Veterans Administration Mendacity

It just keeps on keepin’ on.

Officials at the Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston and its associated clinics altered records to make it appear that hundreds of appointments canceled by staff were really called off by patients, according to the VA’s Office of Inspector General.  The federal audit determined the changes were made to hide unacceptable wait times as VA hospitals around the country were under fire for neglecting patients.

This was for the 12 months ending June of last year, but it’s still after widespread corruption at VA facilities across the nation had been exposed.  No one in VA management, apparently, cares a whit about the veterans in their supposed care.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Tragedy Equals Excuse to Inflict Gun Controls

That’s the focus and modus operandi of the Democrats.

Congressional Democrats are renewing their push for gun control measures in the wake of the Orlando terror massacre, arguing the best way to prevent suspected terrorists from carrying out acts of violence is to legally limit their access to firearms.

They’re right this far—certainly such limits would be a large help.  The problem is how to do it without disarming American citizens.  And that leads to the real problem: Democrats don’t care about American citizens and our right—our obligation—to defend ourselves and each other.  Democrats just want us disarmed.

Here’s an example of Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) disingenuousness:

If the FBI believes there is a reasonable chance someone is going to use a gun in a terrorist attack, it should be able to make that determination and block the sale.  If it had that belief about the shooter in Orlando, it should have had the authority to act. But it couldn’t, so we will never know what could have been.

Never mind that if the victims in the Orlando bar or passersby on the street outside had been allowed to be armed, the casualty list would have been far smaller.  No, Schumer’s…foolishness…is here: he carefully elided any definition of “reasonable.”  He carefully omitted to define the parameters of “that belief.”  We’re just supposed to trust his Progressive government.  We’re just supposed to trust a DoJ that strenuously objects to its lawyers being disciplined for lying in open court.  We’re supposed to trust an FBI that demands a backdoor into private citizens’ private communications encryption algorithms and that studiously couldn’t find any criminal wrong-doing in the IRS’ targeting groups of Americans in disfavor with the Progressive government.  Sure.

It doesn’t get any more cynical than that.  Elections have consequences.

Democrats, Gun Control, and Cynical Uses of Tragedy

In Ohio on Tuesday, former Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat running for the Senate, called on Republican Senator Rob Portman to reverse his position on the watch list legislation from Ms Feinstein [Democratic Senator from California].

“The constant has been that these crimes are committed with guns—and that our leaders in Washington like Senator Portman are not taking simple, common sense steps to keep weapons out of the hands of those who would do us harm,” Mr Strickland wrote in a Medium post.

This is disingenuous on its face.  The constant is that these crimes were committed in gun-free zones, where both the victims and others present were completely unarmed and had no way to protect themselves—which the killers knew.

Strickland knows this full well, but in the words (without too much deviation from the original) of an earlier Obama advisor, Strickland will never let a tragedy go to waste.

Obama’s High Dudgeon

A carefully manufactured one, too.  The Wall Street Journal has an accurate read on President Barack Obama’s (D) constructed ire.

“For a while now the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this Administration and me for not using the phrase ‘radical Islam,'” Mr Obama said Tuesday, using his preferred acronym for Islamic State.  “That’s the key, they tell us.  We cannot beat ISIL unless we call them ‘radical Islamists.’ What exactly would using this label accomplish?  What exactly would it change?”

Since the President asked, allow us to answer.  …  If the US is under attack, Americans deserve to hear their President say exactly who is attacking us and why.  You cannot effectively wage war, much less gauge an enemy’s strengths, without a clear idea of who you are fighting.

Mr Obama’s refusal to speak of “radical Islam” also betrays his failure to understand the sources of Islamic State’s legitimacy and thus its allure to young Muslim men.  The threat is religious and ideological.

Obama also said this:

Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. … There’s no magic to the phrase of radical Islam.  It’s a political talking point.

And yet, here he is, making it a political talking point.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of what our enemy is and so preventing himself from constructing a means of destroying it while also preventing Defense from constructing such a means and then acting on it.  As well as repeating his lack of understanding of why it’s important to accurately name our enemy.  The idea of accurately identifying our enemy is not to “make it go away.”  It’s to help in accurately understanding our enemy so we can destroy it.

The term “radical Islam” plainly is extremely important to Obama, too, despite his emotional denial of the importance of it; his seven and a half year refusal to use the term to identify the terrorists demonstrates that.  His steadfast refusal to identify these terrorists, to say who they are, also says far more about his failure to do his duty regarding our nation’s safety, and it says far more about his level of immorality in that failure than it says about any of his critics who decry his failure.

Talk about playing politics with terrorism.  Jeez.

Elections have consequences.

Never Let a Tragedy Go to Waste

Or a terrorist attack.

The debate over how to stop attacks like the terror massacre in Orlando erupted on the House floor late Monday as Democratic lawmakers loudly criticized House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and other GOP leaders for taking no action on the nation’s gun laws.

Instead of moving to enhance our nation’s and our citizens’ ability to protect ourselves collectively and individually against terrorist attacks, the Left has chosen to focus on their continued efforts to disarm us all.

More cynically, yet, the Left carefully elides the potential outcomes, the vastly reduced casualty count were at least some of the folks inside the bar armed, or were some of the passersby on the street outside the bar—and present well before the police could arrive—armed.  The one cop who happened to be on the scene could have been critically reinforced immediately, were there an armed populace present.

The disruption underscored the political divide in the wake of the attack, with many Democrats looking to tighten gun laws in response and Republicans looking to crack down on the strain of radical Islam that seemingly motivated the shooter.

Ryan also tried to hold a moment of silence out of respect for the Orlando terrorist victims, and many Democrats chose to walk out of the Chamber rather than honor those victims.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) justified the calculated insult to those victims:

…told reporters Democrats have “had enough” of moments of silence after mass shootings when Congress does not act to tighten gun laws.

This isn’t a misplaced set of priorities by the Left.  It’s their focus.  Terrorism, Muslim or otherwise, is not a concern of theirs, and the Orlando mass shooting wasn’t an act of terrorism.  Disarming us is the Left’s priority.  Armed American citizens is where the Left’s fevered fears lie.

Elections have consequences.