Mrs. Victor Yushchenko

Amy Ridenour turns out to be a friend of Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, the wife of Victor Yushchenko, the recently elected President of Ukraine.

It turns out that she knows her very well and is claiming that the former Reagan administration official will be a strong advocate of freedom in the former Soviet bloc country.

So now, fellow bloggers, I will go out on a limb -- a very sturdy one in this case -- and tell you that when you read tea leaves on anything related to Victor Yushchenko, look for comments made by his wife, and trust them to be true.

Let's hope her predictions are true. If so, then we can look for great things there. Ukraine has an abundance of natural resources, is the European agricultural "Bread Basket" and has other advantages which would allow it to have great influence because of its probable economic growth.

If Putin's Russia doesn't successfully undermine the democratic process--as it apparently attempted to do in the recent elections--, this should be a great success for democracy world-wide.