Meet the Press

Oh, Rachel. You're going to need a gallon bag of single-malt on a centerline drip after this lovely roundtable this morning. I'm only about ten minutes in on the DVR and already scrambling to get a screengrab of Maddow's perfect BISH PLS look while Tom Coburn claimed that all the Nazi references, Hitler references, and calls for Obama's death are a perfectly understandable reaction by people who are afraid that they've lost control of their government. Oh, here you go:

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She's doing her best with Coburn and Dick Armey, but jello is damn hard to pin to the wall no matter how many nails you have. Ah, but she slaps the Blue Dogs for ceding their majority to fearmongers like Chuck Grassley, and calls out the president for not reining them in. Oh, now Armey says the health stuff is the most hostile government takeover in history. Rachel is sitting next to him trying really hard not to snicker.

Coburn: life expectancy isn't a good indicator of healthcare quality. Medicaid is failing us in terms of neonatal mortality! Rachel comes out of her seat but Coburn shushes her--apparently he can talk without interruption, but she can't--leaving it to Tom Daschle to point out that we currently rank 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in that arena. I was not aware that Medicaid was responsible for all the neonatal mortality in this country. All the dead newborns are Medicaid babies? Because that's the only way that statement makes sense.

And I have now learned from Dick Armey that the best way to handle a question I don't really have a good answer to is to start talking about something else, while leaning forward over the table, waving my finger, and smiling disingenuously. Oh, and talking over anyone who's trying to clarify something I just said. And, finally, Medicare=tyranny! Rachel gives up and just starts laughing.

And I give up and need to eat breakfast before re-watching this and trying to understand it.