Eagle in Winter, Bear in Summer

The Neocons are scared out of their mind. They have to be. The last five days showed the world just how empty and meaningless US power is outside of the delusions of the Kagans and Kristols of the world. The Russians stomped a potential NATO member flat, ignored the UN, ignored the US, and finally cut a deal...a deal brokered by the French.

The US had absolutely nothing to say about the outcome of the conflict. Bush was at the Olympics. Condi was on vacation. Nameless One emerged from the Nameless Lair to give McCain his talking points. McCain peed in his pants, saying the Russians were the scariest thing ever.

After nearly 7 years of hearing how The Great Brown Beturbaned Horde was going to force Sharia Law on the Dhimmiverse with their Terrah Beams, when the Russians actually march in with a TANK COLUMN on an idle Thursday, the Neocons are beside themselves, reacting with kneejerk shock and empty rhetoric.

US power was utterly useless here. American values, American pride, America's troops, America's freedom-spreading Tom Clancy powered Hyperstate meant precisely jack-shit to the Russians, who called our bluff, bitchslapped Georgia like an abused spouse, and now are busy telling all the world "The clumsy bitch fell down the stairs again" and are daring us to say otherwise.

And there's nothing we can say. We've got our own abusive relationship with Iraq and Afghanistan, having killed hundreds of thousands and occupied both countries for years all over lie after lie after lie. The Russians occupy Georgia for five days, and all we can do honestly is say "Well, um...yeah." Anything else elicits the response you saw the world give us: We didn't factor into any goddamn thing. That's got to be outright depressing to the Neocons.

Convinced that we were forging our own reality, the Russians reminded the world that we're a bunch of loudmouthed jagoffs who are hopelessly stuck in the Middle East fighting a war we can't win, that has cost us trillions of dollars, our world standing, our sanity and our economy. The captain of the football team just got pantsed in front of the entire high school, and he's wearing Aquaman underoos.

And after telling us we must be scared of a country with a military about 1% of ours, a country with a real military waltzed in, beat up our proxy, and left. We're a joke now. Somebody finally called our bluff.

Who will call it next? Somebody will certainly do so now. Maybe China. Maybe Iran. Maybe Russia again. It's far past time for us to get out of Iraq and change our entire foreign policy agenda. If McSame is President, we will be at war because somebody will yank our chain and he will respond like the bully he is. If Obama is President...maybe we can get our standing back.

Maybe. Given where our economy is heading, it's a moot point. Our time is over. The next few years will be full of harsh realities for America and its people. It's going to be bad, folks, very very bad. Our economy is on the brink right now, and only funny Fed money is keeping us in Big Macs and mani/pedis. It's going to fall apart in 2009, and we're going to land on our faces hard.

If McSame is in charge, those harsh realities will lead to a global war. More than ever I am convinced of that. He will lose his temper and decide we HAVE to have oil and power in the Middle East for America's very survival. We will be in a bloody shooting war that will engulf the globe and will last for a generation...or it may be brutally short and nuclear.

If Obama is in charge, we will still have a tough road ahead. I foresee unemployment in the double digits, and Americans really, really hurting across the country. The world will be facing a recession, and America I honestly believe will be in a borderline depression. but a way out of it that doesn't involve the draft.

The lesson of August 8 is that America is at a crossroads. We can go with another path, or we can go straight down the road to Hell that we have been on. The world has served us notice.

It's up to us to choose a path in November. Cheesy, but that's what's at stake. When this country hits the skids over the next four years, who do you honestly want in charge, the guy who thinks the path that got us into this mess is the way out, or the guy with the new ideas?