Reality Smacks Lefty Upside His Pointed Little Head...

On Friday, Matt Yglesias published a short article detailing how the tentacles of government bureaucracy made it crazy difficult to start his own small business.  If you recognize his name, you're probably chuckling already – because Yglesias is a well-known lefty blogger and commentator, one who can be relied on to support everything that smacks of big government.

As you might expect, the “rightosphere” has been having a lot of fun with this.  At The Spirit of Enterprise, for example, we have this:

I love when progressive dudes in designer glasses actually have to deal with the government in order to do something and are blown away by the stupidity, waste, and burden of it all. It is as if they have only read journal articles about the theory of regulators and never encountered them in the wild.

More such reactions in these search results...

Obama and the Left...

Jane Hamsher isn't the sort of blogger you'll find me quoting (or linking to!) very often. She's a prominent leftie blogger, a confirmed and vocal “progressive” whose politics are somewhere to the left of Lenin's.

In a post yesterday, she aired her frustration over Obama's tight control of the rhetoric and actions of leftie organizations. She says those organizations are in the “veal pen” – being fed (funded) by the Obama administration while being tightly penned in by the Obama administration's threats to withhold funding if they don't behave well. She concludes with this:

If these groups, if these liberal leaders, let Jones just hang there while Glenn Beck pounds his chest and celebrates the scalp, we have no liberal institutions. What we have are a bunch of neoliberal enablers who have found a nice comfortable place in the DC establishment that they don't want to jeopardize, a place on the new K-Street gravy train that they don't want to lose. Dropping Van Jones from their rolodex is a small price to pay.

If there is going to be a serious progressive movement in this country capable of standing up for health care against an industry that spends $1.4 million a day on lobbying, we can't just look to the members of the Progressive Caucus and say "hey, you, get something done." They need cover. They need to know that they will be supported. And people like Van Jones who have given their lives to causes we say we value like prison reform and environmental advocacy need to know that they will be defended, and not handed over to Glenn Beck as an acceptable casualty in the battle for K-Street dollars.

So to all you liberal organizations in the "veal pen" -- this is your moment of truth. I get all your emails. And the next Common Purpose meeting is probably on Tuesday. If you can't get it together to at least put out a statement of support for Van Jones and condemn the White House for using him as a sacrificial lamb to right wing extremists that will devour us all if left unchecked, it's time to add "proudly liberal only when it doesn't matter" to your logo and be done with it.

Looks like the Obama rose doesn't look quite so good to the lefties any more...