Quickies: Political Hauteur Dept.

     Is there any Gentle Reader who believes that the country is not sharply divided politically? Perhaps this will change his mind:

     A federal employee union president is wracked with regret because veterans likely died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility but didn’t tell congressional leaders because they were Republicans.

     “If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved,” Germaine Clarno told a radio interviewer Monday, referring to the Republican leader of a VA subcommittee. Clarno, a lifelong Democrat and social worker at the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Hines, Ill., has been president of the union representing doctors at the hospital since before the deadly wait-time scandal unfolded.

     Dozens of veterans have died in recent years while waiting for appointments with doctors at multiple VA hospitals and care centers around the nation. But VA staffers systematically manipulated records to make it seem like they didn’t have long waits. The problems became so severe by 2013, that as many as 40 patients died at just the Phoenix facility.

     Nor was the disease of partisanry uber alles confined to a single VA facility:

     A similar situation unfolded in Wisconsin, the site of VA’s Tomah hospital — known as “Candy Land” because its doctors doped up veterans with dangerous combinations of sedatives rather than treating their underlying conditions.

     The Tomah VA employees union didn’t take complaints to Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican, even though he is not only from Wisconsin, but is chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee with jurisdiction over management issues in government agencies.

     And for a grace note that will set the seal on this disgusting display:

     But there is no remorse in Wisconsin. The union is now running ads against Johnson, faulting him for not acting on information he was never given. The public employees union is campaigning for Russ Feingold, a Democrat who preceded Johnson in office and is now running to retake the seat.

     I’m not certain that the behavior would have been different had the VA staffers been partisan Republicans and the officials who could “do something” Democrats. I’d like to believe it, but I’m not going to flatter the GOP beyond the proper extent of my knowledge. What I do know is this: Anyone who deems the preservation of innocent lives less motivating than his distaste about speaking to a political adversary is morally unacceptable, utterly beneath contempt – and I simply don’t care about such persons’ “regrets.”

     Yet they consider us either stupid or evil. Remember that.