Albums of the Year : Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/24958695/albums_of_the_year/31
Sick and Wrong : Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong

Fully $350 billion a year could be saved on paperwork alone if the U.S. went to a single-payer system — more than enough to pay for the whole goddamned thing, if anyone had the balls to stand up and say so.

This article is an opinion piece writton the criticisms and downfalls of the healthcare plan. It is an important site, because the health care reform policy promotes itself, so it is important the the public is exposed to both opinions and both sides of the health care reform system. The article stresses the critical state of America's healthcare system and expresses its need for reform. However, the piece stresses that Obama-Biden health care reform policy will only hurt the health care system further.

Matt Taibbi, right on as usual (and rightly pissed off)

RollingStone

The most important music of the '00s as chosen by more than 100 artists, critics and industry insiders

// What a great article.

The general stands and looks around the suite that his traveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale operations center. The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel's thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and e-mail communications. Dressed in off-the-rack civilian casual – blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks – McChrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the "most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine." The general hates fancy restaurants, rejecting any place with candles on the tables as too "Gucci." He prefers Bud Light Lime (his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (his favorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the public eye has never been a place where McChrystal felt comfortable: Before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon's most secretive black ops.

Got the guy fired 06/23/10 ; ideally should get a bunch of others fired too, but probably won't, or not the important ones anyway.

As to this whole "unspoken agreement" business: the reason Lara Logan thinks this is because she's like pretty much every other "reputable" journalist in this country, in that she suffers from a profound confusion about who she's supposed to be working for.

Matt Taibbi is absolutely right. This is what's wrong with American journalism.

"If I'm hearing Logan correctly, what Hastings is supposed to have done in that situation is interrupt these drunken assholes & say, "Excuse me, fellas, I know we're all having fun & all, but you're saying things that may not be in your best interest! As a reporter, it is my duty to inform you that you may end up looking like insubordinate douche bags in front of two million Rolling Stone readers if you don't shut your mouths this very instant!"... What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Is it worth all the bloodshed & hatred? Who are the people running this thing, what is their agenda, & is that agenda the same thing we voted for? By the severely unlikely virtue of a drunken accident we get a tiny glimpse of an answer to some of these vital questions, but instead of cheering this as a great break for our profession, a waytago moment, one so-called reputable journalist after another lines up to protest the leak & attack the reporter for doing his job. God, do you all suck!"

Matt Tabbi on the follow up reporting of the original article that led to Gen. McChrystal's departure.

Anyone who wants to know why network television news hasn't mattered since the seventies just needs to check out this appearance by Logan. Here's CBS's chief foreign correspondent saying out loud on TV that when the man running a war that's killing thousands of young men and women every year steps on his own dick in front of a journalist, that journalist is supposed to eat the story so as not to embarrass the flag.