socialist, it finally occurred to me that it wasn't a matter of politics or ideology at all, but one of class and culture. Because of the way Americans have been raised - in school, in the media and in the …

WHEN THE TOP CAVES IN

What corporate America wanted was nothing less than the Third Worlding of the US, a collapse of both present reality and future expectations. The closer the life and wages of our citizens could come to those of less developed nations, the happier the huge stateless multinationals would be. Then, as they said in the boardrooms …

Can we talk about the real Obama now?

Sam Smith November 5, 2008 Over the past few weeks I've been a good boy. I've placed everything having to do with the real Barack Obama into a futures file and spent my time on the far grimmer matter of the real John McCain and Sarah Palin. Now the party is over and it's time …

MADE FOR TV POLITICS

Sam SmithThe confluence of Barack Obama's stadium acceptance extravaganza and John McCain's pick for vice president offers superfluous but final proof that Americans have been consigned to spend their lives as part of a crowd scene in an HBO special. Both Obama and Palin have come out of nowhere, rising to preeminence not on the …