Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) ripped his colleagues during a tour of northeast Oklahoma, calling them “career elitists,” “cowards” and said, “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor.”
Coburn’s gun-on-the-floor comment comes less than a month after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) made a triumphant return to the Capitol and the House floor following an assassination attempt in January outside a Tucson supermarket.
Gun-happy Coburn is both a doctor and a Southern Baptist deacon and, of course, is rabidly "pro-life." He may be best known for his involvement in the John Ensign scandal at the infamous C Street House where he helped in the cover up of the affair. Coburn claimed there was doctor/patient privilege involved. Coburn is an obstetrician. As far as is known, Ensign does not have a uterus.
As a congressman, he made news by protesting a televised airing of Schindler's List, saying it was "an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity" and that the airing of the movies was "irresponsible sexual behavior. I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program." (As opposed to the children all across the country hearing a US Senator wanting to shoot his colleagues...)
Every now and then the editorial pages at the Tribune-Review and the Post-Gazette cover the same issue and it's child's play to guess which side of which issue each will support.
Today is no exception.
The Trib say: North Shore connector - bad, Coburn-McCain report - good.
Laurel: To Tom Coburn and John McCain. The Republican U.S. senators, of Oklahoma and Arizona, respectively, list Pittsburgh's North Shore Connector as the nation's third-worst waste of federal "stimulus" money. And what a waste it is. Its benefits were oversold. It's dramatically over budget. And it's a monument to both the state in ineptness and the ineptness of the state. It is "waste" incarnate.
And the P-G:
Don't mistake the report this week by Republican Sens. John McCain and Tom Coburn for an economic analysis of the federal stimulus. "Summertime Blues" is a political stunt, designed to make the stimulus sound foolhardy by belittling and mischaracterizing projects it has funded.
As usual in supporting it's position, the Trib relies on some Scaife-funded think tank without ever declaring his support for that think tank. In this case the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy is referenced twice. You get what you pay for, I guess.
In it's defense of the Stimulus bill, the P-G points out:
It begins with an oversimplification, long stated by opponents of the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, that "Eighteen months since the law's passage, millions of jobs are still gone and the economy is as uncertain as ever."
That conclusion ignores countervailing findings, such as those issued last week -- by a former McCain adviser who is chief economist for Moody's investment service as well as Princeton economist Alan Blinder -- which said the stimulus program and the bank bailout likely averted a depression.
Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.2 percent,
Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.5 percentage points,
Increased the number of people employed by between 1.2 million and 2.8 million, and
Increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by 1.8 million to 4.1 million compared with what those amounts would have been otherwise. (Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers.)
So when Coburn and McCain write:
When Congress passed the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, otherwise known as the stimulus bill, it passed with assurances that it would stem the loss of American jobs and keep the economy from floundering. As most can see, it hasn’t.
Eighteen months since the law’s passage, millions of jobs are still gone and the economy is as uncertain as ever. The only thing getting a boost is our national debt – the stimulus has helped push it 23 percent higher, to $13.2 trillion, a new record.
You know they're just spinning. And that everything that follows is just a part of the spin. The facts may be true, but as the frame is skewed, so is the conclusion.
As the P-G points out:
No one is suggesting that every dollar of stimulus money has been spent wisely, but this report starts with a weak hypothesis supported by exaggeration. There ain't no cure for this "Summertime Blues."
As it's Friday and Fridays should be fun, here's some Eddie Cochran:
UPDATED to include the frickin link to the CBO report
Senator Coburn is affiliated with a religious organization called The Family which has been criticized on Rachel Maddow's show. Senator Coburn lives in one of the Family's dormitories when in Washington, D.C. with Senator John Ensign, another Family member and longtime resident of the C Street Center who admitted he had an extra-marital affair with a staffer in 2009. The announcement by Ensign of his extramarital affair brought public scrutiny of the Family and its connection to other high ranking politicians including Senator Coburn.
Senator Coburn, together senior members of the Family, attempted to intervene to end Ensign's affair in February 2008, prior to the affair becoming public, including by meeting with the husband of Ensign's mistress and encouraging Ensign to write a letter to his mistress breaking off the affair. Senator Ensign was driven to Federal Express from C Street Center to post the letter, shortly after which Ensign called to tell his mistress to ignore it.
Senator Coburn refuses to speak about his involvement in Ensign's affair or his knowledge of the affair well before it became public on the grounds of alleged "privilege" due to his separate status as a licensed physician in the State of Oklahoma (OB/GYN) and an ordained deacon.
Coburn knows that government isn't the solution to our problems, except of course when it comes to sodomy and abortion:
(Maybe we can hold a bake sale for this woman and her husband.) .
