Your Daily Dose of Health Care Reform Stupidity

Mah book is here!  Mah book is finally here!  So let's make this short and sweet, cuz I gotz readin to do.

With health care reform hitting the Senate floor, Steve Benen has a rundown on some of the idiots standing in its way. 

Grassley admits he lived off the public tit, but still rails against Americans having health care.

Virginia Foxx, character assassin, denounces supposed liberal character assassins.  Oh, puh-leeze.

Dick Lugar thinks we should delay health care reform until next year.  They really don't know anything but the same ol' tunes, do they?

Let's talk about some of the amendments on offer.  Ben Nelson's pulling a Stupak.  John McCain's amendment amounts to nothing more than a big, wet kiss to the insurance industry.  But here's an amendment you can root for: Patrick Leahy's trying to get the insurance companies' anti-trust exemption axed.  Go, Patrick!  Loves me some fighting Irish!

And, the most fun health care reform news o' the day: Coburn's had hisself an Alan Grayson moment:

Back in September, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) caused quite a stir. The freshman Democrat had the audacity to argue, on the House floor no less, that the conservative approach to health care is a joke: "Don't get sick. That's what the Republicans have in mind. And if you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: die quickly."

The GOP and its allies were outraged. The media held Grayson up as an example of incivility in our politics. He made it sound, the argument went, as if Republican policies are literally life threatening. The remarks, conservatives said, crossed a line of decency -- no one should accuse their rivals of promoting lethal health care policies.

I can only assume, then, that Republican officials and their allies will rush out today to condemn Sen. Tom Coburn (R) of Oklahoma, who returned to the macabre as part of the debate over health care reform this afternoon.

"What I disagree is moving $2.5 trillion more under government control which will raise costs ultimately in the health care sector," Coburn said. "And if it doesn't raise costs and we're truly going to take this money from Medicare, what it's going to do to our seniors. I have a message for you: you're going to die sooner. And they're going to go, 'That isn't true. That isn't true."

Well, yes, "they" are going to say Coburn's nonsense isn't true, but only because Coburn's nonsense isn't true.

Alas, Steve's assumption (made tongue firmly in cheek, I'm sure), proved tragically wrong.  Cons are scrambling for all sorts of reasons why Coburn's "die sooner" statement is nothing like Grayson's.

And so the parade of pathetic continues....