Remarks by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), as provided by the Republican National Committee:

Hello, I’m Dr. Tom Coburn, a practicing physician from Oklahoma and a member of the United States Senate.

This week I had the opportunity to join President Obama and my Democrat and Republican colleagues for a summit on health care. We had a respectful and constructive discussion.

While we listened to one another, I’m concerned that the majority in Congress is still not listening to the American people on the subject of health care reform. By an overwhelming margin, the American people are telling us to scrap the current bills, which will lead to a government takeover of health care, and we should start over.

Unfortunately, even before the summit took place the majority in Congress signaled its intent to reject our offers to work together. Instead they want to use procedural tricks and backroom deals to ram through a new bill that combines the worst aspects of the bills the Senate and House passed last year.

The American people have rejected the majority’s plan for good reason. Their plan includes half a trillion dollars in new tax increases, a half a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare, job-killing penalties for employers, taxpayer funded abortion and new boards that will ration care to American citizens. At its core, their plan continues a government-centered approach that has...

When President-elect George W. Bush's brand-new Chief of Staff Andrew Card called the assembling White House transition team together for its first pre-inaugural staff meeting two blocks from their about-to-be workplace in January 2001, he told everyone in the eager room to look around.

"In 18 months," White House veteran Card announced, "most of you will be gone." (What he didn't say was, most of you will use this job on your resume to move on to really good money.)

The White House always looks the same when a new president moves in. But inside, it's a high-pressure, highly-competitive arena of determined egos, most of whom have just invested two or three years of their lives at crummy wages, eating crummy food, scrapping and tearing to get there. Not everyone gets along, including some big names who look all pally for the photos. And there's a perpetual turnover.

The departures have started rather early for the Obama Chicago crowd -- just 13+ months in. But the power jockeying has been going on inside all along. And today....

Jim Bunning used to be a hero. In fact he's in the Baseball Hall of Fame -- only the second pitcher in history to get 1,000 strikeouts and 100 wins in both the American (Detroit Tigers) and National (Philadelphia Phillies) leagues.

This week he proved the goat, the only one of 100 senators to block a 30-day extension of unemployment benefits. Without it, for an estimated 1.2 million Americans, benefits expire Sunday.

Actually, some think Bunning has a point -- he wants the Senate to pay for the $10-billion, 30-day band-aid by dipping into the $400 billion in unspent stimulus funds -- instead of adding to the federal deficit.

But Bunning's reputation as a loose cannon precedes him, and he had few defenders even among Republican colleagues. A loose-lipped maverick who once accused an opponent of....

The White House pushed, hinted, suggested, cajoled and otherwise tried to send the message to embattled New York Gov. David Paterson that he should get out of the race.

Now, he has, with various news sources reporting he is going to serve out his term, which ends in January, but won't seek a new term.

(UPDATE: Democrat Paterson confirmed the reports Friday. He's out.)

Paterson has been under fire in recent days for having contacted a woman who accused one of his top aides of domestic violence.

But that is hardly his first brush with controversy. Paterson inherited the governor's office after fellow Democrat Eliot Spitzer resigned in a prostitution scandal. With Paterson's poll numbers down and amid grumbling about his ineffectiveness, the White House sent word to Albany in September that perhaps Paterson could fall on his sword for the party.

As The Ticket reported at the time, New York's First Lady Michelle Paige Paterson blasted President Obama for the backroom push, saying it was wrong for the White House to get involved. "David's the first African American governor in the state of New York and he's being asked to get out of the race. It's very unusual and it seems very unfair," she told the New York Post. "I never heard of a president asking a governor not to run.... I don't think it's right."

But the current scandal -- in which Paterson reportedly called a woman who was about to testify against one of his top aides -- was the tipping point.

The biggest winner from today's decision? Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo, the darling of the Democratic left and the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who can now go for it without a bruising or expensive Democratic primary.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Gov. David Paterson; credit: Associated Press.

Click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot or twitter.com/johannaneuman. And our Facebook FAN page is right here.

A brief online kerfuffle raged this week over a perceived similarity between a newer military agency logo and that trademark Obama O circle from the presidential campaign.

According to an initial conspiratorial theory, the newest logo for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency (above, right) bears a remarkable resemblance to the Obama campaign logo. And is that perhaps some potentially sinister insinuation of the Muslim crescent in there too?

The answer is, simply: Not.

According to Richard Lehner of the MDA, the agency added the second, more contemporary, three-colored logo to its recruiting materials three years ago as a cost-saving procedure over the continuing five-color logo. The newer design was added to the agency's updated website last fall, where both now appear.

For those of us who in high school days may have been symbolically challenged by some Shakespearean lines, Lehner provides this explanation:

"The symbolism of the design is that it shows missile defense as a global system to defend the US, our deployed forces and allies and friends, as depicted by the path of an interceptor missile and a flash (not a star) denoting a missile intercept."

Another way to explain "missile intercept" is an intentionally premature explosion of an incoming enemy armament caused by our own missile, a super laser beam and/or a secret method that we'd have to kill you for if we told you about.

-- Andrew Malcolm

3-2-1-Click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. And our Facebook FAN page is right here.

In case you got so wrapped up in the wonky drama of Thursday's bipartisan healthcare summit and forgot to track the time, the office of Sen. Mitch McConnell helpfully did it for you.

For some bizarre reason having to do with working in Washington more than 24 hours, the distinctly minority Republican representatives meeting with President Obama and his Democratic posse suspected they might get the short end of the timing switch when it came to talking on national TV.

And you will be shocked to learn that, according to the GOP timers, they did.

According to that count, Republican voices could be heard for 110 minutes out of the meeting's 343 minutes.

Democrats were speaking for 114 minutes.

Which seems about equal unless you count Obama as a Democrat, which many people do.

In that case, Democrats out-clocked Republicans 233-110.

At one point, McConnell raised the issue of time imbalance, prompting this comment by Obama:

"You're right, there was an imbalance on the opening statements because I'm the president and so I made...(Laughter) I didn't -- I didn't count my time in terms of dividing it evenly."

Related item:

Healthcare summit opening remarks: Obama, Alexander, Pelosi, Reid

-- Andrew Malcolm

It will only take a sec. Click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. And our Facebook FAN page is right here.

Photo: EPA

For the first time in 13 months, the two men who worked together every day in the White House for eight years got back together quietly this afternoon in suburban Washington.

Former President George W. Bush arrived at the McLean, Va., home of former Vice President Dick Cheney, newly returned from a hospital stay from his fifth heart attack.

"Lookin' good," said Bush.

"Holding up," said Cheney.

Cheney still addressed his former boss as Mr. President in the brief repartee before an ABC News camera. (See video below.) The two men spent about an hour together.

They were both scheduled to appear at a Bush-Cheney administration reunion in Washington on Friday, but Cheney has begged off for more recovery time.

The Ticket previewed the Bush-Cheney meet-up earlier today right here and reviewed what both men have been up to in the ensuing year.

Both men have been working on their memoirs in recent months. Bush has confined his observations and comments to closed exchanges with private audiences, Cheney has been considerably more outspoken in his opposition to many Obama policies as well as his support for the Democrat's strategy in Afghanistan.

Last week in a surprise appearance at a conservative convention, Cheney predicted Obama would be a one-term president, an observation confirmed by a recent CNN / Opinion research Poll. (See links below.)  

A majority of Americans now predict NObama second term

Dick Cheney predicts Obama a 'one-term president'

Obama nears Day 400: What's happened to him?

-- Andrew Malcolm

Is party-hardy Nevada ready for a bachelor governor?

This week, Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons, who recently reached a divorce settlement with his estranged wife, Dawn, likely realized the perils of being an (almost) single public official running for reelection in a relatively small state.

On Monday night, just before the part-time Legislature convened to close an $887-million budget gap, a KLAS-TV news crew confronted Gibbons at the Reno airport. He was returning from a governors’ conference and presidential banquet in Washington.

Essentially, the crew asked: Who was your date?

Gibbons initially denied he was traveling with a woman named Kathy Karrasch, one of the women Dawn Gibbons had accused of being her husband’s mistress. Karrasch was also the infamous recipient of more than 800 text messages from the governor during the 2007 legislative session.

(She and Gibbons have denied they are romantically involved. In fact, in a recent deposition that KLAS obtained, the governor claimed he hasn’t had sex with anyone, including his wife, for 15 years: “I'm living proof that you can survive without sex for that long," he said.)

After Gibbons’ airport denial, the news crew cornered Karrasch outside. She was heading toward the governor’s state-owned SUV.

“You know what? I could have been in Las Vegas having tea with the first lady,” Karrasch said.

Soon after, Gibbons joined Karrasch, the wife of a Reno doctor, and offered a few choice words to the news crew.

“You are full of (expletive). You are. You really are. All you're doing out here late at night trying to make a scene,” Gibbons said.

The next day, Gibbons apologized for his denials. He apparently had no choice. Karrasch, according to a Reno TV station, had posted on Facebook that she had very much enjoyed dinner at the White House.

-- Ashley Powers

Click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us @latimestot. And our Facebook FAN page is right here.

Photo: The Gibbons couple in happier times. Credit: Cathleen Allison / Associated Press

UPDATE: 10:52 a.m.: Here are the brief remarks of President Obama to reporters during the lunch break:

Q   How is it going, Mr. President?

THE PRESIDENT: It’s interesting.  I mean, I don't know if it’s interesting watching it on TV, but it’s interesting being part of it.

Q  Are you making progress?

Q  How is the progress?

THE PRESIDENT: I think we're establishing that there are actually some areas of real agreement and we're starting to focus on what the real disagreements are. If you look at the issue of how much government should be involved -- the argument that Republicans are making really isn’t that this is a government takeover of health care, but rather that we’re insuring the -- or we're regulating the insurance market too much. 

And that's a legitimate philosophical disagreement. We'll hopefully be able to explore it a little more in the afternoon.    ###

A list of summit participants has been added at the end of the transcript.

THE PRESIDENT:  Good morning, everybody. Welcome. Thank you so much for participating today. I am very grateful to all of you because I know how busy you are.

What I want to do is just make a few brief remarks on the front end, and then we're going to allow leadership from the both the House and the Senate to make some opening remarks, and then we will dive in.

Last year obviously was one of the toughest years we've had on record, and all of us in one way or another were devoted to focusing on breaking the back of the recession, restoring economic growth, putting people back to work.  We've still got a long way to go.  And so I know both the House and the Senate are interested in how do we propel economic growth forward; how do we create more jobs. 

I was very pleased to see a glimpse of bipartisanship in the Senate recently in passing a jobs bill, and I hope that continues, and I know there are going to be some additional pieces of....

Remember in the messy, fingerpointing aftermath of the Democratic debacle in the Massachusetts Senate election, President Obama said that after nearly a year of healthcare speeches, healthcare town halls and secret healthcare legislative meetings, he'd gotten the message and for 2010 his Job One was what Joe Biden calls that three-letter word: J-O-B-S?

Well, that voter-driven focus lasted about a week.

Now here we are today with another carefully stage-managed healthcare summit across the street from the White House because there hasn't been enough healthcare talk.

And the overwhelming congressional Democratic majorities that Americans believed they elected in 2008 to break partisan gridlock and finally get something done in Washington can't agree enough among themselves to pass the legislation they wrote themselves. So why not drag in the Republicans as nationally-televised patsies?

And, lo and behold, what happens? Wouldn't you know. Someone at the Labor Dept. didn't....

The bipartisan summit at Blair House today is garnering a lot of media and public attention. Billed as either the last hope for healthcare reform or as marvelous political theater (complete with high-level negotiations over the shape of the table and the menu for lunch), the six-hour marathon brings Democrats and Republicans, President Obama and congressional leaders, together to try to find common ground.

But arguably the more interesting attempt to bridge differences will take place elsewhere in Washington, out of public view, over coffee. For the first time since they left office on Jan. 20, 2009, former President George W. Bush meets with former Vice President Dick Cheney.

They have a lot to talk about.

Since they left the White House, Bush has become a model former president, for the most part staying out of view, careful not to offer gratuitous advice from the sidelines to....

Update on celebrity politicking: One-time singing sensation Barbra Streisand has come out against the recent Supreme Court ruling giving corporations the legal right to make political contributions as she does.

In a widely-overlooked item on Huffington Post this week, Streisand complained that the overwhelming 2008 "historic victory" of Barack Obama "was a mandate for change," as was the awarding of overwhelming congressional majorities to progressive Democrats.

But, according to Streisand, who says she's been a longtime supporter of free speech, progress in Washington has been stymied not by political infighting but by big money.

"Frustration has given way to anger," Streisand says, "as voters have witnessed the inability of our lawmakers to make progress on issues like health care reform, financial regulation, and energy policy. This inaction is due to a tidal wave of big money from the health insurance industry, Big Oil and giant financial institutions who have mobilized to challenge the people's mandate for change."

She adds: "The same financiers, whose greed contributed to the downfall of our economy, contribute significantly to candidates expecting a favorable return on their investment."

She favors new laws limiting large corporate contributions because "campaigns funded by small-donor driven public financing can turn Washington, D.C., away from 'rule by the monied' and towards 'rule by the many.'"

In addition to performing at Obama fundraising events, according to the Center for Responsive Politics' opensecrets.org website, Streisand herself has donated in excess of $600,000, mostly to Democrats or Democratic groups over the years.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Please donate one click here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item all day, every day. Or follow us @latimestot. You can also go to our new Facebook FAN page here.

Photo: Getty Images   Hat Tip: Jeff Poor