Chambliss Win Looking Probable

One of the last two undecided Senate elections will finish tonight (hopefully):

Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Ensign (Nev.) said he believed incumbent Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss would defeat Democrat Jim Martin by five or six points in today's run-off election.

"The Barack Obama magic on Election Day has not carried over to the run-off," Ensign said.

Polls are scheduled to close at 7pm EST. Polling stations across the Peach State reported low voter turnout Tuesday, which would likely hurt Martin who was bolstered by the high-voter turnout inspired by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama last month.

If Chambliss wins, he will shatter the Democrats hopes of attaining a 60-seat supermajority. A run-off was triggered after the November 4 election because neither candidate secured the majority of the votes, Chambliss won 49.8 percent to Martin's 46.8 percent. Libertarian candidate Allen Buckely took 3.8 percent of votes.

Good news in an election year where Conservatives will take any. Chambliss is a good Senator and just seeing Harry Reid's face when he finds out that he doesn't have a veto-proof majority will be golden. Old Harry didn't exactly ingratiate himself to the great unwashed (literally in Harry's eyes) today so this will be kind of pouring salt in the wound, which is always nice.

In the other race, incumbent Norm Coleman is inching closer to a win while Al Franken is inventing ballots and inching towards a another lawsuit or worse, allowing the Senate to decide.

You Can Take the Commie Out of the KGB...

Our old buddy Vlad Putin is still the same old Vlad he was when he was a KGB man back when the Russians were still Soviets:

Nicolas Sarkozy saved the President of Georgia from a threat by Vladimir Putin to depose him from power and "hang him by the balls," according to an account that emerged today from the Elysée Palace.

The Russian Prime Minister told Mr Sarkozy of his plans for deposing the Tbilisi government and disposing of President Saakashvili when the French leader was in Moscow last August to broker a cease-fire in Georgia.

Nice. I imagine old Vlad will not be too happy about the wimpy French (but I'm redundant) President revealing the details of a meeting he had with him. Saakashvili grew up under Soviet oppression so he has to have some intestinal fortitude. It makes one wonder what Mr. Putin will propose to do to the future President Obama?

I foresee Russia trying to supplant al-Qaeda as being the biggest thorn in the side of the US over the next five years. Welcome to the big time, President-elect O. Note that Putin has not started to assert himself again until the end of the Bush years.

US Navy Dares Russia in Black Sea Port

The US Navy is doing what they are designed to do, project US power to all corners of the map. They have decided to test just how much Vlad Putin and the Russians want to hang out in a Georgian port city and figured they stop on by and see for themselves":

A US navy flagship has steamed into a Georgian port where Russian troops are still stationed, stoking tensions once again in the tinderbox Caucasus region.

A previous trip by American warships was cancelled at the last minute a week ago amid fears that an armed stand off could erupt in the Black Sea port of Poti.

The arrival of the USS Mount Whitney came as Moscow accused Dick Cheney, the hawkish US vice-president, of stoking tensions during a visit to Tbilisi yesterday, in which he vowed to bring Georgia into the Nato alliance. Russia sees any such move as a blatant Western encroachment on its traditional sphere of influence.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney will get heat on this from Democrats who will accuse them of ratcheting up tensions or some other such nonsense but the simple fact is that we have to make a stand in support of our allies.

If we were going to really antagonize the Soviets Russians, we'd have sent a guided missile cruiser or a destroyer, not a command ship, albeit a command ship that is able to defend itself quite nicely.

US Navy Headed Toward Black Sea

The US Navy is headed toward Georgia to offer aid to the Georgian people. It's dubbed a "humanitarian effort" but make no mistake about this, this is surely a show of strength that Moscow must take note of:

As we speak, the USS Kearsarge assault ship is sailing alone in Latin America, totally unescorted, on its own humanitarian mission. Captain Walter Towns said he feels "pretty secure." The Georgia flotilla, by contrast, is stacked with heavily-armed warships. The vanguard includes the Burke-class destroyer McFaul (pictured)and the armed Coast Guard cutter Dallas. (Another Dallas, a nuclear submarine, is also in the area.) Trailing behind is the command ship Mount Whitney with, reportedly, Polish and Canadian frigates as escorts. The naval aid effort isn't taking any chances.

And for good reason. Russia's Black Sea fleet dominated the waters off Georgia from the early days of the fighting, and now it's been announced that the sole Russian aircraft carrier, Kuznetsov, is headed to the eastern Mediterranean. In 1991 Kuznetsov illegally sneaked through Turkey's Bosporus Strait (see map here--ed.) that connects the Med to the Black Sea. "It will be interesting to see if Russia does it again," Galrahn writes over at Information Dissemination.

Ironically, the Kuznetsov was once named the Tblisi. Video here of the carrier.

It's a dangerous game to have warships in close proximity to one another as accidents can happen and tensions can be exacerbated. Here's a map of the Black Sea:



Note the only entrance is through the Sea of Marmara and past Istanbul. Tight quarters to be sure. US Navy and Coast Guard ships in a smallish sea with the Russians only carrier keeping station along the Georgian coast is a recipe for disaster. The Russians are also digging in along the Black Sea coast.

These are real issues that will have far-reaching consequences with regard to Russia's growing influence in the region. Putin has to be met with stiff American and international resistance to make him think twice the next time he makes a move. One must wonder how a President Obama (shudder) would handle a growing crisis like this and would he have the balls to send US warships to a hot area in defense of allies or would he instead meet with Putin or Medvedev with no pre-conditions?

Some good will come from this; US allies will see that we keep our word, plus we'll get to eyeball the Russian carrier and see exactly what technical abilities the rusting Russian navy still possesses.

The Media's Problem With McCain

First they loved him because he was against Bush. Then they loved him because he was a thorn in the President's side. Now, they have to love Obama so they are having a problem with him and it's tearing them up.

As proof I offer David Ignatius. He tells how McCain was dead on about Russian intentions at a speech in 2006:

And McCain did indeed deliver a zinger. He blasted Vladimir Putin for "the pursuit of autocracy at home and abroad" -- and then urged that Russia be excluded from the G-8 summit of industrialized nations. For good measure, he included a call for Georgia, already a thorn in Russia's side, to join NATO.

McCain's 2006 speech made news, as he knew it would. So did an address in Munich the night before from Georgia's emotional president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He recalled how he had cried the night the Berlin Wall fell -- and then pleaded for Western support for Georgia's efforts to recover the renegade province of South Ossetia and end what he called the "cancer of separatism."

And, of course, recent events show that McCain was indeed right before anyone even knew what South Ossetia even was. That, in most cases, would be cause to exult McCain for being damn near clairvoyant and it would have been had McCain been running against Bush and the media weren't so liberal.

But alas, this is the new, conservative, enemy McCain:

McCain likes zingers. We've all seen that mischievous look -- just before he shot a quip or sarcastic one-liner at GOP rivals such as former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. It's one of his appealing qualities, but in this case it worries me. Zingers don't make good foreign policy. They embolden friends and provoke adversaries -- and in the Georgia crisis, that has proved to be a deadly combination.

And he goes on about the media-created story that Georgia was being--I don't know--imperial?

He blames Bush of course but lumps McCain in when the Maverick was exactly right. He brings up the fact that McCain's advisor was a lobbyist for Georgia--a newly freed nation--and tries to discredit McCain's stance on an issue he clearly kicked Obama's ass on.

That, my friend, is the media spinning for Obama in a big way because they sense it. They know Obama was rocked at the Rick Warren event last week and when their calls of cheating failed, they needed a new tack and Ignatius has joined in.

The media fail to see that Obama is way out of his league and are now as behind the times on this as they were two-weeks ago on the Edwards affair story.

Confronting the Russian Bear Again

With Russia's offensive actions last week against former satellite state Georgia, other former liberated states are acknowledging that it may be in their best interest to cozy up to the US regardless of the potential downside:

The proposal, made amid growing outrage among Russia's neighbours over its military campaign in Georgia, could see Ukraine added to Moscow's nuclear hitlist. A Russian general declared Poland a target for its arsenal after Warsaw signed a deal with Washington to host interceptor missiles for America's anti-nuclear shield.

...Ukraine said it was ready to give both Europe and America access to its missile warning systems after Russia earlier annulled a 1992 cooperation agreement involving two satellite tracking stations. Previously, the stations were part of Russia's early-warning system for missiles coming from Europe.

"The fact that Ukraine is no longer a party to the 1992 agreement allows it to launch active cooperation with European countries to integrate its information," a statement from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said.

Now the question is will they be offered the chance to join NATO. That would be the final step in assuring that they will remain free nations but also will come with economic cost if Russia decides to cut off the natural gas and oil taps.

I would suspect that both Poland and the Ukraine looked at the pros and cons and saw that even if they were now in the targeting plans of Russia, the shield would protect them and a move that drastic by the Soviets Russians would be met with stiff reprisals from NATO regardless.

The next Cold War has started and the US seems ready to tweak Russia at every opportunity. This week has shown the US that Russian forces are suspect at best and would not be able to attain anything close to their previous Cold War status without years of training and major technical upgrades to equipment. Conversely, US forces have been trained to a level not see in decades through battles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our air power is unmatched and the US military man (and woman) has learned things in the field that could never be taught in a classroom.

Here's to hoping that the bad old days of the 1970's are not revisited with an inept Obama administration that seems more Carteresque than Trumanesque. Obama would gut our military, just as Jimmah did and seem shocked they couldn't produce when called upon.

Update: Prof Glenn has the goods on NATO and the detrimental effect of Vlad Putin's actions.