ROB PORT says it's the bumpsticker of the year, and he's probably right:

Alcohol, Tobacco, And Firearms Should Be The Name Of A Covenience Store, Not A Government Agency

Good one.

WOW, global warming is indeed awful! Look at all the evils it causes...

THIS, by IowaHawk, is hysterical. Pure genius.

DON'T FLIRT in Saudi Arabia. If you want to keep your hair, that is.

SOME SNIPPETS of McCain's past. I don't think it's as troubling that he never mentions them as Karl Rove does. Quite the opposite: I think it's very telling. Most of us would exploit that to no end...

UN PEACEKEEPING TROOPS are so lucky. If they were Marines, everybody would be screaming off their lungs over this.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS on former GOP Senator Bob Smith: "He combines the body of an ox with the brains of a gnat. Indeed, if his brains were made of gunpowder and were to accidentally explode, the resulting bang would not even be enough to disarrange his hair."

Ouch.

OBAMA is a Mac, Hillary is a PC, says Noam Cohen. So what is McCain? Linux? OS/2?

BRUCE BAWER writes about the anatomy of a surrender: "Motivated by fear and multiculturalism, too many Westerners are acquiescing to creeping sharia."

HOW DALLAS won the Cold War. Seems a bit of a stretch, but it's a fun read.

NORTH KOREA readying for war?

THE BBC'S US correspondent writes:

Despite the fact there are more than 200 million guns in circulation, there is a certain tranquility and civility about American life.

[...] I have met incredulous British tourists who have been shocked to the core by the peacefulness of the place, the lack of the violent undercurrent so ubiquitous in British cities, even British market towns.

"It seems so nice here," they quaver.

[...] Ten or 20 years ago, it was a different story, but things have changed.

And this is Manhattan.

Wait till you get to London Texas, or Glasgow Montana, or Oxford Mississippi or Virgin Utah, for that matter, where every household is required by local ordinance to possess a gun.

Folks will have guns in all of these places and if you break into their homes they will probably kill you.

They will occasionally kill each other in anger or by mistake, but you never feel as unsafe as you can feel in south London.

It is a paradox. Along with the guns there is a tranquillity and civility about American life of which most British people can only dream.

[...]

What surprises the British tourists is that, in areas of the US that look and feel like suburban Britain, there is simply less crime and much less violent crime.

Doors are left unlocked, public telephones unbroken.

One reason - perhaps the overriding reason - is that there is no public drunkenness in polite America, simply none.

I have never seen a group of drunk young people in the entire six years I have lived here. I travel a lot and not always to the better parts of town.

It is an odd fact that a nation we associate - quite properly - with violence is also so serene, so unscarred by petty crime, so innocent of brawling.

This doesn't really shock Europeans who have spent some time in the US. It does shock those who pontificate from their keyboards after reading a thing or two on the Internet, telling Americans what they should do, without having ever set foot there, though.

SO GLOBAL WARMING is coming, eh? Make it a new ice age instead. Some "scientific consensus," eh?

WHICH IS WORSE: global warming or the ozone hole?

THE MEN IN BLACK vanish, and Basra comes to life.

AL-QAEDA getting impopular with its natural constituency. Good.

THINGS CAN'T BE as bad as some say, considering this:

Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri criticised Muslims for failing to support Islamist insurgencies in Iraq and elsewhere in a new audiotape posted Tuesday on the Internet.

IRAQ continues towards reconciliation.

BEST COMMENT of yesterday's primary in Pennsylvania award goes to... Stephen Green, at Pajamas Media:

Think of Clinton as Punxsutawney Phil — If she comes out tonight and sees a ten-point margin, then get ready for six more weeks of campaigning.

THE TEN most annoying singers. I totally agree with the list with one exception: Celine Dion should have been No. 1. No question about it.

INJECTING some common sense in the "we gotta save the Earth" issue.

IN IRAQ, After the bombs, the tomatos:

Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put Al-Qaeda to flight, farmers are everywhere out in their fields tending their tomatoes.

Homes in the Sunni Arab rural patch about 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, meanwhile, are being rebuilt, schools reopened, roads repaired and irrigation pumps renewed, even as shopkeepers happily dust off their shelves.

"It's the first time in three years I am able to work in my lands," said Ammar Wadi, a 30-year-old vegetable farmer who also runs a small dairy herd.

His lands, on the banks of the Tigris, are thriving. Besides tomatoes, he also grows ochre and wheat, while some of his 30 acres is devoted to pastures.

TODAY I'll be basically here all day. Gonna be fun.

EUROPE STINKS. Literally:

Commuters in London and its neighboring towns and villages in southern England woke up to an unusual smell Friday morning: a stink that led many to wonder if the city's sewers had overflowed.

Not even the queen was spared, as newspapers reported that Windsor Castle also suffered from the effects of the putrid smell.

The U.K. Meteorological Office (Met Office) was quick to assure callers that there was no reason to panic.

The foul smell was not English, Sarah Holland, a forecaster for the Met Office told the BBC. "The origins of the smell come from Europe," she said.

MEET ME at Jules': for the next few days, I'll be guestblogging, along with several notables, at Jules Crittenden's while he's on a short vacation. That doesn't mean I'll leave Barcepundit unattended, of course, so keep coming!

WHAT THE HELL is this?

A WEDDING in Mahmoud's family.

GOOD NEWS FOR NERDS: Men's masturbation is healthier than sexual intercourse...

I HAVEN'T HAD chance to link much to John at Iberian Notes lately, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't been reading him; he's as great as usual. Start at the top and scroll down.

KEEPING TRACK of the Olympic Torch carboon footprint --one leg at a time.

FOR THE FIRST TIME since mid-March, Hillary leads Obama nationally in a Gallup daily tracking poll.

McCLATCHY -rather than the Miami Herald- should be ashamed about this.

IS THE EARTH actually producing more oil?

HMM:

Iran and the United States have been engaged in secret "back channel" discussions for the past five years on Iran's nuclear programme and the broader relationship between the two sworn enemies, The Independent can reveal.

One of the participants, former senior US diplomat Thomas Pickering, explained that a group of former American diplomats and experts had been meeting with Iranian academics and policy advisers "in a lot of different places, although not in the US or Iran".

"Some of the Iranians were connected to official institutions inside Iran," he said in a telephone interview from Washington. The group was organised by the UN Association of the USA, a pro-UN organisation. Its work was facilitated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a government-funded think-tank chaired by the former chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq, Rolf Ekeus.

While the nuclear issue was "prominent", Mr Pickering said, "we discussed what's going on domestically in both countries and wide-ranging issues" affecting the US-Iran relationship. Although none of the group members was from the US or Iranian governments, he said that "each side kept their officials informed". The Bush administration "did not discourage us," he added.

MY EYES, my eyes!

NO, HILLARY wasn't lying! Some Tuzla gunfire footage has been discovered...

HOPE FOR FALLUJAH: Michael Totten writes on how the surge brought order to "Iraq's meanest city."

TAKE THAT, Bill Gates...

THE MOST ICONIC attack against the Olympic torch in Paris -you'll remember the pic of an alleged demonstrator attacking an athlete in her wheelchair- was carried by Chinese agents provocateurs, looking to discredit the Tibetan cause. Not that I'm suprised, of course.

THERE'S A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS in Gaza... because Hamas seizes half of the fuel transferred by Israel.

HOW DIFFERENTLY women and men shower. Funny:

CUTTING RIBBONS is for girlie men! This is how Arnold "Terminator" Schwarzenegger opens a new freeway:

WHO SAID THIS?

"The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States."

Barack Obama on George Bush? Or was it Jack Murtha? Nancy Pelosi, perhaps? Could it be Michael Moore?

No, it's a Chicago Times' editorial. From 1863. Reacting to the Gettysburg address.

Another interesting tidbit:

The Times was founded in 1854, by James W. Sheahan, with the backing of Stephen Douglas. In 1861, after the paper was purchased by Wilbur F. Storey, the Times began espousing the Copperhead point of view in supporting Southern Democrats and denounced the policies of Abraham Lincoln. General Ambrose Burnside suppressed the paper in 1863 because of its hostility to the Union cause, but Lincoln lifted the ban when he received word of it.

There you go, another similarity between Abe and Bush: both crushing dissent and stifling free speech!

(via my Spanish pal Marzo, who IMed me both link, saying: "Oh, the wonders of wandering around in Wikipedia in a lazy Saturday afternoon!" Indeed...)

UPDATE. Eric Sheie catches the ball and gets a new game rolling: Name that President! "Which administration is most hostile in history to the Bill of Rights?" Click the link and keep playin'!

UODATE II. The Dissident Frogman emails: "Love the bit about 'intelligent foreigners', particularly considering what those "intelligent foreigners" had in store for the coming century at that point..." Hmmmm. Can't think of what he's referring to...

AND I THOUGHT that everything wrong in Iraq was the bad Yankees' fault. Must be because, well, I'm not an Iraqi:

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

MICHAEL YON: "Let's 'Surge' Some More."

I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.

The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about "GoArmy.com."

As the outrages of Abu Ghraib faded in memory – and paled in comparison to al Qaeda's brutalities – and our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.

Keep reading; definitely today's must-read.

UPDATE. This is certainly related.

WHY BEAUTIFUL WOMEN marry ugly guys. Not that it's my problem, of course...

BILL CLINTON'S lavish retirement. On taxpayer's dime, of course:

The Clintons have made a $100-million fortune since leaving the White House, but a Politico analysis found that hasn’t kept Bill Clinton from taking full advantage of the publicly funded perks offered to ex-presidents.

In fact, his presidential retirement benefits cost taxpayers almost as much as those of the other two living ex-presidents combined.

The price tag for Clinton’s federal retirement allowance from 2001 through the end of this year will run $8 million, compared to $5.5 million for George H. W. Bush’s and $4 million for Jimmy Carter’s during the same period.

Since 2001, Clinton has received more of almost every benefit available to former presidents — from his pension to his staff’s salaries and benefits to supplies. His $420,000 phone bill and $3.2 million office rent tab both nearly surpassed the totals rung up for those purposes by Bush, Carter and the late former presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan combined. As a group, they spent $484,000 on telephone service and $3.8 million on rent in the same span.

SPY PHOTOS of secret launch site for Iran's long-range missiles. Iran, the country that is supposed to use centrifugues for peaceful purposes. But those missiles could reach Western Europe and, of course, Israel. And it's true that a real, actual atomic bomb would still be years ahead; it's not an easy thing to do. But what about a dirty bomb?

THEY SAY they want to tackle climate change, and I'm ready to accept that most do it out of genuine -yet misguided- concern. But the result is that those governments are starving people they are supposed to be helping, says Dominic Lawson.

UPDATE. Besides, there's no connection between climate change and the spreading of insect-borne diseases.

WOW, time flies. Been swamped and hadn't realized it had been... a month! since I hadn't updated this. Realized only after I got an email from the syndication company who wanted to know if everything was allright. Shame on me. I promise this will change soon. Very soon.

Meanwhile, read this superb report of the Olympic torch relay in San Fran, with tons of pictures, by none other than Zombie.

IN MEMORIAM

Eva Belén Abad Quijada, Spain, 30 years old

Óscar Abril Alegre, Spain, 19 years old

Liliana Guillermina Acero Ushiña, Ecuador, 26 years old

Florencio Aguado Rojano, Spain, 60 years old

Juan Alberto Alonso Rodríguez, Spain, 38 years old

María Joséfa Alvarez González, Spain, 48 years old

Juan Carlos Del Amo Aguado, Spain, 28 years old

Andriyan Asenov Andrianov, Bulgaria, 22 years old

María Nuria Aparicio Somolinos, Spain, 40 years old

Alberto Arenas Barroso, Spain, 24 years old

Neil Hebe Astocondor Masgo, Peru, 34 years old

Ana Isabel Avila Jiménez, Spain, 43 years old

Miguel Ángel Badajoz Cano, Spain, 34 years old

Susana Ballesteros Ibarra, Spain, 42 years old

Francisco Javier Barahona Imedio, Spain, 34 years old

Gonzalo Barajas Díaz, Spain, 32 years old

Gloria Inés Bedoya, Colombia, 40 years old

Sanaa Ben Salah Imadaquan, Spain, 13 years old

Esteban Martín De Benito Caboblanco, Spain, 39 years old

Rodolfo Benito Samaniego, Spain, 27 years old

Anka Valeria Bodea, Romania, 26 years old

Livia Bogdan, Romania, 27 years old

Florencio Brasero Murga, Spain, 50 years old

Trinidad Bravo Segovia, Spain, 40 years old

Alina Maria Bryk, Poland, 39 years old

Stefan Budai, Romania, 37 years old

Tibor Budi, Romania, 37 years old

María Pilar Cabrejas Burillo, Spain, 37 years old

Rodrigo Cabrero Pérez, Spain, 20 years old

Milagros Calvo García, Spain, 39 years old

Sonia Cano Campos, Spain, 24 years old

Alicia Cano Martínez, Spain, 63 years old

José María Carrilero Baeza, Spain, 39 years old

Álvaro Carrion Franco, Spain, 17 years old

Francisco Javier Casas Torresano, Spain, 28 years old

Cipriano Castillo Muñoz, Spain, 55 years old

María Inmaculada Castillo Sevillano, Spain, 39 years old

Sara Centenera Montalvo, Spain, 19 years old

Oswaldo Manuel Cisneros Villacís, Ecuador, 34 years old

Eugenia María Ciudad-Real Díaz, Spain, 26 years old

Jacqueline Contreras Ortiz, Peru, 22 years old

María Soledad Contreras Sánchez, Spain, 51 years old

María Paz Criado Pleiter, Spain, 52 years old

Nicoleta Diac, Romania, 27 years old

Beatriz Díaz Hernandez, Spain, 30 years old

Georgeta Gabriela Dima, Romania, 35 years old

Tinka Dimitrova Paunova, Bulgaria, 31 years old

Kalina Dimitrova Vasileva, Bulgaria, 31 years old

Sam Djoco, Senegal, 42 years old

María Dolores Durán Santiago, Spain, 34 years old

Osama El Amrati, Morocco, 23 years old

Sara Encinas Soriano, Spain, 26 years old

Carlos Marino Fernández Dávila, Peru, 39 years old

María Fernández del Amo, Spain, 25 years old

Rex Ferrer Reynado, Phillipines, 20 years old

Héctor Manuel Figueroa Bravo, Chile, 33 years old

Julia Frutos Rosique, Spain, 44 years old

María Dolores Fuentes Fernández, Spain, 29 years old

José Gallardo Olmo, Spain, 33 years old

José Raúl Gallego Triguero, Spain, 39 years old

María Pilar Gamiz Torres, Spain, 40 years old

Abel García Alfageme, Spain, 27 years old

Juan Luis García Arnaiz, Spain, 17 years old

Beatriz García Fernández, Spain, 27 years old

María de las Nieves García García-Moñino, Spain, 46 years old

Enrique García González, Dominican Republic, 28 years old

Cristina Aurelia García Martínez, Spain, 34 years old

Carlos Alberto García Presa, Spain, 24 years old

José García Sánchez, Spain, 45 years old

José María García Sánchez, Spain, 47 years old

Javier Garrote Plaza, Spain, 26 years old

Petrica Geneva, Romania, 34 years old

Ana Isabel Gil Pérez, Spain, 29 years old

Óscar Gómez Gudiña, Spain, 24 years old

Felix González Gago, Spain, 52 years old

Ángelica González García, Spain, 19 years old

Teresa González Grande, Spain, 38 years old

Elías González Roque, Spain, 30 years old

Juan Miguel Gracia García, Spain, 53 years old

Javier Guerrero Cabrera, Spain, 25 years old

Berta María Gutiérrez García, Spain, 39 years old

Sergio de las Heras Correa, Spain, 29 years old

Pedro Hermida Martín, Spain, 51 years old

Alejandra Iglesias López, Spain, 28 years old

Mohamed Itaiben, Morocco, 27 years old

Pablo Izquierdo Asanza, Spain, 42 years old

María Teresa Jaro Narrillos, Spain, 32 years old

Oleksandr Kladkovoy, Ukraine, 56 years old

Laura Isabel Laforga Bajón, Spain, 28 years old

María Victoria León Moyano, Spain, 30 years old

María Carmen Lominchar Alonso, Spain, 34 years old

Myriam López Díaz, Spain, 31 years old

María Carmen López Pardo, Spain, 50 years old

María Cristina López Ramos, Spain, 38 years old

José María López-Menchero Moraga, Spain, 44 years old

Miguel de Luna Ocaña, Spain, 36 years old

María Jesús Macías Rodríguez, Spain, 30 years old

Francisco Javier Mancebo Záforas, Spain, 38 years old

Ángel Manzano Pérez, Ecuador, 42 years old

Vicente Marín Chiva, Spain, 37 years old

Antonio Marín Mora, Spain, 43 years old

Begoña Martín Baeza, Spain, 25 years old

Ana Martín Fernández, Spain, 43 years old

Luis Andrés Martín Pacheco, Spain, 54 years old

María Pilar Martín Rejas, Spain, 50 years old

Alois Martinas, Romania, 27 years old

Carmen Mónica Martínez Rodríguez, Spain, 31 years old

Míriam Melguizo Martínez, Spain, 28 years old

Javier Mengíbar Jiménez, Spain, 43 years old

Álvaro de Miguel Jiménez, Spain, 26 years old

Michael Mitchell Rodríguez, Cuba, 28 years old

Stefan Modol, Romania, 45 years old

Segundo Víctor Mopocita Mopocita, Ecuador, 37 years old

Encarnación Mora Donoso, Spain, 64 years old

María Teresa Mora Valero, Spain, 37 years old

Julita Moral García, Spain, 53 years old

Francisco Moreno Aragonés, Spain, 56 years old

José Ramón Moreno Isarch, Spain, 37 years old

Eugenio Moreno Santiago, Spain, 56 years old

Juan Pablo Moris Crespo, Spain, 32 years old

Juan Muñoz Lara, Spain, 33 years old

Francisco José Narváez de la Rosa, Spain, 28 years old

Mariana Negru, Romania, 40 years old

Ismael Nogales Guerrero, Spain, 31 years old

Inés Novellón Martínez, Spain, 30 years old

Miguel Ángel Orgaz Orgaz, Spain, 34 years old

Ángel Pardillos Checa, Spain, 62 years old

Sonia Parrondo Antón, Spain, 28 years old

Juan Francisco Pastor Férez, Spain, 51 years old

Daniel Paz Manjón, Spain, 20 years old

Josefa Pedraza Pino, Spain, 41 years old

Miryam Pedraza Rivero, Spain, 25 years old

Roberto Pellicari Lopezosa, Spain, 31 years old

María del Pilar Pérez Mateo, Spain, 28 years old

Felipe Pinel Alonso, Spain, 51 years old

Martha Scarlett Plasencia Hernandez, Dominican Republic, 27 years old

Elena Ples, Romania, 33 years old

María Luisa Polo Remartinez, Spain, 50 years old

Ionut Popa, Romania, 23 years old

Emilian Popescu, Romania, 44 years old

Miguel Ángel Prieto Humanes, Spain, 37 years old

Francisco Antonio Quesada Bueno, Spain, 44 years old

John Jairo Ramírez Bedoya, Colombia, 37 years old

Laura Ramos Lozano, Honduras, 37 years old

Miguel Reyes Mateos, Spain, 37 years old

Marta del Río Menéndez, Spain, 40 years old

Nuria del Río Menéndez, Spain, 38 years old

Jorge Rodríguez Casanova, Spain, 22 years old

Luis Rodríguez Castell, Spain, 40 years old

María de la Soledad Rodríguez de la Torre, Spain, 42 years old

Ángel Luis Rodríguez Rodríguez, Spain, 34 years old

Francisco Javier Rodríguez Sánchez, Spain, 52 years old

Ambrosio Rogado Escribano, Spain, 56 years old

Cristina Romero Sánchez, Spain, 34 years old

Patricia Rzaca, Poland, 7 meses

Wieslaw Rzaca, Poland, 34 years old

Antonio Sabalete Sánchez, Spain, 36 years old

Sergio Sánchez López, Spain, 17 years old

María Isabel Sánchez Mamajón, Spain, 37 years old

Juan Antonio Sánchez Quispe, Peru, 45 years old

Balbina Sánchez-Dehesa France, Spain, 47 years old

David Santamaría García, Spain, 23 years old

Sergio dos Santos Silva, Brazil, 28 years old

Juan Carlos Sanz Morales, Spain, 33 years old

Eduardo Sanz Pérez, Spain, 31 years old

Guillermo Senent Pallarola, Spain, 23 years old

Miguel Antonio Serrano Lastra, Spain, 28 years old

Rafael Serrano López, Spain, 66 years old

Paula Mihaela Sfeatcu, Romania, 27 years old

Federico Miguel Sierra Serón, Spain, 37 years old

Domnino Simón González, Spain, 45 years old

María Susana Soler Iniesta, Spain, 46 years old

Carlos Soto Arranz, Spain, 34 years old

Mariya Ivanova Staykova, Bulgaria, 38 years old

Marion Cintia Subervielle, France, 30 years old

Alexandru Horatiu Suciu, Romania, 18 years old

Danuta Teresa Szpila, Poland, 28 years old

José Luis Tenesaca Betancourt, Ecuador, 17 years old

Iris Toribio Pascual, Spain, 20 years old

Neil Torres Mendoza, Ecuador, 38 years old

Carlos Tortosa García, Spain, 31 years old

María Teresa Tudanca Hernández, Spain, 49 years old

Jesús Utrilla Escribano, Spain, 44 years old

José Miguel Valderrama López, Spain, 25 years old

Saúl Valdez Ruiz, Honduras, 44 years old

Mercedes Vega Mingo, Spain, 45 years old

David Vilela Fernández, Spain, 23 years old

Juan Ramón Zamora Gutiérrez, Spain, 29 years old

Yaroslav Zojniuk, Ukraine, 48 years old

Csaba Olimpiu Zsigovski, Romania, 26 years old

SO THE RESULTS are in and Zapatero won yesterday's election with 163 seats v PP's 153. It's a clear victory, but I disagree with so many who say it's such a clear endorsement of his policies during the last 4 years since he unexpectedly won after the Madrid terrorist massacre.

First of all, with an almost identical turnout than in 2004, the Socialist Party did win more seats in the Congress of Deputies -the lower chamber- but with essentially the same number of votes, around 11 million. Meanwhile, the conservative Popular Party got 10.2 million votes versus 9.8 in 2004. When Aznar won in 1996, he had 156 seats in parliament, only 3 more than this time. So you could argue that the conservative PP lost by winning, if you get my drift. He did better than last time, but not well enough. Meanwhile, the Socialists won by staying pretty much were they were. It's a sweet-and-sour victory of sorts

What we're seeing is that the political scene has polarized and that the 2 major parties are getting most of the vote, with smaller and regional parties getting a substantial minor chunk of the pie. It was a tendency which started in earlier contests, but now it's clear that Spain is becoming a two-party system.

So, how come the Socialist Party got more seats if it got essentially the same number of votes, you may be asking yourselves. The answer is easy: let me introduce you to Mr. D'Hondt. The way Spain allocates seats, big parties are benefited: they get proportionally more seats than they would in a pure proportional system. So the number of seats depend as much on how many votes big parties get as on how many the smaller parties get. That is, in a pure proportional system, if three parties get, say 100 votes each, and considering for the sake of the argument that you need 100 votes to get a seat, they would all get one seat. But if one party gets 200 votes and the other two 75 and 25 votes each, the winning party doesn't get 2 seats and the second one the third, but it gets all three. Got it?

And the fact is that in this election many small parties, who had a remarkable representation in the Congress of Deputies -at least enough to make a dent-, this time simply crashed and burned. They were small parties that the Socialist party had been allied with during this four years. When Zapatero won in 2004, he didn't have a clear majority, and had made clear that he was going to advance his reform agenda no matter what the main opposition party thought. It was an arrangement that worked well for both sides: Zapatero needed those small parties to get enough votes to pass those reforms, and those small parties enjoyed an amount of influence they would have never dreamt of. They were either the Communist party (IU) or Catalan pro-independence parties (ERC), who in turn demanded concessions in exchange for his support, which translated in a clear left turn of the Socialist party. They even signed an agreement to establish a cordon sanitarie isolating the Popular Party: they pledged not to enter into any kind of agreement whatsoever with the conservatives (yeah, you read that right).

Little did those guys imagine they were sitting in a couch with an 800-pound gorilla who would crush them into tiny bits. Which is exactly what happened yesterday: either their voters thought their ballot would be more effective if it was cast to the bigger one (Mr. D'Hondt again; why voting a small guy if you get the same agenda implemented by Mr Big, with more chances to win?), or either they stayed home disappointed. After all, their bases were not entirely comfortable with their leaders' decisions to support the Socialist party: for the communists, it isn't leftist enough; for the Catalan pro-independentists, Socialist parties -with their their internationalistic foundations- are not exactly nationalistic nirvana.

But Zapatero's victory is far from sweeping for another reason. While the Socialist Party won the Congress of Deputies yesterday, the conservative Popular Party won the Senate. True, in Spain the higher chamber is not like in the US or other countries, where it introduces legislation: it merely has a second look to what the Congress has passed. It can modify that legislation and even strike it down, but in either of those cases the bill is sent back to Congress, who can accept or reject the Senate's decision. So it means the real legislative power lays in the lower chamber, but, still, it can get complicated if the Popular Party decides to filibuster every single piece of legislation.

So in the next four years, Zapatero's choice will be to re-build the bridges with the Popular Party he so badly burned since 2004, bringing some calm to the political climate, which is badly needed. Or he can reach agreement with the moderate Catalan party CiU, which is not pro-independence and is quite pro-business, pro-Western: they got 11 seats, enough for the Socialist Party to get the absolute majority (176 seats). Or he can go on like he did in the last 4 years, since, since there's not really an alternative: even if the PP would convince CiU to coalesce against Zapatero, they still wouldn't have enough seats for a recall.

My hunch is that the latest scenario is the most likely: after all, Zapatero knows that if he moves towards the center, the Communists and the Catalan independentists will revive, and any vote fragmentation will be costly.

UPDATE. Soeren Kern is gloomy.

HERE YOU'LL BE ABLE to follow the live results of today's general election in Spain, coming in as they are being counted. What, you thought that only TV had nice swirling effects?



UPDATE. It seems there's some problem with the widget, don't know the reason and whether it'll be back (being a widget it's not under my control, of course). I'll leave this as it is in case it comes back, but if you can't wait to take a look, you can head to my blog in Spanish (where, oddly, it does work; may be because of the language selection)

UPDATE II. Yes, it seems it has to do with language selection; I'm putting the Spanish version but you can select English at the bottom.

TWO GREAT PIECES explaining what you can expect in Spain's general election tomorrow and what has happened in the last four years: one by John Chappell at Pajamas Media, another by Soeren Kern at Brussels Journal. Both were published before yesterday's assassination, which changes the scenario a little, but they're still very valid.

AS THEY OFTEN DO in the days immediately before elections, ETA terrorists have killed again:

A former councillor from Spain's ruling Socialist Party was shot dead outside his house in the Basque Country town of Mondragon on Friday two days before a national election, police said.Isaias Carrasco, 42, was shot in the back of the neck in a style typical of