Berlusconi vows to arrive for work as Italian PM

[WhiteTara]

this guy is really pathetic
http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,,1759827,00.html

Still refusing to concede defeat in the Italian general election, Silvio Berlusconi put on another bravura performance at the weekend by serenading his supporters and then threatening to paralyse the incoming government.

The former cruise ship crooner took to the stage in a hotel restaurant in Trieste in northern Italy, singing a medley of Neapolitan ballads. He also treated his audience, who applauded wildly, to a song he said he had composed in the wake of the election result, in which he talks about going to live on a tropical island.
snip
Tony Blair and the leaders of China, Russia, the US, Argentina, Japan and all of the major European countries have formally telephoned Mr Prodi to offer congratulations. Mr Berlusconi has shrugged off the calls, saying they reflect Italy's good standing on the world stage.

At his home in Bologna yesterday Mr Prodi said Mr Berlusconi's refusal to acknowledge that the centre-left had won the election was "not my problem, it is his". He said his coalition would stay united and govern for the next five years. "We won the election and we have the right and the duty to govern. We will do so in the service and interests of all the country."

But Prodi's coalition seems to be having birthing pains.
http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/feeds/ap/2006/04/23/ap2690164.html

Prodi's Coalition Already Squabbling

The coalition of Italy's incoming prime minister was already showing signs of fraying Sunday, with the head of a tiny party saying he would stay out of the government.

It could be a Herculean task for Romano Prodi to hold together a coalition that includes mainstream leftists, communists, Catholics and secular radicals.

The center-left Prodi, however, vowed to govern for a full, five-year parliamentary term.

"We will stay united, and we will stay so for five years," Prodi told reporters outside his home in Bologna.

[Poll_Blind]

1. This sort of talk coming from ANY previously-elected official is...

...very, very disturbing. Pray tell, what will you do Mr. Berlusconi when you find they have changed the locks on the door? Or will you post guard to see that it does not happen?

PB

[Renew Deal]

3. I agree

Will they have to carry him out of the office? How far will he go to stay in power? It's a dangerous game. You hurt your country when you do this. That means that power is more important than the country.

[Amonester]

31. Si. What a Whinning Child That Right Wing Ex-Dictator-wannabee

is showing the world the true 'crying baby' character of these wingnut Dominionists.

BOOOOOOOO! Berlusconi, BOOOOOOOO!

[NYC]

2. I wonder if anyone is taking bets on when Berlusconi

will give up the ghost.

[Jack from Charlotte]

51. Just a guess. They're will be a few cardboard boxes sitting in the hall...

outside his former office filled with his personal stuff... like a picture of him and Bobby Bowden shaking hands. Signed and framed letter from one of Mussolini's relatives saying how much they admire him. Letter from Bush thanking him for that yellow cake/Niger forgery.

[AndyTiedye]

4. They Were Applauding Because He Was Singing About GOING FAR AWAY

He also treated his audience, who applauded wildly, to a song he said he had composed in the wake of the election result, in which he talks about going to live on a tropical island.

[Joe Chi Minh]

39. Wouldn't he be thinking of looming jail terms? I dare say

the words of the Psalmist are constantly coming to his mind, "Oh for the wings of a dove!" Maybe he'll anticipate his possible future incarceration by being arrested now.

[AndyTiedye]

40. Or a Tropical Island Without any Extradition Treaties

[Joe Chi Minh]

52. You got it! Didn't someone mention the Cayman Islands!?!

[flyarm]

5. wow Berlusconi is a nut case!! reminds me of *...

sad ..someone is this pathetic...

fly

[Matilda]

6. It's a farce, like so much of Italian politics.

The extraordinary thing is that although their successive governments always seem to be in a
shambles, the economy is strong.

[nicknameless]

43. Wonder whatever happened to Cicciolina.

:eyes:

[Fridays Child]

7. I anticipated the same response from B*sh, had he not cheated his way...

...back into the White House in 2004.

[necso]

8. "...going to live on a tropical island",

also known as flight to avoid prosecution.

Clown.

[glitch]

29. Hope it's a low bank one. nt

[Amonester]

32. Yeah, he should fly to the Cayman Islands so this way...

he could smile all the way to the bank (probably... 'right' next door...).

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. Bush called to congratulate Prodi? Really?

Tony Blair and the leaders of China, Russia, the US, Argentina, Japan and all of the major European countries...

That would be big news, and yet it's buried there in the middle of that series? Weird, weird stuff.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. It was noted on Friday

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=988180

[shenmue]

10. Doesn't he get it? He lost!

Go away, nutcase!

:crazy:

:dunce:

[cascadiance]

24. All of his media (aka ALL the Italian media)...

... will insist that he's won! Much like Bushco's media will try to do the same in 2009 too...

[951-Riverside]

11. Does Italy have nuclear weapons?

[DemoTex]

12. Change the locks.

That's the ticket.

[KeepItReal]

18. And their Secret Service's guest list at the Presidential Palace

That'll learn him!

[cliss]

13. This is just ridiculous.

Can you imagine, on Monday morning? We look into the leader's office.

There, at the desk, we see Silvio Berlusconi and Mr. Prodi, sitting at the same desk. They are jockeying for position on the chair.

This is just bizarre.

And, notice the song Little Danny De Vito composed: he's going to live on a tropical island. Sheesh, the guy is mental.

[0007]

16. It will make for good Saturday night comedy.....

[annabanana]

15. We must laugh louder and make his name emblematic !

So we can call Republicans a raving bunch of "Berlusconis" when B*sh's den of thieves refuse to leave in November.

(There WILL be suspiciously close machine results.. count on it people!!

(K&R!!)

[Octafish]

17. It's what Bush plans to do in 2009.

The crazy monkey will have to be dragged, kicking and screaming from the Oval Office.

It's the same for all dick-taters.

[Binka]

19. Silvio Is A Massive Joke Here...He's pissed Because He Spent $$$$$$

to steal the thing and he still LOST. The two things that bit him in the ass were election reform laws HE passed in December 2005 and the votes from abroad that HE passed the same year. The expression hoisted by his own petard comes to mind. Go home you crappy lounge singer.

[autorank]

21. I read Doug Irelands blog a few times and it was excellent but...

...what's with the naked pics of Silvio. That was a truly disgusting experience, seing that pic on the blog. Ireland is brutal and I'm sure he was laughing.

[LetsGoMurphys]

20. thats exactly what I was thinking n/t

[Javaman]

22. I smell a Fellini-esque movie coming out of all this...LOL nt.

[cascadiance]

23. Well, if he's going to continue to act like Mussolini did...

... then perhaps Italians should ultimately give him the same ending treatment they gave Mussolini, and leave him hanging upside down in the village square!

[Kolesar]

37. Need a gang of Communist partisans, IIRC ... eom

[malaise]

25. Berlusconi should be locked up in

a nut house.

[IndyOp]

26. Berlusconi has to go to JAIL when he leaves office - literally..

Berlusconi passed legislation so that no one holding public office could be tried and jailed. He passed it because his business partners were being jailed by the dozens while he was in office. So long as he stays in office he can't be jailed. Thom Hartmann has been doing an excellent job covering this situation...

:hi:

[nicknameless]

44. Interesting!

I hadn't heard that. Sure wish a local station would carry Thom's show. He's great. :)

[IndyOp]

45. You can stream him 24/7 at WhiteRoseSociety.org --

The link is on the Thom Hartmann page there.

:hi:

[nicknameless]

46. True. But I'm finicky ;)

The stream became a bit weird a few months back. If it stops for any reason, it goes back to the beginning. I wish his program were available like Randi's is, so that you can download it, then pause and play the audio.

But he's such a great host, it's worth any downside to hear him.

:hi:

[IndyOp]

48. For a $45 donation you can access the WhiteRose archives for 1 year --

And you can start/stop reverse/fast forward at will. It does not 'download' -- it plays in an open browser window, but you do have complete control of the stream.

:hi:

[nicknameless]

49. Thanks

:hi:

[iconoclastNYC]

27. Imagine what all his media outlets must be doing?!

Imagine the situation in 2000 with the recount in Flordia. Now imagine that Bush actually OWNED 90% percent of the media in the USA.

The propoganda must going out on Berl's stations must be truly breathtaking.

[Seabiscuit]

28. What, can't Silvio take a joke?

[Peter Frank]

30. Small potatoes compared to what the pnac cabal will do - faced with ouster

eom

[ama]

33. It could be worse

remember when Aznar lost the Spanish election? snip
¨José María Aznar ordered the destruction of computer records dealing with the key period between the Madrid train bombings and the general election held three days later that it lost to Zapatero’s Socialist Workers Party (PSOE). El Pais reported that a specialist computer company was paid $12,000 to erase the computer records, including back-up security copies.¨
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/spai-d29.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

34. BERLUSCONI: I WON'T CALL PRODI, NOR WISH HIM WELL

BERLUSCONI: I WON'T CALL PRODI, NOR WISH HIM WELL
(AGI) - Trieste, April 21 - "I won't phone Prodi, nor will I wish him well, that would go against Italy's interests", said PM Berlusconi in Trieste. "Prodi is the one who should phone me, to apologise, considering how many times he insulted me during the electoral campaign. The vote should be annulled, but we don't really hope that will be so, because we know which coalition the magistracy supports...The centre-left does not represent the majority, we know they are under the shadow of irregular elections", he added, referring to the irregular votes of Italians abroad and null voting cards, "but we won't leave the parliament to the left". He then recalled the vote-count day, "when the Interior Minister told me we were leading by 100,000 votes at the Lower House". Then, something "which was never explained" happened. (AGI) -
212055 APR 06
(snip/)

http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200604212055-1278-RT1-CRO-0-NF82&page=0&id=agionline-eng.italyonline

[warrens]

35. With the bust of the Sicilian godfather the night of the election

Silvio realizes he's going to jail just as soon as the new govt. can repeal all the laws he passed to protect himself. It's overthrow the govt. or spend the rest of his life in jail. Wouldn't surprise me to hear Bush has a similar strategy in the works for Jan. 2009.

[Binka]

36. I Think That Was Done On Purpose They Knew Where He Was Two Weeks Prior

My landlord is a er um er um sorta an important guy. After the bust he told me Silvio was going to be shitting his pants because Silvio was well funded by the mob and Sicily always votes RW. It was a message from the Carabinari to Silvio. Wait and watch the story unfold about the assassination of Nicoli Calipari he was the guy shot in the head while taking Segrena out of the country. Remember everyone was sure it was her they wanted...I believe it was a hit on Calipari. Calipari knew about the forged Niger documents and his wife believes he was murdered. Guess who she worked for? Silvio.

Stay tuned this is going to be real. I will report from the front lines.

[thebigidea]

38. the Jesus Christ of Politics becomes more of a Tony Clifton of Politics

I'd love to see Bush sing a medley.

[Zynx]

41. Considering he has undoubtedly lost support, hold a new election.

A lot of the moderates who backed his coalition a couple weeks ago will switch to Prodi and give him a resounding win. Mussolini Jr has made such a scene that he must have suffered badly politically in this time frame.

[Jose Diablo]

42. Just change the access codes on the doors. Tell the guards he has been

fired. Remove his account in the computers. That should keep him out. And if he still gets in, then turn off his phone/fax lines. That should do it.

Where's the problem?

Edit: Don't forget to remove the coffee maker and all the booze/soda pop. Take all the furniture from his office too. Let him do something then. Oh, send the secretaries back to the sec. pool.

How more direct can someone be to tell someone he's done working there and don't come back. I've heard that Italians can be bullheaded and stubborn, but this guy sets the standard for bullheadedness.

:D

[htuttle]

47. Silvio we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B

We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?

And leave the stapler, please.

[PATRICK]

50. Idle speculation of what

is secret in all these things. I think due both to his ego ANd his recent scandals, the contradictory result was the opposite of Berlusconi's calculations. Sounds familiar, like RW a$$hats everywhere once in power then bobbling the ball. Ominously I think he intended to win this time and move much more rapidly on electronic vote fraud whose beachhead was established but relatively harmless thanks to a type of bedrock paper voting and local care that is missing in American polling.

Should Silvio still intend to wring some unlikely advantage out of those electronic experiments it would be disastrous for e-voting everywhere. Now that he has lost they wish that he- and Kathleen Harris- would shut up and go away before the jig is up.

But these things must be handled delicately or the persons who thought themselves entitled to receive the ultimate benefits of electronic fraud could spill the beans one way or another.

The other and more logical(if that applies) argument is that this despicable move is hard-nosed politics to destabilize and quickly ruin the new government no matter how bad it makes the dissenter look.

Should this legally progress it would be worthwhile for election activists to note and participate in what happens abroad in Italy or ANY OTHER NATION that is practicing this "modernized democracy" of paid media, fraud plutocracy.

I especially would counsel Canadians to keep a close eye on the new Conservative government(which has shown a tendency for quick policy reversals supporting Bush Washington) considering the close connections of vote fraud companies here and there. Any change in their current balloting methods should be viewed only with immediate suspicion and resistance.