We have yet another brewing scandal within this White House. Evidence has surfaced that people in the Department of Veterans affairs have falsified data to cover up delays in veterans getting the care they required. It’s possible that at least 40 veterans have died as a result of these delays.
But have no fear, ladies and gentlemen. We’re in good hands because the President of the United States of America is angry about it! From the NY Times:
President Obama is “madder than hell” about reports that some medical facilities run by the Department of Veterans Affairs have falsified data to hide substantial delays for veterans to see doctors, and he has demanded that the department’s leaders “fix these things,” the White House chief of staff said in an interview aired Sunday.
“The president is madder than hell, and I’ve got the scars to prove it, given the briefings that I’ve given the president” on the subject, the chief of staff, Denis R. McDonough, said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”
Isn’t that nice?
Of course, this is a familiar refrain from this President. If this kind of thing sounds familiar it’s because we’ve heard it a number of times.
Regarding the IRS targeting of conservative groups:
Under pressure to show who’s boss, President Obama called a press conference late Wednesday to say he was “angry” that the IRS singled out conservative groups for extra vetting and to announce that the agency’s acting commissioner had been forced out.
“It’s inexcusable, and Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it,” he said. “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency, but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives.”
Remember the Secret Service prostitution scandal? Well:
President Barack Obama said Sunday he will be “angry” if there’s truth to reports that Secret Service personnel patronized prostitutes ahead of his visit to an international summit meeting here.
There was also the failed ACA rollout:
Mad that his signature legislative achievement is stuck at the gate, frustrated that he’s running out of time to fix it and angry that he’s got a second-term agenda now going nowhere. He’s so furious, in fact, that he stepped out of character to vent to an assembled group of top aides, saying he would have delayed the website if he had known it was a mess.
He was angry after his administration’s Benghazi lies started to come under scrutiny:
Cabinet Speculationfest and Benghazigate collided this afternoon at a rare White House press conference, as President Obama flashed what was either genuine anger or a convincing imitation of it in response to a question about U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice. Earlier in the day, Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte vowed to oppose Rice’s potential-future-maybe nomination as Secretary of State because, in a slew of Sunday TV interviews she gave a few days after the Benghazi attack, she blamed spontaneous protests as opposed to planned terrorism.
Obama went further:
Asked about the threats of McCain et al., Obama grew increasingly heated. “When they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target,” Obama said at one point, “then they’ve got a problem with me.” Gauntlet: thrown.
That’s a lot of anger.
It’s perfectly fine if the President wants to let everybody know he’s “angry” about these problems.
That’s great.
But what good is this anger if he doesn’t do anything about it?
The IRS targeting of conservative groups is a perfect example. While President Obama expressed his anger about what happened, it wasn’t long before he was mocking it as “faux outrage.” Nobody was ever disciplined. Nobody was ever fired. Lois Lerner, who was at the center of this mess resigned and she’s going to have her full pension which could net her over $100,000 a year. We know now the targeting of conservative groups did not happen with a handful of low level employees in some Cincinnati office, but originated in DC headquarters. Where is that anger now, Mr. President?
The President is supposedly “madder than hell” at the VA scandal. Yet the only action taken so far by this administration is to accept the resignation of VA official, Dr. Robert Petzel. Petzel is nothing but a sacrificial lamb. He had already announced he was going to retire this year. Not even veterans groups were buying the shit sandwich the administration was attempting to feed them.
His “Come at me, bro!” histrionics as it relates to Benghazi was a joke as well. If that were the case, his administration wouldn’t be stonewalling, whining, offering up documents where a good deal of info is redacted and basically trying to undermine legitimate Congressional oversight and inquiry into the situation.
So the President can keep being angry all he wants.
Meanwhile, veterans are not getting the care they deserve. He doesn’t seem to give a crap that people are having their free speech rights trampled on by the IRS and he doesn’t care about Americans getting the full truth about what happened in Benghazi.
That’s Obama’s America.