I guess phone sex worker turnout wasn't high enough

Berlusconi's out, though he won't concede yet.

Notwithstanding the loss of one of the great buffoons of world politics, I can't say I'm sorry to see Berlusconi's back, at least for now. Corrupt, sleazy and right-wing, there really wan't much to recommend him to me except the surreal comedy he brought to politics. See ya, Silvio.

Incidentally, those "masters of minority government," the Italians, have possibly the dumbest electoral system on the planet. The first place party or coalition, by law, gets 340 seats in the 630 seat lower house. The second place party, again by law, gets 277 seats. That 0.1% difference in votes between Prodi's bunch and Silvio's gang, therefore, translates into 63 seats, or 10 percent of the house. Also, what precisely is the point of electing two different house of parliament simultaneously with slightly different versions of party-list voting? It seems designed to produce government instability. While it would be comforting to think that Italy's revolving door politics is a result of deliberate planning, rather than incompetence, it seems like a stretch.