Virgil Goode lends gravitas to race baiting

This is an interesting picture and article from consumeraffairs.com. Apparently, this man, Thomas Cromwell, is a regular scam artist who sends letters to seniors trying to get them to send him money. His tack is a classic of the racist, fear-mongering type. He tells them that undocumented Mexicans are trying to steal money from Social Security. Not only does consumeraffairs.com point out that this is not a current problem, but that no one is proposing that undocumented workers should be entitled to Social Security benefits.

However, since Cromwell is a scam artist, he does not care what kind of truth he needs to bend to take money from poor elderly people. Of course, to cloak himself in a blanket of legitimacy he looks for a congressperson with an unblemished record of fear-mongering and anti-immigrant posturing. Even if, as Goode's people claim, he has no official relationship to Goode, it is interesting that Cromwell would seek out our congressperson to lend credibility for his racist scam.

Proverbs 12:26 tells us, "A righteous man is cautious in friendship, but the way of the wicked leads them astray." I think it is interesting the kind of people that try and insinuate themselves with Virgil Goode. I also think it is interesting that Goode does not have the ability to hire a staff competent enough to keep people like this at arm's length, or possibly, competent enough to realize that they are receiving illegal campaign contributions. At the end of the day, Virgil Goode's friends are a good measure of his character.

Goode wants his constituents to live in abject poverty

How does Virg explain his desire for the good people of Southside Virginia who do the work that keeps our economy humming to live on the margins of society? From David Swanson at Democrats.com:

My Congressman, Republican Bush-follower Virgil Goode, recently put out a statement arguing for allowing the minimum wage to continue to decrease because restoring any of its value would attract immigrants to this country. Goode can't seriously imagine that anyone doesn't realize that non-immigrants, too, are affected by the minimum wage. It's just that we've reached the point at which fear of immigrants is expected to persuade us to abuse ourselves, to pick up the chains and voluntarily slip them on. Bush's new proposal for detaining people without charge or probable cause or access to an attorney targets citizens, not just immigrants. We are all in this together, including the Iraqis and the Lebanese and the Palestinians. Only a people that has been trained to fear and abuse others could tolerate what our government is doing to those peoples. Recent immigrants know this better than the rest of us, and we should be recruiting them into the peace movement.

(And, by the way, has anyone nationally noticed that progressive pro-peace Democratic candidate Al Weed is rapidly closing in on Goode in the polls?)

here's a nasty letter

I'll tell you what nice letters do. I wrote a nice letter to Virgil Goode asking him to support the bi-partisan McCain-Feingold Act. I figured that since he was an "independent" at the time, that would be his kind of thing. I still think that bill hurts Democrats as much as or more than Republicans. I also thought it was great that Virg was an Independent. I liked that he could think for himself and do his own thing. Little did I know he didn't give a rat dropping on a Sunday afternoon about being an Independent, thinking for himself, or what I thought about anything. In fact, he wrote me a letter (his staff did) that was very nice, basically asking us to agree to disagree on an issue on which there was bi-partisan agreement. He was also asking for my vote even though I didn't agree with his position on almost anything.

Virgil Goode became an Independent merely so that people wouldn't be able to say that he switched parties faster than George W. Bush makes the decision to bomb Arabs back into the stone age. Of course, if Virg really did care about episotolary nastiness, he'd stop whining about people writing nasty letters and start listening to nice ones that his constituents send to him in good faith.

So, Virgil, take this blog as one giant nasty letter. I don't want you to represent me in Congress anymore because you aren't qualified to do the job. I would like to give someone else a try. It sounds like more and more people agree with me. How about this poll from Zogby International.

A recent survey of Virginia’s 5th Congressional District by Zogby International reveals only 46% of likely voters believe Representative Virgil Goode (R- Rocky Mount) deserves to be re-elected. On a generic congressional ballot, voters favor the Democratic challenger over the Republican incumbent by 48.5% to 37%.

Goode likes money, not Mexicans

Nevermind that immigrants are good for the economy. Virgil Goode thinks that Hispanic immigrants are going to rise up and kill us in our sleep. This is why he hates Spanish. He doesn't like seeing other languages or hearing people speak other languages. Not only is he afraid of other peoples' cultures and ideas, but he is so scared of people that are different from him he would like to amend the CONSTITUTION to officially make their language and culture second-class. This is on Virgil's own website.

H.J.RES.94 Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to establish English as the official language of the United States.

English should be the official language of the United States. In countries where there is a lack of a common unifying language, there is more discord and often efforts to split up the country. Having one common language can be a significant unifying force. We need only to look to the north to Canada. Canada has had three elections over the past couple of decades in an effort to split French speaking Quebec off from the rest of the English speaking Canada. I am fearful that we will have efforts in the country in a few years to split up part of the United States. There are some from Mexico who are already saying that the Mexican War was wrong and that the United States should be split in the Southwest.

Having English as our official language is not new. The issue has been before Congress for several years. America has been a great melting pot and country for persons of different backgrounds. We need to ensure that we have a common unifying thread of a language throug! h these diverse backgrounds. Having a common language for a country will make that country stronger and more unified in my opinion.

Nevermind that Hispanic immigrants learn English at the same rate that all immigrant groups have, Virgil Goode honestly believes that the immigrants who come to America because of our way of life would like to try and cause another Civil War to destroy this country. If I remember my history correctly, it was Goode's ancestors who fought to secede from the United States. Most of the casualties at the Alamo were Spanish-speaking Tejanos fighting against the Mexican government, not for it.

Goode loves money

So, I found this lovely blog while I was trolling the internet yesterday. It is either the insane ramblings of the most vindictive person in the universe, a lame assignment thrown to a Goode staffer with less than a fully adequate grasp of the English language, or both. I figured that two should be able to play at this game, so I intend to provide regular updates to this blog with the inept things my congressman says and does that others notice on the internet. Does that make me the second most vindictive man in the universe? Well, I was always told that second place is the first loser.


This is what I had to say on my other blog about Virgil yesterday.

I've signed up for e-mail alerts from the Al Weed campaign. They gave me a heads up to a few choice things Virgil Goode had to say for himself at a recent candidate forum. According to the Daily Progress, this is how Virgil Goode explained his illegal campaign contributions, "He said I got nearly $100,000 in illegal contributions. Not so. It was about $46,000 that was straw contributions..."

The subject/verb agreement aside ("was" + "contributions"), Goode is using the "I robbed the bank with a toy gun" defense. And what, praytell, is a "straw contribution?" The website doubletongued.org explains, "His solution was to have his employees and their spouses make contributions …under their own names, then reimburse them—a technique known as 'straw contributions' that is a felony under federal election law"

Hmmmm...so what Virgil Goode is telling us is that he should be our congressman one more time because he draws a careful moral line between a $46,000 felony and a $100,000 one. What about $86,754? Where does that fit into your moral calculus, honorable Mr. Goode?

Of course, all of this is compounded by the fact that the city of Martinsville, which is already taking it up the unemployment hind end, gave MZM (the felonious "straw contributor") millions of dollars to locate its defense contracting bait and switch program in their area. A dishonest program that went belly up, costing not only the good people of Martinsville money, but, as Mr. Weed points out, taking away money from properly outfitting our good soldiers in Iraq. (Anyone remember the whole, "You go to war with the army you have?") Of course, all of this is made more mind-numbingly ridiculous by the fact that it is possibly the sole responsibility of Mr. Goode to keep this kind of FUBAR garbage from happening in the first place.

However, Mr. Goode has a smart@$$ play on Mr. Weed's last name to distract us. Mr. Goode's assertion that Mr. Weed, "must be smoking something like what he’s named for," makes me feel so much better about having a representative who is either a felon or has his head so firmly up his hind end that he can't tell a snake-oil salesman from a defense contractor. Shouldn't the whole "I was too dumb to know that I was doing something unethical and illegal" defense mean that one is too dumb to be an elected representative?