They're just people looking to the east

Talk about a mess...Can you imagine a large, industrialized nation with two distinct regions, one that reliably votes for one party in presidential elections and one that reliably votes for the other, with cultural difference so profound that they literally cannot understand what the other is saying. One half of a nation looking toward a progressive future, the other looking back longingly on the authoritarian past.

But enough about the United States.

Are you concerned about the situation in Ukraine as I am? The nation is like too many other geopolitical creations of our dumb 20th Century, tossing together people with different heritages, cultures and ethnic backgrounds inside one artificial border. In this case, blame former Flyers goalie Ilta Bryzgalov's favorite dictator and mass murderer Josef Stalin, who committed genocide against the Ukrainian people and forced more Russian-speaking people into Crimea, a region that already looked more toward Moscow.

Today, just like our own red states and blue states, Ukraine is bitterly divided between its east and west; with the western, European Union-friendly half winning out in the recent revolution, it's hardly surprising that people in Crimea to the east are rising up or that Putiin's Russia is making noise about supporting them It reminds me of a slightly tamer version of the first thirty minutes of the TV nuclear war movie, "The Day After."

What should President Obama do if the crisis worsens? The options seems pretty limited. On this one, I only know one thing...I'm glad I'm not the president.