This Guy Blogs for AOL

I stumbled upon this in my daily tour through the right-wing blogosphere: “Congress Weakens National Security.” This guy is a main writer for the AOL Elections Blog — a pretty high-traffic blog — and he gets to write this stuff. I hate right-wing bloggers, sure, but a site that wants to be a resource to the general public should probably try to set the bar a little higher than this:

The next time you hear of the current Congress referred to as “do-nothing,” tell the person who said it that they have done quite a lot — they have managed to weaken our national security to the point that we are sitting ducks.

It started with their initial push to extract out troops from Iraq. It continued when Nancy Pelosi went on her whirlwind tour, visiting dictators who despise America and attack their neighbors without fear, thus showing said dictator that he can do what he wants whenever he wants. They also want our borders left wide open with free and open access to anyone who wishes to come through: jihadists, drug runners, etc. leaving us open to attack from within.

This week, they’ve finally gone for the gusto:

Apart from prosecuting the global war on terror, creating a comprehensive missile defense shield is the Pentagon’s most important job in the 21st century. Yet some in Congress are trying to kill it.

Why is Congress trying to defund the U.S. missile defense shield in Eastern Europe - where it will protect not just our allies but the U.S. as well?

The Democrats have hated the idea of missile defense since the day Ronald Reagan brought it up. The dubbed it “Star Wars” and said it would never work. They’ve tried time and again to defund it and now that they have the power, they may successfully accomplish their goal this time.
The Democrats have left us as “sitting ducks” because of all that they have done! And what did they do? So far, to paraphrase this professional political blogger, they thought about ending a war in Iraq but haven’t affected its course at all, their Speaker took a trip to unfriendly countries in the Middle East, they have not successfully fixed the problem of border security, and — now, gasp — they want to defund Star Wars.

Take a look at the list and ask which of these could actually change our national security from “safe” to “sitting duck.” In fact, although the blogger characterizes “do-nothing congress” as a misnomer, his evidence supports it — and disproves his new theory. Each of his complaints are in areas in which the status quo was crafted more by the old GOP Congress (and the current GOP President) than by the new Democratic Congress. Is his memory that short?

No, what’s more likely is that AOL hired a lazy copy-writer whom they have tasked with transposing talking points from conservative bloggers and talkers a certain number of times each day. Their model involves breaking no intellectual or journalistic boundaries; they hope to be just one more rung in the vast game of talking points “telephone” that dumbs things down for the rest of us. I’m sure they’ll do quite well in search engines and social bookmarks, and that’s their bottom line.

Occasionally, I’ll be writing posts like this. A lot of blogs focus on the forest of politics; I hope to add something by focusing a bit more on specific trees.