Broken News: Responding to Health Care Reform, Senator Coburn Threatens Further Disaster, Mythical Creatures

WASHINGTON--Emboldened by the media attention surrounding his assertion that senior citizens "are going to die soon" if health care reform passes, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has elected to press the issue even further.

At a hastily-convened press conference earlier today, Senator Coburn announced several other nightmare scenarios that would inevitably occur if various legislative changes on the Democratic Party's wish list came to pass.

"My fellow Americans, I come before you today to warn of grave dangers facing our nation," Said Coburn. "I refer not to the threat of terrorism or the crippled economy, though those are surely legitimate concerns. No, I am here to cast light on unforeseen perils that, should the Democrats accomplish anything at all, will surely bring doom to our great land. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to talk to you about dragons."

Coburn maintains that, apart from mowing down senior citizens by the dozen, health care reform would unleash, "a winged, fire-breathing medieval menace whose wrath would reduce the world as we know it to a smoldering pile of ruins inhabited only by a mutated race of subterranean cannibals."

When informed that this threatening vision was merely a hybrid of the plots from H.G. Wells' The Time Machine and the 2002 box office disappointment, Reign of Fire, Coburn coldly stated, "the facts are the facts" before moving on.

"What do you think will happen if the liberals in Congress institute an automatic weapons ban? Or perhaps repeal portions of the PATRIOT Act?" Continued the junior senator from Oklahoma. "I'll tell you what. Not only will the Yankees take the next seven World Series titles, but a great fire serpent will rise from the ocean and the citizens of this great republic will immediately begin bleeding simultaneously from both the eyes and anus."

Coburn then went on to claim a federal recognition of same-sex marriage would result in roving bands of impeccably dressed, well-groomed dog rapists ravaging the countryside. He then stated that unencumbered stem cell research would bring about the, "death of all kittens and bunnies, everywhere, possibly as a result of wyverns" before asserting that ratification of the Kyoto Protocol would ensure that none of the Black Eyed Peas will be forced to return to their spawning grounds in the Eighth Circle of Hell.

While some alarmist reactionaries and several health reform groups were quick to decry what they saw as Coburn's, "reactionary, fearmongering nonsense", several scholars and historians were more reserved.

Noting the 1906 San Francisco earthquake caused by angry mole people furious over lax Chinese immigration policies, increased minotaur attacks after the passage of Medicare, and the previous dragon assault that occurred when Woodrow Wilson proposed joining the League of Nations, experts were quick to urge caution on passage of many of these new laws.

"Look, we all remember when a gryphon gored President McKinley on the steps of the Capitol for his wavering support for the Philippine-American War. I don't think we want to go through that kind of thing again," observed Dr. Franck Haber, Professor of Mythological Horrors and Political Science at Columbia University.

"If Senator Coburn is intimating that the mystical protections erected during the Ford Administration to prevent us from facing the wrath of vengeful mythical beings enraged over liberal policies have weakened or, I shudder to think, been completely removed, then we can't risk moving forward with any of these so-called reforms without suffering horrifying terrors from dragons, evil spirits, Brobdingnagian giants, frost monsters, cyclopes, and other monsterous enemies of socialism. I think we should trust the Senator on this one. After all, he is a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Mythological and Legendary Creatures."

Calmly noting that he alone could not protect them from dragons, Coburn urged that those who did not wish to live a dystopian nightmare of underground flesh reaving and sky attacks from monstrous fire lizards should do whatever they feel is necessary to prevent the passage of health reform.

"We're on the precipice of catastrophe here, citizens," Coburn gravely intoned. "If you wish to be fire roasted as a giant iguana with wings eats you alive, be my guest. But don't say I didn't warn you. This is the only future that an America with 'health care reform' can look forward to."