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" Remember that Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is often cited as one of the Republicans with whom the president might be able to do business. He is a conservative, but not a crazy person, like his colleague, James Inhofe. He can be expected to listen respectfully to other points of view and to at least consider the virtues of the kind of compromises that take the Davids, Gregory and Gergen, to their respective happy places. Then remember that, fundamentally, Tom Coburn is also a monster.  &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s always been his position [to offset disaster aid],&amp;quot; Coburn spokesman John Hart said. &amp;quot;He supported offsets to the bill funding the OKC bombing recovery effort.&amp;quot;  This is a guy who, one day after a devastating natural disaster killed his own constitutents, said he will not vote to allevate their suffering unless he can inflict some pain on someone somewhere else in the country. And his spokesman defends this as a matter of principle, and uses the worst act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States as a salutary example. (And the link demonstrates that Coburn&amp;#039;s aversion to tossing money down various ratholes is not universal.) Does Senator Coburn really believe you can budget for the unthinkable? That tornadoes are zero-sum events? That you can horse-trade on human suffering as though it were a line-item on a transportation rider? I no longer am willing to try to understand how people like this think. They are monsters and they operate on their own monstrous imperatives. The attack on the natural instincts of a self-governing political commonwealth has been a long one, a powerful one, and (alas) a very effective one. It has made the politically unthinkable a viable alternative in the face of the literally unimaginable. It is a return to the days where people died alone on the prairies during blizzards, or they drowned in floods along the plains, or they were lost in hurricanes that struck without warning. It&amp;#039;s not a great distance removed from staving off severe weather by judging the flights of birds or reading the entrails of a disembowelled goat on a rock. The idea that there is even a &amp;quot;debate&amp;quot; worthy of mentioning over this money shows how far we&amp;#039;ve fallen. By the way, here is the City Of Moore&amp;#039;s official FAQ page about storm shelters and the like. I may be wrong, but this fairly reeks of defensiveness. The explanation for the lack of storm shelters seems economically prissy and more than a tad lame\u2014people won&amp;#039;t use them because they won&amp;#039;t leave their pets behind? So, therefore, we don&amp;#039;t build one? Really?\u2014and the cruel irony of this tornado is that people were warned specifically not to &amp;quot;shelter in place&amp;quot; but, rather, to get in their cars and drive like hell. There is considerable real-time audio from local radio and TV to that effect. And this is a masterpiece of You&amp;#039;re On Your Own, Jack:  &amp;quot;What if I live in a mobile home?This means that you have additional responsibility for your safety, and that begins much earlier! Mobile homes typically do not offer good shelter from thunderstorm winds, and that means you should find shelter elsewhere\u2014perhaps the house of family or friends. You need to plan your actions long before thunderstorms arrive, and leave early...don&amp;#039;t wait until warnings are issued or the sirens are blowing to leave.&amp;quot; Oh, OK. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22694/the-oklahoma-test/>