Outrage is the corn-based ethanol that fuels political action in Washington. Today, we're inaugurating a recurring feature: a list of the outrages, genuine and contrived, of the week. Missed an outrage? E-mail us.
1. The mayor of Las Vegas is OUTRAGED that Barack Obama dared to... say something about Las Vegas.
2. Democrats are OUTRAGED that Eric Cantor's office forwarded to the press a satirical video that included...horrors...naughty words.
The rest, after the jump.
3. Media Matters for America is OUTRAGED that Fox News used Republican talking points.
4. Everyone is OUTRAGED at A-Rod.
5. Glenn Greenwald is OUTRAGED at me.
6. Republicans are OUTRAGED at being excluded from the stimulus package conference.
7. Republicans remain OUTRAGED that Obama nominated a pro-labor Democrat to be his Secretary of Labor.
8. There's OUTRAGE over FEMA's response to ice storms in Kentucky.
9. The press finds California's budget crisis an OUTRAGE.
10. The U.S. is OUTRAGED that a Pakistani court released A.Q. Khan.
11. MoveOn is OUTRAGED that Sen. John Cornyn missed a vote on the stimulus package.
12. Republicans are OUTRAGED that Democrats refuse to acknowledge Rep. Charles Rangel's ethics issue.
13. Democrats are OUTRAGED that retroactive executive compensation limits were taken out of the stimulus bill.
14. House Democrats were OUTRAGED that the Senate tried to announce a "compromise," twice, before one was ready.
15. John McCain, my friends, is OUTRAGED at all the "pork" in the bill.
16. Everyone seems OUTRAGED that President Obama got to choose which reporters he wanted to call on at his press conference.
The pork outrage is the most absurd; if the spending in the bill wasn't explicitly defined it'd be criticized by McCain et al for lacking transparency and throwing money into the black hole of the Federal bureaucracy.
There's no earmarks in the bill. Do conservatives really think that Obama's best move to increase Dem representation in Congress is spending $2 billion on some power plant in Mattoon, IL? It might not be wise, but it's not pork. Obama could spend $100 billion on IL-15 and it would turn blue.
Curiously, Marc didn't link to Greenwald's column. Here it is: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/11/state_secrets/index.html
Greenwald called your article "uncritical, mindless, one-sided recitation." Can you really claim it is anything but?
There's every logical reason for a reporter to simply report out the story given by the authority in question. The entire context of Marc's reporting was scathing criticism of the administration's decision from folks like Greenwald. It's hard to say Marc is going to do a better job of it than Glenn. There's a place for getting the admin's side of the matter, as long as that is how you label your reporting. If you don't claim that it is a balanced assessment of claims, but rather the reporting out of claims, I have no problem with it. There is a legitimate question about whether he should have granted anonymity that I can't dismiss but also don't really see how it changes the fundamental situation.
Folks don't have the obligation to structure their reporting to Greenwaldian specs just because he comes down on them.
I agree with south side, however, if Marc is going link to some of these items, he should link to them all.
Goof feature, though. Keep it.