Protesters Take Control Of Kiev As President Flees Capital

The Ukrainian parliament voted to set early elections for May 25 after declaring President Viktor Yanukovych unable to carry out constitutional duties.

The decision comes just hours after embattled Yanukovych said he wouldn't respect any decisions made by parliament.

Yanukovych stated Saturday that he has no intention to resign, and called the political crisis a coup while saying it resembles the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s.

The agreement reached Friday between Yanukovych and leaders of the opposition protests that have brought Ukraine into crisis called for early elections that were  to be held no later than December, and constitutional reforms to reduce the president's powers.

But the possibility that he could remain in office for the rest of the year angered protesters who want his immediate departure, and said the deal did not address what triggered the protests in November -- Yankuvych's abandonment of closer ties with the European Union in favor of a bailout deal with longtime ruler Russia.

Protesters took control of Ukraine’s capital on Saturday, seizing the president’s office as parliament sought to oust him and form a new government. An aide to President Viktor Yanukovych said he had left Kiev for his support base in the country’s Russian-speaking east, but that he has no intention of abandoning power.

Yanukovych left Kiev for Kharkiv, where governors, provincial officials and legislators gathered. Top Russian lawmakers joined the meeting, too, while thousands of angry protesters gathered outside chanting, “Ukraine is not Russia!”

The leaders gathered in Kharkiv approved a statement calling on regional authorities to take full responsibility for the constitutional order on their territory.

Some called for forming volunteer units to protect against force by protesters from western regions. The assembly urged army units to maintain neutrality and protect ammunition depots.

Russia, the United States and the European Union are deeply worried about the future of Ukraine, a nation of 46 million whose loyalties and economy are divided between Europe and longtime ruler Moscow.

In a special parliament session, lawmakers warned that the country risks being split in two. The country's western regions want to be closer to the EU and have rejected Yanukovych's authority in many cities, while eastern Ukraine -- which accounts for the bulk of the nation's economic output -- favors closer ties with Russia.

Via: Fox News

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The Fall of the House of Obama

"Madman!" screeched Roderick Usher to the narrator as they both recoiled in terror at the wraithlike apparition that faced them at the door in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher."

"Madman!" he screamed again at the narrator of this tale of horror, who by this time had "perceived ... a full consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason upon her throne."

A sound conclusion this was, for Roderick Usher was insane.  His fevered imagination conjured images of fantastic dimensions, such as the living, breathing nature of the house his family had inhabited, as well as the room he painted -- ghoulish, subterranean, frightful, one in which "no outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly and inappropriate splendor."  

It was, in short, a cavern inside a bubble concocted by one who has lost his connection to reality.  This was one who also accused his exalted visitor, the narrator of this story, of a condition from which he alone suffered -- madness.

Which of course brings to mind President Obama's re-election campaign themes, as well as those seen at the Democratic National Convention.  Take for instance accusations made against Mitt Romney for being somehow responsible for the death of a woman whose husband worked for a company for which Mr. Romney's responsibilities had ended seven years earlier.  Or consider the groundless accusation that Mr. Romney did not pay taxes for a decade or so, which generated further the charge that he is a felon and a liar.  Or take further the maniacal frothings of Democratic partisans who essentially accuse Republicans of being Nazis -- this from a party that constitutes the poster boy for the most statist, anti-free enterprise, and arrogant regime in American history.

Via: The American Thinker

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