His prolific use of a bill-blocking measure earned him his nickname, but he also won grudging respect on Capitol Hill as a political maverick.

 

Tom Coburn was an obstetrician who treated some 15,000 patients and delivered 4,000 babies in a maternal and family practice in Muskogee, Okla., before embarking on a political career — three terms in the House of Representatives (1995-2001) and, after a four-year hiatus, two terms in the Senate (2005-15). He retired two years before the end of his second term because of deteriorating health.

 

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I write this post with equal measures of trepidation and admiration. While I deeply disagree with much of Dr. Coburn’s agenda, I can’t help but respect his principled conservatism – and his wicked wit.   Quoting at length…

 

A visceral foe of Washington long before such disaffections coalesced into the Tea Party, Mr. Coburn swept into Congress with the class of 1994, when Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years and installed Newt Gingrich as speaker and his “Contract With America” agenda to shrink government, cut taxes and promote welfare reforms and business activity.

Mr. Coburn soon set about displeasing everyone, including the constituencies most politicians covet: his own party’s activists, donors, leaders and congressional colleagues. He battled with Mr. Gingrich often, charging that he was drifting to the political center away from his contractual pledges to the nation. He openly vented his disdain for career politicians.

“His contempt for them is genuine, bipartisan and in many cases mutual,” a reporter said years later. “He once prescribed a ‘spinal transplant’ for 70 percent of the Senate, and another time said his colleagues had ‘reproductive organs the size of BBs.’”

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For the sake of smaller government, he voted against nearly all spending bills, particularly pork-barrel allocations for legislators’ pet projects.  Opposed to gay rights, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research and abortions except those to save a woman’s life, he also denied that global warming was real. He favored term limits for elected officials and pledged to abide by them himself.

A gun rights supporter, he favored the death penalty, even for doctors who performed abortions. He wrote laws aimed at protecting infants from AIDS and expanding medical care for the elderly. Also, he helped reform welfare and other federal entitlement programs, and led workshops for young staff members on sexually transmitted H.I.V. infections.

 

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He was notorious for using a procedural senatorial privilege, called a hold, with which a single senator could block bills from being voted on by the full Senate.  At first his obstructionist tactics were relatively innocuous. He blocked two 2007 bills honoring the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson and her landmark 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” which documented the environmental effects of pesticides. Mr. Coburn called the book “junk science” and “the catalyst in the deadly worldwide stigmatization against insecticides, especially DDT.”

Later bills blocked by Dr. Coburn included provisions for health care, penalties for child pornography, and protections for natural resources. Senate business was dragging to a crawl under the tactical loophole he was exploiting.

In 2008, to expose and embarrass Dr. Coburn, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, introduced 35 of the most irresistible-sounding bills together as “omnibus legislation.” It was a benign collection that almost any senator would be ashamed to vote against:  A Mothers Act to relieve postpartum depression.  A Protect Our Children Act to thwart internet predators.  And a shameless measure to commemorate “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Tom Coburn put a hold on the package, which was mocked as the “Tomnibus” bill. He did not back down. Neither did Senate Democrats.  The struggle lasted two years.  It came to a head when he put a hold on a bill to fund the disarming of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a Ugandan terrorist group that had massacred countless civilians and dragooned children into its ranks. After an 11-day round-the-clock protest outside Dr. Coburn’s office by people outraged that funds to suppress terrorists were being held up, he relented and the bill passed.

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Recalling other unlikely friendships between political opposites like the one between Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Coburn remembrance concludes this way:

 

While he never drifted from his conservative convictions, Dr. Coburn forged a friendship in Washington that was as unlikely as it was enduring. Arriving in the Senate together in 2005, he and Barack Obama quickly bonded.  Shortly before he retired, Dr. Coburn said of Mr. Obama: “I think he’s a neat man. You don’t have to be the same to be friends. Matter of fact, the interesting friendships are the ones that are divergent.”

 

 

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In a partisan day and age  when it’s hard enough to find a pol in either party with at least two neurons to rub together, let alone one who’s a “principled ANYTHING,” it’s refreshing to hear of one with enough good sense and grace to befriend an opposite number on the other side of the aisle.  RIP, Tom Coburn. I say with equal parts lament and concern:  We’re not likely to see your equal in D.C. again any time soon. And more’s the pity.

 

Full story for those who need more is here.

My wife subscribes to Sunset Magazine. I give her grief about it. I mean, it’s not Martha Stewart Living (which some unknown prankster inexplicably subscribed us to, and it keeps coming, despite our best efforts to shut it off), but it’s close. Still, I’ve got to admit, this story she shared with me today is well worth the price of admission:  Guerrilla Tacos Emergency Taco Kit.  Better still, if you go to the Guerrilla Tacos website, it turns out they have all kinds of “emergency kits.”  These include nachos, wine, cold-brew coffee, and – my personal favorite – margaritas. I like that the Guerrilla Tacos: Emergency Taco Kit comes with 5 lbs of chicken, 5 lbs of carne asada, and two kinds of salsa. It also comes with 30 eggs and a complimentary roll of toilet paper. These guys have thought of everything.

 

The home of Guerrilla Tacos: Emergency Kits is located – where else? – near Skid Row in downtown L.A.  That’s just a short hop to Chavez Ravine, btw.

 

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I’m telling you folks, in these trying times, Guerrilla Tacos deserve our support. For their sense of humor, if for nothing else.  Eat more tacos!

(Also, drink more margaritas!)

(Also, Go Dodgers!)

 

This story about home sewn protective masks does my old heart proud.

You go, seamstresses.

 

 

And our own little contribution to the war effort…

 

I hail from farm country.  Wolf Bros. farms sat about midway between two sleepy little Pennsylvania towns: Dillsburg and York Springs. In fact, situated astraddle County Line Road as it was, if I had been brought up in the barn (something my mother occasionally accused me of), I’d have gone to school in Dillsburg. But with the house on the opposite side of the road, I went to school in York Springs.

 

 

I say all this by way of preamble, not because most people reading this blog give a tinker’s damn about my natal land, but for another reason entirely. Because today I was flabbergasted to read this story in the New Yorker. It’s about a GOP political operative named Sarah Longwell who hails from – you guessed it – Dillsburg, PA. What stunned me about all this was that Ms. Longwell ain’t yer grand-daddy’s brand of Republican operative. She was once board chair of the “Log Cabin Republicans.”  And if you need to look up what that term means, I suggest you google it, pronto.  I like that she’s described as “always <with> a knife in her teeth.” Also this….

 

Longwell grew up just outside Dillsburg, a small town of fewer than three thousand people. Her parents still live there. Dillsburg is conservative and Republican, the kind of place where the local elementary school closes for the first day of deer-hunting season.

 

 

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In any case, since most of you rarely click my links, you’ll remain blissfully unaware of who Sarah Longwell really is, or what’s really going on in Dillsburg these days. And thassok by me. “Just don’t be surprised come November” is all I’ve got to say about that. You been warned.

 

In the “More News You Can Use” department, there’s this story from KTVM Montana:  Reporter Deion Broxton was all set up at the gates of Yellowstone for a shoot on the shuttering of National Parks, when… <wait for it>… he was nearly overrun by a herd of bison. The hilarious Twitter video is posted here, showing our intrepid reporter retreating to the safety of his vehicle, muttering “Oh no, I ain’t messin’ wit’ YOU.” And his cameraman inexplicably failed to get even a passing glimpse of the bison?  How does THAT happen, exactly? But, no worries. It’s TV worth watching nevertheless. In these troubled times, we take our small pleasures where we can find them.  Enjoy.

 

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Also this, from the Yellowstone media guide, on keeping proper distance.

 

More News You Can Use, indeed!

My mom, God rest her soul, was a clean freak. Not a neat freak, mind you. But a clean freak. In a farm house with 4 boys, there’s a certain amount of disorder that’s just inevitable. But the dictum to “take off your garsh-dang pig-shitty boots outside the front door before you come into MY kitchen?”  Well, that’s an iron-clad non-negotiable fiat to be ignored only at one’s own mortal peril. You been warned, son.

 

 

This clean freak trait, handed down (I am convinced) genetically, has stood me in good stead as an Airbnb host. When asked one time by my mother-in-law if my Airbnb co-host daughter (who sadly lacks the clean freak gene) had things ready for the next incoming guest, I replied, “Well, she does have it clean. But it’s not exactly Marzella-clean.” Know what I mean Jelly Bean?

 

 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying anything about moral virtue here. In a reticent farm-family culture where “I love you” is uttered with roughly the same frequency as “You’ve just won the lottery,” crisp sheets and sparkling linoleum floors stand in stead for more verbal forms of affection. So, if by “clean” you mean “loved?” Then I grew up the most beloved kid on the planet – bar none.

 

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All of this came home to me today in a very personal way when I stumbled across this story in the NY Times.  Titled – what else? – “How to Clean Your Home For Coronavirus,” it made me run to the kitchen cabinet to make sure I had the right disinfectant. Sure enough, I did.

 

 

So anyway – THANKS, MOM! And Airbnb guests? You can rest easy. Because as long as I’m still standing upright on Terra Firma, it’s gonna be Marzella-clean – and no messing around. Get it? Got it. Gooooood.