Any day now, the nations’ health insurance companies expect to have a huge influx of new clients. None of the three remaining candidates has the cojones to buck the insurance lobby and embrace single payer cradle to grave healthcare. Blue Cross, United and the rest are practically salivating at the thought of all the new business. The only problem is that under a universal health insurance plan, they will be expected to provide care for sick people ---no cherry picking only the healthy--- and let’s talk turkey here. The health insurance industry did not become the lobbying powerhouse it is today by coddling a bunch of whiny invalids.

That is why Blue Cross Blue Shield is recycling some old methods for denying services. Since the problem, from their point of view, is that they will be forced to insure the sick alongside the well, they are dusting off the underhanded methods that HMOs refined in the 1990s, the last time insurers tried covering all comers.

Today the corporate media won. In the not so fine tradition of Ed Muskie and Gary Hart, they have told the Democrats whom we are allowed to vote for in our upcoming primaries. It took them a full year, because John Edwards is a fighter, but with the full force of the mainstream media against him, I guess it was inevitable.

I sit here wearing my new John Edwards 2008 shirt, thinking back on how a bunch of people armed with word processors and microphones hijacked a primary.

The same press that has brought us Edwards is a Phony, Hillary is a Bitch, The Two Man Race (documented with graphs and everything!) is now working on Obama is a Black Muslim. Why? Because the corporate media likes a Republican FCC. They allow unlimited media mergers and acquisitions. Divide and Conquer is the strategy that Nixon employed--and Pat Buchanan was his campaign dirty tricks chief strategist. Back in 1968, a fractured Democratic Party handed Dick Nixon the election---and gave the US four more years of war, more US military deaths and Cambodia the Killing Fields. The corporate media and Pat Buchanan at MSNBC think that they can do it again. But for it to work, they have to convince America of another lie, that this is a Race About Race.

It makes no sense.Since the Senate Intelligence Committee first passed its ridiculous FISA Bill in October 2007, the Democratic base has made its feelings clear. No telecom immunity. There has been no chance to sneak the legislation through. The New York Times has covered this story into the ground. Every Democrat knows exactly which Democratic Senator to hold personally responsible for selling out the principles of law and civil liberties.

It can not be just about the telecom money. There isn't enough campaign money to make up for the bad publicity. At this point, it has to be something else. It isn't about fears of terror plots. The FISA Courts can give authorization for warrants when needed. After wracking my brain the only answer I can come up with is this: some Democrats in the Senate are willing to put up with some negative publicity now to avoid the risk of even greater negative publicity in the future.

If only this was a black and white world, it would be a lot easier to decide whom to trust. A New York Times reporter who regularly breaks stories about the crimes of a secretive US government agency must be good, correct? But what about a reporter who serves as a mouthpiece of those who attempt to discredit US intelligence agencies which exercise caution in judging the nuclear ambitions of Iran? And what if the same journalist applauds the intelligence estimates of Israelis who claim to have determined that the Syrian site recently bombed in that country was definitely nuclear---and writes that Condi Rice is thinking about her own legacy, not US security when she talks negotiations, not war? What kind of reporter is that?

One week ago it was a story to giggle over. Disgraced ex-Bush adviser was "rewriting history", attempting to tell Charlie Rose that Congress rushed to sign a war authorization against Iraq back in the fall of 2002 before the midterm elections.

Today, the story is a topic of discussion with the facts open to interpretation. How did the Big Lie get legs so quickly? We can thank the corporate media for doing its part in spreading 2008 GOP election propaganda---without telling anyone that's what it is, of course.

http://books.google.com/...

Fascism does not spring up fully formed overnight, like Athena from the head of her father Zeus. Its architects build the foundation slowly, then they begin to invite people in, one at a time, then in groups of tens, then hundreds, then millions. At first, it is a radical fringe group. A hate movement that no one would admit to being affiliated with. Then, it is a right wing party. Then, it is a player. Then----

When does it become fascism?

Just in case you do not read all the way to the bottom of this post, here is the message I hope you take away with you. Last year, a handful of big health insurance companies made obscene profits. They did not do it through their private plans. They made it from taxpayer money,specifically from Medicare money. That's right, from the Medicare system that is supposed to be in such jeopardy. The Bush administration overpaid these companies a total of $54 billion dollars last year for their capitated HMO patients---at the same time that it has been denying adequate care for sick kids, the dying and the elderly.

The quote is from Cesar Chavez. Solidarity is the key to overcoming poverty and wealth disparity, the two greatest ills our country faces. That is why those who enjoy being on the rich side of the disparity equation are using the tactic of Divide and Conquer---and one of their goals is to take down our nation’s labor unions.

Paul Krugman recently wrote a column in which he gently brought up the idea that the anti-immigration debate is being framed as a racial issue by the Republican Party.

http://www.nytimes.com/...

"Can anti-immigrant rhetoric replace old-fashioned racial politics? No, because it mobilizes the same shrinking pool of whites — and alienates the growing number of Latino voters," he writes. This, in the context of an article in which he describes how most of the country has become decidedly adverse to racism, at least of an overt nature. Racism of the kind that Reagan and Bush Sr. used so successfully in their campaigns.

Today, immigration officials announced that millions of legal resident aliens who applied for citizenship this year will not be able to vote in next fall’s election, because the federal government is now going to take 15 to 18 months to process their applications, rather than the 7-8 months which has been standard government procedure since 2001.

"Cruelty has a human heart/ And jealousy a human face."
           William Blake Songs of Experience

Yesterday, a widely reported study revealed that hate crimes in the United States have risen 7% in the last year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

"More than half of the victims were attacked because of their race, while 19% were targeted because of their religion, the annual report said.
However, there were wide discrepancies, with northern states reporting far more hate crimes than the southern states, despite the South's racial history.
Black activists say the real figure is higher, with many incidents unreported."

Election 2008 is on track to be the most expensive in American history, according to
Open Secrets.org.

http://www.opensecrets.org/...

After nine months of fundraising, the candidates for president in 2008 have already raised about $420 million. This presidential money chase seems to be on track to collect an unprecedented $1 billion total. By some predictions, the eventual nominees will need to raise $500 million apiece to compete--a record sum.

It looks simple at first glance. Cable costs a lot, so the FCC is going to try to regulate it to bring down prices. Yeah. Right. They will do this by trying to increase competition. If you believe this about the current FCC as run by Kevin Martin, I have some FEMA trailers to sell you.

Kevin Martin’s time at the FCC is running out, and if he does just one thing before he leaves that agency, he plans to get A La Carte Cable rammed down our throats—whether we like it or not. Here is how and why. It is not a pretty tale, but then Martin is not a savory character.

Back in late 2001, a Republican Congressman was being interviewed on CNN. The Enron bankruptcy was big news, but he was being questioned about a different scandal, one involving Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton and charges it had lied to the federal government on invoices. The GOP Senator responded to the inquiries with outrage. "Halliburton is still solvent!" As if having money in the bank absolved Halliburton of any crime it may have committed.

Today, we learned that Aqua Dots, toy beads made in China have pulled from shelves in the U.S., because if children put them into their mouths, they turn into the date rate drug, GHB and put the kids into a coma. This is just the latest round of recalls of toxic childrens' products that American toy dealers, eager for more profits, have commissioned from China, a land where labor is cheap and where the protestant work ethic does not exist.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/...

When Republicans in Congress killed the DREAM ACT, they proved that anti-immigrant hysteria has less to do with law and order than it does with old fashioned racism, of the kind that the right wing has used so successfully to divide and conquer the working class in this country for years.

In an editorial in yesterday’s Fort Worth Star Telegram, the most reprehensible of Texas’ two GOP senators, John Cornyn is denounced for voting against the DREAM ACT, a measure that is more popular in Texas than in many other red states.

"God Appears and God is Light/To those poor souls who dwell in Night/But does a Human form display/To those who dwell in realms of day."

These humanist sentiments were expressed by a man who regularly conversed with angels and who believed that the key to human happiness lay in separating religion from state (and avoiding sexual frustration), the English poet and artist William Blake. He also wrote "God only Acts and Is in existing beings or Men" and he was a big fan of the American Revolution. His writings helped open the minds of people like Aldous Huxley and Jim Morrison over a century later. Not bad for a Christian.

On my way to the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, our guide told a story of a Native called Juan Diego who was once a priest among his own people but who had become a slave of the Spanish conquerors. One day, ten years into the conquest of Mexico, while passing by a mountain sacred to an Aztec goddess, Juan Diego saw a vision of a woman of mixed Spanish and Native blood adorned with a mixture of Aztec and Catholic religious symbols. She asked him

"Am I not your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your foundation of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?"