Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

• How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich | Politics News | Rolling Stone

  The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy." Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?" The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!" The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

• Steve Jobs’s Real Genius : The New Yorker

  ** Great read - Gladwell on Steve Jobs ** THE TWEAKER - The real genius of Steve Jobs. by Malcolm Gladwell

• 5 Lessons of U.S. Plan for a Permanent Military Presence in Australia - Max Fisher - International - The Atlantic

  The U.S. has arranged with Australia to install a permanent military presence near the northern Australian town of Darwin, a move that signals shifts in President Obama's foreign policy and the U.S. vision for its role in the world. Obama will formally announce the new base with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard during his visit to Australia next week, the Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning.

• Tebow or not Tebow, that is the question - FT.com

  Do you know how to Tebow? Unless you follow American football, you might not know what I’m talking about. But Tebowing is all the rage in the US today – and anyone with more than a passing interest in our society should take note. Tebowing owes its origins to a God-fearing football player named Tim Tebow (pronounced: Tee-boh), who celebrates good fortune on the field by dropping to one knee and lowering his head in prayer – assuming a pose not unlike that of Rodin’s “The Thinker”, if “The Thinker” got off his pedestal, put on pads and rested his forehead on his fist.

• Mitt Romney: I Won't Let Iran Get Nukes - WSJ.com

  ** A terribly ignorant, idiotic and naive op-ed from Romney on Iran. Amazing to hear the war drums beating already... conveniently as Israel steps up its settlement activities ** The International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report this week makes clear what I and others have been warning about for too long: Iran is making rapid headway toward its goal of obtaining nuclear weapons. Successive American presidents, including Barack Obama, have declared such an outcome to be unacceptable. But under the Obama administration, rhetoric and policy have been sharply at odds, and we're hurtling toward a major crisis involving nuclear weapons in one of the most politically volatile and economically significant regions of the world.

• Iran’s nuclear capability: How to stop Iran without bombing them - Slate Magazine

  The “Iran problem” can be summed up as follows: The Iranians really seem to be building nuclear weapons and, while they’re not there yet (an important caveat), they have everything they need to get there soon. It would be seriously bad news if they took that final step. Yet a pre-emptive strike on their nuclear facilities would set back their program only slightly, boost popular support for their regime, and likely unleash a spree of terrorist attacks and economic retaliation with devastating effects worldwide.

• U.S. may sell precision-guided bombs to UAE: source | Reuters

  The U.S. government may soon announce plans for a large sale of precision-guided bombs to the United Arab Emirates, a source familiar with the arms sales plans said late on Thursday, as tensions mounted with Iran over its nuclear program. The Pentagon is considering a significant sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions made by Boeing Co, adding to other recent arms deals with the UAE. These include the sale of 500 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles about which U.S. lawmakers were notified in September.

• Israeli army says accidentally kills West Bank settler | Reuters

  An Israeli soldier killed a Jewish settler rabbi in the occupied West Bank on Friday after mistaking him for a Palestinian militant as he drove to dawn prayers, the army and settler leaders said. Troops set up a checkpoint near Beit Hagai settlement after receiving reports of a car "driving suspiciously," and one of them opened fire on the speeding vehicle after it failed to heed orders to halt, the army said in a statement.

• Obama’s Influential Mideast Envoy to Resign - NYTimes.com

  ** Finally the ridiculously biased Zionist Dennis Ross is leaving his post ** Dennis B. Ross, a seasoned diplomat who has been one of President Obama’s most influential advisers on Iran and the Middle East, announced Thursday that he would leave the White House, at a time when Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are frozen and tensions over Iran are flaring up anew.

• Egypt closes Great Pyramid on 11/11/11 – USATODAY.com

  The authority's head Mustafa Amin said in a statement Friday that the pyramid of Khufu, also known as Cheops, would be closed to visitors until Saturday morning for "necessary maintenance." The closure follows a string of unconfirmed reports in local media that unidentified groups would try to hold "Jewish" or "Masonic" rites on the site to take advantage of mysterious powers coming from the pyramid on the rare date.

• Two blasts hit Egypt’s gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan

  An Egyptian pipeline sending gas to Israel and Jordan was hit by two explosions early Thursday, Egypt’s security services and the official news agency said. A first blast occurred around 1:00 am (2300 GMT Wednesday) 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, a security source said. A second unexplained explosion took place near a pumping station in the same sector, the official news agency MENA said, adding that the army was deploying in the region.

• Newt Gingrich’s war on Republican debate moderators - The Washington Post

  If there’s one thing Newt Gingrich has made clear in recent debates, it’s that he doesn’t have much regard for debate moderators. Gingrich’s duel with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo at Wednesday night’s Republican debate in Michigan was perhaps the tensest exchange between Gingrich and a debate moderator to date, but it was simply the latest in a long line of them. Gingrich has taken on the press at almost every debate (he actually did it twice with Bartiromo on Wednesday) in what can’t be described as anything less than a calculated effort.

• Dubai's MBC says sorry over movie nudity mistake - Media - ArabianBusiness.com

  Dubai-based TV network MBC on Wednesday said it had launched an investigation into how a movie containing nudity was broadcast unedited earlier this week. Into The Wild, directed by Sean Penn, was shown on its MBC Max channel on Monday but scenes showing partial nudity prompted many viewers to complain on social networking site Twitter.

• Obama’s Christmas Tree Tax? Agriculture Department scraps plan for 15-cent fee on growers.

  The effort, which was scrapped by the administration on Wednesday, the same day it was set to go into effect, would have imposed the fee on most American growers for each fresh-cut Christmas tree sold this holiday season. ABC News explains that the proposal was backed by the very growers that would have had to pay the fee, and that the money would have gone to a new marketing board set up by the tree growing industry, much like the "Got Milk" dairy marketing campaign or the beef industry’s "What’s for Dinner" commercials.

• Supreme Court confronts a trove of constitutional questions in case involving passport law - The Washington Post

  If landmark Supreme Court rulings sometimes come in unlikely cases, the justices’ consideration Monday of a law that gives 50,000 Americans born in Jerusalem the option of listing “Israel” as their birthplace seems to fit the bill. In a little more than an hour, lawyers and the justices debated whether the president has sole authority to guide the nation’s foreign policy, whether Congress is an equal — or perhaps superior— partner and whether the Supreme Court even has a role to play in sorting it out.

• Chinese counterfeit parts found in U.S. weapons - The Washington Post

  U.S. officials say a problem that has long plagued luxury handbag makers such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton is now afflicting the Pentagon’s high-end weapons systems: cheap Chinese counterfeits. A months-long congressional probe found at least 1,800 cases of counterfeit electronics in U.S. weapons, with the total number of suspect parts exceeding 1 million.

• Saudi Arabia named among top G-20 emissions offenders - Energy - ArabianBusiness.com

  Saudi Arabia was named on Monday as one of the worst performers in the G-20 for its level of carbon emissions in relation to economic growth. A report published by Price waterhouseCoopers said the kingdom's emissions grew almost twice as fast as its GDP.

• On electoral map, Obama still has routes to victory in 2012, despite low ratings - The Washington Post

  There’s no question that President Obama faces one of the most challenging political environments in modern memory as he prepares to try to win a second term next November. But with one year to go before the 2012 election, a state-by-state examination of the battleground map suggests that the president still retains several plausible pathways to the 270 electoral votes he needs.

• Israel’s secular activists start to fight back - FT.com

  In this city, however, the sight and sound of women singing in the street is seen by a large and increasingly influential part of the local population as a provocation. Members of Jerusalem’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community believe that men should not listen to the female voice in song, because it may arouse impure thoughts. The same goes for public images of women on advertising billboards and buses. Such pictures have become hard to find in Jerusalem, as more companies shun female models, fearing that posters will be vandalised by zealous members of the ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, community.

• Mossad site down after Anonymous warning - FT.com

  The websites of the Israeli military, the Mossad intelligence agency and the Shin Bet domestic security service crashed on Sunday, triggering speculation that the three pillars of Israel’s national security apparatus had fallen victim to a hacking attack. The websites broke down just days after a statement issued by Anonymous, the shadowy group of hackers and online activists, threatened to “strike back” at Israel over the country’s continuing maritime blockade against the Gaza Strip.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.