Welcome to the Tuesday edition of your open thread. The floor is yours.
The Washington Post still does some journalism (even if their op ed section is pitiful). Dana Priest and William Arkin have a multi-part series on the government intelligence operations created since 9/11. It’s a must-read and really too long to excerpt to give it justice. Go read it! Here’s a preview:
The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
…
The investigation’s other findings include:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.
Are we getting anything for all this money? I certainly don’t feel any safer. I think we’ve been lucky that most of the wannabe terrorists recently have been bumbling and inept.
It appears that in the last few weeks, Democrats have started regaining their feet a bit in their arguments. Democrats are poised to pass the unemployment insurance extension today once Robert Byrd’s replacement is sworn in today. Republicans are starting to get hammered for their deficit hypocrisy – tax cuts are free but unemployment must be offset. Perhaps this is the reason for the change in Gallup’s generic Congressional ballot?
In the same week the U.S. Senate passed a major financial reform bill touted as reining in Wall Street, Democrats pulled ahead of Republicans, 49% to 43%, in voters’ generic ballot preferences for the 2010 congressional elections.
Polls keep showing that people are worried about the economy and they’re fed up with Democrats (and their endless handwringing) but people still blame Bush and the Republicans for the poor economy. The best things that Democrats could do is pass more stimulus, so of course it won’t happen. November will be a real knockdown dragout fight I think.