A MONUMENTAL FRAUD

Everyone knows that Sarah Palin is demented. And lest ye ever forget how pitiful Republicans are and how little vision they have for the country, remember that she and her nonsense were added to save McCain's failing ticket. That's all the GOP has to offer: gibberish an a hairdo. But I must say that Palin's latest outing is particularly absurd. She's slamming Obama for "barrycading" a WWII memorial in DC, which along with national parks and monuments, were closed as a result of Sarah's own party shutting down the government. Republicans shut down the government yet Obama still gets the blame for barricading a closed monument? If she really cared, she'd take her own party to task for closing it. But that makes too much sense. She'd rather rile up her "low information" supporters with a claim that Obama disrespects vets. Politicians pay a lot of lip service to our troops. But they're only using them, as Palin is, to slam a political enemy. They all do it. In the last debt ceiling debate, Obama offered cuts in veterans' benefits to balance the budget. Republicans suggested them too. Don't you remember the soldiers whose morale was down because someone in the Bush administration sent them to Iraq without proper body armor and they sometimes had to buy it themselves? How about the soldiers who return from battle and can't get health care access right away, and they're coming home with difficult to diagnose and treat post traumatic stress disorder? This mental illness makes vets 50% more likely to become homeless and they tend to stay homeless longer. So while we see flags and brass sections and parades on Memorial Day, the sad truth is they we don't take care of veterans after they serve. It's breaking a very basic understanding that if these young men and women risk their lives to fight for the US, they won't have to worry about health care costs. I would imagine that on the whole, veterans would care about the government honoring this contract with them than whether or not a monument is fenced off for 13 days. I can't know what our troops think. But I know what's gone on in my lifetime. Troops fighting in Vietnam had people turn on them when they came home, after the war had lost popularity. Troops in Iraq can't have enjoyed learning while they were in Iraq, that the WMDs we went in to get rid of never existed. Troops in Afghanistan can't have been buoyed by the many different strategies which failed there--for a while if a strategy seemed to be working, we'd change it. The boots on the ground would know of the effects of the poor planning and switched strategies far better than civilians would. And our troops just barely escaped military conflict in Syria which didn't make sense to the majority of the country. If our government is going to use the military as pawns in it's international power games and not to actually protect this country, wouldn't it be better to use these able minds and bodies to repair our crumbling infrastructure? Every politicians campaigns on the desperate need to rebuild America. The troops would be paid yet they'd be doing valuable work that kept them out of harm's and PTSD's way. Or does that make too much sense for our government to actually do what they all say we need to do AND respect our troops at the same time? We could re-build this nation and avoid dangerous nation-building abroad, which most of us claim we're sick of. Crazy enough to work? MORE: HUFFPO