In Russia, it's not the money that buys the power, it's the power that extorts and distributes the money. In the USA, the reverse is true. In Russia, any "fight against corruption" in reality means administrative clans fighting over the feeding troughs (sound familiar?).

Without any tiresome references to mediocre candidates, I basically agree with you about the LACK of vilification of Georgians; however I at least equally vilify the Russians.

My attention is now drawn to Ukraine, where the eastern part of the country and Crimea have a Russian majority. The Galician west doesn't have much of the resources. I wouldn't be surprised if in the not too distant future there is a Russian move to at least divide the country (along the Dnieper River?), with a major intent of securing Sevastopol and the Donets Basin. This would be much more important than the tribal disputes in the Caucasus region.

And in the Persian Gulf our carrier battle groups are sitting ducks.

Without serious cooperation from all the allies it had during the peak of the Cold War (with the addition of the eastern european bloc), the USA will not be able to blunt Putin's ambitions to reestablish Imperial Russia. The money isn't there, and the political will isn't there. The squawking of the press can be noise-cancelled, and then gradually silenced.