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A suspected would be assassin jumped out of a sixth floor window in a downtown Denver hotel. A car was stopped in the same town with three armed men in it, and one of them stated that his friend wasn’t going to let a black man live to be the President. Hillary Clinton makes a barnstorming speech in support of her previous rival, Barack Obama, telling her 18 million supporters to get into place behind the Democratic candidate.

Across the world in Moscow, the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, sniffs the political air and belligerently announces that his country has recognized the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent. This is clearly a knee jerk reaction to the West’s own reaction to the recent Russian invasion of Georgia.

When the Russian President explained his country’s actions he excused them by making the comparison with America’s own justification for Kosovan independence. Perhaps he has forgotten that there were no American tanks enforcing that situation.

For the Russian view of this we need to examine the words of Russia’s President. “They addressed to Russia with a request to recognize their independence. Taking into consideration the free will of the peoples, the UN Charter and OSCE documents, I have signed decrees to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on behalf of the Russian Federation. This is the only way to save people’s lives,” Medvedev said.

"Saakashvili chose genocide to fulfill his political plans," Medvedev said. "Georgia chose the least human way to achieve its goal - to absorb South Ossetia by eliminating a whole nation."

“Russia stopped the extermination of the Georgian people and then showed restraint with a goal to regulate the conflict through diplomacy,” the president said.

The Russian leadership has clearly studied the Nazi theories of propaganda with diligence. They demonstrated that if your first lie was big enough and was accepted then anything you said thereafter on the subject would also be accepted. This entire argument was not about Georgia swallowing another country; the two semi autonomous regions were and are legally integral parts of the country of Georgia, which Russia is now swallowing.

“Our warnings were left with no response. NATO and the UN ignored them. It is clear now that the Georgian administration was preparing for the war, whereas the support of its external protectors was only strengthening the feeling of impunity. The Georgian administration chose another way – to disrupt negotiations, launch military provocations and attack peacemakers. The Georgian administration initiated a military conflict in defiance of common sense and contrary to the UN Charter,” Medvedev said.

The truth is that there is not going to be real independence for these two new “countries” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia because the truth of their new situation is that they are now going to be semi-autonomous regions of the Russian Federation in all but name. They have simply swapped the somewhat chaotic rule of Georgia for the much more constricting embrace of the regional colossus, Russia, as it demonstrates its power.

The West, in fact most of the world, disagrees with the Russian actions but is powerless to do anything to stop them, or in fact even to slow them down unless we are willing to risk a world conflict.

The Kremlin's recognition of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia makes it plain that it is willing to dice with almost twenty years of economic, political and diplomatic bonds with its Cold War antagonists.

Medvedev's grim televised announcement sparked immediate and spontaneous joyful celebrations on the streets of the rebel capitals. Parades of cars displaying the South Ossetian and Russian flags blared their horns, women cried for joy and gunmen fired their weapons into the air.

The United States was clearly shocked by the timing and nature of the Russian response, threatened to veto this move in the U.N. Security Council should Russia seek international recognition for the territories.

"Abkhazia and South Ossetia are a part of the internationally recognized borders of Georgia and it's going to remain so," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said. President Bush called the Russian move "irresponsible."

The Kremlin insists, despite many doubts in the West, that its invasion of Georgia was a spur-of-the-moment response to the Georgian military's surprise crackdown on South Ossetia.

Remember that Georgia’s actions were, in all likelihood, engendered by the actions of militant subversives in South Ossetia, trained, directed and armed by their Russian puppet masters. In other words the Russian government set the trap and the Georgians fell right into it.

In any event, since the battles raged Moscow had weeks to weigh the consequences of recognizing the breakaway regions and did so in the knowledge of the consequences.

While the West focused on Russia's effort to shift Georgia's internationally recognized borders, the Kremlin perversely denounced the U.S. use of a Navy destroyer and Coast Guard cutter named the Dallas to deliver aid to Georgia's Black Sea coast.

There are conclusions that begin to be discernable in these seemingly unconnected circumstances. Russia has an appetite for empire and growth that isn’t yet satisfied. There is also an evident thirst for the country to reassert its superpower credentials at the top table of world affairs. Meanwhile, in the States there is the small matter of the election-taking place on November 4th.

It’s a racing certainty that the Russian leadership will, as stated previously in this column, be looking forward to testing the resolve and nerve of whoever becomes the President. If that happens to be Barack Obama then the test could be big enough to rattle all of our cages. Some of you will remember what Khrushchev did to test Kennedy in Cuba in 1961. It nearly caused world war.

What lies ahead for us after November none of us know, but you can bet with some certainty that they’re planning something in the Kremlin right now. Let us all hope no one in Moscow miscalculates and their actions don’t cause any major warlike situation in the near future.

Russia’s Prime Minister Putin is, in reality a carefully coached and coiffured dictator made ready for public consumption. Such men always mistake democratic countries seeking peacefully negotiated resolution as weak. But remember Vladimir Putin received his training whilst working for the KGB in the former East Germany. His mindset is still locked in a Cold War that might never thaw for him.

Strategically it would be a huge mistake for Putin to choose these arguments and times as a convenient window of opportunity to seek revenge for the Russian’s perceived loss of national dignity on the international stage suffered during the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He should remember what Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher once said, if you seek revenge first dig two graves.