In November 2002, at a meeting in the White House, the president and his top economic advisers packed tightly around a mahogany table in the Roosevelt Room. With the administration's own forecasts showing that the economy had already regained its footing, one after another of Bush's deputies sounded the alarm about the dangers of a new tax cut. "This burns a big hole in the budget," deputy chief of staff Josh Bolten told the president. "The budget hole is getting deeper," added Daniels, "and we are projecting deficits all the way to the end of your second term." O'Neill warned the president that a "tax cut that benefits mostly wealthy investors" could imperil the budding prosperity. "With the economy already improving, this could cause an unnecessary boost," he said. "That's how you get a bubble." Entertaining the chorus of doubters, Bush himself voiced qualms about more cuts for the rich. "Won't the top-rate people benefit the most?" he asked. "Didn't we already give them a break at the top?"
But Cheney was having none of it. When O'Neill warned Bush that America was headed for a "fiscal crisis," the vice president, sitting at the Treasury secretary's right elbow, dismissed him midsentence by citing the ultimate champion of Republican tax cuts: "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter, Paul." Rolling Stone's Tom Dickinson on
how the GOP became the party of the rich.
posted by therewolf
on Nov 10, 2011 -
69 comments
In 1977, Rolling Stone magazine turned 10 years old. To celebrate, they put together a TV special, which included
"A Day in the Decade" -- a star-studded, 15-minutes-long tribute to the Beatles.
[more inside]
posted by chowflap
on Aug 5, 2011 -
68 comments
Using album & digital song sales, Hot 100 rankings, radio airplay, YouTube views, social media, concert grosses, industry awards and critics' ratings, Rolling Stone compares sixteen female artists to name
the Queen of Pop.
[more inside]
posted by troika
on Jun 30, 2011 -
40 comments
Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
posted by vidur
on Feb 16, 2011 -
126 comments
During his campaign, skeptics warned that Barack Obama was nothing but a "beautiful loser," a progressive purist whose uncompromising idealism would derail his program for change. But as president, Obama has proved to be just the opposite — an ugly winner. Over and over, he has shown himself willing to strike unpalatable political bargains to secure progress, even at the cost of alienating his core supporters. This bloodless, if effective, approach to governance has created a perilous disconnect: By any rational measure, Obama is the most accomplished and progressive president in decades, yet the only Americans fired up by the changes he has delivered are Republicans and Tea Partiers hellbent on reversing them. Heading into the November elections, Obama's approval ratings are mired in the mid-40s, and polls reflect a stark enthusiasm gap: Half of all Republicans are "very" excited about voting this fall, compared to just a quarter of Democrats. But if the passions of Obama's base have been deflated by the compromises he made to secure historic gains like the Recovery Act, health care reform and Wall Street regulation, that gloom cannot obscure the essential point: This president has delivered more sweeping, progressive change in 20 months than the previous two Democratic administrations did in 12 years. The
Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson argues
The Case for Obama.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Oct 15, 2010 -
177 comments
General Stanley McChrystal is in
hot water over a Rolling Stone
article (pdf) where he and his staff are quoted criticizing Obama, Biden, and senior administration officials. (
Previously on McChrystal's appointment.)
posted by Forktine
on Jun 22, 2010 -
353 comments
"What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street" - "
Looting Main Street" Matt Taibbi takes an in-depth look into how finance, deregulation, corruption, synthetic rate swaps, and greed decimated Birmingham, AL.
[more inside]
posted by The Whelk
on Apr 12, 2010 -
42 comments
Matt Taibbi vs. David Ray Griffin Taibbi, to whose writing Metafilter frequently links, and who is currently on retainer at
Rolling Stone, takes on Griffin, who is perhaps the most prominent member of the so-called "9/11 Truth Movement," in a knock-down, drag-out multiple-round bout (in three parts).
Part II.
Part III.
posted by Hat Maui
on Oct 6, 2008 -
99 comments
Kim Neely has enjoyed a very rich professional life already. A writer for Rolling Stone for fifteen years, she also penned the
Pearl Jam biography. These days find Kim involved in an entirely different pursuit.
Lampworking is a type of glass work that uses a gas fueled torch to melt rods and tubes of clear and colored glass. At her mom's unused workshop Kim created
Bluff Road Art Glass.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on May 15, 2008 -
7 comments
In a rare interview out of character, Sacha Baron Cohen discusses his reaction to the controversy over Borat:
And the reason we chose Kazakhstan was because it was a country that no one had heard anything about, so we could essentially play on stereotypes they might have about this ex-Soviet backwater. The joke is not on Kazakhstan. I think the joke is on people who can believe that the Kazakhstan that I describe can exist -- who believe that there's a country where homosexuals wear blue hats and the women live in cages and they drink fermented horse urine and the age of consent has been raised to nine years old."
Maybe this Kazakhstan doesn't exist--but Borat's antics sometimes aren't far off the mark from
other parts of the world where gang-rape and stoning are meted out as punishment. Is it so silly to appreciate Borat as a comical icon from these dark corners of the world? Who is ignorant of what is really happening in the world--Cohen or his unwitting interviewees?
posted by Brian James
on Nov 16, 2006 -
150 comments
Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.
posted by EarBucket
on Jun 1, 2006 -
171 comments
Bush Like Me: Ten weeks undercover in the grass roots of the Republican Party: As a professional misanthrope, I believe that if you are going to hate a person, you ought to do it properly. You should go and live in his shoes for a while and see at the end of it how much you hate yourself.
This was what I was doing down in Florida. The real challenge wasn't just trying to understand these Republicans. It was to become the best Republican I could be.
posted by GriffX
on Oct 15, 2004 -
44 comments
Downloaders Pay Back Wilco Just-launched
Justafan.org allows fans who downloaded copies of the new Wilco album to donate to the band-selected charity Doctors Without Borders. In less than a day online, with nothing more than word-of-mouth publicity, donations exceeded $1,500.
posted by methree
on Apr 2, 2004 -
15 comments
The story of Mister, uh, Big
Initially I was going to post about this with a tongue-in-cheek tone. But when I got to the end of the piece, I was disturbed to find that an act of child abuse - an act of what I see as an act of pedophilia - has been reported matter-of-factly by Rolling Stone, without so much as the blink of an eye. It's not the central part of the story, not the reason for telling it, but still. Why? is it because perhaps the perpetrator is a woman and it's not seen as a crime? Or is it her age? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?
Warning - might not be safe for work, especially if the link offsite at the bottom of the page is working...
posted by tomcosgrave
on Jun 4, 2003 -
72 comments
Andrew Sullivan
rips apart a Rolling Stone Story that claims that 1/4 of new HIV infections among gay men are sought out by people both looking to infect others and looking to become infected. "Bug chasing" may have been around for a while, but according to Sullivan and
this Newsweek article also debunking the shoddy Rolling Stone piece, it's nowhere near the numbers being exaggerated. This brings up so many issues: the speed with which false information is spread over the Internet; the decreasing responsibility of the media to actually report facts; how trustworthy are our news sources?; will Drudge,
who also reported the RS story without any hint of its falsehood, ever be revealed as the sensationalistic closet case he is? (Okay, that last bit was a wee troll, so ignore!).
posted by archimago
on Jan 24, 2003 -
20 comments
Covered with moss: I've been a continuous subscriber to
Rolling Stone ever since I bought my first issue off the newsstand in October 1975 ("Patty Hearst: The Inside Story"), back when the magazine was still published on newsprint in SF and at least seemed to be a product of the counterculture. Today it's a
glossy celebrity rag published in NY and has almost no relevance to anything except the most superficial aspects of pop culture. Publisher Jann Wenner is bringing in a new editor in hopes of appealing to a younger demographic; this piece asks: Why not just pull the plug instead?
posted by nathanstack
on Jul 2, 2002 -
28 comments
"If I don't do this, who can?" Courtney Love, a unionist? She may be the only one to put the Music Industry to task, and challenge practices that enslave struggling artists, turning shining stars into short-lived comets. That is, provided she doesn't just settle out of court. D'ya think she can do it? Or is this just more smoke & mirrors?
posted by ZachsMind
on Jun 8, 2001 -
22 comments
More nasty facts about what goes into our food. Do a search on the page for 'dead cats'.
(My apologies for posting something old. I'm so shocked I couldn't help it).
posted by u.n. owen
on Mar 15, 2001 -
11 comments
