Good Morning, Hank. I'd like to talk about the Catcher In The Rye today, or else the amazing Nerdfighter gathering on 8-8-08, but you challenged me to discuss the political situation in Georgia while putting on a peanut butter face. And so it shall be. I got the generic stuff, because, you know, it's going on my face.

Everyone knows, Hank, the only way to make the Internet pay attention to news is via peanut butter face. Okay, so Georgia's this small country just southwest of Russia that used to be part of the Soviet Union, but before it was part of the Soviet Union, it was an actual, like, honest-to-god democracy, from 1918 to 1921. And it was busy developing this very close relationship with Western Europe. Oh, history! Will you ever stop repeating yourself? Then, in 1921, the USSR invaded Russia (correction on screen: GEORGIA), mostly because Joseph Stalin, who was born in Georgia, was like, "You know, in, like, twenty years I'm gonna wanna kill about 500,000 Georgians and that's gonna be way easier if we invade now." So they did and Georgia became part of the USSR.

Okay, so flash-forward to 1991, the Soviet Union's breaking up and Georgia declares its independence, right? This is followed by your standard bloody coup, mini civil war, etc. During that time, it turns out that the two provinces, South Ossetia and and Abkhazia, don't wanna be part of Georgia, they wanna be independent countries, presumably because the world does not contain enough Luxembourgs.

Now, Hank, I'm gonna face it that I'm in favor of Abkhazia having its independence, if only because its would-be national flag wants to give you a high-five. But the history of the actual place of Abkhazia is significantly less awesome, for instance, in the early '90s they ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Georgians. South Ossetia, which by the way has a lame flag, is, as you might guess, just south of North Ossetia, which is part of Russia. So basically the deal they end up making is that South Ossetia and Abkhazia will have a kind of semi-sovereignity to them, sort of like the Kurds had in Northern Iraq between the Iraq Wars. And this goes reasonably well for a while until a few years ago when Mikheil  Saakashvili becomes the president of Georgia. By the way, he has a fun name to say, Saakashvili.

It's delicious.

Right, so Saakashvili sees that the future of Georgia is really with Western Europe, so he's in favor of joining NATO and eventually he wants to be part of the EU. And as we know from a couple of years ago in the Ukraine, when former Russian territories wanna become close to Western Europe, Russia can go a little bit bonkers. Like, poisoning presidential candidates bonkers. So that's the background for August 1st 2008, when someone, it's not clear who, threw an artillery shell at someone else. That kind of stuff's been happening for a long time in South Ossetia, but this time it was different, because on the day that the opening ceremonies of the Olympics started, the Russian army decided to come to the aid of the South Ossetians and blow the crap out of Georgia.

I mean, not only did the Russian army enter South Ossetia, they also entered Abkhazia and then they ended up invading large parts of Georgia and bombing the capital. And then, after a week of that, Russian President named-only-because-everyone-knows-that-Putin-runs-everything Dimitri Medvedev was like, "Okay, that's enough, you've been punished, Georgia."

I mean, Hank, he literally used the Russian word for "punished", like Georgia is his naughty nephew. So Medvedev has agreed to give up fighting, provided that Georgia give up both South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Which in the end they're totally gonna have to do because everybody knows that neither Western Europe nor America will come to their military aid, which is pretty much Medvedev's point. Putin and Medvedev don't particularly care about South Ossetia or Abkhazia, but they do care very much that Georgia is becoming closer and closer to the West. And this war has been nothing more than Russia reminding Georgia that the West won't come to your aid and we can pwn you whenever we want.

Hank, it's not the place of a man who's covered in peanut butter to speak ill of others, but that's lame. That's my basic problem with most wars: they're as stupid as they are evil. Anyway, let's hope that Georgia continues its path to democracy and economic growth. Mm. Generic peanut butter i' good.

So, Hank, that's my armchair political analysis with peanut butter on my face. I'll see you soon.

And now, Hank, I'm going to show you the happiest dog in the world. Alright, Willy, you've got exactly five seconds, GO! *laughs* One, two, three, four, five, that's it!