Fixing Blame Is NOT Fixing the Problem

I think the middle of the Memorial Day weekend is as good a time as any to offer an unsolicited observation about the current sad state of affairs as reported in every media imaginable about the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I don't know who's wrong and/or who's right-I'd suggest assigning blame for what has been reported is happening doesn't help any of the men and women in uniform we so often, and too often, blithely send off to places across the globe whose names we cannot pronounce and about whom we spare not a thought unless and until something truly tragic happens to them.

General Eric Shineski is the current political pinata and if anybody can stand the strain, it is he. I met him a long time ago in another lifetime (he doesn't recall me, perhaps a small mercy) and he struck me then, as he does now, as the epitome of a class act. He is a man who knows what is the right thing to do and who seeks to do it, despite obstacles placed in his path about which he would neither carp nor complain as that requires energy he needs to accomplish his mission.

On a holiday we have set aside to remember the highest sacrifice those in the American Armed Forces can make and have made in every conflict since the Revolutionary War, perhaps we can also spare a thought for those who serve(d) and return(ed) broken in body and/or spirit and how much more each of us needs to do to help them heal.

But in the halls of Congress, when we're not repealing "Obamacare" (which we're still not Representative Boehner) or getting to the bottom of Benghazi (again), we are outraged, outraged I tell you with the job Shineski and his crew are doing over at the VA and as soon as the TV cameras get here, I'll wax apoplectic about it.

I found a motion of the United States Senate requiring 60 (of 100) votes for passage on the next to last day of February 2014 of  "(a) bill to improve the provision of medical services and benefits to veterans, and for other purposes" whose official title was the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014.

As we honor our fallen this holiday it might be helpful to remember no one sacrificed her/himself for a Republican or a Democrat- no one died defending Lutheranism, Judaism, Catholicism or animism. No one asked about racial heritage or sexual orientation. They gave their fullest measure for every one of us, even the forty-one star-spangled hypocrites with the exact same initial behind their names.
-bill kenny