Eric Shinseki has resigned. Until today, it sure looked as if Fox News wanted this to happen -- on various Fox platforms, one commentator after another after another has said that Shinseki needed to go.
So what's the lede of Fox News's story on the resignation?
President Obama announced Friday that embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki would take the fall for the rapidly growing scandal over veterans' health care, accepting his resignation under pressure from members of both parties.(Emphasis added.)
Oh, so now his departure is a phony gesture. Right. Got it.
The panel on the Fox show Outnummbered added that Shinseki wasn't fired, so, y'know, it doesn't really count:
Harris Faulkner asked Powers why - with veterans dying due to a lack of care from VA facilities - the president did not fire Shinseki and instead chose to wait for him to offer his resignation.So, really, Shinseki failed when he didn't disband the VA medical system and privatize veterans' health care in his first week in office.
"It sends a completely different message when you fire somebody," said Faulkner.
[Kirsten] Powers said she's not sure why the president doesn't fire people...
[Tucker] Carlson made the point that even if the president himself resigned, it wouldn't fix the VA, which has had problems for decades.
"The problem is the government's not that good at delivering medical care actually. Or anything else that requires precision and nuance and human touch. Big bureaucracies just aren't good at that," said Carlson.
Well, this is S.O.P. for the right (hat tip: SheriffFruitfly):
This is how absolutely political the debate over Shinseki is. See the timeline of this GOP-aligned vets group: pic.twitter.com/Bt8y9NJx1h
— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) May 18, 2014
I'm cross-posting my comment from WaMo here:
ReplyDeleteWell, it’s NOT like you couldn’t see THIS coming!
The General who told Cheney, Rummy, and the Dummy, that they'd need a hell of a lot more troops to secure Iraq after a quick victory - and gets, basically, fired - a decade later when he's the head of the VA, takes the fall for not being able to handle all of the MILLIONS of veterans all of those years later, that those stupid and needless wars and occupations created.
It was inevitable!!!
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh…
This is NOT to say that a better job couldn't and shouldn't have been done!
It could and should have!!!
But that would have taken Congress being willing to spend money.
And Conservatives LOOOOOOOOOOVES to create soldiers.
And they'll spend whatever it takes to engage in wars and occupations.
They just don't want to pay for the soldiers dying, or for breaking them.
Talk about "Collateral Damage" - our fine men and women, who served this nation with pride and honor, and sacrificed themselves to one degree or another to keep us safe. Even if they kept us safe from fictional WMD's, and other non-existant things.
The men and women are soldiers - not "Statesman."
Sadly, too many of them have paid the cost for preening and posturing politicians who could never be confused for REAL "Statesmen."
Carlson concludes the only thing the government should do is blow stuff up. Yeeehaaaw!
ReplyDelete"Or anything else that requires precision and nuance and human touch. Big bureaucracies just aren't good at that"
ReplyDeleteCarlson may not understand what a bureaucracy is. Most large organisations are bureaucracies, regardless of whether they are publicly or privately owned. Despite their many notorious deficiencies, they remain the most effective way to deliver most goods and services. Any modern health care system is inevitably going to be a bureaucracy, unless Carlson wants health care to revert to the early 20th century ideal of the family GP, before all these pesky machines and medical specialisations came along.
On the matter of resignations - consumers of right wing noise don't remember what was said yesterday, much less last year. So Fox and the rest can spew whatever crap they want without having to worry about consistency.
ReplyDelete