RUSH: This is Tommy in Knoxville, Tennessee. It’s great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Thanks for taking my call. I’ll be as quick as I possibly can. I just want to make a comment on all this VA crap that’s going around. You know, the question I have is, “Why now, after all of these years?” You know, this kind of stuff has been going on with the VA since Moby Dick was a minnow, and nothing’s been done about it. You recall several years ago when it came out the conditions that soldiers were subjected to in the VA hospitals?
On both sides of the aisle, you had Republicans and Democrats alike say, “Well, we have never seen such conditions,” yada yada yada. Are you telling me that you, as a congressman or an elected official, have never received — on behalf of the soldier or from a soldier himself — a letter or a phone call requesting assistance because they can’t get anything done through the VA and that you have never visited soldiers from your district that are wounded and in these hospitals?
RUSH: Why don’t you do it?
CALLER: What they need to do is, get ’em all in Congress, get ’em all accounted for, lock the doors, and put ’em under oath, so they don’t have time to say, “Look, you can ask me questions. Here are the questions that you’re allowed to ask me, because I have prepared responses for these.” Because such as the Affordable Care Act, there are about four or five questions they need to put these jokers under oath and ask them.
Number one: When you voted for this, to vote it in, did you vote your conscience? Number two: Did you vote the general consensus of the people that you represent in Washington? Number three: Did you vote because you were under duress? Did you understand what you were voting for when you voted for it? Number five: If you had the opportunity, would you change your vote and retract your vote from voting it?
RUSH: You know what the answer to every one of those questions would be whether you put ’em under oath or not. The Democrat Party is gonna vote to advance its agenda no matter what, whether there’s a lobbyist involved or not. Anything that happens in the news, even crime, is a way to advance their agenda. You’re not going to get them to admit they made a mistake if you put ’em under oath or not.
Now, you ask, “What changed with the VA?” Obviously The Hunger Games has heightened people’s attention to what’s happened there. Obviously it has had a dramatic impact, much more than I ever knew. (interruption) No, I’m just kidding. He’s got a good question. I’m gonna try to answer his question legitimately. Why now? Why all of a sudden now? Because everything he said is true.
For the longest time there were horror stories about the VA for decades. So what is happening now has to be demonstrably even worse than the status quo. Everything has a baseline. Moynihan called it “defining deviancy down.” You try to fix something that’s going wrong and you fail. So you give up. You just declare that it’s normal and move on. Okay, so the VA, what was normal was, it was lousy.
Then it got so bad that it was even worse than what it was accepted to be, and how did that happen? Do you remember, ladies and gentlemen, the early days of Obama trying to sell Obamacare, he went out and blasphemed doctors, particularly surgeons? He accused private sector doctors/surgeons of putting their pocketbooks before the health of their patients. They did unnecessary amputations because they could pocket 30 grand.
Remember all that?
He went through a litany of things. People that did amputations or took out an appendix unnecessarily or what have you. He really ripped into private-sector doctors as just evil profiteers, performing unnecessary medical procedures because they could get a lot more money for those. Well, isn’t that exactly what the bureaucrats at the VA did here that’s got everybody up in arms? I mean, they didn’t amputate limbs or take out tonsils to line their pockets.
So they came up with super-secret waiting lists that they put people on, and those people never got seen. They didn’t get in to see a doctor. This greedy-heartless doctor narrative was used very effectively by Obama to get Obamacare passed. He ginned up a bunch of hatred and suspicion of private sector doctors. It was deliberate. It was vicious. It was just as bad as, “If you like your policy or if you like your doctor, you can keep them.”
That was a huge lie.
So the greedy, heartless bureaucrat narrative is what happened here at the VA.
I find it fascinating that exactly what he accused private sector doctors of doing was happening in his own bureaucracy. I think when news of this hit, it was so bad, so below what had been normal… You know, the VA might have been bad in the past, but they didn’t lie about massive numbers of deaths. They didn’t keep separate sets of books all for the purposes of securing bonuses. I’m not saying this to excuse what had gone on in the past, but the caller had a legitimate question.
Why now? Why all of a sudden now? Because everything he said is true. For the longest time there were horror stories about the VA for decades. So what is happening now has to be demonstrably even worse than the status quo. Everything has a baseline. Moynihan called it defining deviancy down. You try to fix something that’s going wrong and you fail, you give up, you just declare that it’s normal and move on now.
Okay, so the VA, what was normal was, it was lousy. Then it got so bad that it was even worse than what it was accepted to be. And how did that happen? Do you remember, ladies and gentlemen, in the early days of Obama trying to sell Obamacare, he went out and blasphemed doctors, particularly surgeons. He accused private sector doctors, surgeons, of putting their pocketbooks before the health of their patients. They did unnecessary amputations because they could pocket 30 grand. Remember all that?
He went through a litany of things. People that did amputations or took out an appendix unnecessarily. He really ripped into private sector doctors as just evil profiteers, performing unnecessary medical procedures because they can get a lot more money for those. Well, isn’t that exactly what the bureaucrats at the VA did here that’s got everybody up in arms? I mean, they didn’t amputate limbs or take out tonsils to line their pockets, but they let human beings die and monkeyed around with waiting lists in order to earn their bonuses.
It may have been bad forever at the VA, but you didn’t have 40 people on a special waiting list dying. And why did they die, and why were they on a waiting list? It’s because the VA was overwhelmed, and they had to do something to show that the names had been moved through the system so they came up with super-secret waiting lists that they put people on, and those people never got seen. They didn’t get in to see a doctor.
This greedy, heartless doctor narrative was used very effectively by Obama to get Obamacare passed. He ginned up a bunch of hatred and suspicion of private sector doctors. It was deliberate. It was vicious. It was just as bad as if you like your policy, if you like your doctor, you can keep them. That was a huge lie. So the greedy, heartless bureaucrat narrative is what happened here at the VA. And I find it fascinating that exactly what he accused private sector doctors of doing was happening in his own bureaucracy.
And I think when news of this hit, it was so bad, so below what had been normal, you know, the VA might have been bad in the past, but they didn’t lie about massive numbers of deaths, and they didn’t keep separate sets of books all for the purposes of securing bonuses. I’m not saying this to excuse what had gone on in the past, but the caller had a legitimate question. Why now? Why all of a sudden now? You can ask that about pretty much anything going on in the country, why now? These six years have been a horror story for this country, for the economy, foreign policy. I mean, it really is starting to add up now.
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