Socialist Party supporters celebrate their party's win today in Madrid

Yeeaa for Spain!

We all grieve for you still, but now we're all encouraged by your good sense and courage in throwing the current government into the streets where it belongs. If it had been there all along, 11 millions Spaniards just might not have had to stand in those same streets on Friday.

It's a remarkable turnaround from just a few days ago, when all pundits had been predicting a large victory for the conservative Popular Party, until now Bush's second partner in the coalition of willing rogue nations responsible for the Iraq invasion and occupation.

Blair should be quaking in his boots. No, maybe he's even soiling his pants by now, since he's had plenty to worry about ever since the WMDs evaporated into thin air.

In the meantime, maybe Italy can do something about their own embarassing toady. [Say, just how much in bribes has Washington been offering these governments, whose populations have been so unwilling? There's no other sensible argument for their support.]

Unfortunately here in never-never land we're going to have to wait until November for a regime change, but the population of the U.S. is neither as informed or bold as that of Spain, Britain, or even Italy, so nothing can be certain even about that date. Atrios wrote about that on Saturday:

Terrorism and Elections

Conventional wisdom, which we'll assume to be true for the moment, tells us that if the people responsible for the horrific bombings in Spain were al Qaedaish or Islamic extremists or something similar, rather than ETA terrorists, that it could cause the defeat of Aznar's party, PP, in the elections tomorrow. The reason being that Iraq was not popular with the Spanish people, and if Aznar directed resources to fighting a non-threat instead of spending time to find real threats, or if the terrorism is a response to their participation in the Iraq war, then he and his party obviously failed in their duty.

On the other hand, I would say that conventional wisdom in this country would be that a major al Qaedaish terrorist attack in this country before our election would be good for the Republicans and Bush. I have no idea if this, or the other, conventional wisdom is true, but the contrast is interesting.

[image from Yahoo! News]