Posted on 05/22/2014 4:26:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
resident Obama is “madder than hell” about the scandal at the Veterans Administration. How do we know? Dennis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff, told us so.
Between fundraisers and golf outings, the president took time from his “busy” schedule to inform his chief of staff aside how angry he was that his administration was, in effect, issuing death sentences to veterans by hiding them on secret wait lists so as not to endanger performance bonuses bureaucrats receive for ensuring those vets did not, in fact, die.
The president must be so angry he’s lost the ability to speak – at least for two weeks when he couldn't be bothered to say or tweet a word about the mistreatment of veterans by his team. Finally forced to break his silence Wednesday, he delivered a statement filled with all the passion of a bag of dirty laundry. But I’m not here to complain about the president’s failed leadership – at this point it’s commonplace, his “style,” and God only knows how much worse things would be if he decided to be “hands on.”
No, I’m not going to mock him since it’s hard to mock a parody anyway. Nor am I going to run through the litany of things “the smartest guy to ever become president” has found out about through media reports and not his paid staff whose very job it is to keep him informed of the happenings in his administration. (The great Washington Free Beacon has a video of some of them worth watching here.)
No, others can do that much better than I. But there is one thing I noticed in the McDonough distract-a-thon over the weekend that I found to be incredibly telling, not just about the president, but about liberalism in general.
When McDonough was on CNN with Jake Tapper, he was confronted with proof the White House knew for years about the hidden VA wait times and the consequences of that act. Rather than offer an apology or simply admit the truth, he offered what is standard fare for liberals – a distraction. But the distraction in this case is the crystallization of liberalism.
McDonough told Tapper, “The president has seen dramatically expanded investments in Veteran’s Administration operations over the course of these last five years … year-on-year historic increases in that budget. At a time, by the way Jake, when we’ve seen budgets under intense pressure, we will continue to make those investments.”
Did you catch it? The president has spent more money on the VA than anyone else has, and to liberals that’s the solution. No concern for how the money is spent – whether it is being spent effectively, being wasted or stolen - just that it’s being spent. The appearance of caring, coupled with a big check, is enough.
We see this not only in the Veteran’s Administration, but in just about everything liberals touch. Washington, D.C., spends nearly $30,000 per student and fully 83 percent aren’t proficient in something as basic as reading.
In Maryland, another big-spending state, Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley is gearing up for a presidential run by touting how the Old Line State is No.1 in national reading tests. What he leaves out is that’s in large part because Maryland exempts more students who would score lower on that test that any other state – by a lot. As the Washington Post put it, “The state led the nation in excluding students on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, posting rates that were five times the national average and more than double the rate of any other state.” (Emphasis added.)
As I’ve said before, when you choose the unit of measure, or invent one out of whole cloth (jobs saved or created), you’ll always come out on top. When it comes to caring, liberals have set that unit of measure as money – always other people’s money. With that as the yardstick, no one cares more than liberals. But, like a distant rich parent in movies and novels that raise horrible children, a bottomless checkbook is no substitute for results. And when it comes to results, at least in the real world, be it health care, education, anti-poverty programs, the Veterans Administration, or anything else big government attempts to “fix,” liberals are sadly lacking.
Leaving off the ‘P’ was a nice touch.
Thanks
Oh that was delish, well played Hoodat.
Has anyone ever noticed how Obama personalizes all these crisis's that "He" is outraged etc and won't stand for it. Does this not reek of Narcissism? Every other President I can recall always referred to This or My Administration. Tangent to this is afterwards with all his protestation, he still does nothing. Pray for America, nothing else will work at this point...
“After seven years of an Administration that has stretched our military to the breaking point, ignored deplorable conditions at some VA hospitals, and neglected the planning and preparation necessary to care for our returning heroes, America’s veterans deserve a President who will fight for them not just when it’s easy or convenient, but every hour of every day for the next four years.”— Then-Senator Barack Obama, November 12, 2007
That arrogant pos sure shows how much he cares about them.
In Zero’s defense, the VA has been a problem for a lot longer than just his tenure as _resident.
The true significance is as a test case for full National Health Care - if the VA is too big and inhuman to work properly how can something 50 times larger be expected to work?
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. This is what any government-run medical (or education, or other) system looks like.
While there are many individuals in the system working very hard to serve the patients, the organization as a whole considers the patients a nuisance: the tiresome but necessary occasion to perpetuate the organization’s budget and employ its personnel.
There’s a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that tells me the deliberate ignorance of problems at the VA are designed to allow mainstream single payer to come in and rescue our poor veterans (even though it would be just as bad). As appalled as I am about this, I can’t say I’m surprised, liberals kill babies and have a general disdain for the military; this is a reflection of their values..
While true, in 2008 the POS ran for the _residency claiming to fix the VA. Fast forward six years and untold deaths under his abomination, it has gotten "progressive;y" worse.
Well whatever, It works every time. “I didn’t know, I’m mad as Hell, get to the bottom”, and that is the last that we hear of the issue. I blame Republicans most, because they never get MAD AS HELL, and raise Cain to hold those EVIL people accountable.
The schmuck -if has any humility in him at all - is just embarrassed by this, that’s all. I mean, it may inhibit his ability to raise more funds! I watched his statement last night. He didn’t looked pissed. He looked bored.
“In Zero’s defense, the VA has been a problem for a lot longer than just his tenure as _resident.”
It started 1962 when JFK signed an executive order granting federal employee unions the right to collective bargain. At that time union representation was 8%, now it’s 100%. There are two fundamental problems at the VA; there’s the “Culture of Corruption” that has permeated the system and there’s the problem of “extremely low productivity”. The genesis of both these problems are one and the same; union collective bargaining. Currently, there is nothing that can be done about either due to bullet proof union contracts - exceptions being Obama signing an executive order rescinding JFK’s 1962 executive order or congress doing the same legislatively which would never get through the senate or signed by Obama. So, until the GOP has both houses and the presidency all we can expect is lots of noise and an occasional firing of an appointed executive, that’s about it folks.
Its simple, really.. Since they are dead, they are no long patients so their deaths can’t be the responsibility of the VA..
Just as the people who stop looking for work are no longer counted as unemployed.
Many are talking about poorly run VA hospitals. Bureaucratic nightmares by well meaning public servants.
As you state, such leviathans do not work. Oversight is impossible.
But my issue is the increasing systemic corruption in our institutions. What happens to societies that take so lightly such vicious behavior?
A fish rots from the head down.
Sooooooo, will he be “focused like a laser” on this as he was on creating all those jobs? < /sarc
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