Obama in Rolling Stone

Two great pieces from the latest issue of RollingStone Magazine. I forgot how much I enjoyed their political reporting, especially Matt Taibbi's. Rarely is there a piece that I find uninteresting, and often they are more well-written than the established publications.

President Obama gave Jann S. Werner an Oval Office interview. I'm not completely sold on Obama's drive to prevent a GOP majority in November, because as one reads his comments, it's almost like he is in campaign mode as opposed to actually leading the Democratic party. I also think pushing the "we've completed 70 percent of what we set out to do in our first two years" line is a little overconfident. Yes he got financial reform, health care, and education items passed, while making major decisions on the wars, but can he really say that those items account for 70% of his agenda? What about all the concessions he made just to get those things passed? Granted that isn't entirely on him, but, the major reason for him even being in the Oval Office is because he wanted to fix Washington. I don't see that yet.

Taibbi wrote a phenomenal piece on the inner-workings of the Tea Party machine. It's more depressing than anything to read how he traveled around Kentucky meeting with people who are so upset with government spending that they are throwing their support behind young Rand Paul, but they can't defend why they themselves draw on Medicare, or want a tax cut...it's more about them wanting stuff taken away from others so that they get more for themselves. Paul himself is exposed as wanting to reign in spending, yet doesn't see an issue with his comments that personal physicians like himself are entitled to make more money.