You sit down a "round table" of pundits and they are great at spinning stories, but whether any of them has any validity or not is not going to be determined by this kind of navel-gazing.

This discussion is just so much bloviating. It is substance-free, both on who the candidates are and on what the public is looking for.

What you might want to do is provide some historical perspective. For starters, what were poll numbers like at similar points in past Presidential races?

I'm also wondering whether this is going to be another exercise in pondering over meaningless polls. Throughout the primary season, we were repeatedly treated to the meaningless comparison in the "national vote" between Obama and Clinton. I know it's a bit tougher to do, but seeing as the only meaningful election is in the Electoral College, shouldn't that be a point of interest a bit more often?

when the neocons decided that "regime change" was a legitimate foreign policy option for the US to pursue in Iraq, that they opened the door for Russia to do exactly the same thing in Georgia.

Furthermore, the fact that hundreds of billions (trillions?) of dollars have been spent on the war, and that the military is suffering from overextension necessarily implies that the US has no practical foreign policy options when it comes to any response to Russia's actions.

So, really, there are two problems with pursuing a foreign policy based on naked aggression. (Or semi-naked aggression in the case of Iraq, but the only people who don't view it as aggression are naive Kool-aid drinkers in the US, and every war has such a cadre of fools.) One problem is that the aggressor nation loses any moral standing in the international community. And moral standing is not merely something that makes feel good about themselves. It is a necessary prerequisite to peaceful resolutions of disputes.

And the second problem is that pursuing wars of aggression tends to tie up valuable resources that make it difficult for the nation to respond to new situations.

Right now, the US has little course to pursue other than scolding Russia. I realize that is impolitic for pundits to admit, though, so we'll have to find some what to deal with the Kristols of the world.

As to that problem, I have no clue what to do.

Also Obama never wrote a law review article and was made editor of the Harvard Law Review because he was black. I was on Law Review. Everyone else had to write articles.

Somehow I'm doubting that anybody with grammatical issues like this was ever on the Harvard Law Review.

"I was on Law Review."

Yeah, and I was "on Law Review" too!

If you're going to pretend to be a lawyer, you're going to have to write a little bit better.

Just a word of advice, troll.

I'm fairly sure Obama has promised to end the American occupation of Iraq. Doesn't that count as 'change'?

Things to consider:

Portraying Hamdan as an unrepentant "al-Qaida warrior," Murphy said, "The government asks you to deliver a sentence that will absolutely keep our society safe from him." He requested a minimum 30-year sentence, and urged the members to consider that life might be more appropriate. "As for reform and rehabilitation -- I question whether that is even possible. The day may never come and the risk of releasing him might be too great."

and

But a few hours later in the prosecutors' press conference, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Stone, one of the prosecutors, stated that he "couldn't say" whether he thought Hamdan would be a threat if released back to Yemen. When asked why Murphy made a strong argument portraying Hamdan as a serious and unrepentant danger to society, Murphy explained: "I put on evidence to seek a conviction, but I accept what the members felt was fair."

and

At the airport, after the trial was over, military judge Capt. Keith J. Allred explained, "It's easy to be warm with Mr. Hamdan."

and

In an unsworn statement, Hamdan explained, "When I found out a lot of innocent people were killed in the United States -- I present my apologies if anything in what I did caused that."

and

but before they left, Hamdan spontaneously motioned that he wanted to say something to them. "I want to apologize one more time to all of the members and thank you for what you have done for me," he said.

So the next time somebody in a position assures you that "the terrorists" are evil, heartless bastards, without possibility of redemption, and are single-mindedly focused on destroying America, I hope people will see the fear-mongering for what it is.