The Huffington Post could learn something from Beppe Grillo in Italy and the Pirate Party in Sweden

Before the results of the recent regional elections in Italy had been tabulated, the political and social mobilization efforts of Beppe Grillo and his grass roots political party The Five Star Movement, had been one of the most under reported stories in the Italian and international mass media. The Italian media in fact, never even reported on any of the political rallies Grillo held in over 50 locations in the five regions where the Five Star Movement had a candidate running for office. Never heard of the Five Star Movement or Beppe Grillo? That just underscores the point of how an important role the media plays in helping grass root political movements. But as Mr. Grillo and his Five Star Movement supporters recently demostrated to the world, true grass roots movements and citizens do not need the mass media to tell them information or what is important. Responsible citizens in a democracy like the members of the Five Star Movement in Italy, engage in the vigilant defense of Liberty by actively participating in its defense , and do not only mouth the words for political effect like supporters of the Tea Party with their political rhetoric of only defending "civil liberties".

Making the electoral turnout for the grass roots political movement of Beppe Grillo even more impressive from a political science perspective is that the grass roots political movement of the Five Star Movement did not get any mass media coverage before the election and a majority of Italians did not know it even existed. Unlike the Tea Party in America which has had a great deal of media exposure that nearly every American knows about, the political and social mobilization by Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement was known to only a very small segment of the Italian population. Yet, even with the lack of media coverage, a half a million Italian people voted for the Five Star Movement in the five regions that it had a political candidate. This reveals that the traditional old mass media can be bypassed with the social and political mobilization tools of the new media offered on the Internet.

The recent success of the Five Star Movement to mobilize half a million voters is the latest example of the social and political mobilization efforts by Grillo and his army of Five Star supporters.

While some of the Italian and international mass media outlets like the Economist Magazine describe Mr. Grillo as an anti-Berlusconi comedian and blogger, these shallow and trivial descriptions of Beppe Grillo, greatly misrepresent and underreport the political and social mobilization success Mr. Grillo has done over the last three years.

Beginning with the first V-Day in 2007 and the subsequent V-2 Day in 2008, where over 350,000 Italians signed a petition demanding a referendum to have a law passed banning people with criminal records from serving in government, the political activism is nothing but heroic considering the near total media blackout of Beppe Grillo's efforts against a corrupt and entrenched political establishment.

Building off of the success of the two V-Days, Mr. Grillo has gone onto to recruit 60,000 civic-minded citizens and helped launch a grass roots political party, whose main platform issues were drafted by citizens, as opposed to the larger political parties run by professional political strategists and career politicians.

Begun at the local level on March 8, 2009, Beppe Grillo instigated the launch of the grass roots political movement first by targeting local municipal elections with the creation of the Five Star Lists. Named after the lists that Beppe Grillo encouraged people to submit names of individuals who had no criminal record or belonged to a political party, individuals from communities signed up and ran on Five Star Lists in municipal elections. Equivalent to the county commissioner or town council member, Grill and his Five Star List candidates were on the ballot in over 30 towns in northern Italy including such towns as Bologna, Ancona, Ferrara, Forlì, Cesena, Reggio Emilia, Livorno, and Rivoli.

In addition to electing several candidates to positions in municipal government, Beppe Grillo and his political activism helped elect two candidates he supported to electoral victories in the 2009 European Parliament elections in June 2009.


Encased in what Grillo called the Florence Declaration, due to the fact that is was launched in the former Florentine Republic, the Florence Declaration began the process of fielding citizen candidates to run in regional elections being held in Italy a few months later. Over the next few months, the initial 12 platform issues of the Florence Declaration were consolidated into six core platform issues and ratified with the launch of the Five-Star Movement in Milan on October 4, 2009. The core issues all focused and addressed some of the most important issues facing Italians. The main platform issues or Stars as Grillo called them were The State and its Citizens, Health, Energy, Transport, Economy, Information, and Education.

Compared to the Tea Party activists in America, the grass roots efforts of Beppe Grillo and his success in getting candidates from his grass roots political party elected to municipal government positions expose the Tea Party as merely a fringe element of the Republican Party and not a true grass roots political movement.

Perhaps the leaders of the Tea Party movement in America could learn something from the supporters of the Five Star Movement in Italy and stop aligning themselves with the business as usual political leaders of the Republican Party like Sarah Palin. Unlike the Tea Party Movement in America, the Five Star Movement in Italy is a political movement not aligned with any other political party and is made up of everyday citizens. It is time the leaders of the Huffington Post use the same social mobilization strategies Beppe Grillo used in Italy to turn their center left political blog into a political movement and then a political party for the young and other disenfranchised aspects of the American electorate to join if people want to live in a better world.

Although Beppe Grillo in Italy and the Pirate Party in Sweden have provided templates for the American public to mobilize political forces to unseat the entrenched career politicians and their corporation controlled lobbyist bedfellows, at this point in time, it does not appear Ms. Huffington or any other leader of the Huffington Post is going to use their popular blog to social mobilize a political grass roots in America.

One of most inspiring aspects of the Five Star Movement by Beppe Grillo and his political party is that it is a Movement of proposals, a programme filled with young people sharing ideas and people running for office who have no ties to an established political party.

One of reasons most people in Italy do not understand the Movement is because it is not on the right, nor is it on the left.

It is ahead.

Per le persone che vivono in Italia- Come votare il MoVimento 5 Stelle

Per le persone che vivono in Italia, che non è stato detto su Beppe il rally di quasi il 50 politico di Grillo ha partecipato e organizzato nel corso degli ultimi 3 settimane, il video e post di blog è per voi. I media disinformati e manipolati cittadino italiano.



Recuperare quello che po 'di libertà che si ha e non ottenere le informazioni dai telegiornali italiani giornali italiani.



For the people living in Italy who have not been told about the nearly 50 political rally’s Beppe Grillo has attended and organized over the last 3 weeks, this video and blog posting is for you. The uninformed and media manipulated Italian citizen.

Reclaim what little freedom you have and stop getting your information from Italian television news Italian newspapers.


As both a blogger and a political scientist, Opinione is fascinated and impressed with the political and social mobilization that Beppe Grillo has accomplished in a country that is considered a partly free country in terms of press freedom. While most Americans are aware of the political activists belonging to the Tea Party, nearly every Italian Opinione has surveyed, does not know about the existence of the The “MoVimento 5 Stelle” (five star movement). Even fellow bloggers living in Italy like MikeB302000 know more about American political activism than they do about the country they live in. This in not however entirely their fault due to the fact that Grillo’s political social mobilization has never even been mentioned (antenna time *) on any of the TG1, TG2, TG3 or RAInews24 television newscasts (data as at 20 March 2010, source: Agcom).

As Italian voters go to the polls to elect representatives for regional government positions, the press is portraying the election as a test for the scandal plagued and mafia tainted Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Not marching to the corporate drumbeat of the mass media, Opinione wanted to inform readers, especially Italian readers, that the grass roots and citizen driven political party, The Five Star Movement, has candidates in several region election races. This is news that you will not hear or read about in the Italian media because of the political and business control Silvio Berlusconi has on the Italian mass media. For any Italian living in the Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Campania, or Emilia Romagna regions, the Five Star Movement has citizen candidates on the ballot in those regional elections.


For the people living in Italy who have not been told about the nearly 50 political rally’s Beppe Grillo has attended and organized over the last 3 weeks, this video and blog posting is for you. The uninformed and media manipulated Italian citizen.

Reclaim what little freedom you have and stop getting your information from Italian television news Italian newspapers.

Another illegal war started by Israel and supported by America

A good political analyst does not only explain why a politician acts the way they do, but also has the ability to predict future actions by political leaders or in some cases, how a country will act in political events like military action and war. Although Opinione did not post the article in time, recent events related to domestic Israeli politics and blog postings by colleagues in the field of geo-politics, gave an indication that the Israeli military would launch yet another military attack on the Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Sadly, though, like the two previous military campaigns started by Israeli, resulting in over 1,200 Palestinian deaths, the true meaning of this attack also appears to be centered on the leader of Israeli using military force for domestic political gain.

This analysis is supported by the timing of both an Israeli Op-ed article by Aluf Benn in Haaretz, which declared, “Netanyahu leaves U.S. disgraced, isolated and weaker” and the timing of letter of support for Israel by 300 members of the U.S. Congress, just a few hours before the attack on Gaza by Israeli military forces. Although not an expert on Middle East politics, the timing of these two events appears to support the analysis that the attack by Israel on innocent civilians, living in refugee camps in the Gaza Strip appears to indubitably prove that Israeli leaders launched the attack to appease right wing factions within Israel.

Thanks to the brave work done by journalists covering the Middle East like Robert Fisk of the Independent, and others in the Guardian, Reuter news agency, bloggers like War in Context and Opinione have critical sources of information to access.

While the main stream media was suffering a case of tunnel vision with its coverage of the health care bill being passed in America, blogs like War in Context, filled in the void left by the weapons of mass distraction. This blog is an excellent source to read articles related to geo-political events in the Middle East. Although the blog may be to brutal from some Israeli supporters to stomach, the candid analysis offered on War in Context would never be found in any main stream mass media news outlet afraid to loss advertising revenue from sympathetic Israeli and Jewish clients. Blogs like War in Context and other non-revenue profit driven news outlets available on the Internet are an excellent source for people to get some of the best insight into controversial issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Although Opinione recently posted an article which included a story of how CENTCOM commander Gen David Petraeus gave a warning to members of the US Congress about the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it appears that members of congress are more influenced from the political donations from AIPAC, than they are from respected leaders of the US military.

The continual power of the Jewish lobby in American politics was demostrated when more than half of the members of Congress still took time out of the busy schedules to mingle with thousands of mostly Jewish activists and donors, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s conference banquet at the Washington Convention Center, where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be the featured speaker.

Perhaps the more members of congress should start wearing an Israeli flag lapel pin in place of the yellow ribbon lapel pin members of congress occasionally wear for members of the US military.

Transparency= Democracy. Secrecy = Tryanny

Coinciding a day after Americans began enjoying more daylight with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, the week of March 15 – 19 2010 commemorated Sunshine Week in America, which had the goal of reminding the American public the importance of transparency in government. Begun by a civic-minded group concerned about transparency in government and the diminishing freedom of information available to the general public, the participants of this advocacy group include newspapers, television, online news media, civic groups, libraries, nonprofits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know.

Enthused by the spirit behind Sunshine Week, Opinione thought it was a good opportunity to review some of the instruments and policies the political establishment has used over the last few decades which has reduced transparency in the US government and lead to more secrecy. Since Sunshine Week in America garnered little attention in the mainstream mass media, entrenched interests and arrogant career politicians are emboldened to continue leading the country down the destructive and ineffective road of perpetual war and the out of control military spending destroying the country from within.

The fact that none of the major news outlets in the print media like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal did a front-page story on Sunshine Week, contributes to why America is not considered to be one of the best democracies in the world. If the fourth estate is not acting as a check on the abuse of power and numerous acts of corruption within the corridors of Congress, it sets the conditions for politicians to continue to act in selfish and self-serving ways.

In what should have been a front page story for the New York Times and other main stream media outlets, attitudes on the openness of the federal government have changed in recent years. In the first poll conducted for National Sunshine Week in 2006, 22 percent of respondents said they believed the federal government was “very secretive.” It rose to 37 percent in 2007, 44 percent in 2008 and then dropped slightly to 40 percent in 2009 at the beginning of the Obama administration.

A brief review of how the American government operates today, highlights that the instruments used by the duopoly political establishment in Washington is eroding democracy in America, where the interests of the minority and not just the politically powerful donors, are supposed to be represented and upheld. This lack of transparency in government is corrupting the principles of good governance incorporated into the U.S. Constitution. Examples of non-transparent procedures used by the duopoly establishment include Presidential Signing Statements, the use of the Conference Committee, the failure of the Executive Branch to hold public hearings, and the failure to release information involving previous government officials. While the 2001 Energy Task Force meetings by Dick Cheney is one example, where there was a lack of transparency in government proceedings, perhaps the failure of the US government to release all public records surrounding the Kennedy assassination is the most powerful example of how secretive the political establishment has become in Washington DC.

Even though politicians are public servants and are responsible to the American people, the nearly five-decade-old refusal by the duopoly political establishment to unseal the documents surrounding the Kennedy assassination shows how far the duopoly political establishment will go to protect itself. Leaders from both the republican and democratic political parties know that if any other political party came to power, that political party in control of the government could rescind the order to keep the records private, which would undoubtedly contain embarrassing information for both political parties of the duopoly political establishment. This new level of transparency in the US government by a third political party would further weaken duopoly’s political power and prestige.

As the recent health care reform legislation highlighted, the lack of transparency in the Conference Committee stage of how a law is passed in Congress, is one of the most fundamental reasons why American voters become disillusioned from participating in future elections. With the prospect of some of the laws being written by lobbyists working for a corporation or industry, a third political party should run on a mandate to remove the conference committee stage of the legislation process, in order to restore more transparency in American democracy and receive more credibility from the American voter.

In addition to the conference committee stage, the use Presidential Signing Statements by American Presidents’ erode the check on executive power set forth in the U.S. Constitution. The dramatic increase of Presidential Signing Statements by President George W. Bush during his eight-year administration allowed him to avoid using a Presidential veto and made a mockery of the legislative process, and contributed to the growth of an Imperial Presidency. Following the caustic precedent set forth by an ill advised Bush Administration led by Karl Rove and the secretive Dick Cheney, the Obama administration has signed several Presidential Signing Statements since entering the Executive Branch.

Public cynicism that the federal government operates in an atmosphere of secrecy is as strong as ever, despite President Barack Obama's promises to make government information more easily available to the public.
A new survey of 1,001 adult residents of the United States found that 70 percent believe that the federal government is either “very secretive” or “somewhat secretive.” The largest portion of respondents, 44 percent, said it is “very secretive.”

As these trends continue, the checks and balances on government power and tyranny given to the American people by the US Constitution will continually be subverted and bypassed all in the name of national security. Like the former Soviet Union, the United States Empire will not fall from attack from external forces, but from internal strife and economic collapse.

Conservative or Liberal? It's all a matter of where you live in the world

This blog is intended to be resource for people to get news and viewpoints that they may not be getting from the mainstream media. While some visitors to the blog may consider the viewpoints to be written from an American liberal viewpoint, this may be due to their political ideological filter and not reading the entries from a more neutral or detached perspective. Some political scientists in the field of human political and social behavior have presented a theory that some people may even be predisposed to be either liberal or conservative at birth. While this theory may take decades if not centuries to validate, perhaps the influential environmental factor variable is the best tool to help explain why people vote, think, and act the way they do in a liberal democratic society.

Once liberated from the confines of the environmental factors influencing the polity in America as to what norms in society should be, there is strong evidence that suggests that environmental factors like the mass media and cultural conditioning play a significant role in how people think and act. Unlike the mass media in America where more people get their information from, blogs such as Opinione have the goal of offering a more detached and educated view of current events. This egalitarian outlook is the result of a pursuit of knowledge in the field of government and politics in combination with real world experiences.

For most Americans who hear a news report about a “conservative” or “liberal” politician from another country, they will automatically view that politician through the American ideological red and blue filter. From an international political perspective, there is a striking difference between what constitutes a European conservative political candidate and an American conservative political candidate. One of the most easily recognized areas where this is evident is in the area of labor rights and the role of the government in society. After spending a considerable amount of time of living in Italy, it is safe to say that even the most liberal American politician would be a candidate from the conservative polity party of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy or the political party of Pier Ferdinando Casini and the Union of Christian Democrats.

The stark difference in what constitutes a liberal in Europe and what constitutes a liberal in America was evident during the 2008 Presidential election between Barack Obama and John S. McCain. In that election, it became clear to anyone living in Europe at how similar both the liberal and conservative American political candidates were when it came to labor rights and their overwhelming support of the capitalistic economic model used by the United States, which gives the owners of capital , i.e. management, an inordinate amount of power over American workers. In none of the campaign speeches by the American liberal candidate did Barack Obama make any promises to raise the level of worker rights for Americans to be more equal to their European counterparts and other citizens in other advanced industrialized countries. Although one may argue that both of the Presidential candidates in 2008 were equally influenced from their political donors in the financial industry who were hedging their bets on the eventual winner, the environmental factor of unconditional support for capital in America as opposed to labor was the driving factor to Obama’s victory and why he is not the candidate of change he proclaimed to represent.

The ignorance working class Americans have at the rights and privileges that workers have in other advanced industrialized countries is a contributing factor as how the United States is more conservative than other liberal democracies. Hiding behind the façade of worker productivity, most American workers do not realize how badly they have been exploited by the owners of capital over the last 30 years. The support of capital as compared to labor by the politicians in Washington was recently confirmed when employment benefits were withheld for millions of Americans while bankers received million dollar bonuses.

The environmental factor of being repeatedly told by the mass media that American workers have the highest worker productivity in the world tends to lead Americans to think that the liberal market approach to economic growth and prosperity is a good policy. Most Americans are not aware of the double standard that public officials who profess support for the market to decide worker rights, such as the amount of vacation time given to an employee, while these same government politicians enjoy generous amounts of free time and are some of the most unproductive employees in America. President Bush made this evident when he took three to four week vacations at his Texas ranch, while most Americans enjoy less vacation time, which in turn, increases the worker productivity ranking for American workers.

While liberal candidates in Europe talk about freedom in an election, they are generally referring to the personal freedoms individuals should have from a government as opposed to the economic freedom that most liberal and conservative American politicians talk about when referring to freedom. When America is compared to other liberal democracies in the world this statement is strongly supported due to the fact that America is not listed in any top ten category for overall freedom in a country, press freedom for the media, and the overall democracy level of a country. The only rankings that America is in the top five in the world is for military spending (#1) and economic freedom (#3).

Looking at Barack Obama from a European perspective, the only issue Obama is considered a liberal on is the support and endorsement of liberalism as an economic model and his liberal support of continuing the perpetual use of military power. While most European voters from both ends of the political spectrum have an aversion to war and the use of military force, the United States is continuing to rely on the use of military power as an integral part of the its foreign policy. Not learning from their mistake during the Vietnam War era where politicians said the war was needed to stop the spread of communism, naïve Americans are now allowing that generation of draft dodging chicken hawk politicians to use the excuse of fighting radical Islamic fundamentalism and a generational war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and countless other non-western Judeo-Christian countries.

This brief examination of the influential environmental factors in different countries helps to explain why a liberal democrat in America would be considered a right wing politician in Europe, and why most conservative voters in America have more in common with the extremists and fundamentalists living in non-liberal democratic countries.

The Weirdest Political news of the Month

A republican presidential candidate who supports the troops, is against abortion, and like most politicians, likes younger women.

Opinione does not know which is worse, the fact that someone like this is walking the streets, or that the local station aired this on their program.

How AIPAC undermines America's National Security

As the mass media in America reports on the diplomatic spat between The United States and the Jewish State of Israel over Israel announcing plans to build homes on contested land near Jerusalem, none of the mass media weapons of mass distraction is offering any commentary discussing how America may be better off not supporting Israel as unconditionally as it has done over the last 30 years. For shrewd political analysts brave enough to say it without worrying about being labeled an anti-Semite or another derogatory term by Jewish supporters in America, the United States would benefit from a closer alliance with the Arab world, than it would from the bias and unconditional support it gives the Jewish State of Israel.

The issue that sparked the diplomatic spat between the United States and Israel is the most important aspect and under reported story of the overall peace process in the Middle East and America’s foreign policy over the last 30 years. The failure of the United States to be an honest broker in the Middle East has negatively impacted the overall security of the United States and contributed to the overall decrease in the living standards of most Americans due to the high defense spending of the US government. Testifying before the US Senate Armed Services Committee on March 16, 2010, CENTCOM commander Gen David Petraeus gave a grave warning about the wider impact of a conflict that has been the epicenter of Middle East hostilities ever since the creation of Israel and how it impacts the national security of the United States. Although most of the mass media did not give this story the attention it needs, the strategic national security advice given by David Petraeus to the members of Congress highlight how the political establishment in Washington DC is incompetent and is more concerned with pleasing lobbyists from groups like AIPAC, than it is about the national security of the United States.

The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [CENTCOM's area of responsibility]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

While most Americans are angered at the injustice of millions of people being unemployed while politically connected bankers receive yearly bonuses in the millions of dollars, just imagine how the Palestinian people must feel when a politically connected minority population who has the support of the lone world hyper power in the world, continues to be allowed to violate international law , wage illegal wars, and practice apartheid like policies towards the Arab and Palestinian population living in and around Israel. Voters in America from the right wing Tea Party activist, upset at the abuse of power by the US government, to the latte sipping New York City anti-war liberal, most Americans would be outraged at the type of things the State of Israel is allowed to get away with, all because of the power of the Jewish lobbying group AIPAC in Washington DC.

As Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were tipped off by F.B.I. agent W. Mark Felt to follow the money trail during their investigation in the Watergate scandal, anyone asking why America gives so much support to the strategically insignificant country of Israel has to follow the same advice given to the two young intrepid investigative journalists in Washington DC in the early 1970s. Follow the Money.

Like the proverbial third rail in American politics, very few media outlets in America or any American administration has the courage or the integrity to hold Israel to the same standards it does to other countries in the region. While most Americans are spoon fed a daily supply of negative press stories about Iran’s nuclear energy program, almost none of the mainstream media will discuss Israel’s refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) related to nuclear technology. Although there is a constant stream of negative stories about the nuclear program in Iran, the mass media in America fails to mention that one of the reasons why the United Nations nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is allowed to be in Iran and monitor that country’s nuclear program is because Iran is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Americans distracted long enough from watching American Idol or Dancing with the Stars, are never reminded that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was initiated in 1968 to stop the spread of nuclear weapons through inspections, was never signed by Israel, India or Pakistan. All of these countries coincidentally border or are near Iran, which is one of the reasons why Iran may be trying to pursue a nuclear weapons program.

Just like the American living in a dangerous neighborhood who wants to buy a handgun for protection, Iran has the right to protect itself.

Karl Rove has no Courage and most Americans are paying the consequence.

For professionals in the field of political science, meeting people who believe that Karl Rove is a political genius is perhaps one of the easiest ways to recognize how the media breeds ignorance in America. The latest book published by Karl Rove, Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, is the latest literary piece of fiction that further lowers the national IQ level of most Americans and is another attempt by an uneducated individual to rewrite history and influence public opinion. Just as any sane person wouldn’t go to a doctor who hadn’t finished medical school or trust someone with their life savings who didn’t have a financial degree, the people listening to and relying on their information from people like Glenn Beck or thinking that Karl Rove is a political genius, is perhaps one of the most obvious reasons as to why America is a great power in decline.

Of all the selective questions that Rove answers in his latest book that should be placed in the fiction section of the local bookstore, the failure of not answering his lack of an education is perhaps the most vivid example of the substance his new book is lacking.

Even though he sat in the West Wing of the White House and advised the President on such issues that dealt with international relations and the political economy, Karl Rove not possessing any kind of formal degree in the issues he was advising the president is evident in the current state of the economy and how the wars are going in Iraq and Afghanistan. For people who may argue that having a degree is not a requirement, one only has to use Mr. Rove as exhibit one in their defense.

People who believe they know something about American politics or American foreign policy when they read books published by Karl Rove or listen to Glenn Beck are like the people who read the National Inquirer’s stories about space abductions and believe they know something about astrophysics. With not a college degree between the two of them, Rove and Beck are like the 18th century snake oil salesman selling their bogus products to naïve and gullible people. Unfortunately, instead of only a few individuals the snake-oil salesman might have swindled out of some money, working class conservative voters since the age of Reagan and Bush Sr. and then later Bush Jr. have been swindled out of billions of dollars and seen their standard of living decrease while the rich in America become wealthier and politically more powerful.

Not learning from the mistake they made in allowing uneducated individuals from injecting political partisan goals into national security policy, such as George W. Bush did in listening to the uneducated Karl Rove advise the President to launch the country into a perpetual war in Iraq and central Asia, the American people are continuing to watch American “news programs” and read books published by uneducated opportunists and men of poor moral character. One has to ask the question; If Karl Rove is identified as Bush’s brain and George W. Bush is considered by nearly everyone as having only one oar in the water, doesn’t that expose Karl Rove to be just as intellectually challenged as the man he is advising? As political scientists of today and future historians will undoubtedly confirm in the future, the combination of Karl Rove and George Bush and the combination of Tommy Franks and Donald Rumsfeld, will be identified as why the war in Iraq strengthened America’s enemies and perpetuated the continual demise of United States as a global power.

Substantiating this claim is the total failure of Karl Rove’s political strategy to use the Iraq War as part of a broader political strategy that uses the Republican’s presumed political advantage on national security to keep the GOP in power for a generation. Under Rove’s supposed political masterful control, the Republican Party lost control of the House and Senate just six years into this new era, followed in 2008 by losing the executive branch to an anti-war Presidential candidate.

For judicious political scientists, the claim of Rove’s supposed political genies is almost laughable when considering his track record of getting candidates elected to office. As Paul Begala recently pointed out in an article on the Daily Beast, Karl Rove got his ass handed to him in a race in Pennsylvania in 1992, when Rove’s client, Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, lost to Begala’s client Harris Wofford in a 1992 Pennsylvania Senate race. Even though taking control of a campaign that had a 47-point lead in the polls, the political genius and his client lost by 10 percentage points when the election was over.

While there is no doubt Karl Rove would make up for this embarrassing loss in Pennsylvania by helping to get George Bush elected Governor of Texas and then President of the United States, to most political scientists who are knowledgably of how he got Bush elected in the state of Florida, Rove does not merit to be labeled a political genius.

Just like a disgraced athlete who cheats to win a race, the purging of voter registration rolls in Florida along with the Republican Secretary of State in Florida Katherine Harris enabling the deceit, the 2000 election in American history is the only election where the winner was appointed by a branch of the government and not put in power by the American people.

The 2000 shenanigans in Florida repeat a typical pattern for Karl Rove and his use of dirty tricks in the electoral process. Some examples include:

• In 1970, College Republican Rove stole letterhead from the Illinois Democratic campaign of Alan Dixon, and used it to invite hundreds of people to Dixon's new headquarters opening, promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing," disrupting the event.

• In 1973, Rove ran for chairman of the College Republicans. He challenged the front-runner's delegates, throwing the national convention into disarray, after which both he and his opponent, Robert Edgeworth, claimed victory. The dispute was resolved when Rove was selected through the direct order of the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who at the time was none other than George H.W. Bush.

• In 1986, while working for Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful William Clements, Rove claimed that his personal office had been bugged, most likely by the campaign of incumbent Democratic Gov. Mark White. Nothing was proved, but the negative press, weeks before the election, helped Rove's man win a narrow victory. FBI agent Greg Rampton removed the bug, disrupting any attempt to properly investigate who planted it.

• When Rove advised on George W. Bush's 1994 race for governor of Texas against Democratic incumbent Ann Richards, a persistent whisper campaign in conservative East Texas wrongly suggested that Richards was a lesbian. According to Texas journalist Lou Dubose: "No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove. Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it. It's a process on which he holds a patent. Identify your opponent's strength, and attack it so relentlessly that it becomes a liability. Richards was admired because she promised and delivered a 'government that looked more like the people of the state.' That included the appointment of blacks, Hispanics and gays and lesbians. Rove made that asset a liability."

• After John McCain thumped George W. Bush in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, with 48 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent, a massive smear campaign was launched in South Carolina, a key battleground. TV attack ads from third groups and anonymous fliers circulated, variously suggesting that McCain's experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam left him mentally scarred with an uncontrollable temper, that his wife, Cindy, abused drugs and that he had an African-American "love child." In fact, the McCains adopted their daughter Bridget from a Bangladesh orphanage run by Mother Teresa.

• According to the investigation of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, Rove played a central role in the outing of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak and former Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in retaliation for her husband Joe Wilson's accusation that the Bush administration falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Niger.

• Rove has ignored subpoenas to testify before Congress regarding the Justice Department scandal of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. He skipped a hearing on improper use of RNC e-mail accounts by White House staff, which allowed them to skirt the Presidential Records Act. Rove claims he enjoys executive privilege, which travels with him as he leaves the White House.

Understanding the dirty tricks Rove has used in the past, as time marches on into infinity and the secrets of the US government are exposed to future generations, the deceit and trickery used by Karl Rove and the GOP in the 2000 election will expose him to be the crude and uneducated man he is and the lack of moral character that was common among political leaders of the 21st century in America.

Instead of reading the work of fiction by Karl Rove, which fails to address any of the issues of deceit he used in previous elections or address the issue of him never earning a college degree, the American people should read books written by members of the academic community such as Andrew Bacevich, Chalmers Johnson, and Kevin Phillips.

The lopsided representation and influence of the rich in America has been one of the least known facts in American politics and something that you will never hear Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, or any other media personality talk about in their “news” programs and books.

Political analysts and intellectuals shielded from the ignorant and misleading statements of these media personalities, clearly see how the mass media in America breeds ignorance among the polity.

Concerning the Power of Congress to Regulate the Election of Members

Although none of the highly paid political pundits on the Sunday talk shows will say it or any editor from a national newspapers will write about it, the latest Parliamentary election in Iraq has proven yet again that the people of Iraq outclass their American counterparts in two important aspects; they are more civic minded and have less fear than most Americans. Supporting this argument is the fact that even though facing threats of murder and terrorism, 70 percent of eligible Iraqi citizens voted in a recent election in their country, while in America, the average voter turnout in American elections has never been over 60 percent in the last 30 years. For the international relations political analyst who tries to explain why the Iraqi’s participate more in elections than their American counterparts, the answer appears to be that both American voters and the politicians running for office in America are filled with fear and doubt, while Iraqi citizens and their politicians running for office appear to be filled with hope and courage.

As the preceding statement will assuredly cause a firestorm among Americans who consider themselves patriotic and civic minded citizens of the American Republic, the data from previous elections and the lack of change in the American electoral process since the flawed Presidential election in 2000 further supports this analysis. With the calendar approaching the tenth year anniversary of that controversial election, none of the practical changes that could help more Americans participate in the electoral process or address some of the inadequacies in the electoral system in America have been implemented. This indicates that the elected politicians in Washington DC are fearful of losing their very comfortable jobs and fearful of the people they are supposed to work for an represent in Congress.

While the American press was reporting on the types of barriers excluding some political candidates from participating in the recent Iraqi election and the security measures put in place for Election Day, perhaps the mass media in America should have taken the opportunity to report on the status of the American electoral process. The mass media in America missed another opportunity to report on the kinds of barriers the duopoly status quo in Washington DC and most state legislations enact, that discourages more people from voting in an election or running for public office in American elections. Some of the types of barriers include the way congressional districts are drawn (and redrawn), when election day is held, the amount of money needed for a candidate to run for office, and other technical issues related to the counting of votes in an election.

Of all the barriers and obstructionist instruments used by the duopoly political establishment in Washington DC to protect their ruling power, perhaps the law allowing state legislations to redraw congressional districts is the most vivid example of how the duopoly establishment has been allowed to protect their hold on power.Instead of using preexisting state and local government boundaries such as town and county lines, congressional districts are instead drawn along social economic and racial boundries. The redrawing of congressional districts by state legislations, calcifies the power of the republican and democratic parties in America and limits for a pluralistic representation in the House of Representatives to emerge, as envisioned by the framers of the U.S. Constitution. The drawing of congressional lines in America based on social economic status is a reflection of the importance Americans have placed on money in the democratic process in America and how an aristocracy favored by Alexander Hamilton has emerged as opposed to the agrarian republic envisioned by James Madison.

Whereas America is an exceptional country in many regards related to other liberal democracies in the world, such as the size of its military, its status as a hyper power, or its use of capital punishment in its judicial system, America is also an exceptional country when it comes to the day of the week when America holds its elections as compared to other liberal democracies in the world. While nearly every other country in the world holds its national election on a non working day and in most cases on a Sunday, holding elections on a working day in America is a powerful example of how the duopoly establishment in the American polity has discouraged people from participating more in the electoral process.

The recent election in Iraq, a client state of the American government, is another example of how a country conducts an election on a non-business day, which does not disrupt business and commerce or disenfranchises voters who normally work during a regular business workday. To accommodate the workers that may work on a Sunday, most countries such as Italy, keep the polls open for six hours on Monday to ensure all voters have access to place their vote. This is one of the reasons why 80 percent of Italian voters participate in elections and the government is a more pluralistic representation of the society in which they represent. This is in stark contrast to the American government, which has a higher ratio of millionaires serving in Congress as compared to the general population they are supposed to represent. It is no coincidence that the financial net worth of the political duopoly in Washington DC and most state legislatures mirrors the economic polarization in American society.

One of the reasons how the plutocracy in America has been allowed to take shape is the working class vote being pressured to cast their ballots either on their to work or during their way home at the close of business on election day. As more parents juggle two jobs, raise a family, and workers travel on business, most workers influenced by opinion polls and other factors, fail to practice their civic duty like the Iraqi citizens in the recent Parliamentary elections.

By amending the 18th century document written by an privileged class of men of property and social standing, the leaders of America in the 21st century could allow more people to participate in the electoral system and save the American Republic from destroying itself from the vested interests of the majority factions now in power in state legislations across the country and at the federal level that the founding father of the American Republic had once feared.

Foreign Policy Analysis not found in the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal

Although many old media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post will report on American foreign policy, most of these media outlets offer mediocre and run of the mill analysis of American foreign policy and strategy. As high lighted by a recent blog posting where Opinione took a New York Times Op-Ed author to task for her naïve and flawed analysis of using air power in Afghanistan, the commentary by some of these newspapers of record are almost laughable. New media outlets like the on-line magazine Foreign Policy and blogs such as Opinione, TomDispatch, and War in Context offer the opportunity for a reader to get a wide variety of viewpoints and analysis from academic scholars and intellectuals from not only the United States, but also the entire planet. While Opinione does not have the viewer-ship of a popular blog like The Huffington Post, the readership of The Wall Street Journal, or the audience of a popular mass media political pundit, the aim of Opinione is not to win any popularity contest, but to educate and introduce its readers to multiple points of view and commentary. Several articles related to the perpetual war in Afghanistan, where one trillion dollars of American taxpayer money has not resulted in anything close to a free and democratic Iraq promised by the previous administration, merit the attention of readers seeking a more informed view and analysis of American foreign policy and strategy.

While most reporters at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times may be excellent journalists, people wanting to get the best analysis involving American foreign policy should read books and journal articles written by experts in the field with doctorate degrees in political science and American Foreign Policy. Recent articles written by Andrew Bacevich from Boston University and John Feffer, the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus, are arresting examples of the type of analysis lacking in most of the main stream media “information cocoons” and “media chambers” like The Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

In a recent article in Foreign Policy, Andrew Bacevich analyzes some of the remarks made by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calling for Europe to increase its overall military spending and for NATO countries to continue to support the American war effort in Afghanistan. Just as Opinione discussed in his first blog posting back in August 2008, NATO, Propaganda, and the American Military Industrial Complex, Bacevich views NATO as nothing more than another organization for American to use as a means of power projection. One of the more powerful quotes in his Foreign Policy article Bacevich writes:

In concrete terms, this attempt to reignite Europe's martial spirit has found expression in the attempted conversion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from a defensive alliance into an instrument of power projection. Washington's aim is this: take a Cold War-inspired organization designed to keep the Germans down, the Russians out, and the Americans in, and transform it into a post-Cold War arrangement in which Europe will help underwrite American globalism without, of course, being permitted any notable say regarding U.S. policy.

The allies have not proven accommodating. True, NATO has gotten bigger -- there were 16 member states 20 years ago, 28 today -- but growth has come at the expense of cohesion. Once an organization that possessed considerable capability, NATO today resembles a club that just about anyone can join, including, most recently, such military powerhouses as Albania and Croatia.

Most people do not Bacevich as well as Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck because after serving his time in the military, he enjoys not being controlled by other people and he speaks the truth.

Another article worth mentioning related to SecDef Gates lecturing Europe about arms spending was Juan Cole’s Informed Comment. To help put the amount of military spending in context for American readers, Cole compares the size of the European Union’s military spending to its economic output and compares that to the rising global economic power of China and to finally to America’s GDP and economic growth outlook.

Surely to make any American not feel to good about the next twenty years, the waste and out of control spending on the American military industrial complex is driven home when Cole , writes:

The bloated military budgets continue now, apparently because of a couple thousand al-Qaeda operatives hiding out in caves in the Hadhramawt and Waziristan.

Looking at the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, it puts the following information into a much more interesting context.

US Military Budget 2009: $711 billion
European Union Military Budget 2009: $289 billion
China Military Budget 2009: $122 billion.

US GDP 2009: $14.4 trillion
European Union GDP 2009: $16.5 trillion (PPP)
China GDP 2009: $8.8 trillion (PPP)

US economic growth 2009: 0.2%
European Union economic growth 2009: -4%
China economic growth 2009: 8.7 %

Although some commentary to Mr. Cole’s article on Sec of Defense Robert Gates was critical for Cole’s low-balling of the amount of money spent by China on its military, most of these comments miss the fact that China is not interested in an arms race with America and is comfortable with the current world order. China is more than happy to see America bankrupt itself out of being a world power in much the same way the former Soviet Union did during the early 1980s.

Daniel Henninger should leave political history to the experts

Even though citizens living in democratically controlled advanced industrialized countries across the world have an enormous amount of information available to them, many of these citizens are still trapped in “information cocoons” and “echo chambers”. Following the same trend that occurred with the old mediums of newspapers and then television, the transmission of inaccurate information and biased information is merely occurring at a much greater speed and in a different medium. A recent Wall Street Journal article by Daniel Henninger who speaks nostalgically for the Robber Barons of the 19th century is just one example of how citizens are continuing to fall into the 21st century version of “echo chambers” and “information cocoons”.

Cass R. Sunstein, the author of Republic.com 2.0 was one of the first scholars to raise questions about the explosion of available news on the Internet and the emergence of blogs offering political opinion and commentary. In his book, Sunstein presented the argument that citizens are using the Internet to get news or information regarding politics, and would trap people in "information cocoons" and "echo chambers," wherein people avoided the news and opinions that they do not want to hear. Although this argument is valid to a certain degree, the notion that people exist in information cocoons and echo chambers is nothing new considering how newspapers in every country around the world have a political or ideological viewpoint. Beginning with the United States and the conservative Washington Times and the liberal New York Times, to European countries such as France, which has the liberal newspaper Le Monde, and the conservative newspaper Les Echos, the pattern repeats itself.

In addition to Cass Sunstein, two of the nation's foremost experts on politics and communications, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella offer a searching analysis of the conservative media establishment in America in the book, Echo Chamber- Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment. In the book, Jamieson and Cappella find that media pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal opinion pages create a self-protective enclave for conservatives, shielding them from other information sources, and promoting strongly negative associations with political opponents. Rush Limbaugh in particular, they write, fuses the roles of party leader and opinion leader in a fashion reminiscent of the nineteenth century's partisan newspaper editors.

While most people will agree that all the media outlets have a political and ideological bias, all of the corporate owned mass media news outlets ranging from the old medium of newspapers and television to their on-line cousin versions, all the corporate owned mass media share the same business model of making money and not upsetting the status quo. Independent blogs on the Internet offer citizens a source of unbiased and candid information. Not worried about losing the corporate advertising account, independent blogs such as TomDispatch write about serious issues involving American politics such as the out of control military spending in Washington DC and leave the news stories about Tiger Woods sex life to the tabloids. These types of blogs are the true free and independent press that the founding fathers fought for during the ratification process of the U.S. Constitution.

This brings us to the story by Daniel Henninger and the recent article in the Wall Street Journal, Bring Back the Robber Barons, in which he presents biased and incorrect information for the conservative and pro capitalistic audience reading his article in the “echo chamber” and “information cocoon” environment of the Wall Street Journal. For anyone familiar with American history, the article by Henninger shows his ignorance of American politics and his bias for capitalism when he fails to mention that opposition political parties such as the Greenback and Populist Party’s achieved much of their political success from the opposition of the concentration of wealth the state appointed Senators serving in Washington DC facilitated. As the political historian Kevin Phillips and former Nixon White House strategist writes in his book, Wealth and Democracy,

it was the farmers in rural America that first applied the nomenclature of Robber Barons to the masters of the railway system.

Henninger fails to mention in his article how the last great political mobilization and the emergence of a third political party in America was a result of the polarization of wealth in American society during the late 1800s. Considering how both political parties are controlled by wealthly elites in America, and the power of the duopoly political establishment in Washington DC,there does not appear to be much hope for an emergence of a new third political grass roots movement in America to rescue average people from the tryanny of majority factions that Madison and other Federalist Papers authors had feared in the 18th century.

Henninger, in writing to his audience of politically connected bankers enjoying one percent loans from the Federal Reserve Bank and loaning that same money out at 5 percent car loans and 13, 18 and 25 percent credit cards, appears a little hypocritical when he talks about politically connected wealth related to the new green industry jobs he talks about in his article. His statement of

“ Politically connected entrepreneurs (who) will spend their energies running a mad labyrinth of bureaucracies, congressional committees and Beltway door openers”

could easily be applied to Pentagon funded mercenaries and defense contractors building weapons systems with no residual value for citizens living in America. At least with green industry jobs, there is some glimmer of hope that the government subsides could help America become less dependant on foreign sources of energy.

The article by Henninger appears to be an article that has the goal of instilling fear in the upper one percent of wealthy Americans who regularly read the Wall Street Journal that the Obama administration is out to raise their taxes and stop the flow of easy money from the Federal Reserve to their politically connected banks. Any astute follower of news and having a basic understanding of American politics over the last 40 years will understand that the interests of the top one percent of Americans will always be taken care of first, while the rest of the population fights for the scraps. This is clearly evident when politically connected bankers of the FIRE industry privitize their profits , while the losses associated with the dozen instances of risky financial adventures of the American financial sector have been socialized in the last 30 years.

Until America becomes a country of production again and starts rebuilding the country instead of building massive military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, Kuwait, Turkey, Japan, and scores of other countries around the world, the obstructionists to change like Henninger and the people in the information cocoon of the Wall Street Journal will not be able to see the bigger picture.

The President's annual check up and its link to militarism in America

For astute readers of the news, the prevalence of militarism in U.S. politics is undeniable.

The casual references associated with the military in news reports related to the President of the United States (POTUS) such as describing the President as "Fit for Duty",is further proof of the growing influence of a perpetual war mentality in the United States and the continual emergence of an Imperial Presidency. As the former CIA analyst Chalmers discusses in his 2004 book, The Sorrows of Empire- Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, several founding fathers recognized the danger of foreign entanglements and the corrosive damage that war can have on a democracy. The latest annual medical checkup by POTUS at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland is a token example of the continuing collusion between an out of control state apparatus the founding fathers feared and the ever growing power of Washington DC institutions which threaten the constitutional order of the United States.

While most people may not question POTUS, using a military institution for an annual check up, the use of the military facility for an annual medical check up by the civilian leader in America exposes how people are seduced into allowing the plight of militarism to grow in America. As Jo Comerford of the National Priorities Project points out in a recent TomDispatch article, the latest federal budget by the Obama administration opens the American public to yet more pain and sacrifice, while shielding the military and the rest of the national security establishment from the same kind of pain and sacrifice.

The use of a military facility by a Washington DC politician also exposes how the elected leaders in Washington DC ,who are supposed to be employees of the American citizen, have much greater benefits and access to government services than the average hard working American. For politicians who are supposed to protect and ensure the rights given to Americans in the U.S. Constitution are upheld and protected like the clause, all men are created equal, it appears that these politicians are more like the pigs in the classic George Orwell novel Animal Farm, where some pigs are just more equal than other pigs.

The use of the military facility for President Obama’s annual check up at a time when the political establishment in Washington DC is unable to offer more health care to Americans who do not have any, is perhaps one of the most under reported story following the Presidents annual check up. Considering the annual salary of $ 400,000 for the President, $192,600 for the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, $ 166,700 for the Majority & Minority Leaders of the Senate & House and $166,700 for Senators & Representatives, it surely appears that all of these politicians could affords to pay for their own health care. The use of the Naval hospital by President Obama is an example of how the political establishment in Washington DC enjoys the social welfare benefits that members of the military receive for serving their country. If the President and other politicians are allowed to use military facilities for their annual medical checkups and considering the fact that the military’s budget is not getting reduced in 2011, Americans needing health care should seek medical help in the thousands of America military bases.

Tea Party activists should read statements made by the founding fathers related to militarism, war, and the fear of an out of control state apparatus like the Pentagon of the 21st century that could displace the constitutional order in the United States, if they truly want to rail against the big government in Washington D.C.

Paying attention to the headlines of such benign news stories such as the Presidents annual medical check up are indications that the big government that the founding fathers of America feared is continuing unabated.