Welcome to the Overnight News Digest
The OND is published each night around midnight, Eastern Time.
The originator of OND was Magnifico.
Current Contributers are ScottyUrb, Bentliberal, wader, Interceptor7, rfall, JML9999 and NeonVincent.
Stories and Headlines
- Tax Cuts Forever?
(The Nation) - The Republicans have spent two years—an entire election cycle and postelection victory lap—repeating with tourettic persistence dire warnings about the existential threat posed by large deficits and mounting government debt.
And yet, amazingly, these same Republicans (and a few conservative Democrats), who love to offer lectures about the necessity of shared sacrifice, also spent the week demanding that all the Bush tax cuts be made permanent, a policy that would increase the debt over the next ten years by an astounding $3.3 trillion. Occasionally, you would find politicians oscillating madly between these two positions in the same paragraph or media appearance, reaching its reductio ad absurdum with a blog post about Kent Conrad's views on the matter that George Stephanopoulos headlined: Sen. Conrad: Extend All Tax Cuts; Time to Get 'Serious' About Deficit.
This apparent contradiction makes sense only if you understand what has become so manifestly obvious that writing it out makes me bored and angry: conservatives do not care about deficits or the national debt. Nothing they have done over the past several decades—from the record deficits of the Reagan and Bush/DeLay years to their party-line opposition to nearly every legislative measure (public option healthcare reform, cap and trade) that would reduce the deficit—suggests otherwise ...
What Republicans do care about is defending the incomes of the country's wealthiest, distributing income upward and cutting taxes in order to make progressive governance impossible ...
They know that by extending the upper-income cuts now, not to mention the historically low (35 percent) rate of estate taxes, they have all but foreclosed the possibility of rates being raised in two years. Tax cuts today. Tax cuts tomorrow. Tax cuts forever.
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- WHO claims gains in global fight against malaria
The World Health Organization says a massive malaria control program since 2008 has helped reduce infections across Africa and eradicate the disease in Morocco and Turkmenistan. |
Just when you thought it was safe to sequester your carbon ...
- Scientist warns of quake risk from 'carbon capture'
Efforts to stem global warming by pumping emissions of carbon dioxide deep into the Earth's crust could trigger widespread earthquakes, a Stanford geophysicist warned Monday.
Although those quakes would not be particularly destructive, they would be widely felt and disruptive - and it would also cost billions of dollars to create thousands of disposal sites for the greenhouse gas, said Mark Zoback, one of the country's leading seismic experts.
His conclusion could have repercussions for research projects backed by the U.S. Department of Energy. So-called "carbon sequestration" or "carbon capture and storage" projects have focused on what could be done in regions of the country where coal-fired power plants emit billions of tons of carbon dioxide every year. |
- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange awaits bail appeal
The founder of whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, Julian Assange, will know by Thursday if he will be freed on bail.
Mr Assange remains in Wandsworth Prison after Swedish authorities appealed against a decision to grant him bail.
His lawyer Mark Stephens said about half the £240,000 bail money had been raised and the High Court appeal would be heard on Thursday at the latest.
Mr Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden where he denies sexually assaulting two women.BBC |
- US envoy Bill Richardson hopes to calm North Korea
Bill Richardson, governor of the US state of New Mexico, is travelling to North Korea on an unofficial diplomatic mission to ease regional tensions.
Mr Richardson, who has been to Pyongyang several times in recent years, said he hoped to persuade the North Koreans to "calm down a bit".
Tensions have been especially high between the two Koreas since the North shelled a South Korean island. |
My alibi is that I was working on the OND, what's yours?
- Bellagio casino in Las Vegas robbed of $1.5m in chips
An armed man stole at least $1.5m (£950,000) in casino chips from a craps table at the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas before escaping on a motorcycle, police have said.
The suspect entered the casino at 0350 local time wearing a motorcycle helmet and walked directly to the table ...
Strict controls over Las Vegas casinos may make it difficult to cash in the chips anywhere other than the Bellagio. |
- Intelligence Reports Offer Dim Views of Afghan War
WASHINGTON — As President Obama prepares to release a review of American strategy in Afghanistan that will claim progress in the nine-year-old war there, two new classified intelligence reports offer a more negative assessment and say there is a limited chance of success unless Pakistan hunts down insurgents operating from havens on its Afghan border.
The reports, one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan, say that although there have been gains for the United States and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle. American military commanders say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and resupply.
The findings in the reports, called National Intelligence Estimates, represent the consensus view of the United States’ 16 intelligence agencies, as opposed to the military, and were provided last week to some members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.
(NY Times)
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- Dream Act may come back to haunt the GOP
As Latino voters' clout grows, Republicans could come to regret their shift against the Dream Act, designed to give young illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
(LA Times) — After years of courting Latino voters with a softer tone on immigration, Republican leaders in Congress have all but abandoned that posture, risking what remains of GOP support among the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population.
The latest example is the near-unanimous opposition by Senate Republicans to the Dream Act, a measure that provides a way for some illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children to become citizens.
The bill once was seen as a bipartisan initiative that offered the GOP a bridge to Latino voters. But in a Senate debate last week, Republicans branded the measure as "amnesty," denouncing it as ripe for abuse. |
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Photo Essays from Photophilantrophy.org
I thought these photo essays (and accompanying short text) were very good, so I included a few of the pictures here and I invite you to click through to the site and check them out for yourself!
- Mexican internal migration: A Photo Essay
- by Josh Meltzer via photophilanthropy.org
- M-Lisada in Kampala, Uganda: A Photo Essay
By Eileen Roche, via photophilanthropy.org
- A Human Face in the Coral Triangle: Photo Essay
-By James Morgan, via photophilanthropy.org
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Thanks all! Please add your own stories in the comments.