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...


2) In case no one noticed, the stimulus worked

Partisans Ignoring Stimulus' Success (The Hill)

Token Fox News Democrat Juan Williams had a piece today in The Hill (People Magazine for losers) defending the $787 billion economic stimulus President Obama signed shortly after taking office in 2009. What's sad is that it even needs defending.

Our economy was on the brink of Depression when Obama was sworn in. We were losing nearly 800,000 jobs per month (that's equivalent to the entire population of seven different US states, and the working-age population of several more). By pumping money into the economy, the stimulus essentially put a band-aid on a gaping wound, which is now healing slowly. Could that wound have healed faster? Maybe, had there been more money at the outset (i.e. a larger band-aid); part of the reason reactionary politicians and media bloviators were able to engender opposition to the stimulus is that it didn't make the economy boom on its own. What it did do is stabilize an extremely sick patient, giving that patient an opportunity to make a full and robust recovery - that's where we are now.

But the best point Williams makes is that the stimulus was composed of nearly 40 percent tax cuts (he falsely says the bulk of it was tax cuts, but still). Don't expect to hear this mentioned out loud by Republicans who claim the stimulus failed.

3) When did being ignorant become cool?

GOP to Navy: Use More Oil, Demand More Money (Grist)

Two weeks ago, Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the US Navy's 2013 budget request. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus got an earful from GOP lawmakers who criticized the Navy for accepting budget cuts and attempting to improve its operations and cut costs by being more energy efficient. If you had a limited amount of money and could cut back on a significant expense without it hurting your overall effectiveness and well-being, that should be a no-brainer right?

Not if you had a creditor who insisted you keep taking more of his/her money, I guess.

The current GOP response to any efforts that involve not wasting energy hearken a bit back to 2008, when John McCain's campaign mocked Barack Obama for suggesting that Americans help alleviate the burden of high gas prices by insuring that their tires were properly inflated. For about a week, McCain waved around a tire gauge to derisively represent "Obama's energy plan." Aside from the general scariness of John McCain waving around anything, it was obviously a bit ridiculous, and somewhat desperate, to ridicule a politician promoting an effort to save energy at a time when gas prices had hit record highs.

As then-candidate Obama said in response, "it's like these guys take pride in being ignorant."

Given that this was before the rise of the Tea Party, for today's crop of GOP congressman, the same words wouldn't be too far off.