WE WONDER IF THE WHITE HOUSE IS ADDING THE WORD SATIRE IN BRACKETS TO ITS UKRANIAN STATEMENTS: It's quite inspiring to see Ukranians refusing to accept an apparently shoddily counted election, and heartwarming to see the American government adding its support to them:

Washington has accused the Ukrainian government of skewing the poll in favour of the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich - President Leonid Kuchma's preferred successor - by clamping down on the state media and throwing the resources of the state behind its man.

Totally unlike the US elections, of course, where you'd not have caught George W Bush using Air Force One or the other paraphanelia of the Presidency to push his campaign for re-election, would you? Oh. Well, at least he didn't clamp down on the media - the White House were more than happy to leave the media totally unfettered to do whatever they chose. There was no indication at all that Bush forced Fox to be rabidly pro-Bush.

The main stinking smelly rat from the elections in Ukraine is because the exit polls were so startingly different from the actual poll result - the exits pointed to an 11% lead in favour of Yuschenko compared to the "official" result of 3% for Yanukovich. Of course, the Bush adminsitration finds that sort of discrepancy a little too large to be true - when you're talking about Ukraine, of course. A dip from, say, a 20% poll Kerry lead to an actual 1% Kerry lead, as happened in Pennsylvania, or the evaporation of Kerry leads in exit polls time and time again not replicated when people were voting electronically rather than in a traditional manner - that, of course, is a sign that the exit polls themselves were wrong, or flawed, or misinterpreted. It's really quite simple.