A Very Blowhard Christmas

You know what I think of when I look at pictures of Prime Minister and (disgraced) Presidential Candidate, Viktor Yanukovich (picture above blatantly stolen from today's Washington Post)? He looks like a sterotypical obnoxious great-uncle you might see in a typically mediocre Christmas Movie...probably from somewhere in the Rust-Belt, like Youngstown, Akron, Erie, or Rochester. And he shows up at the protaganist's house (usually with an equally obnoxious wife) much to everyone's chagrin, and provides some comic relief in the movie with the patently absurd things that come out of his mouth.

Well our man Viktor has certainly been doing his best lately to come up with patently absurd things to say. How about this(pulled from the Ukrainian News Agency, quoted in the Action Ukraine Report)?

Presidential candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has said that entrepreneurs in East Ukraine are more civilized than those doing business in the western parts of the country. "You are not afraid of Donetsk entrepreneurs, you are afraid of those in Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk. Those guys from glens are hungry...and unlawfulness is larger than in the east."

Way to try to win over the opposition Vik! Call them corrupt, the oligarchs you protect (and are a member of) in the quasi-fascist East legitimate, and toss is a back country reference by referring to half of the country as "The Glens."

Or we have this beaut from today's Post: "If this legal nihilism continues, I will not be able to stop people...It's impossible to agree with this great injustice, this discrimination. And if it (Yushenko) is indeed the face of the future authorities, I will never be on their side. Today in these regions, there are civil organizations that are being established, that are making lists of volunteers, and they will be making some decisions."

Uh-huh...civil organizations...protests being organized...right. This from the same people who, when protests numbering in the hundreds of thousands were going on not only two weeks ago, the best they could muster was sending in a couple of busloads of paid drunks to try to stir up some trouble. A couple of paid drunks who acutally ended up getting taken in by and cared for the same people they were supposed to be roughing up. Or maybe he means the 15 or so people I saw waving flags by the pensioners last weekend.

In all seriousness, these veiled threats to stir up civil unrest should he likely lose an election conducted freely and fairly are not a good thing. Dude needs to just take his lumps and move on. He did say one sensible thing in that Post article: "From a political point of view . . . it [Putin's campaign visits] didn't raise me up. It's rather worked against me." So maybe he can realize what the best interests of his country would be and shut the hell up.