Check it out:
http://www.cnn.com/...
As exit polls are showing a margin of error of 2%, it looks as if one of Bush's best friends is about to pay, not only for his friendship with W, but for his own mistakes...
I spend a portion of each year in Europe, most of it in Italy, in a working class port town on the Adriatic.
There are a lot of parallels between Bush and Berlusconi. One is that both have bases that are full of hero-worshipers who think their man can do no wrong. Another is that both are well-connected businessmen who tend to give breaks to their comrades while the rest of the economy plods along.
Another is that both men feel they are divinely inspired, or chosen even, to inflict their particular worldviews on the rest of the country.
Another is that both are impervious to criticism on Iraq. If Bush actually had the intellectual capacity to handle Italian history and culture, I'm sure that he would be visiting Berlusconi as often as he visits Crawford.
Finally, he is as big an embarrasment to many Italians as Bush is to Americans. However, like many Americans, many Italians have been afraid to speak out for fear of the man's reach into the media. He owns or has a controlling interest in most of the country's media. Despite this, he is going to lose his majority, in both the lower and upper chambers of parliament.
Now only the UK remains as a major partner in this craziness.