Akkam’s Razor

• Joe Bageant: Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus - What voters are expected to believe is that after a 30-year class war against the bottom 90% of income earners, the source of their troubles are black rappers and inner city fathers and not criminality on Wall Street or a corrupt political system. The road to the White House over the past 30 years has been paved by pretending to believe the absurdity that the individuals who pull the levers of power over people's lives are named Willie Horton, Sister Souljah and Ludicrous, and not Robert Rubin, Phil Gramm and Hank Paulson.

Update: As expected, the Democrats caved, including local Representatives Pat Murphy and Joe Sestak.  The roll call in the House can be found here, and the Senates tally forthcoming.

In the spring of 1987,  the year of the 200th anniversary of the first Constitutional Convention, President Ronald Reagan began calling for another.  Reagan had been frustrated by Congress’ failure to brovide him with a Balanced Budget Ammendment.  Reagan’s solution was to call for a new Constitutional Convention, as described (but never tested) in Article V of the Constitution, where each state would get delegates to propose a balanced budget ammendment, and then pass it on to the individual state legislatures for approval.  Reagan succeeded in getting agreement from 32 of the required 2/3 of the States, but was eventually blocked by an unlikely coalition of Constitutional defenders, fearful of the seismic changes [pdf] regarding preemptive federalism and the erosion of states’ rights.

• Glenn Greenwald - Salon:The president's escalating war rhetoric on Iran
  (tags: iran war propaganda Bush)
• File Icons | WordPress Designpraxis
  File Icons adds icons via CSS to your links.
  (tags: WordPress Plugin icons plugins)
• Micro Persuasion: The 4-Hour Workweek - Behind the Meme
  (tags: marketing books blogging PR blogs book social)

• Glenn Greenwald - Salon
  “Previously, reporting on “what the government does, not just what it says” was the basic function of political journalism. But these days, journalists who actually do that are so rare — they stand out so conspicuously — that they win Pulitzer Prizes fo
  (tags: pulitzer bostonglobe signingstatements charliesavage journalism)

• My Way News - Ex-Cheney Aide Details Media Tactics
  The Libby Trial continues to deliver: Cheney’s former aide details the machinations about how our “democracy” and the “free press” operate.
  (tags: dickcheney scooterlibby timrussert meetthepress cathiemartin valerieplame joewilson WMD Iraq Iran Niger yellowcake uranium)
• The Weekend Economist “Quaerere Verum”: #22 The new “Silk Road”
  “Although you could easily write a book about all the similarities between ancient Rome and the United States, one thing is certain; the global economic paradigmatic shift is forcing the old Pax Americana into a slow retreat.”
  (tags: US China economics government history Iraq Politics rome america)

• DVHAA - Museum Collection
  The website of the Delaware Valley Historical Aircraft Association.
  (tags: museum aircraft)
• Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Rod Dreher: “Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation this”?
  “I turn 40 next month — middle aged at last — a time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed so painfully.”
  (tags: Liberal conservative Bush Iraq Politics)
• Populair.eu - Where do you get all those cool crazy links from?
  A big ‘ol social networking aggregator.
  (tags: links popular web2.0 sites internet lists)