No way to hold his feet to the fire, then, is there?

Yet another example of sniveling-git-ism from "the Left". Liberal critics urge the liberalist-president-of-our-lifetime to be more, you know, liberal, and both he and his "supporters" get angry and defensive and start wagging their fingers and sermonizing. I guess there really is no way of holding President Obama's feet to the fire, as he urged the people of the Left to do, is there?

The President did "the one thing that he actually has the power to do" by instructing the DOJ not to enforce DOMA? Uh, not quite - he could also, you know, be a forceful advocate for what is right, even if there is nothing he could do in terms of legislation or the law.

This applies for many other things as well (but don't try to prevent him from blowing shit up in other countries!) - but Obama simply refuses to even make the case for what is right. And so America will keep getting what it probably deserves - hand-in-hand destruction of the bases of modern American society by the Republicans and the Democrats, while people like BooMan turn their fire against people who don't really like this outcome rater than the people who are doing their utmost to bring it about.

Not *quite* socialist...

The solution to this problem is clear: the military must be privatized.

Not quite liberal...

I hope that even the biggest Obama supporter is happy that his Justice Department lost this case:

A former spy agency employee agreed late Thursday to plead guilty to a minor charge in a highly publicized leak prosecution, undercutting the Obama administration’s unusual campaign to prosecute government officials who disclose classified information to the press.

The National Security Agency official, Thomas A. Drake, had faced a possible 35 years in prison if convicted on felony charges under the Espionage Act. Instead, he agreed to admit to a misdemeanor of misusing the agency’s computer system by providing “official N.S.A. information” to an unauthorized person, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.
...

The flurry of criminal cases has led to both praise and criticism for Mr. Obama, who entered office promising unprecedented transparency but in less than three years in office has far outdone the security-minded Bush administration in pursuing leaks. Some political analysts say Mr. Obama’s liberal credentials may give him political cover for the crackdown.

The Drake case was seen as a test of the tougher line against unauthorized disclosures. But news media coverage of the charges against Mr. Drake, 54, an introspective computer specialist, has highlighted his motivation for sharing information about N.S.A. technology with a reporter for The Baltimore Sun in 2006 and 2007: the agency was rejecting a $3 million in-house program called ThinThread in favor of a $1-billion-plus contractor-run program called Trailblazer. His supporters have portrayed him as a diligent public servant who was trying to save taxpayers’ money and strengthen national security, not damage it. 

President Obama - the liberalest president ever... only not quite liberal.

Money and positive messaging

This is how easy it is for left/liberal groups to be bought off:

AT&T is lining up support for its acquisition of T-Mobile from a slew of liberal groups with no obvious interest in telecom deals — except that they’ve received big piles of AT&T’s cash.

In recent weeks, the NAACP, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Education Association have each issued public statements in support of the deal.
...

AT&T is working hard to win approval of the deal from the FCC and the Department of Justice. It’s not supposed to be a political process, but with Democrats — inherently skeptical of big corporate mergers — in control of both agencies, the company isn’t taking any chances.

It has assembled a platoon of more than 72 outside lawyers and consultants to work the FCC and Justice Department on the deal. 

And it’s brought on public relations agencies and other consultants to craft a message that the merger is more about spreading wireless broadband to underserved populations across America than about enriching the company’s shareholders.

To build support, AT&T employees and consultants have been making personal visits and calls as well as holding luncheons.

Out of about a dozen supporters interviewed by POLITICO, the vast majority said they decided to issue a statement supporting the AT&T/T-Mobile deal after being approached this way. 

Yep - endorsements are forthcoming, after the nice people from AT&T just happen to drop in for a chat. And we get some groups that might otherwise be skeptical of corporate mergers and that have no obvious expertise in telecoms or mergers giving their blessing to this deal. And then we'll get a new company that will probably continue its record of providing more funds to Republicans - who don't really care for any of these left/liberal groups - than Democrats.

It's that easy.

Sports, labor and "progressivism"

This is a rather curious post by the ever-curious Yglesias. First, it purports to lay out a "progressive" case for supporting the Miami Heat in their encounter with the Dallas Mavericks. But this case rests mostly on LeBron James and his decision to move to the Heat. There's no discussion at all about the Mavericks - something we might expect if someone is trying to convince us to pick sides. So there really is no "case" at all.

This brings us to what the post is really about: Yglesias's idea that it is "progressive" to allow full, unrestrained market forces to determine labor policy (and, by extension, employment policy) in the NBA. Simply writing that out - that it should be "progressive" to allow "the market" untrammeled ability to set wages - highlights how bizarre this "argument" is. Would it be "progressive" to export that argument outside of the NBA? How about getting rid of the minimum wage and letting "the market" set lower wages too?

But, then again, we're dealing with one of the leading lights of the American "left", so it shouldn't be too surprising that we get some kind of head-scratching "progressive" proposal that is nothing of the sort. But if Yglesias would like to see how "market forces" play out in sports leagues, all he'd have to do is look at the English Premier League, the Scottish Premier League, La Liga, or many of the other European football/soccer leagues. There's no draft, no maximum wages, no controls on players moving their labor to whatever employer will pay them - Yglesias' workers' paradise in action.

Sadly for this little fantasy, there's no real competition in these leagues, either. Titles are won by one of the same 2 or 3 teams, year after year after year. Competition among these super-clubs has led to the appearance of ultra-wealthy billionaire owners who raise ticket prices above the level average, long-time fans can afford and who sometimes saddle the clubs with huge debts. Smaller clubs' have no chance to really compete, and their best players are regularly picked off by the bigger, richer clubs.

And this should be considered "progressive"? Jesus - just beat what remains of the Left with a baseball bat and let's call time on it.