…is that of helping our defeated enemies rebuild and letting them have face, rather than colonializing them or simply leaving them to fester in ruins.

When we won the Cold War, and the former Soviet Socialist Republics as well as the Iron Curtain countries gained their independence from underneath the heavy thumb of Russia, we could have left Moscow to fend for itself, but instead we poured the largesse of the American People into the task of helping them get back on their feet.

Perhaps in Russia’s case, we made a mistake.

Witness their invasion of Georgia, and as Caroline Glick sums up so well, the effects the entire affair, including the lackluster U.S. response to same, may well have on much of the rest of the world, including the Middle East.

Georgia can now claim membership in an exclusive club whose other members include a number of Cubans of Bay of Pigs fame, the South Vietnamese, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and who knows, maybe one day the Taiwanese!

But I digress.

Russia has been becoming increasingly uppity since Putin first arrived at the helm and is continuing to do so under his puppet, Dmitry Medvedev.

Can you imagine, they’re even threatening possible air strikes in Poland should that country manifest its agreement with the U.S. to install a missile interceptor base on its soil.

“Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent,” Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, was quoted as saying.

He added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia’s military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them.” Nogovitsyn that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, he said, according to Interfax.

At a news conference earlier Friday, Nogovitsyn had reiterated Russia’s frequently stated warning that placing missile-defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic would bring an unspecified military response. But his subsequent reported statement substantially stepped up a war of words.

Where is the late, great Ronald Reagan when we need him!?

…the very fact that the likes of a Barack Obama being even remotely considered for, let alone being an official candidate for, the office of the President of the United States of America is a sign that our country is in dire straits where any semblances of sanity, common sense or so much as the most fleeting perception of reality figure into the scheme of things.

It has nothing whatever to do with his skin color, his age or even his experience, or lack thereof, in politics and everything to do with the things he says, his complete lack of honesty, those things he purports to represent and the various details of his background and the mentors and influences within.

Liberals can say what they want in response to speculation that a major reason Obama came out over Hillary Clinton during the primary season was his skin color, but face it, that speculation is spot-on. The left will call you a racist for uttering such a sentiment, your actual beliefs notwithstanding, but even given a variety of other reasons, including the more-than-accurate observation that most Americans are quite weary of the Clintons, the fact remains that it’s the truth.

I’ve heard many blacks, for example, say that they are planning to vote for B. Hussein Obama for the sole reason that he is a black man, and to their way of thinking it’s about time we had a black President. White liberals say they’ll vote for him because a vote for John McCain would be a vote for another Bush Administration, but that’s not the only reason…

The liberal mainstream media, along with their portside following, take whatever opportunities they can get away with to infer that the only reason any caucasion would not vote for Obama is racism.

Of course.

In the 12 August 2008 Best Of The Web Today James Taranto links to a New York Magazine Article by Patricia J. Williams that implies just that in its own liberal-reasoned way.

Patricia Williams, a law professor at Columbia, has proved that skeptics of Barack Obama are racist. The evidence is close to home–right there in her imagination. In New York magazine, she explains:

On a short flight to New York recently, I was sitting behind two white, well-dressed twentysomethings chattering loudly and uninhibitedly about going to clubs and travel plans and the possibility of living in New Jersey. Then came the question: “So who are you voting for?”

“I was for Hillary, but now . . . I’m kind of undecided,” volunteered the first woman.

“Are you a Democrat?” asked the second.

“Yeah. But I think I might go with McCain. It’s just that, well, I don’t know. You know.” Her voice dropped. I leaned forward to hear better. “You kind of hate to say it aloud, but . . .” Here her voice dropped again, to a murmur lost in the roar of the jet engines, and I missed whatever came next.

Let’s start with this concession: I have no idea what that young woman actually said. In a perfect world, I suppose that would be the end of the story and I would go back to minding my own business. In the context of contemporary political discourse, however, it did cross my mind that if this conversation were presented on one of those “finish the sentence” cultural-literacy tests, then pretty much every American, of whatever creed, color, or class, would have exactly the same guess as to how the woman completed her thought.

I think there’s some consensus, in other words, about the one thing in America we really “hate to say” aloud. Yet by refraining from saying audibly that-which-must-not-be-spoken, was the young woman’s political choice rendered rational, neutral, pure?

Conversely, if I were to spell it out here, would I be the one accused of “playing the race card”?

That’s it! These ladies are racist because (1) eavesdropper Williams fills in the blank in their conversation with something invidious, and (2) she imagines that everyone else fills in the blank the same way. Just imagine if President Bush had used similar methodology to determine that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. People would be calling for his impeachment!

When a liberal or a black acquaintance hints that I may be a bigot because I don’t endorse Obama, I invariably point out that should J.C. Watts run for President, I would vote for him without reservation.

This never fails to be ignored, including by those who know fully well whom J.C. Watts is, because the liberal rule of thumb is that if a black man is not a Democrat, he is not only not a true black man, he is also a traitor to all black people everywhere.

Go figure.

That said, though John McCain (you know, the guy to whom the MSM gives only a fraction of the campaign coverage they give Obama, even while B. Hussein is on vacation) is only my choice for POTUS because he is the lesser of two evils, the Arizona senator is, exponentially, a more realistic and certainly more desirable Presidential candidate than Obama, pale skin and all.

…Pelosi and Company, the Democrats who are presently in control of Congress, have chosen to leave the American people in the lurch by heading off on vacation without first taking the time to try and solve the current fuel kerfuffle (despite the frustrated objections of a whole passle of their Republican colleagues). Oh, yeah, they have dropped a few half derriered ideas along the lines of depleting the strategic oil reserve for a few seconds’ dubious relief, exhorting the oil companies to drill empty or nearly empty oil leases, and extracting more money from the coffers of the oil companies, completely ignoring the concept of said concerns passing these additional costs on to the consumer, thereby nullifying the added expense to themselves, but hey – who ever said today’s Democrat politicians believe they’re paid to think things through?

I’m reminded of the budget debacle during Bubba’s first term in the White House, when that President repeatedly vetoed the then Republican controlled Congress’ efforts to put forward their budget, and the Democrats all going home on Christmas vacation while the Republicans remained in Washington attempting to hammer out a budget that would meet with Clinton’s approval – kinda’ showed us which party is more dedicated to We, the People, didn’t it? The only thing that saved the day back then was Alan Greenspan’s threat to raise interest rates during an election year if he didn’t have a budget on his desk post-haste – on that note, Clinton, both abruptly and conveniently, misplaced his veto pen and the next budget went through.

So now they’ve demonstrated in no uncertain terms that, whether they hold the minority or the majority in Congress, they will walk out on us without so much as a how-do-you-do because their vacations are more important to them than the work for which we pay them (you know, the “work” for which they periodically vote themselves pay increases whether their performance warrants such raises or not).

We can hardly expect the leftpard to change its spots at this stage of the game, so…

What I find most irksome about this entire thing is that, despite the majority of even their own constituency demanding that we consider drilling our own oil in order to relieve the shortage that is generating the higher gas prices, Pelosi and her House retinue have refused to even debate the subject with the more sensible representatives on the right side of the aisle, let alone among themselves. It seems that the enviro-extremists have infinitely more say among the Democrats than the constituency at whose pleasure these critters serve. For the Democrats in Congress, politics trumps both the will and the well-being of the American people.

Of course, while preventing the oil companies from drilling where there is plenty of black gold, Alaska tea, they blame these same companies for high prices, completely ignoring the facts:

We live in a market based, supply and demand economy. When a commodity is in short supply, in oil’s case this being when the countries we buy from limit recovery quantities and our own domestic drilling is not what it could be (by government mandate, not by private sector choice – Hmmm, where is the Constitution in all this?), prices go up. This has nothing to do with the President, whom the Democrats naturally blame, him being Bush and all, and little to do with our own oil companies, whose prices adjust to the cost of a barrel of oil. If you’re running a candy store and the wholesale cost of a Nestle’s Crunch goes up .25, you’re going to raise your own price a quarter a bar, right?

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi and drilling, I would be amiss without linking to a great post on the subject over at Mike’s America.

Having said my piece on this as relates to today’s irresponsible, purely politically motivated Democrat majority in Congress, let’s go back several days to a Walter E. Williams (yep, the guy who’s become one of my favorite all time columnists over the last few months) column about the environmentalist moonbats’ influence on government that is totally on point and highly relevant to the topic at hand.

Let’s face it. The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it’s a different story with groups such as Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and The Nature Conservancy. When they speak, Congress listens. Unlike the average American, they are well organized, loaded with cash and well positioned to be a disobedient congressman’s worse nightmare. Their political and economic success has been a near disaster for our nation.

For several decades, environmentalists have managed to get Congress to keep most of our oil resources off-limits to exploration and drilling. They’ve managed to have the Congress enact onerous regulations that have made refinery construction impossible. Similarly, they’ve used the courts and Congress to completely stymie the construction of nuclear power plants. As a result, energy prices are at historical highs and threaten our economy and national security.

Read the entire column here.

The Cap & Trade bit’s a little scary, wouldn’t you say?