It is 1945 all over again. A major historical War for the White House has ended forever, and the liberals won. The liberals do not usually win these things because they are scared of fighting, so who knows how this happened. Whatever. They can “govern” till the cows come home. The real story now is the new post-election Cold War that’s rapidly developing between McCain aides, Palin aides, conservative bloggers, conservative teevee hosts, conservative columnists… basically any GOP operative with a half-decent Rolodex and a certain moral flexibility. They are all shitting on each other. This is the greatest Cold War we’ve ever had the pleasure of covering. Let’s try to make some sense of it. MORE »

Excerpts have leaked from Charlie Gibson’s first of three interviews with Sarah Palin, which will be aired in some form tonight on his ABC News show. We were expecting a puffy sort of chit-chat, and it mostly is, except for the part where they talk about WAR WITH FREAKING RUSSIA. Now, when you run around saying Georgia and Ukraine should be let into NATO — as both John McCain and Barack Obama do — as some reward for establishing a vaguely democratic government, that’s much more than a harmless platitude — there are actual, real-world implications! No one has really bothered to push McCain or Obama on this, which is why it’s so hilarious that Gibson pushed Palin on it during her first big interview. And she fucked up. MORE »

The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, everyone’s favorite old coot of a “moderate liberal,” has written a sort of hilarious rant against Sarah Palin today. He calls her a “sitcom of a vice presidential choice,” which is probably the most apt description yet. Then he gets sassy, MMHMM: “Still, you have to admit that in all that time, especially since Palin became governor about two years ago, no Russian invasion force has come across the strait, maybe because she was in charge of the Guard, maybe because she herself is a hunter and an athlete.” Cohen also writes about Julius Caesar because fuck all. [Washington Post]

DUH: “Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by Dick Cheney, the vice president, to stop Barack Obama being elected president of the United States.” [Times of London]

Be warned: America’s class of neoconservatives have suddenly grown a POWERFUL NEW BONER. Russia and Georgia’s conflict 20 billion miles away has opened the door for the New Cold World War III, this time with SURROUND SOUND AND TEMPERATURE CONTROLLING CUP HOLDERS AND DIGITAL FIRE STEAMFUCK LIBERTY NUKES. Have no fear, because whenever a former Commie aggressor threatens God’s Democracy somewhere in the world, there’ll always be a Kagan somewhere just stone cold writin’ killer op-eds denouncing those fuckers. MORE »

Good news, everyone! The Russia’s despotic leader is just kidding about all this “point nuclear weapons at European targets” business! MORE »

We keep trying to build a big useless threatening mysterious missile defense system in Eastern Europe, and our bestest ally ever Vladimir Putin doesn’t seem to care for it. So he recently said he was going to point all of Russia’s decaying, decrepit nuclear missiles back at Europe. MORE »

Condi Rice finally found a use for her Cold War expertise that has been basically worthless since the end of the first Bush administration: promising everyone that we’re totally not in another Cold War. MORE »

Deefeecult for you. Easy for me! MORE »

Devoted readers are still puzzling out the meaning of Paul Begala’s Sugar Land move, but they’ve busted “unleash chang” wide open. It’s not a porny-sounding family in-joke, it’s a Cold War-era family in-joke! And it’s not “chang,” it’s “Chiang,” as in Chiang Kai-Shek — the plea to “unleash Chiang” was a rallying cry for those who thought the U.S. should allow Chiang’s Nationalist forces to invade mainland China and drive the Communists from power. MORE »