Flatulence from George Will, Cont.

A slightly more serious take:

Will:

McCain...should ask Obama to join him in a town meeting on lessons from Russia's aggression. Both candidates favor NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, perhaps Vladimir Putin's next victim. But does Russia's behavior cause Obama to rethink reliance on "soft power" -- dialogue, disapproval, diplomacy, economic carrots and sticks -- which Putin considers almost an oxymoron?

There are times when you've got to be ready to back up soft power with hard power. But if you use soft power first, you're more likely to have hard power in your back pocket when you need it. McCain wants to use hard power for everything, and then one day when you need it, you're out - just as we are now, having followed the course he advocated. And it isn't like you can just go down to Safeway and buy another ten brigades of combat troops.

Does Russia's resort to military coercion, and its arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles, cause Obama to revise his resistance to missile defense?

Does George Will think that missile defenses actually work against a Russia-sized arsenal? and does Will think putting ineffective missile defenses in Poland was worth blinding ourselves to Russia's troop movements, so we'd be caught by surprise in Georgia?

Gawd, what a bozo.

Obama, unlike McCain, believes that Russia belongs in the Group of Eight. Does Obama think that Russia should be admitted to the World Trade Organization? Does Obama consider Putin helpful regarding Iran? Does Obama accept the description of the G-8 as an organization of the largest "industrialized democracies"? Does he think China should be admitted?

I guess this is the sort of trivial shit that Will thinks the election should be about. It really doesn't matter worth a rat's ass whether Russia or China is in the G-8.