Once you're gone I'll start a campaign to get me ousted

if those hidden appointments are true, and he fixes it, he did his job .
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if there are lots of problems that he know about, and he does not try to fix them, that would be different.

...but attention spans are short, power is everything (and with that goes posturing).

Thanks so much for posting today's desperately needed dose of sanity!

...or making a decision where he knowingly was cutting people off from untimely care OR if he knew others were doing those things and did nothing about it, then someone might have an argument. But from everything I've seen, Shinseki is a pretty brilliant, honest and good man who was not in a position to be made immediately aware of the problems at some of these VA hospitals. If its not communicated to you, then you don't know about it. Its pretty simple shit. And we are talking about big bureaucracies here, while although necessary, can sometimes lead to people at the top being "the last to know". That probably suggests we should structure the whole thing differently, but it in no way suggests that Shinseki is the enemy here.

...administration. We know they're not sincere -- in fact, we know the Congressional GOP is by and large full of shit. Why on Earth does anyone at DU ever fall for this maneuver?

Thanks, Proud Lib.

Reps constant cry for firings, yet hold onto their cronies and protecting them for all its worth.

I'm not jumping on the bandwagon yet. Clearly this has been a problem for a long time. I used to work at a VA hospital, it was horrible, this was back during the vietnam era. There was so much that was not reported outside the property lines of the facility where I worked. I don't know what's going on over there now however, my non profit, non military hospital is less than 5 miles from the local va hospital and we routinely take vets because they have no beds at the va. I would say that has something to do with any back-ups. I think the glaring problem is Rummy famously saying iraq would last 6 days, 6 weeks, certainly not 6 month and no one planned for 13 years of war and the consequences.

I was pretty amazed.

I'd like to think we could. However, you're asking for reason and rationality to prevail. In other words, ''facts.'' Facts all come with two sides -- sometimes with sharp edges. They both cut in either direction which means you should get to know your facts well before displaying them. Otherwise, it can be dangerous when you let the facts flow freely because there's no telling where they'll end up. You could really shoot yourself in the foot.

- But I'm willing to give it a go. It's the kids you have to worry about:

[center][/center]

K&R

I'm tired of the excuses and Wagon circling for those at the highest level and harsh accountability for us "small people".

Hell, even on our side you can tell who is on the side of the people, they are who gets hung out to dry, the turds get circling wagons.

I just believe that we need to be smarter about it than getting on the TV and putting on a big show about heads rolling rather than taking the time and energy to correctly identify and fix the problem(s)

In the 1990s, the VA made Medicare and private healthcare look terrible. So the Republicans decided they'd better destroy the VA before people realize single-payer works.

Can't just vote it out of existence - would upset too many people. So they started under-funding it. And continued to under-fund it for the intervening decades.

Firing Shinseki means punishing him for what Republicans in Congress have been doing for decades. And letting those Republicans off the hook - after all, it must be Shinseki's fault if he got fired. And that's why Republicans are demanding his scalp immediately. The media would move on and their under-funding gets swept under the rug.

You didn't hear O'Reilly wailing about firing people and incompetence during the Bush years.
And that Regime was RIDDLED w/incompetence and scandals.
Excellent thread OP!
*thumbs up*

Here, I'd like see blame put where it belongs, unabashedly rather than mealy mouthed and half hearted semi pushback. If it is the TeaPubliKlans are culpable then shove it their mugs. If he can't do that then he deserves to get rolled.

It is war so it is time to act like it.

When a Republican screws up, conservatives insist he's management material.

Because of politics. It's a knee-jerk response, as you point out. Evidence of malfeasance is different, of course.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]

I therefore "suspect" that he has not tried to micromanage the VA health care system. It might be different if he were running something more closely related to his chosen career, like the Pentagon.

an organization with a few hundred thousand. But some people don’t seem to care about whether or not he was making things better or worse, or if instability caused by firing leaders who are trying to fix a problem does anything to solve the problem.