I think the VA scandal proves, most of all, that the president is a steaming heap of shit

Don't like that? Too strong? Fine. Let's walk through it. Careful not to get shit on your shoes, people.

First, in 2007, Barry was just all about making sure veterans got proper care:

"Barack Obama has fought to improve veterans' care, to reduce homelessness among veterans, and ensure fair disability benefits," said Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who served as a United States Air Force intelligence officer. "As President, Barack Obama will continue his leadership for the rights and benefits of veterans. He will stand with veterans -- just as they have stood up for us."
"I'll be a President who ensures that America serves our men and women in uniform as well as they've served us, and that's why I'm proud to have the support of these veterans advising me on the issues facing our troops and veterans," Obama stated. "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."

There was more campaign trail horseshit from Barry back then, but we won't get into it. So, when Barry got elected, having contended during the campaign that veteran were getting shafted, he got told veterans were getting shafted:

The Washington Times is reporting that officials at the Veterans Administration briefed the Obama transition team thatVA hospitals were reporting inaccurate wait times and scheduling failures that was costing veterans timely treatment.
Veterans Affairs officials warned the Obama-Biden transition team in the weeks after the 2008 presidential election that the department shouldn’t trust the wait times that its facilities were reporting.
“This is not only a data integrity issue in which [Veterans Health Administration] reports unreliable performance data; it affects quality of care by delaying — and potentially denying — deserving veterans timely care,” the officials wrote.
The briefing materials, obtained by The Washington Times through the Freedom of Information Act, make clear that the problems existed well before Mr. Obama took office, dating back at least to the Bush administration. But the materials raise questions about what actions the department took since 2009 to remedy the problems.

What did he do? Fuck all, that's what. After all, he didn't know shit until he saw it on CNN, or something:

Transition briefing? Nah. Whatever information he was talking about during his 2008 election campaign? Nah. He knew Jack and shit before he heard that the VA was fucking awful on the news. Not clear why he campaigned in part on fixing the VA if he knew nothing about the problems, but hey. He's the smartest guy in the world, right? Right. But let's face it. This president knows fuck-all about anything. He only finds out about stuff right after we do. Is his staff really that incompetent? (I think they are incompetent, but I don't believe he never knows about this stuff.)

Somebody, at least, is finally noticing that the president apparently is not paying attention to anything. Face it. I knew the VA was fucked up. How come he didn't?

Has there ever been a president in the history of America who knew less than President Obama?
With each new crisis and scandal, Mr. Obama tells Americans that he just didn’t know.
He didn’t know the Veterans Administration was letting America’s veterans languish and die unattended — he learned about it in the newspaper.
He didn’t know the Justice Department was trolling phone records of members of the U.S. media. He didn’t know the ATF was running guns into Mexico; didn’t know the NSA was spying on the German chancellor; didn’t know the Obamacare website was a disaster; didn’t know the IRS was targeting conservative groups.
With every scandal, the president — the CEO of the United States, if you will — said he first learned about it in the papers. If he were head of Apple or IBM, he’d have been fired years ago, because in business, it’s your job to know, and ignorance is, frankly, even worse than failing. Fail = fired.

The media has largely given Barry a pass on this shit. Most of you know nothing about Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, Benghazi, or this latest VA shit, although I will grant that the mainstream media is paying attention to the VA stuff, at least for now.

But mostly, the mainstreams just make excuses for Barry. Finally, somebody in the mainstreams is criticizing that tendency. Ron Fournier, used to be of the Associated Press and is definitely a mainstream puke, blasted Obama administration butt boy Ezra Klein, who was too deep into Obama's pants even for the Washington Post and had to leave, rips Klein for helping turn Obama into the superhero of excuses:

The inconvenient truth is that Klein's kind of thinking lets the president off the hook, unaccountable for promises broken and opportunities lost. Rather than change Washington's culture of polarization, zero-sum game politics, and spin, Obama surrendered to it almost immediately. On health insurance reform, government debt, and loosening immigration laws, Obama shares blame with obstinate House Republicans for fumbling potential compromise. On climate change and gun control, Obama knew (or should have known) his rhetoric was setting up voters for disappointment. Rather than roll back Bush-era terrorism programs that curb civil liberties, Obama deepened them.
The launch of the Affordable Care Act and the worsening of conditions at the Veterans Affairs Department are emblematic of Obama's inattention to the hard work of governing. He is slow to fire poor-serving Cabinet members and quick to dismiss controversies as "phony scandals." To the Obama administration, transparency is a mere talking point. The great irony of his progressive presidency: Democrats privately admit that Obama has done as much to undermine the public's faith in government s his GOP predecessor. The Green Lantern Theory is an excuse for failure.

Barry, of course, has refused to fire anyone at the VA to get things fixed. I don't really care about that. The problem here is not that VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has or has not been fired. Shinseki has been every bit as good a VA secretary as he was an Army chief of staff, which is to say, he sucks fucking balls. He was an incompetent moron then, and he's an incompetent moron now. But Barry doesn't fire people for being incompetent. And he can't afford to fire Shinseki now, because the VA will still suck nuts regardless of who is running it, because this is what government-run health care looks like.  It is God-awful, fucked up, people die who shouldn't. Barry, the father of Obamacare, can't afford to expose the fact that government-run health care will always be awful, because he wants that for everyone. If he fires Shinseki and nothing gets better, what does that say about government-run health care? Barry doesn't want people drawing conclusions from actual evidence.

As Ace reports, the mainstreams are trying to pump up how wonderful VA care is to prove that socialized medicine is the answer. The obvious failures of government-run health care don't matter to them. It is a matter of ideology.  Government must provide health care for all, and so when it does, it doesn't matter how awful it is; that is, ideologically, a good thing. Whether it helps people is irrelevant. That is how liberals/progressives think. What matters is not whether the program helps people, but whether liberals feel like they are helping people with the program. How else do you explain the ludicrous failure of but continued funding of  Head Start? Results don't matter. Feelings do.

Well, fuck a bunch of feelings. Can we please start doing things because they work instead of doing things that make people feel like they're doing something good even if it isn't good? Government does too much of the latter, and then does it inefficiently. And when government fucks it up, Barry is the first in line to be mad as hell and the last in line to do anything. Barry's mad about the VA, too, but don't hold your breath on action:

Obama said Wednesday that he doesn’t want the matter to become “another political football,” and that’s understandable. But his response to the scandal has created an inherent contradiction: He can’t be “madder than hell” about something if he won’t acknowledge that the thing actually occurred. This would be a good time for Obama to knock heads and to get in front of the story. But, frustratingly, he’s playing President Passive, insisting on waiting for the VA’s inspector general to complete yet another investigation, this one looking into the Phoenix deaths.

He won't do anything. He doesn't give a shit. He's always mad as hell at whatever his administration is fucking up, but he can't be bothered to do anything about it. I think, maybe, this time that bites him on the ass. Maybe, finally, the media cares. Or maybe not.