Note to Catholic Bishops and Idiotic Democrats: Keep Your Filthy Hands off My Healthcare

It is now clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was instrumental in the insertion of the infamous "Stupak Amendment" into the new and barely-passed House of Representatives health care bill.

For those living under a rock, this amendment would not only prohibit the use of federal money to pay for an abortion (which we already had in the equally infamous Hyde Amendment), which is bad enough, but Stupidak's proposal goes way beyond that, to also prohibit paying any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother.

As bad as it is that a purely religious lobbying organization can pretty much dictate to a couple of true-believer Democrats (Stupak is a member-in-denial of the secretive fundamentalist and religiously-toxic C Street Gang) the content -- even the actual wording -- of potential legislation, it is much worse that Nancy Pelosi and by extension Barack Obama are pretty much rolling over and taking it.

Somebody needs to remind the Democrats that the party is supposed to stand for something. I'm afraid that next year, when it comes time to vote, many people -- that muddled middle -- are going to be faced with voting for a real Republican, or Republican-Lite.

And we know where that's going to go. Why settle for pale weak margarine when you can have fat yellow butter?

So Democrats, for crissakes grow a couple and kick the rightwingers to the side. If you look back in history at the milestones of progressive legislation you'll see that the Rethugs were always the "party of no". Social Security, Minimum Wage, Workplace Safety, Child Labor, Voting Rights, Medicare: These were all passed pretty much without any Republican support at all. No, back then the Democrats were in the forefront of passing progressive legislation and if the Rethugs didn't want to go along, the answer was "fuck 'em!". And that's how we got these terrific programs that work for all of us, even those asshole Republicans who rended their garments over the slide into socialism that they represented.

All this namby-pamby catering to the bastards isn't going to work and it will only serve to make the Democrats look weak.

Give it up, dudes. Ignore the braying of the jackals, and pass a goddam comprehensive health care package that will provide health care for the 90% of this country who are existing in the bottom third of the economy.