Common Dreams – by Abby ZimetIn the time-honored tradition of setting abstract and often wrong-headed partisan politics above the needs of real-life people, Oklahoma’s GOP Sen. Tom Coburn, along with his colleagues a longtime climate change skeptic and foe of federal disaster relief, announced within hours of the devastating tornadoes hitting his state that any federal disaster aid should be paid for with budget cuts elsewhere, no doubt preferably affecting poor people. So when he tweeted that his “thoughts and prayers” were with the suffering victims of “the tragic tornado outbreak,” they weren’t having any of it.
From his Facebook page: “You are simply just a bad person…You are failing miserably as a senator and a human being. Fucking piece of garbage…. To hell with you sir, and enjoy the weather…You are the enemy – you disgust us all.”
Update: Coburn’s office has blasted his “crass” critics for “playing disaster aid politics.” It adds that Dr. Coburn has opposed disaster aid bills in the past because “he believes disaster funding should be used to pay for disasters, not a wish-list of parochial or backlogged priorities,” all of which – crass, parochial priorities – Dr. Coburn knows something about.
Coburn simply knows that any money sent will be sent after repairs are made. This money will then be used for Governor Fallin’s friend’s projects. Coburn also doesn’t want help in exchange for favors, like further implementation of Agenda 21. We are already fighting Common Core. BTW, Coburn did not vote for NDAA, but senator Inhofe did. And Governor Fallin is a puppet who does what ever her masters tell her. Oklahoma will recover and we don’t need FED handouts to do it. We can raise donations and volunteers locally. In fact, take your damn FEMA and DHS out of our state. You bastards are preventing the volunteers from reaching those who need help. That bitch Janet is here today pretending to give a hoot….
“That bitch Janet is here today pretending to give a hoot..” Isn’t that what all the Socialists do?.
As devastating as a tornado is when it’s your house that gets hit, since reading some research on tornado frequency I’ve always kept in mind what a small area is affected, unlike the huge areas clobbered by hurricanes. In the most-dense tornado area of the US (which is also the highest frequency in the world because of unique weather conditions) the chance of any given square meter being hit be a tornado is once every 400 years. At that level of risk Oklahomans are better off dealing with the crisis themselves than trading away anything to DHS or FEMA for helping them.