Florida in the Ukraine?

There's a real mess going on in the Ukraine right now, and given the strong emotions on each side, real violence is a possibility. It appears from the reports of election observers that a pro-Russian government has been elected through massive vote fraud, and the pro-Western candidate and his supporters are not just going to sit back and take it.

As I listened to some of the reporting last night, I heard some statements that were eerily reminiscent of our own election. According to reports, the exit polling in the Ukraine showed the pro-Western candidate winning handily, but when all the "votes" were counted, the pro-Russian guy had a 3 point lead. We all have experience with bad exit polling - remember Zogby calling the election for Kerry at 11am PST? If the only evidence of problems were exit polling, I could easily dismiss that as bad samples, as in the case in the U.S. elections.

That's not all that has happened in the Ukraine. As you'll read in the linked article above there were enough problems in the Ukraine that even Colin Powell went before the press and stated that the U.S. could not accept the results. Putin has a very big interest in keeping a pro-Russian government on his border, and the events in the next few days in the Ukraine will be very volatile.