Hoverin’ by my suitcase, tryin’ to find a warm place to spend the night
Heavy rain fallin’, seems I hear your voice callin’ “It’s all right”
A rainy night in Georgia, a rainy night in Georgia
It seems like it’s rainin’ all over the world
I feel like it’s rainin’ all over the world
— Tony Joe White, ‘Rainy Night in Georgia‘

Last night from the New York Times:

• Nerves frayed all day after a Russian tank battalion occupied the Georgian city of Gori, a move Georgia condemned as flagrant defiance of a Western-brokered agreement struck only hours earlier.
  Gori is only 40 miles from Tbilisi, the capital, and rumors circulated all day of an attack on Tbilisi.
  Meanwhile, hundreds of Russian soldiers poured over the border from Russia into the separatist enclave of South Ossetia, where attack helicopters and fuel trucks accompanied a long convoy of trucks.

This little, nasty skirmish in the Caucasus is another toxic flower in Decider George’s legacy-hat. Once again he’s proven to be just an empty-talking asshole.
There’s not much the US can do right now in the clean-up of this Georgia mess, but whatever action this crowd of DC clowns take will only worsen the situation.
A real-absolute factor, however, is the US gave expansive life to this shit-kicker affair, lending the apparent whip-blown Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgian president, a pretentious sense of Decider George’s incompetent cool.
And Jackboot John McCain’s bluster facade.

In a bit of old-man, soft-asshole verbiage:

• “I told him that I know I speak for every American when I say to him, today, we are all Georgians,” said the Republican, a hardliner against Russia who wants the mighty nation expelled from the Group of Eight club.

McCain also told the crowd at a Tuesday campaign stop in Pennsylvania, that he had spoken by telephone earlier with Saakashvili, who he said wanted to thank the American people for their support.

Another telephone call two four months ago pretty much sums up Jackboot John:

• Sen. John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser prepped his boss for an April 17 phone call with the president of Georgia and then helped the presumptive Republican presidential nominee prepare a strong statement of support for the fledgling republic.
  The day of the call, a lobbying firm partly owned by the adviser, Randy Scheunemann, signed a $200,000 contract to continue providing strategic advice to the Georgian government in Washington.

Read about big-time lobbyist-liar Scheunemann here and here.

And this Wednesday from Think Progress:

• But as Josh Marshall notes, “watching John McCain speak about the Georgian crisis […] should deeply worry anyone interested in a sane US foreign policy,” suggesting that a President McCain would have pushed the U.S. closer to war during this particular crisis: “People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he’s giving us of a McCain presidency.”

McCain’s big mouth has been running full-bellow since the conflict broke out last week.
And although Decider George was a little laid back on his blubbering at the outset, on Wednesday he cut loose with some of his time-proven bullshit.
From the New York Times:

• President Bush sent American troops to Georgia on Wednesday to oversee a “vigorous and ongoing” humanitarian mission, in a direct challenge to Russia’s display of military dominance over the region.
  His action came after Russian soldiers moved into two strategic Georgian cities in what he and Georgian officials called a violation of the cease-fire Russia agreed to earlier in the day.
  …
  The decision to send the American military, even on a humanitarian mission, deepened the United States’ commitment to Georgia and America’s allies in the former Soviet sphere, just as Russia has been determined to reassert its control in the area.
  On a day the White House evoked emotional memories of the cold war, a senior Pentagon official said the relief effort was intended “to show to Russia that we can come to the aid of a European ally, and that we can do it at will, whenever and wherever we want.”

Another blow-hole, bring ’em on, fist-waving bluster.

Decider George and the US has screwed up again.
This from Aljazeera:

• Jon Sawyer, the director for the Pulitzer Centre for Crisis Reporting, said US politicians had encouraged their Georgian counterparts to think they had the backing of the US when Tbilisi decided to launch its attack on South Ossetia last week.
  “The US has for several years now mishandled the situation in Georgia,” he told Al Jazeera.
  “The way that Mikheil Saakashvili has approached this [has been by] thinking that he could be an extension of the west, a partner of the United States.”
  “In many ways we have given him cause for thinking that, with the many visits to the United States, the talk of Georgia as a beacon for democracy.”
  …
  Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations, agrees that US encouragement may have made Saakashvili “miscalculate” and send Georgian troops into South Ossetia.
  “I think in many respects Saakashvili got too close to the United States and the United States got too close to Saakashvili,” Kupchan told the Reuters news agency.
  “It made him overreach, it made him feel at the end of the day that the West would come to his assistance if he got into trouble.”

And from the LA Times:

• Saakashvili helped oust former Soviet Foreign Minister and Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze in the so-called Rose Revolution in 2003 and became Europe’s youngest president the following January at the age of 36.
  He has been jousting with Moscow ever since over control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two pro-Russian regions of his country.
  …
  A lover of Georgian wine and Western culture, Saakashvili is described as supremely confident and even autocratic.
  He moved troops into disputed South Ossetia last week as a new Russian president presided in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Bush visited Beijing, and much of the world’s attention was focused on the Summer Olympics.
  Georgian forces came under overwhelming air and ground attack and were quickly repelled.
  Saakashvili says his forces were provoked into action in South Ossetia; Russia accuses him of launching an offensive move against his nemesis. Either way, he has ended up in a more precarious position.
  …
  “It was a calculated gamble and he miscalculated,” said F. Stephen Larrabee, corporate chair in European Security at the Rand Corp. in Washington.
  “He has been forced to withdraw. It’s a military blunder. It caused an international incident.”

Military blunders are part-n-parcel for Decider George, Jackboot John, and now, Miki Mis-step.
Ain’t these boys ever gonna do anythin’ right?

Another wet-splashed brick in the wall — rain is indeed falling, and that voice calling “It’s All Right” is just another tequila sunrise, just another frame, forcing echoes off hammering-down rain all over the world.