VA Scandal Rocks Obama Administration

[Ryantology]

It's not that it's an invented conspiracy (though conservatives have a tremendous collective hard on for invented conspiracies). It's that it's one of those things, like the deficit, that conservatives only care about when they think it's going to score them points with voters.

It won't. People outside of the echo chamber understand that the same shit was going on throughout the last five GOP administrations. Remember Walter Reed Hospital?

That's not to say that this administration shouldn't be held responsible for not taking action. Absolutely, they should. But we have a lot of stone-throwers in glass houses, and it is totally and very obviously artificial outrage from the right when most of those stone-throwers are campaigning on the promise to deny health care (or take away the health care they now have) to millions of Americans (which include around 250,000 veterans). Who is going to be fooled into thinking that conservatives actually care about the health of veterans, other than the simpletons who already believe it?

[Creed of Heresy]

Okay....

There's a scandal involving the VA that could potentially harm the democrats in the upcoming mid-terms. So the left follows the same familiar pattern of...

1). Deny there's a problem.
2). Dismiss and make light of any scandal that could be potentially harmful to the democrats for upcoming elections.
3). Make use of the Whataboutism deflection.
4). Blame the Republicans.
5). Accuse the Republicans of creating a Conspiracy just to discredit Barack and the democrats.
6). Deflect to other issues that have nothing to do with the scandal at hand.

1: There IS a problem.
2: There's nothing light or funny about 1400 veterans having committed suicide this year.
3: I'm not deflecting, I'm addressing the root of the cause, where you're focused on the stem of the weed.
4: They blocked the fucking legislation to provide funding! You can't do shit without resources, and they keep refusing to provide resources to an already cash-strapped agency!
5: That's what politics is! Conspiring against your opponents! Of course they're conspiring! It's not like the democrats don't conspire, they do it just as much, it's called political maneuvering.
6: Or in your case, ignore the root of a problem and instead focus on the task of cutting the weed rather than killing it.

C'mon, man, this is stuff that is unbelievably obvious. Are you denying that the republicans blocked legislation to provide vital resources to the VA? If not that, are you denying that it's extremely hard to do shit when your organization is underfunded, and therefore understaffed, since the first thing to get cut in response to financial losses is the employees?

It's hard to manage things when you're trying to do a job that should be handled by five people by yourself. Anyone who works in retail can tell you that.

The VA IS mismanaged. Why is that? Well, the only thing I can rationally think of is the financial issues, because the VA wasn't struggling nearly so much until the republicans started nixing legislation for funding allocations to them. Less than a year after the republican-controlled congress cut the existing financial flow to the VA down, and not long after the Republican senators (except for two) blocked Sanders' proposed bill to increase coverage and funding, the suicide rate of veterans skyrockets. I'll leave you to wonder why, but to anyone who even gives a cursory amount of attention to the overall political picture, it's pretty obvious.

I'm no mindless fan of Obama. I don't vote along party lines. Yes, I lean to the left, and I do so because I am a progressive; I want the country to catch up with the rest of the developed world, and stop stagnating. We're stagnating because the political climate is still putting too much power behind policies that have been proven over and over to hold us back, to not change with the times, to empower those who already have too much power, to back economic policies that continually hurt those who are already struggling. But all that said, a president who fucks shit up, I will hold them to it. I'm pissed Obama hasn't cut the damn DoD's pork-riddled, unbelievably bloated R&D budgets. I'm pissed he's left Gitmo open. I'm pissed he's kowtowing to political pressure to refuse to change policies that grossly favor people with fucktons of money.

But this? This is not his fault, nor his administration's fault. You don't get to take away someone's money, and then say it's their fault they're poor, you just fucking don't, dammit, and it's a twisted, warped, and flatly stupid brain that thinks you can be justified in doing so.

The fact that the Republicans are jumping at Obama's throat to say it's all his fault shortly after the whole legislation and funding debacles that they caused gives this away; it IS a political move. The GOP is aware that the midterms are coming up and they're highly unpopular thanks to the shutdown and the other issues they've been causing. And the GOP has shown time and time again to utterly disregard collateral damage in the pursuit of their goals. The shutdown is a great example of that. Now they're fighting extremely dirty, because they know the average American is politically illiterate, and all they need to do is just go "the veterans are committing suicide, and there's mismanagement in the VA, ergo it's Obama's fault!" to convince the idiotic masses who vote for them, and the political voyeurist voters who hardly pay any attention and just love to eat sound-bites.

So in conclusion, the Republicans started the fire, and they're blaming the burning house on the lack of fire extinguishers available...when they're the ones who voted to remove the fucking fire extinguishers.

But hey, who needs to look at the cause, when all you need is the dramatic effect, right, AT?

[Wyrd of Gawd]

The people doing the loudest whining are the very same ones who bitch about paying taxes and a large federal government. It's obvious that the system can use more doctors and medical personnel but the whiners would have a fit if they have to fork over an extra dollar to pay for them. Their tears are just for show.

[A Theist]

Okay....

There's a scandal involving the VA that could potentially harm the democrats in the upcoming mid-terms. So the left follows the same familiar pattern of...

1). Deny there's a problem.
2). Dismiss and make light of any scandal that could be potentially harmful to the democrats for upcoming elections.
3). Make use of the Whataboutism deflection.
4). Blame the Republicans.
5). Accuse the Republicans of creating a Conspiracy just to discredit Barack and the democrats.
6). Deflect to other issues that have nothing to do with the scandal at hand.

---

1: There IS a problem.
2: There's nothing light or funny about 1400 veterans having committed suicide this year.
3: I'm not deflecting, I'm addressing the root of the cause, where you're focused on the stem of the weed.
4: They blocked the fucking legislation to provide funding! You can't do shit without resources, and they keep refusing to provide resources to an already cash-strapped agency!
5: That's what politics is! Conspiring against your opponents! Of course they're conspiring! It's not like the democrats don't conspire, they do it just as much, it's called political maneuvering.
6: Or in your case, ignore the root of a problem and instead focus on the task of cutting the weed rather than killing it.

---

---

C'mon, man, this is stuff that is unbelievably obvious. Are you denying that the republicans blocked legislation to provide vital resources to the VA? If not that,

---

are you denying that it's extremely hard to do shit when your organization is underfunded, and therefore understaffed, since the first thing to get cut in response to financial losses is the employees?

It's hard to manage things when you're trying to do a job that should be handled by five people by yourself. Anyone who works in retail can tell you that.

The VA IS mismanaged. Why is that? Well, the only thing I can rationally think of is the financial issues, because the VA wasn't struggling nearly so much until the republicans started nixing legislation for funding allocations to them. Less than a year after the republican-controlled congress cut the existing financial flow to the VA down, and not long after the Republican senators (except for two) blocked Sanders' proposed bill to increase coverage and funding, the suicide rate of veterans skyrockets. I'll leave you to wonder why, but to anyone who even gives a cursory amount of attention to the overall political picture, it's pretty obvious.

---

I'm no mindless fan of Obama. I don't vote along party lines. Yes, I lean to the left, and I do so because I am a progressive; I want the country to catch up with the rest of the developed world, and stop stagnating. We're stagnating because the political climate is still putting too much power behind policies that have been proven over and over to hold us back, to not change with the times, to empower those who already have too much power, to back economic policies that continually hurt those who are already struggling. But all that said, a president who fucks shit up, I will hold them to it. I'm pissed Obama hasn't cut the damn DoD's pork-riddled, unbelievably bloated R&D budgets. I'm pissed he's left Gitmo open. I'm pissed he's kowtowing to political pressure to refuse to change policies that grossly favor people with fucktons of money.

---

---

But this? This is not his fault, nor his administration's fault. You don't get to take away someone's money, and then say it's their fault they're poor, you just fucking don't, dammit, and it's a twisted, warped, and flatly stupid brain that thinks you can be justified in doing so.

---

The fact that the Republicans are jumping at Obama's throat to say it's all his fault shortly after the whole legislation and funding debacles that they caused gives this away; it IS a political move.

---

The GOP is aware that the midterms are coming up and they're highly unpopular thanks to the shutdown and the other issues they've been causing. And the GOP has shown time and time again to utterly disregard collateral damage in the pursuit of their goals. The shutdown is a great example of that. Now they're fighting extremely dirty, because they know the average American is politically illiterate, and all they need to do is just go "the veterans are committing suicide, and there's mismanagement in the VA, ergo it's Obama's fault!" to convince the idiotic masses who vote for them, and the political voyeurist voters who hardly pay any attention and just love to eat sound-bites.

---

So in conclusion, the Republicans started the fire, and they're blaming the burning house on the lack of fire extinguishers available when they're the ones who voted to remove the fucking fire extinguishers.

But hey, who needs to look at the cause, when all you need is the dramatic effect, right, AT?

WTF?! You can't be serious! What the hell have you been listening to?! VA administrators have been cooking the books to lengthen wait times for veterans in a job security scheme as well as milking the system for nearly $9 million in bonuses for themselves....and this was over a span of just two years and at only 6 facilities! So you want to throw more money to corruption and mismanagement? Because that's what you're supporting! Same old leftwing bullshit. Never changes. More money and more money's the answer. Throw more money at government bureaucracies, no questions asked. The investigation into the VA corruption scandal has now expanded to 26 facilities.

When Barack campaigned for president in 2008 he acknowedged that there had been issues with the VA for decades and he promised he was going to fix the system. ...a political move on his part, no doubt, to garner as many military votes as he could. Five years later, what's he fixed? Not a damn thing!...and now he acts shocked that all of this has been going on? Just like every other scandal this administration has been hit with, and asked by the media when the president first heard of the events, Jay Carney replies that he heard it on television the same time everyone else did. Isn't he supposed to know what's going on in his administration?

This isn't a Republican created conspiracy. Democrats have been slamming obama over this too. So is this political theatre for those democrats who have spoken out as well?

[Darth]

In the black-and-white world of the reflexive Republican/Libertarian, all problems are this, or they are that. Their inability to see and appreciate the complexity in any issue is the basic problem. As liberals, we're able to see those shades of gray -- long-term, systemic problems, not attributable to just this Administration and/or this Congress, problems with understaffing and in some cases, underfunding... but to guys like AF, it's this, or it's that. So if he can't process his way through all these multiple, complicated causes, it must be OBAMA'S FAULT. Because what else, yeah?

I love how you bemoan the black and white worldview of (people of enemy political persuasion) while stating that (people of my political persuasion) can see shades of grey, and in so doing reveal your own black-and-white thinking of the world and how you believe people of various political persuasions think. It's called irony, and you sir are a fuckwit.

The VA IS mismanaged. Why is that? Well, the only thing I can rationally think of is the financial issues, because the VA wasn't struggling nearly so much until the republicans started nixing legislation for funding allocations to them.

And the idea that a lack of funds is somehow contributing to the problem of mismanagement is beyond ludicrous. If anything the mismanagement is contributing to any lack of funds. After all, if they reported that everything was a-ok, why would they then get more funds to play with?

Either way, the blame lies with those who lied, and those who let them get away with it.

[A Theist]

In the black-and-white world of the reflexive Republican/Libertarian, all problems are this, or they are that. Their inability to see and appreciate the complexity in any issue is the basic problem. As liberals, we're able to see those shades of gray -- long-term, systemic problems, not attributable to just this Administration and/or this Congress, problems with understaffing and in some cases, underfunding... but to guys like AF, it's this, or it's that. So if he can't process his way through all these multiple, complicated causes, it must be OBAMA'S FAULT. Because what else, yeah?

I love how you bemoan the black and white worldview of (people of enemy political persuasion) while stating that (people of my political persuasion) can see shades of grey, and in so doing reveal your own black-and-white thinking of the world and how you believe people of various political persuasions think. It's called irony, and you sir are a fuckwit.

The VA IS mismanaged. Why is that? Well, the only thing I can rationally think of is the financial issues, because the VA wasn't struggling nearly so much until the republicans started nixing legislation for funding allocations to them.

And the idea that a lack of funds is somehow contributing to the problem of mismanagement is beyond ludicrous. If anything the mismanagement is contributing to any lack of funds. After all, if they reported that everything was a-ok, why would they then get more funds to play with?

Either way, the blame lies with those who lied, and those who let them get away with it.

Just watched on the news, I guess we can add another VA facility to the list of those others that have already been caught stealing and lying.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is easily the most entertaining non-religion oriented thread here in a long, long time. Keep at it.

Boru

[Faith No More]

Either way, the blame lies with those who lied, and those who let them get away with it.

Correct.

But it's the people that use something like this to make a cheap political point while failing to acknowledge their own party's contribution to the problem and ignoring the fact that they give politicians in their own party a pass for much more heinous actions, like lying to get us into war that took thousands of lives and cost trillions of dollar, that are exacerbating the problem. Because to these people, it's not about fixing what's broken. It's about saying, "Na-na-na-boo-boo," like a little fucking child, so they can cry "hypocrisy!" when no one takes their taunts seriously.

[A Theist]

Either way, the blame lies with those who lied, and those who let them get away with it.

Correct.

But it's the people that use something like this to make a cheap political point while failing to acknowledge their own party's contribution to the problem and ignoring the fact that they give politicians in their own party a pass for much more heinous actions, like lying to get us into war that took thousands of lives and cost trillions of dollar, that are exacerbating the problem. Because to these people, it's not about fixing what's broken. It's about saying, "Na-na-na-boo-boo," like a little fucking child, so they can cry "hypocrisy!" when no one takes their taunts seriously.

Oh yeah. Here we go. Blah, blah, blah....More deflection. Blame the Republicans....sticking with the leftwing strategy when they're hit with a potentially harmful scandal...

1). Deny / Ignore there's a problem.
2). Dismiss and make light of any scandal that could be potentially harmful to the democrats for upcoming elections.
3). Make use of the Whataboutism deflection.
4). Blame the Republicans.
5). Accuse the Republicans of creating a Conspiracy just to discredit Barack and the democrats.
6). Deflect to other issues that have nothing to do with the scandal at hand.

[Faith No More]

No one's ignoring the problem.

Just pointing out that your intentions are petty.