I just can't watch. . . .

“But barring astoundingly self-defeating behavior by Democrats, a decent bill will get to Obama's desk." So said E.J. Dionne a few days ago predicting a health-care reform bill would pass, and so quoted I a few entries back. But, I added, never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to engage in astoundingly self-defeating behavior.

Which, of course, is exactly what they're doing. Republicans have completely opted out of any discussion, so if the crazies want to get heard, they have to find forty or so blue-dog Democrats who have nothing better to do than to howl at the moon and call it music. In this case, they have two demands: no federal health-care dollars can go to illegal immigrants, and no tax dollars can go toward abortion.

Simple enough. Write that into the bill, but then exactly how are you going to enforce it? The Blue Dems don’t say, except basically anything you can come up with isn’t good enough. Simply writing these restrictions into the bill doesn’t even start to cover it. How do we know Jose’ is really a citizen, even if he was born in Pasadena and went to Harvard? The looney right doesn’t even believe the President is a citizen since his father was born in Kenya and he was born in Hawaii.

This only makes him a citizen of Kenyawaii.

And it’s not enough to say any public-option plan can’t cover abortions; any private health plan that has any publicly subsidized enrollees can’t either.

Why stop there? Why not prohibit private individuals from paying for their own abortions if they are unemployed and collecting insurance, or getting disability, or in the military, or working for an agency that has a government contract? Those are tax dollars they’re spending, and if they want to spend them to kill babies, they need to give them back and start standing at the exit to Wal-Mart with a “Need abortion, Please help” sign.

Or they could just get a job at Wal-Mart, since they probably won’t ever get health coverage there either.

Despite all this craziness, the Dems still probably have the votes to pass a bill this weekend, especially if Obama will come on down to the hill and meet with some Dems who are still sitting on the fence. Which is exactly what he was going to do until the tragic shootings at Food Hood, Texas, so now he’s not.

Huh?

Huh?!

Really, I just can’t watch anymore. I’m going back to my cartoons. Let me know how it all turns out.