This Just In:

Our government officials feel shame. What had once been thought to be a dormant center in their otherwise profoundly reptilian brains turns out to have some activity after all. “I’m ashamed of my country, I’m ashamed of my president and I’m ashamed of myself." These were the words senator and Maverick used to describe his reaction to the ongoing standoff between Russia and the Ukraine. A couple of key points should be made here: John McCain is not a senator in Russia or the Ukraine. He is a senator for the great state of Arizona. Furthermore, when he says, "my president," he is referencing neither Vladamir "Bear-Wrassler" Putin nor Petro Poroshenko. 

The other point to be made here is that United States Senator John McCain made these comments on CBS's Face The Nation. He was facing the nation, on a Sunday morning, to tell us all how embarrassed he is that his country, the United States, was failing to halt Russia's advance on the Ukraine. He would very much like to see his country, himself and his president included, doing whatever we could to stop this aggression. The Ukranians “are not asking for American boots on the ground, but merely weapons to defend themselves against the Russian onslaught,” McCain said. “Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine not to be part of Europe, and he is succeeding in doing so,” McCain continued, adding “this is really a dark chapter in the history of our alliance.” 

John McCain knows a few things about dark chapters. He fought in the Vietnam war. He was a naval aviator who was shot down and taken prisoner for more than five and a half years. This experience has most certainly given a charge and direction to the public service career of John McCain. The bad guys are pretty obvious to him, That may be why he felt the need, back in 2011, to tweet at President Putin,  "Dear Vlad, The Arab Spring is coming to a neighborhood near you." The bear-wrassler's response? "Mister McCain fought in Vietnam. I think that he has enough blood of peaceful citizens on his hands. It must be impossible for him to live without these disgusting scenes anymore. Mister McCain was captured and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years," he said. "Anyone [in his place] would go nuts." Ouch. Let's just say that before and since then, these two gentlemen haven't exactly seen eye to eye. Unless they happened to be narrow slits through which they can sneer at one another. 

In the meantime, trying to figure out how to get things to go "our way" without putting "boots on the ground" or using "needless quotation marks" has proved to be most challenging. While many here in the U.S. media scoff and scold our president for not moving fast or decisively enough, Vlad has a pretty sweet deal because his state run media as well as our fair and balanced fourth estate has gone so far as to laud his assertiveness, even as his tanks go rumbling into the Ukraine. Ashamed? I think I know who ought to be ashamed, but I'm not guessing that bear-wrasslers get that either.