he supported monti's makeover, and now promises to take a different route, less radically opposed than berlusconi, who's promising to give cash extracted through monti's house and land tax (except on the vatican property).

bersani has just words, and his party is involved in the MPS bank scandal, so is losing votes to that. he is conspicuously silent on the greening of the economy, leaving those votes to grillo.

if i understand correctly the 5*ers will have 100 seats in parliament.

i think most italians are realising bersani has nothing new to bring to the table really, he was there to pick up centrist voters disenchanted with satyrism, who are forgetting their disgust at the prospect of a cheque in the mail.

beppe is on a roll meanwhile, his campaign speechifying finally on the daily tv news... too big to ignore at this point, which considering the craven italian media is no mean feat. the wall is breached, and considering how many arrests were made today of 'excellent' big fish, it seems like the magistrature will have its hands full for a while.

berlusconi stuck his foot in his mouth also, saying we should be realistic and accept that bribery is just a fact of life and it is auto-lesionistic, pure masochism to pretend that italy can run without it, in other words to attack it is a form of treason against the homeland. (and all the judges are commies, yawn)

i hope oliver stone does a biopic of this guy soon, it could out-do nixon's for the viscosity factor alone.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty