www.nationalview.org and Note From a Madman brought to you by
for your Information Technology needs
owned and operated by Noah "The Madman" Greenberg
This is What Democracy Looks Like
Today's Note From a Madman
Thursday, December 21, 2006
A
Not-So-"Goode" Quote in the Lead
The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that
district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode
position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office
and demanding the use of the Koran."
-Rep. Virgil Goode (REPUBLICAN-VA) in a letter to his constituents
I wonder if Rep. Goode ever played pro ball of any kind. After all, Rep. Goode
speaks of Rep. Goode in the third person, as if commenting on his own life and
thoughts somehow makes him more legitimate.
It appears that Goode believes Muslims and people from Minnesota shouldn't vote.
His comments were about the first Muslim representative ever elected to the US
congress, Democrat Keith Ellison. Ellison had the temerity to obtain more votes
than his REPUBLICAN counterpart and that makes Virgil Goode mad. My sense is
that if you asked Virgil Goode just how mad it made Virgil Good Virgil Good's
answer would be something to the effect of "Virgil Goode is mad".
If and when Rep. Ellison gets a chance to speak with Virgil Goode, I hope he
addresses Virgil Goode as "Vigil Goode". It might go something like this:
REP. ELLISON (approaching Rep. Virgil Goode in the halls of Congress): How is
Rep. Virgil Goode today?
REP. VIRGIL GOODE: Virgil Goode is good.
REP. ELLISON: Well it's good to know that Virgil Goode is good. Good-bye.
REP. VIRGIL GOODE: Virgil Goode says good-bye as well.
-Noah Greenberg wrote this short piece for Noah Greenberg to publish in Noah
Greenberg's newsletter Note From a Madman
On the Ground in Iraq
"Sir I think we need to just keep doing what we're doing. I really think we need
more troops here. With more presence on the ground, more troops might hold them
off long enough to where we can get the Iraqi Army trained up."
-Spc. Jason T. Green of the 101st Military Intelligence Brigade Combat Team, 1st
Infantry Division, to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at a breakfast with the
troops
Nothing like a new Defense Secretary with a new photo-op to keep the ol' status
quo "Stay the course." Just how many soldiers did the Bush administration have
to interview before they found one who wanted to stay anyway?
This next question is directed to anyone in the Bush administration who may want
to take a shot at answering: When General Eric Shinseki, Anthony Zinni, Tommy
Franks (before he said "small", he said "big") and then-Secretary of State Colin
Powell said things like "overwhelming force", why didn't you listen then?
"We need to make damned sure that the neighbors understand that we're going to
be here for a long time — here being the Persian Gulf,"
-Gates.
As "The Who" might say. "Meet the new Secretary of Defense, same as the old
Secretary of Defense."
"More troops would help us integrate the Iraq Army into patrols more,"
-Pfc. Cassandra Wallace of the 10th Mountain Division
Maybe we could get someone with a star or two on their hats to recommend
something. Whad'ya think?
At the same time that Gates was chowin' down with is new "peeps", Commanders on
the ground weren't so sure that providing more American troops, or targets, was
the answer. They want the Iraqis to police themselves and feel that more troops
will only act as an additional set of training wheels on this badly damaged
bicycle. Even the troops who want more of their brothers in arms to show up
noted that many of the Iraqi police never even show up for work.
General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the middle east is retiring and
general John Casey, the top commander in Iraq may be following on Abizaid's
heels. "What," you may ask, "do these two men have in common?" They both don't
want any more troops in Iraq. That's advice the White house, and probably Gates,
don't want to hear. And we all know what happens to Generals who don't tow the
Bush line They get to retire, or get demoted or both.
No wonder Gates ate with the SPC's and PFC's.
"Secretary Gates is going to be an important voice in the Iraq strategy review
that's under way,"
-President Bush
Someone check for Dick Cheney's hand up Gates' ass and see if his (Cheney's)
lips are moving
"We discussed the possibility of a surge and the potential for what it might
accomplish,"
-Gates
A huge surge will mean nothing if they are American troops ONLY. There needs to
be an international force inn Iraq and it needs to be overwhelming. A few extra
American boots on the ground won't do a thing. The Iraqi army will only respond
once that have to respond. It's time to take the training wheels off and allow
Iraq to peddle freely, fall, then get back up and start peddling again.
-Noah Greenberg
The "W" Legacy, Continued
Bureaucracy Solves Everything
NYS Senator Kenneth LeValle (REPUBLICAN-NY) recently called for hearings into
how the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the organization that devised and
administers the SAT grades the results. The hearings are the result of mistakes
ETS has allegedly made in grading the fall SAT. Senator LeValle has uncovered a
major flaw in the process of the high stakes educational testing: Even a valid
test is subject to the competence of the scoring.
In trying to devise a fix for this problem Sen. LeValle has spoken a great deal
about the use of alternative testing in the form of the American College Testing
Company's ACT test. He has recognized that alternative testing is needed in many
instances in our high stakes educational testing system.
SAT and ACT provide valid and reputable tests for the scholastic aptitude of
college bound high school seniors, but this is not the result that the Bush
Administration's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing program is seeking. NCLB is
seeking to test whether a child or adolescent is competent. It is not being
touted as a measure of literacy or of the attainment of a specific body of
social studies, math or scientific knowledge. Bush and the GOP have been using
the NCLB testing to evaluate the effectiveness of schools. This has had the
perverse result of depriving improving schools of resources.
For example, if a seventh grade teacher receives a class that has a large number
of pupils with third grade attainment and brings that class up to sixth grade
level before turning them over the eighth grade she is deemed a failure. Even
though she has brought the attainment levels of those children up three years
she still has not turned them over to the next grade at their level and so is
deemed a failure.
In NCLB failure has the consequence of reduced resources. SO FOR BRINGING
CHILDREN'S ATTAINMENT LEVELS UP THREE YEARS IN ONE YEAR SOME TEACHERS AND
SCHOOLS ARE LOSING RESOURCES. This problem is so endemic that all fifty states
and the District of Columbia will be deemed deficient in the five year
evaluation of NCLB.
An even more pernicious result of NCLB is the paper chase of certification that
has resulted from the well qualified teacher requirements that Washington has
imposed upon the states. Many teachers with years, if not decades of solid
success in the classrooms- where it counts- of elementary and middle schools
have lost their positions because they have not been successful in the
classrooms behind the ivied walls of graduate school level classes. Failure to
earn a master's degree results in decertification of teachers regardless of
their track record in teaching children.
The failure of NCLB has been the result of a poorly conceived system that has
rigidly maintained one form of testing. The validity of this exclusive form of
testing has not been established. In fact, the research in the field shows that
high stakes paper tests are not measuring the outcomes desired.
Research conclusively shows that exclusive reliance on high stakes paper testing
is injurious to the educational process in the critical elementary and middle
school years. Of course, every parent knows that from experience.
Teaching careers have been disrupted, not because of established deficiencies in
instruction or classroom management, but because teachers lacked specific,
expensively obtained credentials.
Instead of addressing educational reform in a holistic and fundamental way, Bush
used NCLB to add more bureaucracy to a system already staggering under a load of
excess administrators.
Bush used NCLB to strengthen and enrich the established academic testing mavens
rather than devising good teaching and learning assessment appropriate to
elementary and middle school pupils. He has used NCLB to extend federal control
and patronage into new areas.
How ironic that the GOP, the conservative, small government party has become
under GW Bush- described in '04 convention by NYS Gov. Pataki, as the
indispensable man- the party of bureaucratic intervention into everything.
Our generation's challenge is not to go forth and find foreigners to fight. Our
generation's challenge is to protect American liberty from a greedy and
power-lusting bunch of politicos trampling on our historic values. The
Bush-Cheney Administration and the GOP Congressional leadership are the nerve
center of these enemies of American freedom.
If American liberty survives, the Bush Administration may well be remembered as
its most perilous and darkest time.
I hope that we are remembered as another generation that handed on the heritage
of freedom and not as the one, who through panic and unreasoning fear, yielded
our freedom to the insidious erosion of implacable bureaucratic rigidity.
-Robert Chapman
Bush Goes "Holiday" Shopping
Chuckle Nuts Bush held the last news conference of the year. When asked about
the economy, the idiot said he encourages Americans to do more Holiday shopping.
Indeed, he didn't say Christmas shopping ... contact the Luffa Boy O'Reilly at
once. But seriously, are Americans only good for consuming?
Meanwhile, the butcher of Crawford is prepared to send as many as 40,000
additional troops into the Iraqi meat grinder and all this cold hearted SOB can
say is that he encourages Americans to do more shopping. When will this
nightmare end!
-Robert Scardapane
Liberal Hate-Mongers, Too
How about Al Franken? Or Michael Moore. Michael's got some good mouth on him and
Franken wrote a book called Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot or something like
that.
Of course Franken used a couple of politically incorrect terms -- mainly "fat"
and "idiot." Weight challenges and intellectual challenges are not why we hate
Limbaugh. I would say that he is "compassionate-challenged."
-Billie M. Spaight
Forwards and Comments
from Robert Scardapane
Better Red Than Union—Communists Infiltrate Wal-Mart!
by Mike Hall, Dec 20, 2006
It’s just such a delicious thought. If only ol’ Sam Walton—the patriarch of the
Wal-Mart empire—was still alive.
Picture this as some flunky Wal-Mart VP enters Walton’s office:
“Sir, do you want the good news or bad news first?”
“Hit me with the bad news!”
“We’ve been forced to recognize unions in some of our stores.”
“Ohmygawd! That’s awful. Tell me the good news.”
“We’ve given the Communist Party permission to set up chapters in some of those
stores.”
To quote humor columnist Dave Barry, “I’m not making this up.”
The Associated Press reports there are six Communist Party chapters at Wal-Mart
operations in China, including the latest established at the company’s Chinese
headquarters in Shenzhen. In addition, the company with 68 stores in China (and
many more on the drawing board) in August agreed to allow its 36,000 employees
in that nation to join a union.
Sure, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions is blessed by the state and
Communist Party and is considered a paper tiger when it comes to protecting
workplace rights and workers, but it’s a union nonetheless.
The matter-of-fact explanation of Wal-Mart’s acceptance of the Communist Party
chapters is priceless when—compared to the vicious tactics and end-of-the-world
rhetoric used against its U.S. workers seeking to win a voice at work with a
union. Wal-Mart spokesman Jonathan Dong tells the AP:
Quite a few of our associates [workers] are party members already, so they have
a right to establish branch organizations.
Translation: Communist Party membership OK. Membership in unions with real
rights and freedom—forbidden!
****
Word has it that the American corporations have gone completely berserk since
the Chinese government announced their intentions to allow factories to
unionize. In fact, they are encouraging it! There have been many instances of
riots at these plants and the Chinese government is getting nervous. Could this
explain why the American corporations were desperate for a free trade agreement
with Vietnam (as was the CEO President Dumbya)? Apparently, unions are outlawed
in Vietnam. -RJS
Wal-Mart & Child Labor
Wal-Mart has repeatedly violated U.S. child labor laws and profited from
overseas child labor abuses.
A recent investigation revealed children, some only 11 years old, were making
Wal-Mart clothes in a Bangladesh factory. The children report being routinely
slapped and beaten, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, often seven days a
week, for wages as low as 6 and a half cents an hour.
In the United States, Wal-Mart's own internal audit found 1,371 instances in
which minors worked too late at night, during school hours, or too many hours in
a day. It also found 60,767 instances of workers missing breaks and 15,705
instances where employees were forced to work and miss meal times.
Despite all of this, Wal-Mart refuses to adopt a zero tolerance policy on child
labor! Our children deserve better from Wal-Mart this holiday season.
http://wakeupwalmart.com/feature/holidays/childlabor.html
***
Wal-Wart sucks! I simply refuse to shop at their stores. -RJS
Bush, Asleep in his Bunker
by David Corn
David Corn writes The Loyal Opposition twice a month for TomPaine.com. Corn is
also the Washington editor of The Nation and the co-author, along with Michael
Isikoff, of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the
Iraq War. Read his blog at http://www.davidcorn.com.
I'm sleeping a lot better than people would assume.
-George W. Bush
Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense this nation has ever had.
-Dick Cheney
This is scary. The president of the United States of America has created a
hellish disaster that has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Iraqi civilians and thousands of American soldiers, and he's resting well. The
vice president believes that the man responsible for three of the greatest
military blunders in U.S. history (attacking Iraq without devising a strategy
for securing the country after the invasion; dissolving the Iraqi army, creating
armed and trained recruits for the incipient insurgency; and mounting an
extensive de-Baathification campaign that destroyed the governing infrastructure
of the nation) did his job well.
Such comments suggest that the two people in charge of this country are not
living in denial but detachment. They must realize that Iraq is a mess perhaps
beyond remedy. But that doesn't seem to affect them. How can that be?
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/20/bush_asleep_in_the_bunker.php
****
This country is being governed by a pair of lunatics. The Bush/Cheney
combination is without a doubt the worst in history. -RJS
Eye of Newt speaks:
"Newt bit his tongue for months and now feels he has to tell his base the truth:
the White House does not have the will or the power to promote any agenda," (and
he) blames White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove for Mr. Bush's mistakes,
including the loss of Congress in 2006. They said Mr. Gingrich's criticism of
the top Bush political adviser has been considered by the president and this
could lead to Mr. Rove's early departure...
****
I have news for World War IV Newt. Americans are as disgusted with you as they
are with Bush. Okay, indeed Rove should go. If there was any decency in the Bush
administration Rove's security clearance would have already been pulled for
leaking information to the press about the identity of an undercover CIA agent -
namely, Valerie Plame Wilson. Any other government employee in a high security
job would have been toast by now. I don't like Newt as he is a disgusting
charter member of PNAC but in this case he is right - Rove must go! -RJS
In response to Employment and Health Care, Billie M. Spaight writes:
Having universal health care would certainly spur employment. Many middle-sized
employers would also be less hesitant to take on older or disabled employees
because there would not be concerns about healthcare premiums going up. In
addition, workers who get healthcare are, of course, more likely to BE healthy
and thus more productive. And while depression can be both chronic and/or
situational, having universal healthcare in place could ensure that any person
who experienced depression could afford to have it addressed.
Your reasons among many, many others are why Carol and I--and so many
others--are in the movement to pass H.R. 676, the New and Improved Expanded
Medicare for All bill, sponsored by John Conyers, Jr., in the House of
Representatives.
But there is one flaw in the scenarios presented. The flaw is the idea of taking
10% from a person's unemployment check. Those checks are extremely small and
barely cover living expenses. Unemployment insurance should not be subject to
any money removed from it for any reason whatsoever--not for taxes, not for
healthcare--not for anything! In fact, that amount of money should be at least
doubled!
Other than that--I think it is a great idea to "sell" the concept to small
businesses--that THEY can profit from it.
Send your comments to: NationalView@aol.com or comments@nationalview.org
-Noah Greenberg