House of Eratosthenes

As the fallout from the Veterans Administration cooking of the books and the related deaths of over three dozen veterans continues, President Obama took to the podium on Wednesday to explain that problems at the VA are nothing new. On Wednesday, President Obama took to the podium to first express his tremendous anger – VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was “mad as hell” but President Obama was “madder than hell,” thus winning the rage sweepstakes – and then explained that the VA’s issues go back years:

[A]ll of us, whether here in Washington or all across the country, have to stay focused on the larger mission, which is upholding our sacred trust to all of our veterans, bringing the VA system into the 21st century, which is not an easy task…. caring for our veterans is not an issue that popped up in recent weeks. Some of the problems with respect to how veterans are able to access the benefits that they’ve earned, that’s not a new issue.

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And herein lies the problem for the left: the failures at the VA, including its bureaucratic incompetence, its waiting lists, and its deaths, all debunk the notion that a government-run healthcare system will work. It’s a fresh slap in the face to all those commentators who, in pushing Obamacare, endorsed the VA as a model.

And then — he starts rattling off examples. With the relevant quotes. Ouch. Every single one of them self-assured, self-centered, smug, smarmy…seldom correct but never in doubt. Just like a liberal commentator unloading on a conservative blog, or something. Not that I have too much familiarity with that.

Just a sample:

Every time I read about a Teabagger ranting about how socialized medicine will destroy this country I think of the VA system. There it is, a huge and vastly important universal healthcare system — government run, single payer and therefore socialist — right here in the brave and privatized United States: The Veterans Affairs hospitals.

He’s got a list of excerpts and they all read like that one.

If we turn the clock back and repeat the whole exercise a thousand times, it’s gonna go that way a thousand times. No matter who the Secretary of VA is, the leviathan bureaucracy is going to act like a leviathan bureaucracy, acting toward its own preservation instead of toward servicing those it’s supposed to be servicing. And liberals are going to act like liberals: Throw billions of dollars of someone else’s money at the problem, “smug out” anybody who mutters a peep of protest against socialized medicine, hold up the “huge and vastly important universal healthcare system” as a model, then get embarrassed at the eventual results. Then talk up a storm about how angry they are, how they just found out about this the same time we did, but conversely, don’t blame them because they inherited the mess.

About that. A bit of Hello Kitty of Blogging wisdom that drew an unexpected number of likes:

Note to President Obama: “I just found out about this” is NOT good. You should stop using that one. “I inherited this mess” is arguably even worse. Using both of those, in Your sixth year on the job, is really, really, really bad.

Note to self: if ever leaving a job where Barack Obama will be taking over, don’t leave any messes. Tie up all loose ends. Because if Obama finds He’s inherited a mess, He’ll bring it up *all* the time. Whenever it becomes clear He can’t do the job, which will be often.

But only after He finds out about the mess. Which can take six years.

To be fair, a dysfunctional VA is not a partisan thing. But — for the time being — the elevation of mediocre bureaucrats above the people they’re supposed to serve, the circling around them and protecting them when they screw up, and the myopia against the ineffectiveness of big government, certainly are. The democrats have made such a fine art form out of manipulating public opinion that I’m afraid if they were ever interested in actually fixing something, they’d find that particular skill set to have been atrophied and displaced a long time ago.

But I suppose there’s no way to test that.

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The VA as a ModelFriday, May 23rd, 2014

The VA as a Model
Friday, May 23rd, 2014