Wise Man and Best Friend
by digby
Recall that this man is considered a Very Serious Person, member of the Gang of Six and close personal friend of President Obama when he was in the Senate:
"Show me where in the Constitution the federal government is responsible for your health care?" Coburn said.
He went on to say that government programs such as Medicare are primarily responsible for rapidly rising health-care costs, and that Medicare has made the medical system worse.
"You can't tell me the system is better now than it was before Medicare," he said.
Coburn agreed that some people received poor care - or no care - before Medicare was enacted in the 1960s, but said communities worked together to make sure most people received needed medical attention.
He also conceded that doctors and hospitals often went unpaid for their efforts, or accepted baked goods or chickens in partial payment.
Earlier, in Langley, Coburn partially deflected criticism of President Barack Obama - and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke - by blaming the country's financial woes on Congress. He described his colleagues as "a class of career elitists" and "cowards," and at one point, talking about his frustrations, said, "It's just a good thing I can't pack a gun on the Senate floor."
But Coburn also said most members of Congress are good people with good intentions.
Responding to a man in Langley who asked if Obama "wants to destroy America," Coburn said the president is "very bright" and loves his country but has a political philosophy that is "goofy and wrong."
Obama's "intent is not to destroy, his intent is to create dependency because it worked so well for him," he said.
"As an African-American male," Coburn said, Obama received "tremendous advantage from a lot of these programs."
Gosh, his good friend Barack must be so surprised to hear what he really thinks about his achievments. But it is a good illustration of how a certain subset of American assholes really think about the President. (As if Tom Coburn is intellectually superior to Barack Obama ...good God.)
Some of us are not surprised by this. After all, he ran for office claiming that lesbianism was so rampant in the public schools that they could only let one girl go into the bathrooms at a time. He's not all there and never has been. And yet, this loon was until recently considered one of the wise men of the Senate who was going to cut an epic Grand Bargain to fix every problem in America for all time.
I would alert the Capitol police to keep an eye on him. He's just that nuts.
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