short of wandering the streets in a soiled adult diaper with a Tupperware helmet, wooden sword, and a trash can lid

Oh shit, so I guess my chances at the presidency are really gone huh?

OK, Chicken Little, take another pill:
"Mr. McCain said America and its allies should push for a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Russia's actions, even if it meets with an all-but-inevitable Russian veto. He also urged that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization convene an emergency session to consider an international peacekeeping force and revisit Georgia's request to become a NATO member." And "....Mr. McCain, who has already pushed for ousting Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized nations."

Hardly acts of war, and Georgia's chance of becoming a NATO member are zero, especially given current circumstances.

"NATO’s decision to withhold a Membership Action Plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia, and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision."

I agree that Georgia's chances of becoming a NATO member are zero, but they were before this happened too. That's the point: wtf is McCain doing proposing it?

3.
He'd have to explain for the definitive answer.

My guess is to send signals to both our NATO allies and to Russia that we view this seriously and will do more than just talk (but short of actual military conflict). Don't forget, Turkey borders Georgia too and they probably view this with trepidation, they probably appreciate a show of strength by NATO and the US. This, hopefully could help to keep Russia in check.

Tenuous, not tentative.

Also passed, not past. Jeez.

Here's how it works. "The Great Game", as it has been called for a century, is all about encircling Russia so that its vast natural resources don't connect with too many nice warm water ports to the south, which also happen to be in oil-rich lands. Who likes oil sold at a good price with few competitors? Why, Standard Oil, of course! Rockefellers. Who runs the country, and especially its foreign policy? Rockefellers.

Now here's how they do it. When a Republican gets into office, the "Oyal" Family makes sure that Kissinger gets a spot close to the Pres. When it's a Democrat, they pick Zbigniew Brzezinski. Both of these gentlemen happen to be very hawkish and interventionist, and see the little people of the world and their countries as mere pawns.

The only major difference between these two guys is that Zbig might want to sit down and talk with the Palestinians every now and then. But both will want to continue playing the Great Game of poking around at the Russian Bear.

Jon, most of the time I find you sort of delightfully batty. But 9 is pretty much correct start to finish.

9 & 10: Jon and apo, I think you are both delightfully batty.

Jay Rockefeller, for one, is in the pocket of the coal industry and delights in bashing big oil, and neither Kissinger nor Brezinski has had much influence in the past 8 years, both opposing the nonsense of Chimpy McBush.

Rather than Rockefeller manipulations, what we're seeing instead is much more mundane and insidious: the use of foreign policy alarms to justify enormous transfers of public resources (both tax revenues and IOUs that our kids must pay) to the defense industry and thence into private pockets, including the pockets of the Administration. The US is fast-becoming the world's largest kleptocracy, and a scale vaster than Putin's more obvious but much punier efforts.

Chest-beating pays political dividends (and creates hordes of uncritical followers, some evident above, who are hooked on the tribal hostility high), and military misadventures, especially expensive ones, are very profitable to the Defense/Intelligence industry and to Administration leaders. The US Treasury, coupled with its power to borrow and shift debts to the future), is the world's largest piggybank. Republicans certainly showed themselves as more adept than Dems in stealing from it and directing pork to their friends, and McCain and his advisers seem to be repeating the chest-thumping that worked so well for Bush after 9/11.

Dems still haven't figured out how to respond, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear Obama echo Macho McCain.

I do have some hope, however, if Obama wins in the fall that he will be more inclined to direct the flow of pork away from defense, and perhaps into climate change, where pork is not needed but will do less damage to our long-term interests than the militarization of US foreign policy. Rockefeller is certainly pushing for the US to put billions into helping make dirty oil clean and usable as jet fuels, and to bury all of the carbon.

7: GB, I thought that when time has "passed", we call it the "past".

okay, can we put the man down as ignorant without insulting all our grandparents?