Choosing Palin shows balls

Mind you, I still believe McCain won't be a good president. His saving grace is that I believe Obama would be a significantly worse president. However, I have to say that McCain has balls and brains to choose Palin as his VP choice. While Obama decided to temper his basic message of change by choosing Biden, an integral part of the political machine, McCain increased his ownership of the message of change by choosing somebody who was far from his image as being a part of the Washington political machine. I am resigned to having a president that will not address the real fundamental economic issues of the country, but McCain made me a little more interested in the race for the White House.

Russia's expansionism

It is evident now that Russia is moving into a state of expansionism. In bordering areas, Russia is using both the carrot and stick to either ensure neighbors are friendly or are gradually diminished. For neighbors like Georgia or Ukraine, this means that Russia will offer Russian citizenship and subsequently military "protection" in problem bordering areas gradually subsuming them into Russia itself. If you ever played a boardgame called Diplomacy, you would recognize what is happening. Russia is making its move to increase its control of the world. What its goal is to become the next sole superpower. This is why Russia finds missile defense in Eastern Europe directed at Iran threatening to its own interests since those interceptors could also be used against Russia and would decrease the threat and influence that Russia's military has in its quest for world domination. With the USA the current king of the mountain, Russia's ultimate goal is to topple the king and take his place on top of the mountain. So what should the USA do? If we really were playing this game like the Diplomacy boardgame, we would use our current geopolitical dominance to crush Russia's confidence and aspirations. Probably the best way to do this without a direct confrontation is to have Russia get sucked into another resource depriving conflict like the Soviet Union's attempt at quelling Afghanistan. With Russia virtually bulging at its borders, another conflict like that with Georgia is guaranteed. What we have to have our CIA and military do is gradually increase the military capability of possible future conflict areas so that Russia can no longer do what it did to Georgia quickly or cleanly. However, in the real world what we have are too many people in the USA who aren't willing to take such decisive actions considering them to be too self-serving. The trouble is that in the real world if the USA isn't willing to preserve its dominance, it will lose it to those who want dominance more.