The only things that I have been reading in the TPM cafe is Palin this and Palin that. I sick of reading about McCain's stupid VP pick. There are other things to be concerned with such as the war in Georgia or Hurricane Gustav that might strick New Orleans. No offence to some TPM bloggers but you should keep your eyes on the bigger picture and not be obsessed with McCain's VP pick. 

While much of the media's attention has been about Obama's speech and John McCain's selection of Palin as Vice President not enough attention has been made to the continuing crisis in Georgia. The Atlantic Council seems to racheting up the langauge against Russia by stating that the United States should not recognize the two breakway provinces in Georgia. It appears to me that the Atlantic Council is not really concerned about the future security arrangements in Europe but rather it just has a hostile attitude towards Russia. The Atlantic Council  in many ways resembles the China Lobby in the fifties. The China Lobby, like the Atlantic Council, supported small states like Taiwan over big states such as the PRC. The end result was chaos in East Asia before the Americans recognized the PRC.  The United States is making the same mistakes in Europe by always siding with the small republics in the former Soviet Union while ignoring Russia's interest. The Atlantic Council rather than the neo-cons are the ones mainly promoting this dangerous foreign policy.

With picking Sarah Palin, John McCain has discredited the three main tenants of his camapign which is foreign policy knowledge, experience, and judgement. As to foreign policy knowledge and experinece it is obvious that Palin has neither. Also it shows that John McCain has poor judgement because if he should die in office the button will given to someone who is not qualified to be president.

I'm 34 and is basically considered to be an Xer, and while Obama, who was born in 1961, is technically an Boomer, he is more closer to the Xers. The main weakness of Generation X is that we have too much respect for older gernerations and not confidence in ourselves. This was not always the case. In the ninteen eighties there was vibrant cultural scene with New Wave, Punk, Heavy Metal, and politically inspired Rap music. It appeared growing up in the eighties that Generation X was creating a new identity for itself. But this did not prove to be the case, because in the early nineties my generation began to lose self confidence. This lose of self confidence can be seen both with the return of swing music and the new hippie movement. It seemed that my generation was ashamed of itself and only worshipped previous generations. This was especailly true in the late nineties during the whole Greatest Generation fad. Obama symnolizes Gernation X to me in that his life story is very fimiliar to to what I think happened to my generation. In the early eighties, Obama rebelled against the system by working as a community oraganizer in Chicago. But in the early nineties Obama went to get a law degree and worked for a cooperate law firm granted it was a only for a breif period. You could also see it in Obama's campaign in which he promised a fresh new start but after the nomination moved closer to the center and the establishment. This tendacy to worship previous generations can be seen in Obama's refusal to go negative. Obama really did not go after Hillary's record, but instead praised her for previous contributions in public service. The same also applies to McCain in which Obama always talk about his POW ordeal before even attacking him. It just seems to that my generation has yet to the previous generations accountable for the bad state of the country.

      What many commentators fail to realize is that Iran  developing a nuclear weapon out of its fear of Pakistan. It is the Pakistanis and not the Israealis who the Iranians fear the most. The current political chaos in Pakistan only makes the Iranians more determined to make a nuclear weapon. The Iranians worry that if a civil war breaks in Pakistan than the bomb may fall into the hands of Sunni extremists, who want to nuke Iran. This makes the Iraninans want to develop their own weapons in order to deter these radicals. It is important that the United States and its allies find some sort of poltical arrangement in Paksitan because that would also help with the situation with Iran.

     Obama needs to stop fighting McCains's accusations against himeslf. If Obama is too busy trying to rebute McCain's claims that he somehow unpatriotic, it would appear that McCain is setting the agenda for the convention. The Democrats made a similiar mistake in Boston 2004, in which Kerry was trying to prove his patriotism and was not attacking George W Bush. The Democrats could repeat this mistake if Obama over concentrates on his personal life story. What Obama and Biden need to do is to describe how dangerous McCain and the status quo is for America's future. Obama could tell how the eviromental policy of both Bush and McCain could threaten future generations with the threat of gloabal warming. Or describe the recklessness of the Bush and McCain  fiscal policy which defunds schools and colleges that are necessary for this nation's future. Finally Obama could state that the Bush-McCain foreign policy is dangerous because of its unilateralism and believing that war is the first option.

I was wondering if any TPM members were going to the Democratic Convention? I live in Denver and I was wondering if TPM was sponsering any events in that city? If not then me or and some other members of the TPM community could organize our own getogether.

Robert Kagan has used Munich to describe the ineffectiveness of the Americans during the current crisis in Georgia. Ironically this is the right analogy because the British and French resorted toward appeasement because they lacked a security aggreement with Russia. If the British and the French dropped their anti-Russian or anti-Communist views and developed a security pact with the Soviet Union in the early nineteen thirites, Hitler would have been deterred from attacking Czechsolvakia. The United States, like Britain and France in the thirties, needs Russian assistance to deal with Iran and Afghanistan, but we are still stuck with the anti-Russian prejudice from the Cold War.

To tell you the truth, I'm not really that thrilled with whom Obama has been selecting for his foreign policy team. In his speech in Berlin, Obama states that he wanted to end the Cold War pysche, however with both Biden and Brzenzinski on his team this is no way to turn a new page in history. JFK, like Obama, selected hawkish advisors such as Walt Rostow and Maxwell Taylor, but ignored their advice to bomb the Cuban missile sites in 1962 and this prevented a nuclear war from breaking out. In the end JFK had enough confindence in his judgement to ignore the irrational advice from his advisors. While Jimmy Carter wanted to continue Nixon's Detente but he gradually accepted Brzezinski's advice about developing the MX missile and basing Pershing II missiles in Europe. The end result was a more heated phase of the Cold War and the end of Detente. I just hope that Obama has enough confidence in his judgement to overrule the advice of not only his advisors but that of the foreign policy establishment.