Frosty reception

Maybe Fox is on this bandwagon, who knows (I watch MSNBC solely to spite FOX), but Russia sent mixed signals to Obama on his victory: a tough speech on deploying missiles near Poland's border with a telegram congratulating Obama's victory. If you google "Medvedev congratulates Obama" you get a page of links with that headline, with text: "Medvedev did not congratulate Obama." As I noted in my posts on Georgia, an Obama presidency scares Russia because of the threat of Obama rallying allies to contain Russia's expansionary interests. Russia has been riding high on America hatin', and the last they need is an America love-fest.

The Russian press coverage is interesting: Nezavisimaya Gazeta has an interesting article proclaiming the victory of a velvet revolution (literally flower revolution) in the US, something associated with thorns in Russia's paw Ukraine and Georgia, while Komsomolskaya Pravda has a series of shallow articles on electing the dark-skinned guy, and then this one from their US based correspondent:

This was not my country, not my history, but I got goosebumps as soon as they started announcing the results . . . I was sitting in a bar in Omaha, Nebraska. Near me were sitting simple Americans, glued to the television, crying.