Hit It and Quit It: Quick Links For Your Reading Pleasure

They say that avid readers make good writers, which obviously isn't true, since both of your favorite contributors to CONFLICT REVOLUTION read current events frequently and are still waiting on that promised payoff. Either way, with Stephen out of the game this week, I'm stepping up with a brief list of reading material to share from my favorite blogs and websites.

My top three:

1) If President Obama is a "snob," what does that make Rick Santorum?

Tea Partiers Against College -- For Other People's Kids (The Daily Beast)

Former Bush Speechwriter and accused RINO (Republican In Name Only) David Frum comments on Santorum's characterization of Barack Obama as a "snob" for... wanting everyone to go to college (seriously). This is an awfully bold statement for a man with both a law degree AND an MBA, who has two kids in college and whose own father held a Ph.D. Not that there's anything wrong with that - hats off to the Santorum family for their academic achievements. And for those who would pillory the deposed Senator and crack presidential candidate excessively, let's be clear that there's nothing wrong with NOT earning a liberal arts degree - people are smart in different ways, and the real failure of our education system is that we've placed such an emphasis on training future office workers that individuals with different sets of talents are overwhelmingly the ones who fall through the cracks.

What's worse though: wanting everyone to have some form of secondary education (Obama), or protecting that privilege for your family but insisting that others can do without it?

More reading pleasure after the jump...

Krugman's Malpractice

Let me start this by first saying that I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Krugman, and read him very frequently as I consider him to be the leading economic thinker on the left and a one of the leading leftist intellectuals at the moment. That being said, Krugman is very good at properly diagnosing the problem, but then will totally manipulate the cause to whatever agenda he is promoting. His usual tactics are ignoring the long term, and looking for the slightest hint of anything anti-Keynesian to assign all fault with.

In "Pain Without Gain" he starts by really laying out how terrible the recession is in Europe, all true since he is just describing current conditions. So far, honest. Then this:

Worse yet, European leaders — and quite a few influential players here — are still wedded to the economic doctrine responsible for this disaster.

Read Stephen's rebuttal after the jump...

CR Reading List: Shun the Non-Believer!

Stephen posted the article mentioned herein to our facebook page over the weekend, which prompted my confusion. Why would a committed economic conservative like Steve post an article that fails to make a compelling case for any of the basic assumptions underlying the intense Republican opposition to President Obama? Read the original article here. My thoughts below:

Republicans have never done a particularly good job of concealing their efforts to paint Barack Obama as a radical left-wing socialist who doesn't believe in American greatness and wants to fundamentally transform the very nature of our country. I used to think this was to manipulate the Tea Party and other elements of the GOP grassroots. Increasingly, however, I'm not so sure.

It seems that even the party elites and other conservative thought-makers really, actually believe this stuff. Honestly I'm not sure how else to explain Fred Barnes (of The Weekly Standard)'s weird, post-factual account of the recently-released Obama Budget for Fiscal Year 2013.

Read Barnes' take here (The Real Obama - 2/27/12 issue)

More radical socialism after the jump...

Just When You Thought the Culture Wars Were Over...

I came across an interesting article during my lunch break today about how Republicans and Democrats alike are both eager to turn the recent dispute over health care coverage for birth control into a big-time election year issue.

The contraceptive fight is not the only indication that social issues have returned with a vengeance. The past three weeks have also seen the nation’s leading breast cancer research foundation defund a leading provider of breast cancer screenings over an issue (abortion) that has nothing to do with breast cancer, then restore that funding after succumbing to intense public pressure.And while it’s becoming increasingly clear that almost nobody likes Mitt Romney, does anyone really think it’s a coincidence that Rick Santorum has catapulted to the top of GOP primary polls? This recent flap over “religious freedom” could not be any more in his wheelhouse.  

The difference between this and prior culture war battles, however, is that for arguably the first time, public opinion has taken a hard left turn away from the conservative viewpoint.

"There is Nobody in this Country Who Got Rich on His Own"

After watching the below video, sent to him by Matt, Stephen was so enraged that he needed to respond to what he called "utter horseshit." As a man who doesn't use the word horseshit lightly, now is his time to refute this garbage. Here's the article that made Stephen so mad that he was ready to dump toxic waste into the Hillsborough River just to get back at Matt.

First, I'd like to start by agreeing with Elizabeth Warren, yes the wealthy did not spontaneously pop into existence. But does that really prove your argument or anything you really stand for? Actually, the way I see it it's painful to the liberal movement to remind us all of the Social Contract (which this argument plays off).

1 - Leave it to liberal "intellectuals" to reignite a debate that was settled in the mid-1700's. Yes, I understand the Social Contract, we all come together into society because alone we cannot provide all the goods society can. In return, we sacrifice some things. Fine, but I can't see how that leads to progressive liberalism, Matt if you would be so kind please explain.

Read the rest of Stephen's argument and check out Matt's response after the jump...

CR Reading List: Oh SNAP! In Defense of Food Stamps...

We're debuting a new format here at Conflict Revolution: the CR Reading List. Each week, Stephen and I will post an article we've read recently, and then write a brief statement placing that article in context. Responses will follow - and it could get ugly. I lead off this week by defending the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) - also known as food stamps.

From Newt Gingrich's recent exhortation for African-Americans to "demand jobs, not food stamps" to Rick Santorum's pledge to scale back the program significantly if elected President (keep dreaming, buddy), it seems that food assistance has become the latest front in the long-running conservative war against the American social safety net.

Read the LA Times Op-Ed that inspired this post

You would think that the self-avowed party of economic growth would want the citizens of its country to be as productive as possible – it’s awfully hard to work when you’re hungry. And before Stephen makes the Darwinian argument that people will be more motivated to work if they don’t know where their next meal is going to come from (as if this is a good thing), I’ll pre-empt that by noting that 40 percent of food stamp recipients are already employed but don’t make enough money to cover their expenses. For many who have seen their wages decline or disappear altogether – including an increasing amount of formerly middle-class households – food stamps are essential to keeping individuals and families from falling into economic disarray.

CR Does Sports: Celebrating the Giants Super Bowl Victory

SPECIAL TO CONFLICT REVOLUTION: It was a Super Monday for Matt Buccelli and Stephen Siena. As previously noted, the authors of this blog have found a way to reconcile their many political differences through mutual fanhood of the New York Football Giants - for a whole year, the Giants are now champions of the football universe. Read our thoughts on our moment of sporting glory below.

Posted by Matt (2/6/12):

It's a pretty remarkable feeling when one of your favorite sports teams wins a championship. That may sound obvious, but so does saying it would be great to spend a week in Tahiti. That doesn't make it any easier to articulate or imagine until you're actually there.

Everything is better when your team wins. Your clothes look nicer, your shoes more expensive. The crowded bus you normally ride to work is empty for some reason. The person behind the counter at your go-to breakfast place puts butter instead of cream cheese on your bagel - normally a massive faux pas - and you shrug it off and tip her anyway. You come home to a house full of empty beer cans and rearranged furniture from your Super Bowl party, and you don't really mind cleaning it up.

More Super Bowl reaction after the jump...

Should the Keystone XL Pipeline Be Constructed?

Two weeks ago, President Obama was forced to rule on the Keystone XL pipeline. He had hoped to push the proposal off until 2013 when election year politics would not play a part. However, pressed to make a decision, the President argued he did not have enough time to the project's environmental impacts fully - and therefore rejected the project. Since the pipeline hits home on an issue Matt and I both feel strongly about -- the US' energy future -- and it came up in our previous debate on Solyndra (which you can catch up on here), we decided to tackle this issue in a complete post.

Opening Statement by Stephen (1/30/12):

Rejecting Keystone XL shows us so much about the liberal agenda. It is anti-jobs, anti-consumer, and pro-environmental crusades (but not even good at that). Honestly, the debate seems so one sided, I'm really looking forward to seeing what reasons there are for not constructing this. Here's why we should have:

1 – The pipeline would have employed 13,000 Americans to construct it, 7,000 manufacturing jobs, and 118,000 spin-off jobs. This is in addition to all the businesses that would prosper along the route. At a time when unemployment is at 8.5%, why wouldn't we like this? Even Obama's own jobs council advised that the US must embrace an “all-inapproach” to the energy sector, and further went on to promote safe development of pipelines. #jobcreationfail

More after the jump...