Rusah Limbaugh makes a salient point about the decision to allow racehorse Californai Chrome - who's going for the triple crown of horseracing next week at the Belmont Stakes - to wear nasal strips to help him breathe better. The decision was handed down by the New York racing board in 2 days.

How does that compare with life and death decisions made about our vets at VA hospitals?

So California Chrome, the horse that's gonna be running the Triple Crown.  You're saying, "What? A horse? With everything going on out there?" Yeah, 'cause it's important, folks.  You see, California Chrome was possibly violating the rules of horse racing by wearing Breathe Right nasal strips, a whole bunch of 'em, on the snout, or the snoot, the nose.  And this, of course, allowed the horse to breathe more easily. 

Now American athletes in all sports use the Breathe Right nasal strips.  I don't know if Breathe Right is the brand name, but it's the same principle.  And they asked last week after the horse won the Preakness, the Belmont Stakes comes up, that's Triple Crown, and the owners of the horse said they want to continue using the strips.  And the gods of horse racing say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute, we've gotta check into this."  They got an answer back in two days.

Now, imagine if you're in a VA hospital, in Arizona, and you've been promised to be on a special waiting list where you are going to get advanced treatment, preferential treatment 'cause you're on a special waiting list. And then you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and all the while you see that a horse has his request answered in two days, or the owners of the horse get the request answered in two days. But you are on the list and you die before treatment.  That happened.  I have it right here.  It's in the Financial Times:  "Veterans Scandal Risks Engulfing Obama."

[...]

"The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is facing mounting evidence that some of the hospitals it runs have been keeping two sets of books to make it look as if they were reducing waiting times to see a doctor.  More damning, the department is investigating the claims of a whistleblower doctor in Arizona that dozens of patients at one hospital died while they were languishing on a hidden waiting list without ever being given an appointment.  Richard Griffin, the department’s acting inspector general, admitted on Thursday that its review could lead to criminal charges. In the first political casualty of the scandal, Robert Petzel, the department’s undersecretary for heath, resigned on Friday."

Shinseki forced him out.  Eric Shinseki, about whom we have spoken at great length previously.  "If the evidence of mismanagement continues to accumulate, the Obama administration will find itself not in another partisan knife-fight, but under fire from both parties in a Congress where the uniformed military is venerated." Right.  Both parties, where uniform military is venerated.  Right, right, right, right.

Limbaugh makes the point that this scandal is different because it's engendered bi-partisan anger. And we've only just begun to lift the veil on this thing. Shredded documents, falsified reports, and whistleblowers now coming forward to tell their stories.

A criminal investigation is underway, although don't expect any senior administrators to go to jail. Like the IRS scandal, it will all be the fault of some mid-level functionaries who sought shortcuts to the scheduling problem.

If there was any evidence implicating higher ups, it's already been destroyed.