July 29, 2011

This Week in National Insecurity: Debtageddon Edition

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctbto/4926598654/sizes/m/in/photostream/">Flickr/CTBTO</a>

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While you were watching The Town on Blu-Ray the DC debt-ceiling drama, a lot happened in the national security sphere. In this installment: We’re defenseless against default, would-be domestic terrorists do it wrong, a Russian diplomat rips red-staters, a Vets’ Hall of Fame inducts…Rick Scott, a fighter jet has gremlins, and the DOD outputs an epic cyber fail.

The sitrep:

• Yes, going into a debt default could make America less safe. Kind of a dilemma for conservative hawks.

• A Planned Parenthood clinic was firebombed in Texas. Terrorism? Perhaps. Al Qaeda? No, because they probably know better than to use diesel in a Molotov cocktail.

• In other “alleged domestic terror in Texas” news, a Muslim Army private was arrested near Fort Hood for conspiring to attack soldiers on the base with guns and explosives. And for possessing child pornography. It appears the soldier was also connected to a host of antiwar groups. Right-wing bloggers, commence cackling.

• What happens when you throw a Russian ambassador in a room with two hawkish Republican senators? Sound bites galore.

• Florida Governor Rick Scott appointed his old chief of staff to oversee a new state Veterans Hall of Fame. On the list of inductees: Rick Scott! And six Confederate ex-governors. And none of the state’s dozens of Medal of Honor recipients. Shockingly, this plan may change.

• After decades of delays and cost overruns, the Air Force’s top fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor, has a strange problem: It’s leaking anti-freeze into the pilots’ oxygen systems, making the aviators dangerously woozy during flights. It may take many more flight hours to identify the cause, at $44,000 an hour. And you thought your mechanic was expensive.

• The Pentagon launched its new cyber strategy website on Monday…the same day the GAO issued a report concluding that the DOD is dreadfully unprepared for a cyber attack. Evidently, the military is also dreadfully unprepared for negative media reports.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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