Right Where We Left Off
These past few days I cannot get the politically ridiculous comments of Sarah Palin out of my mind regarding it being a President’s fault that her son does not know right from wrong in domestic behavior no matter what the cause. I know I shouldn’t let her kind of cheap rhetoric get to me, but there are some things here that I just can’t leave unsaid or at very least brought to the fore front. This is right where we left off 6 years ago with her nutty rhetoric. I often wonder why they keep invoking Obama in the first place as none of them are running against him?
Recent history in short, in case you have been on a beach on a remote island somewhere… Palin’s eldest son “Track” smacked his girl friend around on the same night that Sarah went before Trump supporters to endorse his candidacy. At the rally she threw some red meat to see what she had for sharks in the audience by blaming Obama for Track hitting his girlfriend due to poor Veteran care.
Sarah Palin’s son Track Palin enlisted in the service in 2007 two years before Obama took office and the subsequent responsibility of a very messed up Veterans Administration that Bush knew had an incredible backlog and some serious corruption problems during his tenure as President. To Bush’s credit he eventually acknowledged there were some problems and likely they had been on a downward spiral for a long while, but he failed to fix them. The incredible shortages in funding came because, poisoned with “Agent Orange” Vietnam veterans went down like flies over time, with every affliction from Parkinson’s to skin cancers and liver damage to brain tumors. The same chemical you use on your weeds by the way. There was simply too many veterans to treat effectively with the funding they had, so the newer veterans began to feel the pinch of years of monetary neglect.
As with anything in DC who owes who, who knows who and who squeaks the loudest gets the prize so problems in every facet of government get buried because there is more money to be made in layering over a problem than solving one. Obama did roll some heads over the whole VA debacle after it came to light that at least some of the problems were due to internal corruption, but it did not start in this administration and in fact there is no one administration that can be held totally accountable for the long term failings other than the ones who oversaw the application of Agent Orange in the jungles of Vietnam. When Obama did ask to revamp and steer more money to the VA after much squabbling, congress did indeed let funds go for that, but a good share of the GOP voted against the increase, in particular the “rogue” players in the party.
As for Track Palin who has had a few more brushes with the law than most kids, he could very well be suffering from PTSD and even if he is not, there are still, of no fault of their own, combative behavior issues with many vets coming home from the Middle East. However, a quick check of the Internet tells me there are three Veteran facilities in Anchorage alone where he could be seeking treatment. His family is now more than wealthy enough to pay private doctors if they are concerned for his welfare and deem VA services there are inadequate. I would think he would be worth spending a bit of that reality money on a real reality in their family.
Alaska is no stranger to Veterans, and Palin of all people should be and should have been acutely aware if there are/were shortcomings there, as she served as governor before she quit mid-term in the face of corruption charges leveled at her.
Our veterans are not part of some reality game, and to use their injuries as finger pointing tools is really a slap to many who are trying to put their lives back together. It is a slap to any President who has to write or sign letters of condolences to a dead soldier’s family, or meet an incoming transport plane carrying the bodies of soldiers as this President has done several times. It is also a slap to Track who may well be in need of some serious help. I am glad Track was not one of the bodies coming home and Sarah Palin is lucky to have him at home and ought to pay him some attention if he is in distress instead of using him to gain attention to herself. Her rhetoric at the Trump rally was nothing more than a cover up of Track’s short comings regardless of the cause. He deserves better so he doesn’t end up yet another casualty of these ridiculous conflicts of war.
