Let’s just run down a quick checklist: The United States is approaching financial crisis.  Gas prices are exorbitant.  Crime rates and urban poverty soar.  We have a militaristic Republican President running up our national debt like its grannie at the $2 slots.  We’re in a growing standoff with Iran and their hirsute hardliner.  And just in case that’s not enough – there’s a crazy Ivan rolling tanks in all directions from Russia.

Man oh man, it feels just like old times.

Did you hear?  South Ossetia and Georgia are in the midst of a celebrity breakup.  Yeah, apparently the South Ossetians got sick of Georgia always calling and checking where they were at all hours of the day.  As for the Georgians, South Ossetia has a history of dalliances with those Reds north of the border.  There’s a trust issue.  After all, there is indeed a NORTH Ossetia.  Apparently, the Ruskies like Ossetian booty.

With all of the vicious texting and Facebook slander, it was no time at all before South Ossetia called it quits.  And then she found herself in the arms of another lover – the crazy, roid-raging Russian Federation.  That whore!  And as it works out, Russia wasn’t just interested in some mild make-out sessions with the average looking South Ossetia.  Instead, they just wanted to start an all out brawl over the Caucasus.  This time its personal.  All of this one the eve of the Olympics.  That’s cold, homey.

So here we are.  Russia has balls, two bottles of Absolut, and a Tokarev full of bullets.  They came to the kegger to do two things: get drunk and kick some ass.  And they’re almost out of vodka.

There are some things that are completely reliable in this world.  Come rain or shine, you can count on those things.  Reliable like the LA Clippers butt holing another season.  Like a Democratic big shot slipping his pokey into a campaign staffer.  And of course, a homicidal, Charles Manson clone assuming the tenuous mantle of leadership of Russia.  Do they hold a contest to find the most crazy asshole outside in Red Square?  I can imagine the Japanese obstacle course were KGB agents are bouncing off of giant red balls and face planting into cold mud.  Whatever they do, they’re good at finding the right man.  And that right man is …

Putin.  Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.  Or as I like to call him – Bad Vlad.  I think he owns a BBQ smoke shop on highway 51.  Let’s be clear about his surname and its pronunciation.  It’s not like Puttin’ on a golf green.  No, actually it’s Pootin’ like the little toots that come out before a big crap.  The ominous forebears of a brown dinosaur about to rampage in the porcelain city.

Geez, what’s the smell in there?  Oh, that’s just Vladimir pootin’.

A couple of facts about Bad Vlad.  First, he’s ex-KGB and probably an active field agent in East Germany before the wall fell.  I’m making the assumption that he’s killed at least two rogue agents with his garotte wrist watch.  He is in fact trained in judo, mentioned on the Olympic broadcast.  Second, have you seen this guy?  He’s got eyes like Travis Bickle from the second half of Taxi Driver.  Third, every Russian journalist that criticizes him … dies.  Under suspicious circumstances.  Not suspicious like a sudden heart attack, but suspicious like a karate chop to the skull.  I believe one of these Russian journalists was even in London at the time.  Wait a second … shit …

Let me just say right here and now that I think Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is one hell of a nice guy.  Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.

I have to admit that being at odds with Russia and Iran again is a nice distraction from the world that is global terrorism.  Even when I play C&C Generals, I enjoy beating the crap out of the GLA.  Hide in your holes, fuckers!  Here comes my plasma cannon.  Face it, as Americans, we know Russia.  All of our movies of the late 1970s and 1980s were filled the stereotypical Russian villain.  We’ve been lining up against them in the Red Rover Red Rover nuclear card game for fifty years.

Should we ever go to war (and of course pinkie swear not to use nukes), it’d be a war that we’re prepared for.  You line up your forces and tanks here and here and then we’ll bomb them into antimatter with our stealthed, laser guided, unmanned, fusion-powered, adamantium veritech aircraft.  And you won’t have the benefit of the land war that beat the Germans in WW1 and WW2 – because if we wanted vast stretches of uninhabited permafrost, we’d invade Canada.  Mike Myers and Jim Carrey vs. Yakov Smirnoff?  That’s a pretty easy decision even with the Love Guru.

I miss the Ruskies.  I miss the Soviet Bear.  Tom Clancy’s been to rehab seven times since the Cold War ended.  For Christ’s sake, in his latest book I hear that Jack Ryan has started fighting illiteracy.  The Russians had a noble bravery to their oafish tactics and over the top antics.  Remember Nikita Khrushchev?  He was straight early days WWF during the UN meetings.  “We will bury you!”  Can’t you just imagine him as the evil manager of Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik, singing the Soviet anthem at center ring in middle of redneck America?

The terrorists?  They don’t have tanks, planes, or subs.  And in truth, they’re pussies in real life.  Most of these die-hard fundamentalist jijadis come over to the Great Satan on their holy crusade and spend most of their time bumping uglies with our fine selection of Reno strippers and bus stop prostitutes.  If they don’t have the opportunity to bomb unsuspecting civilians, they wilt, cry, and beg for mercy at the first sign of an approaching Marine.  I know this is true, because I’ve spoken to vets from Afghanistan.  The idea of battle hardened Afghans soldiers elicits laughs from the military specialists – even on Fox News where War Sells!

I miss Russia.  I watched the Russians play Lithuania in Olympic basketball the other day and I found myself silently cheering for Andrei Kirilenko and the rest of the red ballers over the break away satellite state.  As much as I’m shocked that Putin is using the Soviet Foreign Affairs Codex from 1965, I’m glad that they are back to being the world asshole.  North Korea wasn’t doing it for me.  Kim Jong-il is too much like a retarded pit bull too busy sniffing his own butt to be threatening.  China isn’t doing it for me either.  I know too many Chinese to think of them as the evil empire.  And Peking Duck tastes goooooooood.

The other good thing about Russia getting the band back together for a drug binge, reunion tour over the Caucasus Mountains is that the USA no longer looks like the imperialist overlord looking to suck the world dry of its natural resources.  Just like the skrulls.