The little corporal.

I guess by now everybody knows about how many houses John McCain owns, even if he seems to be a little unclear on the subject. And it's likely that even I know by now who Obama's running mate will be (my guess: Pat Paulson). Call me morbid, but my mind is more focused on what appears to be a strong indication of how a President McCain might be expected to rule the American empire. His stance and rhetoric on the Georgian conflict have been jaw-droppingly bellicose - torn as they may be from the playbook of paid Georgian lobbyist (and former Rumsfeld advisor... and former Chalabi promoter) Randy Scheunemann, one of McCain's chief advisors, they represent a side of the candidate that has been chillingly consistent for as long as he's been in public office: a knee-jerk preference for military force. As much as he's milked his own wartime experience and mouthed platitudes about the horrors of war, McCain has been fully on-board with virtually every invasion, attack, bombing run, etc., we've undertaken since his return home from Hanoi. He apparently has never met a war he didn't like.

Now the admiral appears to be drawing a line in the Caucasus, calling this the first serious crisis of the post cold war era. I'm not sure what creeps me out more - the notion that he actually believes that to be true, or the fact that no one seems to recognize that it's crazy talk. Actually, I think the second part is scarier. We've really reached kind of a sad day in America when, in the wake of five years of pointless bloody war in Iraq, we don't recoil violently from the kind of blather that's emanating from McCain and his neocon colleagues. Remember that McCain has taken a position distinctly to the right of the Bush administration on this. In light of the fact that we've been stoking up Georgia's military for years, under both Bush and Clinton, and that both Bush and McCain have been pushing to make Georgia part of NATO, it's a little disconcerting to know that this man who would be president is willing to turn this dispute into a full-blown confrontation between ourselves and Russia, still possessed of thousands of ICBMs (real ones, not the imaginary kind Bush officials keep referring to in places like Iran).

So anyway... let's see a show of hands. Who wants to die or send their child to die over a dispute between Russia and Georgia about a region that most Americans can't even pronounce let alone find on a globe? Anyone? Honestly, I have to think the numbers are pretty low. And yet... why do I keep hearing that McCain is more trusted on national security and foreign policy than is his opponent? The man has neocon-fueled Napoleonic delusions about putting Russia in its place. He clings to a war that never should have been fought, and seems more than eager to start yet another. He referred to Iraq as "phase II" of the War on Terror back in 2001, working with the administration to link that country to the anthrax attacks on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. He has been dangerously wrong on pretty much every major foreign policy issue of the last decade. This man is more qualified?

Note to the Obama campaign: take a page out of LBJ's book. He rightfully painted Goldwater as a dangerous extremist. McCain has done half of that job for you.... take it from there, folks.

luv u,

jp