By JAY AMBROSE, Scripps Howard News Service

After Russia invaded Georgia with the same Soviet-style, imperialist, bullying ways the world grew to hate so much during the Cold War, we got a chance to see how Barack Obama reacts to a crisis. He blinked.

China clearly sees the Summer Olympics, which start Friday, as a grand, glorious, $40 billion, 10,000-athlete, internationally telecast coming-out party, a chance to show off its modernizing achievements as it begins to emerge as a superpower.

There are just 6 million of them, they don't have a lot of money to wave around, and about the only way you're going to hear much about American Indians during a presidential campaign is when one of the candidates speaks at a conference of minority journalists and gets asked a specific question about them.

Survey the latest news about newspapers -- the unending layoffs of staffers, the ever-shrinking content -- and then understand that there's a threat here, not just for those poor souls in a struggling business, but to you. The threat is of intellectual diminution.

While disagreeing with Barack Obama on maybe three-fourths of his so-far enunciated political views, I actually like and admire the guy, perhaps as eloquent a speaker and alert an intellect as has pursued the presidency in my lifetime.

I live in Colorado, where the very pleasant, personally appealing Mark Udall is running as a Democrat for the Senate while supporting a very unpleasant, unappealing plan to help subvert precious American principles and exploit workers.

Given the intensity and length of a Democratic primary season mostly devoted to hugs and kisses for leftist absurdities, it seems little short of astonishing that Barack Obama is now edging however tentatively in the direction of common sense on at least a few issues. But there you have it. He is.

Barack Obama is catching hell from some for his endorsement of faith-based government services, and yes, there is reason to worry about his position. But don't suppose for a minute that all the critics know what they're talking about.

General Wesley "Flap-jaw" Clark recently said of John McCain that "riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down" is no qualification to be president, and the immediate accusation was that he was guilty of "swiftboating." Two disgraceful things are going on here, starting with Clark's mouth.

George W. Bush is hugely unpopular, and we all know what to do when a man is down, don't we? Why kick him, and kick him hard, maybe even come up with an idea like one in San Francisco to name a sewage plant after the president, and make sure never, ever to acknowledge his accomplishments, such as the one in North Korea.