Medvedev Wins!!!!

The only English language independent newspaper in Russia tonight splashed the headline that Dmitry Medvedev was headed to a landslide victory in the Russian presidential elections held on Sunday. According to the Moscow Times, Medvedev had 68.5 % of the vote with about 70% of the votes counted. The closest candidate to Mr. Medvedev was a ultra-nationalist Communist who has run for president more times than Brittany Spears has wigged out in front of cameras. He had 18 % of the vote. So, Vladmir Putin's reign as president of the new Russia ends. But wait, it is not truly over. Is it?

Mr. Medvedev indicated during the campaign that wasn't that he was going to name Mr. Putin as his new prime minister if elected. Medvedev did not undergo a gauntlet of campaigning a la Clinton and Obama. He made a few appearances, but did not debate his opponents and did not go cross country holding any babies. Nonetheless, the image of Putin and Medvedev was seared into the hearts and minds of Russian voters. Children who were sending art projects depicting the election were clear in their choice of Medvedev. The main reason for this is that there were numerous statements made by school teachers to parents that if they did not vote for Putin's hand-picked choice that their children would get bad grades. The pictures sent by school children also paired the two love birds together. They depicted Medvedev and Putin holding up a map of Russia wearing a weightlifting outfit and a judo uniform respectively. Another picture of the married couple showed them coming off an airplane in a foreign country. The picture was entitled "Medvedev and Putin together on a trip to a foreign country." You have to love the imagination of Russia's impressionable and coerced children. Imagine when young Ivan came home from school with a teacher's note saying that if they didn't vote for Medvedev that young Ivan would be getting a "F" in "Revisionist Russian History." In that class Putin becomes the new Stalin and wages war against the Nazis. Putin himself then finds Hitler in a Berlin bunker and kills him with his bare hands just like he did with that 5 ton bear in the woods in Siberia.

Children were not the only ones used as pawns to control the elections. Their teachers were also threatened in many places with being fired if they did not cast a ballot for Medvedev. A story in the Moscow Times illustrates the group think of Russian politics. The story depicts a mother of two living above the Artic Circle getting into her best clothes with her aged mother and going to the polling station to place a vote for Medvedev as he represents the "only true future" for Russia.

Election monitoring agencies throughout Europe decided against sending their agents to Russia to monitor the election. The reason was not because they felt the Russian election were going to go as well as let's say--in Cuba. It was because the Russian government was going to place too many "restrictions" on their ability to their jobs. Classic Russian paranoia. One has to remember that the Russians are the most paranoid people in the history of civilization. They expect bad things to happen. They expect that someone out there is out to get them. It will be either another country, their neighbor, their lover, the KGB, or their dog. It does not matter. They are paranoid and refuse to open their windows for fear that sunlight will somehow shine through--and give them skin cancer. It does not matter that they have had democracy for 17 years and Communism is relegated to 18% of the vote. The Russians are paranoid and the idea of getting people to guess the answers is part of their DNA. Just like watching reality TV is in our DNA. So what all this means is that if the monitors had come to Russia they would have been made to stay in their hotel rooms drinking vodka watching the results just like everybody else. Then they would have been drugged, put in a car, driven out to Gorky Park, shot in the head, and their bodies would have been found in a staged scene back at the hotel with fifty year old hookers.

There have been outcries of fraud from many in the country. Reports indicate that bosses in factories forced employees to vote for Medvedev for fear of their jobs. People in Moscow report seeing ballots marked for Medvedev were already in the ballot box prior to the polls opening. These allegations will be quickly squashed. It will not matter if they are true or not. Medvedev will be the new President--on paper. Soon after Putin will be named as the new prime minister. This insures the obvious: Putin will always be in the background. He will be pulling the strings on his hand picked successor. He will continue to be the centralized head of the Russian state long after Medvedev takes the oath of office. He will remain as czar. This is what the Russian people expect. It's in their DNA. They can't help themselves.