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By the way don't forget to check out Blue America's Bad Dogs page. It's been set up to help defeat Blue Dogs. As Media Matteres did a fine job of pointing out for everyone, this guy was already a Republican. How this House version of Tom Coburn on steriods was ever allowed to have a D behind his name is beyond me. He pulled out every Republican talking point during this press conference along with calling his former party the "Democrat Party". Since he voted against every single Democratic platform that he should have been well aware of before he threw his hat in with the party, I say goodbye and good riddance. Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

As much as the GOP might like to claim this as some sort of victory, the wingers over at Red State are already ready to run a primary challenger against him. Welcome to the Republican Party Congressman.

John Amato:

What a great day for progressives. A horrible Blue Dog took his rightful place with his fellow conservatives. Good riddance. Howie Klein was the first one to point out how disgusting he was, but as usual the media ignored it. But suddenly yesterday they discovered that he existed. This is why blogs are so important. We analyze voting records and candidates thoroughly before we comment on them. The NRCC loved Parker so much they hit him with their usual fear-mongering ads about radical Islam. Now there surely will be an interesting primary fight between the teabagging conservatives.

Howie Klein writes:

Last August DWT posed the question How Does One Justify Singling Out Just One Blue Dog-- In This Case Parker Griffith Of Alabama-- As The Worst Democrat In The House? It wasn't a tough case to make, and back at the link I have a chart, a snarky photo and a video of another one nearly as bad. Then just over a month ago I tried to point out that Griffith, a multimillionaire whose personal self-interest is always with the GOP, was hysterical about the estate tax.
--
Today, when the mainstream media suddenly discovered Parker Griffith for the first time, as he announced he would be joining the GOP, Media Matters was prepared to show that his voting record had never strayed from that of any slimy Republican. In fact there are 7 House Republicans with either an identical ProgressivePunch score on crucial votes or a better one! He opposed equal pay for women, opposed the stimulus bill, opposed clean energy legislation, opposed healthcare reform, voted against the budget and against regulating the banksters. Basically, from the day he slipped into the House he was a charter member of the Boehner Boys.

This is the guy, as we mentioned last summer, who promised his constituents that if they re-elected him, he would vote against Nancy Pelosi, who he referred to as a mental case, as Speaker next year. Now the DCCC won't have to waste another $1,000,000 trying to save a seat for someone who votes with the GOP all the time. Come to think of it, they'll need that money to try to save the seat of the only other House Democrat as bad as Griffith, Mississippi reactionary Travis Childers. Blue America has a page, Bad Dogs, dedicated to defeating Blue Dogs. If you have any interest in helping out, please let us know.

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Dick Durbin takes Tom Coburn to task for his remarks earlier on the Senate floor where he said the American people should pray that somebody can't make the vote tonight.

Durbin: This statement troubles me, and I’m trying to reach him come back to the floor and explain exactly what he meant about a senator being unable to make the vote tonight.

Durbin also went after Coburn and his cohorts and their PrayerCast where they were praying for the health care bill to fail and said that's their right, but asking Americans to pray for something to happen to another member of the Senate was going to far. Of course cowardly Coburn did not respond to Durbin.

Here are Coburn's earlier remarks and Dick Durbin initially asking Coburn to return to the Senate floor to respond.

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Let the abortion fear mongering from the GOP begin on the Nelson compromise. From The Hill -- Coburn: Nelson agreement with leaders 'threw unborn babies under the bus':

A number of Republican senators attacked an agreement reached between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Senate Democratic leaders Saturday, saying it would lead to the eventual reversal of more than 30 years of federal law banning abortion funding.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oka.) said it is “absolutely fictitious” that there is an anti-abortion provision in the Senate Democrats’ reworked healthcare reform bill.

“The negotiations, whoever did them, threw unborn babies under the bus,” Coburn said.

[...]

“The abortion language in this bill funds abortion for the first time since 1977,” said Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). “We are told this is a pro-life bill. It is not.”

The agreement reached between Nelson and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will give states the choice to ban abortion coverage or not in the insurance exchanges the legislation creates. The deal will also separate premiums from insurance plans that pay for abortion from federal money.

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This is rich. C-Street Family member Tom Coburn who along with his fellow Family members have been doing their best to inject religion into the health care debate, uses a quote by Thomas Jefferson about separation of church and state, and takes it out of context.

h/t jenyum at Daily KOS who has more -- Dear Senator Coburn: Liberals Can Quote Jefferson, Too:

During today's Senate health care bill debate, Senator Tom Coburn held up a big graphic displaying a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical

This quote resided in the background while Coburn went on and an about earmarks, and abortion, and waste and fraud in the federal government. If Senator Coburn had actually read the original source of the quote, however, I don't think he'd be so quick to use it.

Jefferson's actual words originated in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical

The Statute goes on to say...

our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right, that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage.

Obviously among other things too long to list, Tom Coburn's irony alert button is broken. He'd better hope he doesn't wind up in trouble for his part in his buddy John Ensign's affair that the press has been giving him a pass on. As jenyum noted:

Jefferson's words when not taken out of context are hardly a rallying cry for a party that opposes health care reform on religious grounds.

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

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Rachel Maddow responds to Dick Armey's insulting remarks about her during today's AFP tea bagger rally. As usual Rachel displays about 1000% more class than the sexist ass Dick Armey could ever hope to muster in his life time. I wonder if Dick Armey will be accepting any more invitations to appear with Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press again so he can respond to her face to face.

From Think Progress--Dick Armey sneers at ‘a woman named Maddox’ who ‘has a Ph.D. in something that doesn’t matter.’:

During today’s AFP-sponsored “Code Red” anti-health reform rally on Capitol Hill, one of the speakers — former House Majority Leader and current corporate defender Dick Armey — derided MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Armey was prepared to introduce Sen. Tom Coburn (whom he bizarrely referred to as “Doc Colbin” a couple of times), but Coburn wasn’t there yet. So instead, he told a story that was a shot at Maddow:

ARMEY: The last time [Coburn] and I were together, I had the amazing opportunity to watch him receive a lecture on health care from a woman named, uh, uh, uh, “Maddox.” A television personality. Who I’m told has a Ph.D. in something that doesn’t matter. Who knew she was qualified to lecture the good physician on health care in America because she had actually gone to a doctor once.

Rachel replayed her exchange with Tom Coburn on Meet the Press and had this response for Dick Armey:

Maddow: That was my only exchange with Tom Coburn in front of Dick Armey. Now if Mr. Armey thinks I was not qualified to be in that discussion because Tom Coburn is a gynecologist and I'm not, I wonder why Dick Armey thought that he was qualified to be in that room?

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Sen. Tom Coburn, after first claiming that the Republicans aren't just looking out for the insurance industry goes on to say this about why the Senate passed the Mikulski breast screening amendment.

Coburn: Because we know a larger percentage of the emotional attraction has to do with those things associated with women. So we pounded our chest and passed the Mikulski bill for preventative care for women and we ignored the preventative requirements of everybody else in this country.

Fail. They passed the Mikulski amendment because the media and the GOP decided to make an issue out of the findings from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that said women didn't need to get screened for breast cancer in their forties, not because anyone's "more emotional" about issues relating to women.

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Sherrod Brown explains to David Shuster why he signed decided to co-sponsor Tom Coburn and David Vitter's amendment which would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option ends up being passed in the health care bill.

Brown: Yeah, you often find out about amendments going on on the Senate floor and if my staff and I like one of the amendments we'll call an office and say, Republican or Democrat, I'd like to co-sponsor. We do that as a matter of course it happens across party lines all the time, hundreds of times a day. We did that with Sen. Coburn, nine times we said we wanted to co-sponsor--usually it takes once and they say yes--I've always accepted that. So has everybody I know in the Senate. Nine times we asked to co-sponsor and their office either just said we'll get back to you or ignored our calls and our emails because it was all a sham.

They don't, they clearly don't like the public option. They were making fun of it. Their whole game is to delay and deceive and to play political games. And when they offer an amendment saying sign up for the public option to force--tell members of Congress they have to join the public option--I think I should. I think we all should but they don't evenn like it themselves. And so it's just a little partisan game they're playing, and this is too serious for them to play those kind of games.

From Salon's War Room--Coburn, Vitter plan to ridicule public option backfires:

Now, as the Senate's debate over its version of reform legislation kicks into gear, two Republicans -- Sens. Tom Coburn and David Vitter -- have picked up that theme and are running with it. The two authored an amendment they want attached to the bill; it would require members of Congress to enroll in whatever version of the public option the final legislation creates, if it includes one.

Both Coburn and Vitter are vehement opponents of the public option, and they're hoping to prove themselves right by showing that no senator who's in his or her right mind would want their healthcare covered by it. They've gotten a surprise, though: Genuine support for their amendment from someone on the other side of the aisle -- and a proponent of the public option, at that -- Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

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Senators Franken, Dodd, and Mikulski also joined Sen. Brown in co-sponsoring the amendment. Here's Sen. Franken weighing in on the Senate floor.

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Boy, this is some hard-hitting journalism by George Stephanopoulos here isn't it? Anyone think Tom Coburn would have gotten this type of softball from Rachel Maddow?

Shorter George Stephanopoulos:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So Senator, is there anything else we should know about you arranging a bribe for your C-Street buddy that you can tell us in ten seconds or less?

COBURN: Nope.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, nothing to see here. Move along. Thanks for coming in everybody.

Let's hope his network's interview with Doug Hampton yields just a tad more information than Georgie-boy decided to try to elicit from Coburn on This Week. Really pathetic George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I'm going to have to -- I'm going to have to stop this right now. And, Senator, before you go -- and I know this is your least favorite subject -- but Doug Hampton, Senator Ensign's chief of staff, has given an interview to "Nightline" which is going to air tomorrow night, where he says that you were an intermediary between him and Senator Ensign, and I want to show that for a second.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HAMPTON: Tom Coburn said, "What I would do, Doug, if I was you is I would have them buy your home, give you $1 million bucks so you could get started over, and that's what I'm willing to help you negotiate."

(UNKNOWN): And what happened?

HAMPTON: John said, "No can do. Not going to happen."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is he telling the truth?

COBURN: No.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Flat no?

COBURN: No.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You did not serve as an intermediary?

COBURN: Oh, I did. No, there's no question. Look, my whole goal in this thing was to bring two families to a closure of a very painful episode. And there's no question that Doug called me and said, "Will you talk to John about solving a problem?" And so I called John Ensign and said, "Do you want me to talk to him?" He said, "Yes."

But, you know, the -- the question that's worrisome is, what is the motivation now for -- for this? Doug obviously asked to have some remuneration for the injury that he had. And on private sector, that happens all the time. But there -- there was no negotiation. There was, "I'll pass it along," or, "Yes, I won't."

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, thanks very much.

Thank you all very much.

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Rachel follows up on TPM's reporting on the C-Street house--C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt:

Residents of the C Street Christian fellowship house will no longer benefit from a loophole that had allowed the house's owners to avoid paying property taxes.

Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home.

Natalie Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington D.C., told TPMmuckraker that her office inspected the house this summer. "It was determined that portions of it were being rented out for private residential purposes," she said. As a result, the tax exempt status was partially revoked. Sixty-six percent of the value of the property is now subject to taxation.

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Jeff Sharlet followed up with more insight from his time spent there researching his book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. At least one good thing has come out of all the attention Bart Stupak has drawn to himself and to the formerly very secretive C-Street House.

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Rachel Maddow reports on the latest news to come out of the C-Street House. It appears that Tom Coburn, despite previous denials, was allowed by John Ensign to basically negotiate his bribes for him. So much for those "family values".

MCCONNELL: I really don`t have any observations to make about the Ensign matter. Senator Ensign continues to serve. He`s a member of the finance committee, been active in the discussions here.

I don`t think today is a day to make any observations about the matter. It just appeared in the newspaper today. I don`t have any observations to make about the Ensign matter today. At the risk of being redundant, I really don`t have anything to add about the newspaper article that was in the "New York Times" today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: That`s the top Republican in the United States Senate. Mitch McConnell today pointedly and refusing to say anything supportive whatsoever about Nevada Senator John Ensign. His political fortunes have gone from dismal to humiliating, to him now being on resignation watch because of an adulterous affair so dramatically mishandled it may ultimately land the senator in prison.

But the dramatic new revelations in the blockbuster 4,000-word expose published on the front page of "The New York Times" today have also ensnared another Republican senator whose self-proclaimed integrity and piety have also been dragged down into the gutter with John Ensign. The second senator has been caught on tape lying to reporters about something he now admits -- lying about the fact that he ended up being the financial broker who tried to get Senator Ensign a cheaper payoff rate for his mistress.

It`s Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. He`s an evangelical. He`s an ordained deacon and he lived with Senator Ensign at the C Street house in Washington, a house that`s maintained as living quarters for conservative Christian members of Congress by a secretive religious group that`s called the Family. We discussed the Family a lot on this show.

The Family actually lists on the C Street property as a church for tax purposes. And it was at that church, C Street, where Senator Tom Coburn learned that his housemate, John Ensign, was having an extramarital affair. And it was there that Senator Coburn made the extraordinary decision to try to help John Ensign contain the damage from that affair with cash.

According to an interview that Senator Coburn himself gave the "New York Times," while Ensign was still sleeping with his mistress, Coburn became Ensign`s negotiator, his financial negotiator. A lawyer hired by the mistress` husband wanted a cash payout to the mistress and her family as compensation for the harm caused by the affair.

Senator Coburn personally negotiated the financial deal, trying to get Ensign the best possible price for his sins.

What you`re looking at here is the first proposed cash settlement. This is what the family of John Ensign`s mistress wanted Ensign to pay as compensation for messing up their family and costing both the mistress and her husband their jobs since they were both employed by Senator Ensign. The cash demand was $8.5 million. That was presented to the upright and pious Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma who acted as Ensign`s negotiator in the deal. Coburn`s reaction to that proposed settlement was: no way.

We don`t know if he has experience negotiating senator`s payoff rates for their extramarital affairs, or if he just thought that he could get his friend in this case a better deal. But according to "The Times," the mistress` family lawyer, quote, "gave Mr. Coburn a figure, just under $8.5 million. Mr. Coburn dismissed that as ridiculous. The mistress` husband came back with a lower number, about $2 million, which Mr. Coburn passed on to Senator Ensign."

It`s really a heck of a news flash for the people of Oklahoma if you think about it. People of Oklahoma, your U.S. senator, the deacon, the anti-abortion, anti-gay, holier-than-thou senator who went so far as to demand that "Schindler`s List" not be shown on television because it contained nudity, Senator Tom Coburn has been spending his time in Washington brokering cheaper payoff rates for senators to their mistresses. And he`s been lying about it.

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(h/t Heather)

Do you want to know how lost in space conservatives are during this health care debate? Watch Eric Cantor, the golden boy of the conservatives, make a complete fool of himself. When their goal is to just block everything, lies, dodges and sick thoughts cascade out of their mouths and into the atmosphere. First he says health-care reform is so time-consuming and is stopping them from doing anything else, but the real sickness comes out when he's asked at a town hall if he could help a woman who has tumors in her belly, who had lost their health insurance and has cancer.

The anti-government freak Cantor actually looks this woman in the eye and asks her to try and find some mythical government program for help. If these programs existed, shouldn't the golden boy at least know what they are? And I thought the government was the devil to Cantor? When confronted with real-life problems, they have no solutions and just make twisted crap up.

Then he brings up the BIG CANARD: Charity care. Hahahahahahaha.

We saw the same thing with Tom Coburn at his town hall and now we see it with Cantor. Remember Coburn?

Coburn: Well, I think—first of all, yeah. We'll help. The first thing we will do is to see what we can do, individually, to help you, through our office. But the other thing that is missing in this debate is us as neighbors, helping people that need our help. [Applause.] You know we tend to ... [Applause.] The idea that the government is a solution to our problems is an inaccurate, a very inaccurate statement.

There answer is to go broke, become indigent, then beg the government for some crumbs while you die waiting for a non existent program to swoop in and save you. Or maybe you can go begging...

I wonder if one of his health-care reform proposals will be that Americans should organize charity squads that go door-to-door and beg for charity money from their towns and hope they can raise 400K in a couple of days for one person. I'm sorry, I just got queasy just watching this video of this asshole.

The San Francisco Chronicle is equally appalled:

I cannot make this up. You have to watch the entire video unedited (though I also have the short video version) and see if Representative and Minority Whip Eric Cantor's version of a "public option" squares with your personal values as a human being and as an American.
--
The question an audience participant asked is paraphrased as "Relative got cancer and lost his insurance... what happens?"

Representative Eric Cantors response paraphrased: "Sell or auction all your belongings. After you reach a certain poverty threshold, apply for Medicaid, the federal medical insurance for the very poor. If that's not enough apply for indigent services."

As I said, I cannot make this up. Just watch the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, Rep. Eric Cantor.

Cantor was on MSNBC and said that he was only trying to answer the question and figure out a way for that women to get help immediately. Tamryn Hall didn't ask a follow-up, but Cantor looked like a buffoon. Is the only thing he can think of to help quickly is that a person become indigent. Why is he blocking any meaningful reform?

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Rachel Maddow featured a hilarious bit from this weekend's "Values Voters Summit" in Missouri, featuring a fellow named Mike Schwartz, who is Republican Sen. Tom Coburn's chief of staff. Matt Corley at ThinkProgress actually had this first (and deserves credit from those who later make use of it -- ahem!), and has the transcript too:

SCHWARTZ: But it is my observation that boys at that age have less tolerance for homosexuality than just about any other class of people. They speak badly about homosexuality. And that’s because they don’t want to be that way. They don’t want to fall into it. And that’s a good instinct. After all, homosexuality, we know, studies have been done by the National Institute of Health to try to prove that its genetic and all those studies have proved its not genetic. Homosexuality is inflicted on people.

How does Schwartz know this? Well, a friend of his was once tragically caught up in "the homosexual lifestyle":

SCHWARTZ: And one of the things that he said to me, that I think is an astonishingly insightful remark. He said, “all pornography is homosexual pornography because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards. Now think about that. And if you, if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants." You know, that’s a, that’s a good comment. It’s a good point and it’s a good thing to teach young people.

You can't make this stuff up. This is a truly special level of stupid we are reaching here in America.

The full video is at YouTube.

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When the GOP trotted out the hapless Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) to deliver the response to President Obama, the former cardiologist became just the latest Republican physician deployed to halt health care reform. As it turns out, the repentant Birther was an unfortunate choice to carry the GOP banner of tort reform, given his own history of malpractice suits. Of course, as his colleagues Tom Price, Tom Coburn and Bill Frist all show, when it comes to the politics of health care, Boustany isn't the only Republican doctor offering Americans the wrong diagnosis and bad prescriptions.

Georgia's Tom Price, a one-time orthopedic surgeon and current chairman of the Republican Study Committee, is a case in point. While the GOP tried to block the passage of Medicare in the 1960's and tried to slash its budget by 15% in the 1990's, today's Republicans pretend to be the defenders of the system Newt Gingrich famously said they hoped to see "wither on the vine." But in a July op-ed, Dr. Price reminded America's seniors why it is Republicans and not President Obama they should fear when it comes to Medicare:

Going down the path of more government will only compound the problem. While the stated goal remains noble, as a physician, I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare.

Then there's Oklahoma Senator and unexpected Obama confidante Tom Coburn. As a Senate candidate in 2004, Dr. Coburn famously warned that "lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom." Upon his arrival in the Senate, the former obstetrician was elevated to the Judiciary Committee despite having advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions. More recently, Coburn the C Street marriage counselor to John Ensign and Mark Sanford turned Deather:

In an interview with KOTV, Coburn said that he disagreed with Obama's dismissal of fears that reform will "pull the plug on grandma."

Coburn said that he'd offered three amendments seeking an "absolute prohibition" on rationing care based on effectiveness research.

"Why would you not want an absolute prohibition? Because you ultimately plan to ration care," Coburn said. "Their plan is to control costs by limiting options."

Last but certainly not least is former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

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Michael Steele goes to a black college and insults a woman whose mother died of cancer because she said that everyone should have good health care.

So people go out to town halls, they go to the community, and they’re like this. (SHAKES ARMS) It makes for great TV. You’ll probably make it tonight. Enjoy it.

First, there's the insanity of the head of the RNC criticizing anyone for disrupting a town hall meeting. Second, you have a woman whose mother died, ostensibly because of a lack of insurance, basically being insulted for daring to try to call attention to herself.

And this is not the only example. I can think of a dozen instances of Republican officials dismissing people trying to explain how the current system is broken. There was Tom Coburn telling the crying woman whose insurance refused to cover her husband that she should go to her neighbors for help. There was "Great White Hope" Republican Lynn Jenkins telling an uninsured constituent to be a grown-up and get insurance. The callousness on display at these things is palpable. And it could easily be turned into a powerful force for change.

That is, if there was one Democratic strategist interested in making a moral case anymore instead of a bunch of functionaries squandering a progressive agenda in favor of pleasing elites and talking about "bending the cost curve."

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Rick Sanchez shows some footage of a woman pleading with Tom Coburn to help her at a town hall meeting because her husband has had a traumatic brain injury, and they can't get insurance for him. After Coburn says he'll help through his office that that we "as neighbors" ought to help each other and the idea that the government is here to help is inaccurate. Gotta' love Sanchez's response here.

What's interesting about that is that Sen. Coburn just essentially said the government is not the solution, but then you have to ask yourself. He just told her to come and see him, isn't he the government? By the way after helping her, what will he do about the other 46,999,999 who don't have insurance, and the thousands upon thousands of Americans who say they do have insurance but like her, they're not getting covered? We'll ask those questions.

Exactly.

h/t The Political Carnival