Kerry Bentivolio Kicked Out Of The GOP Cult-- And Forced To Sell All His Reindeer

"This is what happens," groused Kerry Bentivolio, "when a regular guy gets an opportunity to come to Congress." He's feeling pretty aggrieved all around. Not many Republicans lost their seats this year. But Bentivolio did-- and he lost ugly to Michigan's foreclosure king, who unleashed a torrent of cash-- over $4,000,000, including $3,623,402 from his own bank account-- to smear him mercilessly from Canton, Livonia and Novi to Auburn Hills and Washington, DC. In the end Trott and his Establishment allies beat him 138,229 (56.1%) to 100,665 (40.8%). Bentivolio calls himself a "a regular guy," but that's a bit of a stretch. He's an unconventional guy with a typical Tea Party sense of victimhood and way to independent-minded to fit in with garden variety, button-downed Republicans. He never really fit in anywhere in DC and, as disgusting as everyone acknowledges Trott is, not many are going to cry in their beers over the premature end of Bentivolio's accidental ascension to Congress.

Some Republican thugs are going in the opposite direction-- trying to wipe out the memory that he ever existed! Trott sent out word that he wouldn't be interested in any Bentivolio staffers and that he wouldn't look favorably on anyone else who hired any of them.

Bentivolio had hired a martial arts trainer from Ann Arbor, Robert Dindoffer, as his senior advisor and then gave him the job of campaign manager, firing him 7 months later. Dindoffer is widely considered a real scumbag and he's one of the leading forces behind Michigan Republicans' efforts to steal electoral votes by changing the way the state apportions them between candidates. When Bentivolio fired him-- basically for submitting false expenses and stealing from the campaign-- Dindoffier sued over some weird contract with a typically Republican type scam to extract more money from the campaign than is normal. Republicans always do this to each other.

Although he isn't willing to talk about it, Bentivolio has made it clear that Dindoffer wasn't just scamming the cash-strapped campaign for money but was also disloyal and looking out for himself, not his boss. This week a local judge ruled that Bentivolio has to pay Dindoffer $120,000.

Dindoffer’s attorney said on Wednesday both sides had reached a confidential settlement agreement this summer and Bentivolio had made some but not all payments as required by a Nov. 30 deadline, which prompted the Dec. 15 consent judgment by Oakland Circuit Judge James Alexander.

“It was confidential until he (Bentivolio) stopped making payments,” said Dindoffer’s attorney Kevin J. Stoops.

Bentivolio, 63, will leave office next month. He was defeated in the Republican primary and then ran unsuccessfully as a write-in candidate.

The judgment is against Bentivolio, and two of his campaign committees, Kerry Bentivolio for US Congress and Bentivolio for Congress. The judgment, which represents 1.5 times the amount due and owed to Dindoffer, resolves the last pending claim and closes the case, Alexander said in his ruling.

In an interview off the House floor last week, Bentivolio told the Detroit News that he was facing financial troubles in the face of the significant judgment. He criticized the conduct of his former campaign manager and questioned the bills and his loyalty.

But he acknowledged agreeing to settle the case earlier this year to reduce possible additional losses and said he had not been able to make payments.

“What can I do? I’m in the middle of a campaign. I’ve got all these people telling me to settle,” Bentivolio said last week, saying he was looking to reduce additional losses.

Bentivolio, a former school teacher who drew attention for being a part-time reindeer farmer, said he sold his reindeer earlier this year to pay bills and fund his campaign along with borrowing from his retirement fund. He said he has been “beat up” by establishment Republicans and the media.

“This is what happens when a regular guy gets an opportunity to come to Congress,” he said.

Defeated Tea Party Congressman Kerry Bentivolio Is Very Bitter Towards The GOP Establishment

No one can ever accuse me of having ever said anything good about one-term Republican soon-to-be ex-Congressman Kerry Bentivolio, a Michigan teabagger. (Here's proof.) A reindeer farmer and Santa Claus actor tainted with some crooked business dealings, Bentivolio became an accidental congressman when his predecessor, Thaddeus McCotter was busted in an electoral fraud case and was forced to resign from Congress and end his campaign for another term. Bentivolio soon found himself in Congress, where he was out of his depth and unable to cope. He tried aping Justin Amash's principled libertarian opposition to the Establishment but lacked the skills and political talent to even be a successful follower.

The Republican Establishment got behind Michigan foreclosure king David Trott, a self-funder who spent $2.5 million from his own personal wealth against Bentivolio and beat him decisively 42,008 (66.4%) to 21,254 (33.6%). A perfect pick-up opportunity for the Democrats, Steve Israel instead decided to try to help the CIA infiltrate one of their agents into Congress and backed sure-loser Bobby McKenzie, who, of course, lost. The official results are David Trott- 138,229 (56.06%), Bobby McKenzie- 100,665 (40,83) and Libertarian John Tatar- 7,668 (3.11%). Although that adds up to exactly 100%, it doesn't take into account the write-in ballots. And there were write-in ballots. Bentivolio decided to run a quixotic write-in campaign against Trott in the general, claiming Trott staffers kept demonizing him and his family even after he had won the primary.

Basically, he feels that Trott and the GOP establishment stabbed him in the back, have worked for two years to ruin his reputation, and he isn’t going to take it anymore.

He is well aware of his image as “Krazy Kerry,” who has been lampooned as a nutty reindeer farmer and part-time Santa Claus.

In fact, he seems himself as a principled conservative whose first and greatest love is constituent service.

At one point, he put a staff member on the phone line, who told me that the two cardinal rules in his office were “transparency” and “never lie.” He also told me that his reputation for shunning the media was the fault of a former campaign manager who never passed along requests for interviews.

The only bad things Bentivolio had to say were about the GOP establishment.

“They believe you have to be anointed to run for office-- that you are supposed to kiss the ring,” he told me, adding, “That’s not how the founding fathers saw this country.”

I told him that some Republicans saw his effort as sour grape resentment, and he admits that he does feel some of that.

Bentivolio also knows that his write-in effort could well help Democratic nominee Bobby McKenzie, but he feels that when a Republican congressman is doing a good job, he doesn’t deserve to be challenged in his own party’s primary.

Not only did Trott do that, but Bentivolio feels he unfairly smeared his reputation.

When he left some of those attacks up on the internet after the primary, Bentivolio announced he would write his own name in “as a shot across his bow.”

But Trott still didn’t take the offending material down, and meanwhile, Bentivolio’s staff members in Washington started hearing they would be blacklisted from new jobs.

That did it.

Kerry Bentivolio, a career army officer and former teacher, is not a wealthy man.

He doesn’t know what he will do if he doesn’t get reelected, and may be looking at personal bankruptcy.

But he told me he felt he’s done his best in Congress, and has never been afraid of a fight. “There’s something flattering when a guy spends $5 million to beat you,” he said of Trott.

Although no actual numbers for the write-in ballots are available, on Friday the Toledo Blade reported that Bentivolio's low-budget effort ($40,000) failed and they claim that he "appeared to have gotten fewer than 1 percent of the vote, from stalwart supporters who wrote in his name." Bentivolio says the effort was worth doing anyway.

"I was hoping for a miracle, but it was worth making a point," he said. "I owe the Republicans nothing. They did nothing for me. They have this attitude that you can’t just run for office. You are supposed to be anointed by them, that you have to kiss the ring.

"Well, that’s not how the Founding Fathers saw this country."

Mr. Bentivolio was famous for shunning news media during his time in office, He often was painted as flaky and irascible.

However, he called me a week before the election. "I know you may disagree with me,” he said, "but you strike me as fair." He wanted to tell his story.

He has one thing in common with liberals such as independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont: Mr. Bentivolio feels that the system is broken, corrupt, and dominated by a moneyed establishment that is happy to destroy anyone it can’t control.

..."[T]he establishment said from the start I was going to be a one-term congressman," Mr. Bentivolio said. "They smeared me, spread lies about my teaching record, started the 'Krazy Kerry' stuff."

Here's Krazy Kerry talking with a pack of krazy konstituents. Is he nuts? You decide:

GOP Front Groups Backing Democrats From The Republican Wing Of The Democratic Party-- Take Patrick Murphy Of Florida

So far this cycle the NRA's PAC, the Political Victory Fund, has contributed $399,350 to Republicans running for House seats and $18,950 to Democrats. The Democrats are all from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party:

• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)- $4,950
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- $1,000
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $1,000
• Pete Gallego (Blue Dog/New Dem-TX)- $1,000
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $1,000
• Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)- $3,500
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR)- $1,000
• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)- $1,000
• Tim Walz (MN)- $2,000

The NRA has also donated several thousand dollars to right-wing Democrats who can no longer muster any support from grassroots Democratic voters and are finally retiring-- Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC), and Tom Owens (New Dem-NY).

There's been a tremendous outcry from Republicans and their media-backers today over the push-back from Gabby Giffords' PAC. The Republican strategy is to refocus the attention from the incredibly effective anti-NRA ads (see the one they ran against teabagger Frank Guinta in New Hampshire above) into a typical right-wing smear of Giffords herself, a former congresswoman who was shot in the head in a mass shooting by an NRA backer/dangerous gun nut. The Beltway eats it up, of course.

The other Republican Party front group that endorses a few conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the party is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Last week they endorsed Barrow, Scott Peters and Nick Rahall. Today they endorsed another wretched New Dem, "former" Republican Patrick Murphy, a perfect patsy for Republicans inside the Democratic Party-- and one they are working furiously to build up so that he can run for the U.S. Senate in 2016-- meaning that Republicans will have two candidates (like they do in this year's gubernatorial race) and Democrats will have no real choice.

The Murphy campaign couldn't wait to put out a press release bragging how their anti-working family candidate is only the 4th Democrat endorsed for the Republican-oriented US Chamber of Commerce.

"At no other time in our nation's history has it been more critical that Members of Congress provide leadership that protects and advances the interests of the business community," stated U.S. Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue in announcing Murphy's endorsement. "Murphy's record of support on pro-business issues earned this endorsement."

"It is truly an honor to receive the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a highly-respected organization that shares my commitment to creating an environment conducive to job growth through common-sense, pro-business solutions," said Murphy. "As a former small businessman, I have brought my private-sector experience to Congress and put smart policy above partisanship to make sure that America and Americans succeed."

Earlier this year, Murphy was one of only seven Democrats nationwide to be recognized with the Chamber's coveted "Spirit of Enterprise" Award for his support of pro-growth policies. An August report by National Journal also ranked Murphy's voting record among the top five percent most independent in the entire House of Representatives.

"Most independent" inside the Beltway doesn't refer to independent thinkers like Shenna Bellows (D-ME), Alan Grayson (D-FL), Bernie Sanders (I-VT) or Justin Amash (R-MI); it refers to willingness to back Boehner and his crazy right-wing ideas against core Democratic values and principles. The Chamber's Spirit of Enterprise award was given out to 199 Republicans and 7 Democrats, all corporate whores who back the Keystone XL Pipeline and have voted to delay and wreck the Affordable Care Act. That's what Murphy was bragging about. One extreme right wing Republican, Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI), even returned the award is disgust because of the way the Chamber was sold itself to China. "Crony capitalism," explained Bentivolio's chief of staff, Rob Wasinger, "is alive and well at the Chamber of Commerce… The US Chamber is in the pocket of Communist China and big companies seeking cheap labor in the United States. We think it is morally repugnant for the chamber to pursue, as a matter of public policy, initiatives which exploit the poor and oppressed, just so they can keep labor costs down for their fortune 500 member companies."

Bentivolio himself was quoted explaining that "The Chamber of Commerce is beholden to special interests and has long since forgotten the main street businesses that struggle everyday to make payroll and keep their company afloat. It is with great pride that I reject their award, and call on them to stand on the side of America, instead of on the side of China and corporate interests seeking to exploit people for profit. I am with main street, not Wall Street."

Patrick Murphy didn't reject the award. He keeps putting out press releases bragging about it.

Patrick Murphy: Spoiled rich kid, Republican, pretending to be a Democrat

Is Steve Israel Helping The CIA Infiltrate Congress With Its Own Agents?

I don't know the answer to the question posed in the title above. I've been trying to find out and I've been tracking down several leads. The names that come up most frequently are Kevin Strouse, who like all CIA spies bills himself as an "ex-CIA analyst" and is running against Mike Fitzpatrick in Bucks County (PA-08); Bobby McKenzie, another former CIA spy who glosses over that and calls himself an "ex-US State Dept. Counterterrorism Official" and is running in MI-11 against Michigan's least attractive politician, Dave Trott the state's foreclosure king; and Jerry Cannon the former comandante of the Guantánamo gulag/torture prison who is running against GOP sad sack Dan Benishek way up in the sparsely populated, desolate Upper Peninsula of Michigan, flush up against Canada.

I spoke to one Bucks County political expert this morning about Strouse's CIA connections and he told me Strouse has no chance to win and that the DCCC, after recruiting him and pushing him against a plausible grassroots Democrat, Shaughnessy Naughton, has abandoned Strouse entirely. "There is no way," he told me, "that Strouse wins this race unless the CIA arranges to kill Fitzpatrick. I'm hearing Strouse is down by 20 points." 20 points?!!?! This is an R+1 swing district that Obama won 53-46% in 2008 and then fought Romney to a 49-49% head heat 4 years later. How does a Democrat-- even a crappy Steve Israel Mystery Meat candidate like Kevin Strouse lose a district like that by 20 points.

Meanwhile, as of the June 30 FEC filing deadline, Strouse had only raised $1,016,010 to Fitzpatrick's $2,482,114 and only had $268,721 cash-on-hand to Fitzpatrick's $1,906,830. The DCCC hasn't spent a dime on Strouse's behalf so far. However, the DCCC as reserved $1.9 million on Philadelphia broadcast from Oct. 21 to Nov. 4, which could mean ads for Strouse or Manan Trivedi (PA-06) or Aimee Belgard (NJ-03). Their House Majority PAC has reserved another $1.2 million for unspecified candidates in the Philly area. Despite the rumors that the DCCC has kicked Strouse to the curb, unlike some of the candidates that they have dumped, he's still on the most current Red-to-Blue list soliciting money for their candidates. I guess if Michael Fitzpatrick turns up dead or suddenly resigns for some bizarre reason, we'll know the CIA plan is operational.

Jerry Cannon has also been seriously underperforming as a candidate. He and Benishek last reported on July 16 and Benishek had raised $1,497,655 and had $830,703 on hand while Canon only raised $647,734 and had $336,663 on hand. This unlikely red-to-blue district has a PVI of R+5 and would be a steep climb for even a good Democratic candidate. Obama, though, did beat McCain, 50-48%, although he lost to Romney four years later 54-45%. (Benishek barely fended off his last challenge by another bad Democratic recruit, Gary McDowell, 167,060 to 165,179.) What McDowell and Cannon have in common is that they're both conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Is the CIA behind Cannon? I haven't found anything that would make me comfortable asserting as much, just rumors.

The DCCC has spent $237,304 in negative ads against Benishek so far, part of a $450,000 Traverse City broadcast from Sept. 2 to Sept. 22 they reserved. They have another $490,000 on hold for Oct. 14 through election day. Yesterday, Emily Cahn at Roll Call reported that the NRCC just reserved a million dollars worth of ad time in the district to defend Benishek and will start running them on Friday and not stop until November 4.

OK, now let's go back to MI-11, Kerry Bentivolio's mostly suburban district north and northwest of Detroit that includes parts of Oakland and Wayne Counties, an R+4 district but good hunting for a Democrat, especially with such an awful and indefensible candidate like Trott. But the CIA agent, or, supposedly, "ex"-CIA agent, McKenzie, just wasn't closing the deal. Trott, who wrote his campaign a casual $2,423,402 check for the primary, had $1,018,913 cash-on-hand on July 16. McKenzie only raised $375,432 and had $68,448 left after the primary, which shouldn't be enough to stay competitive. The DCCC hasn't spent any money in the district yet but they've reserved $850,000 in the Detroit broadcast market and $290,000 in the Lansing market between Oct. 21 to Nov. 4, money that could go to help McKenzie (who is no longer on their Red-to-Blue page at all) or Pam Byrnes (who the DCCC has reportedly given up on entirely). Strange. I suppose they could use the reservations to support Eric Schertzing against Mike Bishop in the district Mike Rogers is abandoning (MI-08, Ingham and Livingston counties, R+2 PVI) but there is no indication they are getting behind Schertzing or any other Michigan candidates.

And now the big "however" in this race. Someone (a CIA cutout, supposedly) persuaded Bentivolio to run as a write-in candidate and pull the extreme right away from Trott, who he really hates, so that McKenzie wins the seat. Yesterday, the Detroit Free Press reported that a very bitter Bentivolio just wants Trott to lose.

“Everywhere I went here at home or in D.C. I had a Trott tracker working for a self-serving, self-absorbed entitled bully,” Bentivolio said in an e-mail to the Free Press. “Now they want unity?”

In last month’s primary, Trott beat Bentivolio by nearly a 2-to-1 margin. In the race to represent a district widely considered to lean Republican, Trott faces Bobby McKenzie, a former U.S. State Department employee and the Democratic nominee, who Bentivolio said he also opposes.

Bentivolio told MIRS he was “pretty frustrated” by the loss and the amount of money Trott spent defeating him. He said he has been approached by “a lot of people out there” who want him to run as a write-in “because they don’t see much difference” between the two parties.

…[H]e e said that it’s difficult for him to listen to Republican Party calls for unity and support given that he was targeted for defeat by mainstream elements in the party when former U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter resigned abruptly in 2012 and left Bentivolio the only other GOP name on the ballot.

I'm trying to track down what Bentivolio meant exactly when he said he's being pushed to run by "a lot of people out there." It would mean a lot to the CIA and other intelligence entities to have one of their own-- or 3 of their own-- inside the branch of government charged with overseeing all the unconstitutional activities.

Last Night's Primaries-- Justin Amash Kicks Boehner's Ass

I knew it was coming but I'll still amazed it came. The teabaggers couldn't even save one of their incumbents, Kerry Bentivolio in the suburbs west and northwest of Detroit in Oakland and Wayne counties. Boehner's Chamber of Commerce wing of the party recognized he was weak and they moved in for the kill. But what was so startling was that the Republicans of the district picked this monstrosity to replace him. Watch that video up top made by some Bentivolio supporters. This guy Dave Trott's going to be the worst piece of crap in the whole Congress. And he nearly beat Bentivolio two to one-- 40,421 (66%) to 20,572 (34%). Trott wrote himself a check for $2,423,402, collected another $921,196 from big donors and went up against Bentivolio's relatively puny $570,022.

MI-11 is a winnable district too. Even at R+4, Obama won it narrowly in 2008 and lost it narrowly to native son Mitt Romney in 2012. But Israel recruited some ex-CIA spook, Bobb McKenzie, who's not going to beat anyone. He barely even won the primary last night against an Indian-American urologist, Anil Kumar who's doesn't seem to be an actual Democrat as far as I could tell from chatting with him. The DCCC pushed for McKenzie, who raised $375,432 but urologists and the Asian community helped Kumar who took in $756,973. McKenzie won by a few hundred votes, 12,765 (34%) to 12,094 (32%) and with progressive radio host Nancy Skinner, who raised virtually no money at all, taking 9,960 votes (27%). Trott, the weakest Republican candidate in years, will probably annihilate McKenzie in November.

The other libertarian-oriented incumbent the Boehner wing tried really hard to destroy was Justin Amash in MI-03 (Kent, Calhoun, Barry, Ionia and Montcalm counties). Boehner got the Chamber of Commerce to run a wealthy self-funder, Brian Ellis, who wrote his campaign a check for $1,007,214, raised another $555,145 in big donations and outspent Amash $1,230,307 to $840,370. (Club for Growth spent $510,588 attacking Ellis while the Chamber of Commerce tried bolstering him with around $200,000.) In the end Amash beat him comfortably 35,309 (57%) to 26,498 (43%). And Boehner has another target on his back in the eyes of the Liberty Caucus. Amash was quoted saying "To Brian Ellis, you owe my family and this community an apology for a disgusting & despicable smear campaign… I ran for office to stop people like you." He also unleashed the rhetorical kracken on Ellis backer and Republican ex-Congressman Pete Hoekstra pretty harshly too: "I want to say to lobbyist Pete Hoekstra, you're a disgrace. I'm glad we could hand you one more loss before you fade into total obscurity and irrelevance." But he didn't call out Boehner (yet)-- unless you count this as an attack on Boehner: "My race should give confidence to people in Congress. There are a lot of people who are bullied by the leadership. They're bullied by lobbyists. I'm giving confidence to them that they can do the write thing. That they can stand up for regular people. That they can follow the Constitution."

Kansas had some Republican primaries but nothing or progressives to spend any time thinking about. As expected, Brownback won his primary (63%) but is neck and neck-- or losing-- for the November battle with moderate Democrat Paul Davis. Racist icon Kris Kobach was renominated for his Secretary of State job. beating Scott Morgan 65-35%.

In the Kansas House races Tim Huelskamp had a relatively close call against Alan LaPolice but won renomination 54-46%. And in KS-04 the congressional Koch employee, Mike Pompeo, beat back a challenge from the former congressman from the district, Todd Tiahrt, 63-37%. Probably time for Tiahrt, a radical right extremist, to start thinking about getting some honest work and to forget about this whole politics thing. As expected, confused old Pat Roberts was renominated by beating a serious challenge from right-wing superstar Milton Wolf, 48-41%.

Washington state's jungle primary is all mail-in-ballots. No real surprises that matter for progressives. Good news was that in WA-08, Jason Ritchie beat the other Democrat in the race 24,368 to 7,540. If Steve Israel allows the DCCC to help him now-- which isn't likely-- he might be able to beat Republican Dave Reichert in this R+1 district Obama won both times. I'm guessing Israel wants Ritchie to lose so the Republican wing of the Democratic Party can slip a conservative in in 2016 when Hillary's landslide coattails will make Reichert a sitting duck.

Nothing interesting happened in Missouri, but no one thought anything would. Next up: Saturday's big deal races in Hawaii, where two progressives-- Brian Schatz for Senate and Stanley Chang for the open House seat-- face up against corrupt conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

Michigan Eviction King Dave Trott-- Far More Vile Than A Teabagger

If House Democrats were absolutely certain that it was imperative that they not gain any seats in November-- and that they just could not leave anything to chance-- there would be no better plan of operation than appointing Steve Israel to chair the DCCC. Although Pelosi has admiringly described him as reptilian, Israel is more accurately viewed as grotesquely corrupt, completely incompetent, dedicated to stocking the Democratic caucus with anti-family Big Business shills like himself, and desperate to play footsie with the Republicans

Michigan's 11th CD is one of dozens of good cases in point. Israel, primarily due to his obsessive hatred of Muslims, already botched the district for the Democrats once before, ignoring a strong progressive candidate, Dr. Syed Taj, and allowing a pathetic and weak teabagger extremist, Kerry Bentivolio, to win. Obama won the district handily in 2008 but the Republican state legislature gerrymandered Democratic towns like Belleville, Westland and Redford out and stuck in some deep red areas of central Oakland County, giving it a more Republican-tinge, though not prohibitively so. It's still winnable for a Democrat, especially for a good progressive fighting against either Bentivolio or the Establishment cut-out the Boehner-Cantor wing of the party is running against him, Dave Trott, an especially despicable foreclosure and eviction expert. See that effective ad up top? It's very powerful-- and, of course, did not come from the DCCC or any of the Steve Israel-allied PACs. Nope, the ad was done by some teabaggers on behalf of Bentivolio.

August 5th is primary day for Michigan. Bentivolio and Trott, two really unpalatable candidates square off. But so do 4 Democrats. Steve Israel recruited another CIA spy, "mystery meat" conservative Bobby McKenzie. Progressives have been rallying around radio personality Nancy Skinner and two vanity candidates, Bill Roberts (a LaRouche psychopath) and Anil Kumar (a urologist). By recruiting McKenzie, Israel blew the chance to win the 11th back. Sunday, the Detroit Free Press just absolutely destroyed Trott's credibility as a general election candidate. He can still win the Republican primary, of course, where his kind of sociopathic behavior in not just permissible, not actually admired.

In a commercial for his congressional campaign, David Trott tells of joining his mom and dad’s business in 1985 and later taking the helm.

“The business grew from six people to 1,800,” Trott says, as the camera shows him, dressed in an open-collared shirt, in a light-filled room, before shifting to scenes of people working in a warehouse setting and an office. “I’m a job creator.”

Trott never identifies what the family business does. The stock footage used in the political ad shows what appears to be manufacturing or shipping.

In reality, Trott is an attorney and his specialty is foreclosing on homes on behalf of banks and other lenders-- as many as 80,000 in Michigan in a single year, by his own count, during the peak of the housing crisis. His Farmington Hills law firm, Trott & Trott, is Michigan’s largest foreclosure law firm and one of the biggest in the country. Financial disclosure statements he filed in December as part of his congressional campaign show the financial holdings of Trott and his wife, Kathleen, are worth at least $60.2 million and possibly as much as $204.9 million.

Trott became a leader in the foreclosure industry that boomed in 2008 when the housing market went bust by buying up companies needed to complete a foreclosure from beginning to end. And he profits at each step of the process.

Besides his law firm that handles legal work, Trott owns or has a financial interest in the document company that processes paperwork, a newspaper that publishes required legal notices, the title companies that do the deed work, and a large real estate firm that sometimes handles the homes on which his clients have foreclosed.

…[C]ritics say his one-stop-shopping approach sometimes works against struggling homeowners.

“The only way he makes money is to take people’s homes,” said attorney Valerie Moran, who helped a retired nurse keep her Walled Lake home after a two-year legal battle.

Trott declined to discuss that case and those of several other Michigan families interviewed by the Free Press, some of whom were able to stop their foreclosures through legal battles with Trott’s law firm and the banks.

“This firm has never been subject to a significant judgment, and no court has ever sanctioned the firm for unethical conduct,” he said.

His job, Trott said, is to do what is in the best interests of the banks that hire him, whether that’s negotiating a loan modification or taking a house through foreclosure. If he put his own interests or those of the homeowners ahead of the banks, his clients would fire him, he said.

…[Mark] Rozier, like tens of thousands of other Michiganders, lost his home to foreclosure during the housing crisis. After a three-year legal battle with Trott’s law firm and the bank, the notice arrived last Christmas Eve. He was evicted in January and moved his wife, who is on kidney dialysis, his bedridden mother, and his uncle, who has Down syndrome and is in a wheelchair, into a neighbor’s empty duplex across the street.

With the neighborhood in decline, his former house was only worth $10,000 when the foreclosure was filed-- even though Rozier, 49, owed $48,000 on the mortgage, money taken out in part to fund the improvements. He’d started missing his $634 monthly payments in 2009 when his wife, Nomora, a nurse’s aide, went into kidney failure and could no longer work.

Rozier said he scraped up $8,000 to try to keep it.

The bank, through Trott’s law firm, refused that offer, and spent three years and thousands of dollars in legal fees, taking the home away from him, Rozier and his attorney said.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. spokeswoman Amy Bonitatibus said the bank tried to work with the Roziers early on but that Rozier made the cash offer too late, after the house had been foreclosed upon. The bank spent little on legal fees because the case stalled after a judge halted the eviction for a year, she said.

“We worked hard to keep the customer in his home,” she said.

The home is now for sale for $4,900. Most of the $8,000 Rozier said he had saved up at the time of the foreclosure went to other bills, including medical payments for his sick wife.

“I hope someday we can go back home,” Rozier said wistfully in a recent interview. “That maybe somebody will let me buy back my house.”

The home that Rozier put his heart and earnings into has since been stripped by vandals of its copper wiring, plumbing and kitchen cabinets. The front door and side doors have been kicked in, and it is taking on the look of all the other homes in the neighborhood-- one of despair.

…[The] inability to deal with the onslaught of defaults proved Trott’s good fortune.

For lenders looking to take back a home from a delinquent borrower, Trott & Trott offered a unique one-stop-shopping business model.

For Trott, there was money to be made on each foreclosure that came through his business empire-- in 2009, by his own accounting, he handled 80,000 in Michigan alone. The banks paid his firm a flat fee for each foreclosure completed-- exactly how much, Trott won’t say.

Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that beyond his firm’s legal fees, Trott’s businesses generated hundreds of millions of dollars for him and his business partners.

Two aspects of Trott’s work-- legal notice publishing and foreclosure file processing-- generated $344.3 million in business between 2007 and 2012 for Dolan Media. The Minneapolis-based information company partnered with Trott on numerous projects, including partial ownership of Detroit Legal News Publishing, according to the SEC filings.

Trott’s business was so valuable, Detroit Legal News took out a $15-million life insurance policy on Trott and paid him a $500,000 annual consulting fee, as long as his law firm provided at least 1,000 foreclosure notices per month, the SEC filings show.

Trott also helped create a foreclosure file processing company, now known as NDeX. He sold his stake to Dolan Media for $10.5 million four years ago but continued to run it until February 2013, earning about $264,000 annually, the SEC filing shows. Dolan also paid about $646,000 annually to lease office space for NDeX in Trott’s headquarters on Northwestern Highway.

As the economy recovered and foreclosures fell, Dolan Media sold back the Michigan part of the NDeX business to Trott last year for an undisclosed sum. In March, Dolan filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reduce its debt.

In 2009, the federal government launched massive housing assistance programs to try to stem the avalanche of foreclosures; Michiganders alone lost 500,000 homes during the crisis. The assistance was available through banks. Trott’s firm was hired by the banks to bargain in good faith with borrowers to modify loans with incentives such as reduced principal, lower interest rates or longer payback periods.

But in state and federal lawsuits reviewed by the Free Press, dozens of delinquent borrowers complained that they were turned down for minor problems, such as misplaced documents, confusion over deadlines or poor communication.

Trott, in recent interviews, said that although his firm had the authority to assist homeowners in stopping foreclosures-- and was even required by state law to meet with troubled homeowners to discuss their options-- he preferred to defer to the banks and mortgage companies, which often gave the thumbs down to new deals… [H]e acknowledged that he makes more money by foreclosing than by stopping the process with a loan modification.

…In 2012, the U.S. Justice Department sued the nation’s top five banks for mishandling foreclosures and failing to adequately assist struggling homeowners in obtaining money they were entitled to under federal programs-- loan modifications typically handled through foreclosure law firms such as Trott & Trott.

The banks-- Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial-- eventually settled the suit, agreeing to pay $25 billion but without admitting wrongdoing. Trott was not named in the suit and did not participate in any settlement.

“In the course of their servicing and oversight of mortgage loans the banks violated federal laws, program requirements and contractual requirements governing loss mitigation,” the Justice Department charged in the suit, adding the banks engaged in “unfair, unlawful, and deceptive practices” in how they treated troubled homeowners facing foreclosures.

“It was nothing but a charade,” said attorney Ryan Stearn, who has represented dozens of homeowners suing Trott & Trott and the banks, sometimes successfully alleging that they were entitled to loan modifications under the laws but were wrongly turned away. “The banks weren’t even capable of processing the sheer volume of loan modification requests that were coming in. They didn’t have enough underwriters.”

…It’s unclear how much Trott and his companies make on each foreclosure, and he declined to say. But lawsuits and other public records provide some hints.

A lawsuit filed by James and Melissa Dahl of Swartz Creek listed some of the fees that Trott & Trott charged on behalf of their lender, Bank of America, and that were passed on to them. Trott charged $1,152 for legal work and $260 for a title search.

The Dahls were making regular payments on their home after obtaining a loan modification in March 2010, but at the behest of the bank, Trott & Trott sold the house anyway at a sheriff’s sale in 2013. Three months later, after the couple sued, the bank gave the house back to them in a letter “rescinding” the sale, but the Dahls didn’t get reimbursed for any of the fees.

The Dahls are continuing to sue Trott & Trott and the bank for alleged violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress. Bank of America declined to discuss the matter because the litigation has not been resolved.

“These people had money; these weren’t deadbeats who couldn’t make their payments. They did everything they were supposed to do,” said their attorney, Adam Alexander. Trott & Trott and the banks “are just bulldozing people out of their houses. They don’t want loans; they want foreclosures.”

And of course, the House Republicans are totally excited about Dave Trott joining their ranks. They are eager to kick poor, deranged Bentivolio to the curb and replace him with an icon of sociopathic greed and avarice. They're moving from a reindeer rancher and Santa Claus actor to Ebenezer Scrooge himself! And they know they don't have to worry about Steve Israel and the DCCC, an totally ineffective force incapable of even winning a seat like this.




UPDATE: Birmingham

We asked the progressive in the race, Nancy Skinner, if she knew anything about Trott. Did she ever! "David Trott and are both from Birmingham. We both went to U of M. I used my business degree to literally rebuild disaster-stricken communities as models of sustainability (and won a Presidential award for it) and Trott used his degree to accelerate the housing meltdown and destroy communities." I suspect that Oakland and Wayne County woman arer already viewing Trott as heartless and despicable and will rally behind Nancy. The "empathy contrast" is too great even for Republican women to resist.

Suddenly MI-11 Is In Serious Play For The Democrats-- Nancy Skinner Is Running

One of the most bitter and brutal Republican mini-civil wars is raging in MI-11, west and northwest of Detroit and we took a brief look at it last week. Incumbent teabagger Kerry Bentivolio is up against a fatally flawed eviction and foreclosurer specialist, Dave Trott, who is being financed by the corrupt Republican Establishment. The teabaggers are currently running this very effective ad against Trott:



Steve Israel, sensing an opportunity to elect one of his vile mystery meat candidates, recruited an ex-CIA agent, Bobby MacKenzie, who refuses to talk issues and is hoping that Trott and Bentivolio will just kill each other off. Progressive icon and local radio talk show host Nancy Skinner just announced that she's jumping into the race and is likely to get the kind of institutional support Israel hoped to be able to deliver to McKenzie.

Nancy is a known and trusted progressive voice in Michigan and across the country due to her countless media appearances as a syndicated talk show host who doesn't shy away from taking the battle right into the face of fascist heroes like Ann Coulter and Larry Kudlow (see video up top). She bravely took on Joe Knollenberg in MI-09 in 2006, then considered unbeatable after David Fink spent $2 million and lost big. Today half of MI-09 is has been redistricted into MI-11. Skinner used her radio fans and local roots and national base to raise $465,000 (with no DCCC help of course) to Knollenberg’s $4 million dollars and lost 51-47%. The Detroit Free Press called Skinner “Knollenberg’s near-death experience." Back then, her campaign drew national attention. She was endorsed by then Senator Barack Obama; then Senator Joe Biden fundraised for her; Joan Jett also raised campaign funds for her. Environmental hero  Robert Kennedy Jr. did a television ad with Skinner endorsing her for her leadership on global warming. Skinner was voted the “Best congressional candidate in America” in a national poll.

The two other Democrats in the race, wealthy Bloomfield Hills urologist Anil Kumar and the CIA guy, McKenzie, are not likely to muster what it would take to beat either Republican. Kumar, who has never run for any office nor worked on campaigns, is barely a Democrat at all. Recent campaign reports show contributions of $3,000 to Rick Snyder (2010), $2,000 for Romney (2012), $500 to Mike Rogers (2010) and $375 to Rocky Raczkowski, the crackpot Republican who ran against Gary Peters in 2010. McKenzie worked at the state Department for a few months after his secretive stint overseas with the CIA. If he runs, the Republicans will talk about nothing but Benghazi for the entire campaign, while he turns off the Democratic base with the only issue he ever talks about, anti-terrorism tactics. His murky CIA/State department background leaves McKenzie vulnerable at a time when NSA spying on civilians and CIA spying on the Senate Oversight Committees are issues that will grow over the year now that a CIA Inspector General has taken an independent review option. And Steve Israel, McKenzie's crutch, can't vote in the MI-11 primary.

I spoke with Nancy Skinner yesterday. She was focused like a laser on three overriding issues: jobs, economic security for working families, and climate change. She has a natural ability to speak to every issue on hand, honed after many years of debating the other side on TV and radio. She's always had union support and has always fought all the tough battles for working families. We'll be looking a lot closer into Skinner's campaign in the coming days and weeks but her entry into this race is good news for the Democrats, who have been plagued by Steve Israel's abysmal recruitment decisions.

Foreclosure King Dave Trott (R-MI)

Watching this ad running in MI-11 (parts of Oakland and Wayne counties west and northwest of Detroit) you'd think the DCCC was getting ready to take back the district. Forget it! The ad is being run by a far right nut group, Freedom's Defense Fund. I'll get back to them in a second. First, the fighting 11th. When Obama ran in 2008, the 11th gave him a big win over McCain: he carried the 11th by 11 points; not a landslide but the kind of victory MI-11 was giving Democrats. The incumbent congressman, Thaddeus McCotter-- later charged with a variety of election fraud charges and forced to resign-- was nervous and the Republican-controlled legislature responded to his colitis problem by excising Democratic towns like Belleville, Westland and Redford from the district and larding it up with some trashy GOP areas from central and eastern Oakland County. The district's PVI went from an R+1 to an R+4 overnight. And where the old boundaries gave Obama an 11 point win, under the new boundaries he would have only won 50-48% against McCain. In 2012 he lost the district 52-47%. And a tea bagging Reindeer rancher and crooked developer, Kerry Bentivolio, was elected 51-44%, primarily because Steve Israel hates Muslims and refused to allow the DCCC to give any assistance whatsoever to Dr. Syed Taj, the Democratic candidate.

Meanwhile, the Michigan and the Beltway Republican establishments are embarrassed as hell to have a babbling imbecile like Bentivolio representing the district and they have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other Republican Party subsidiaries helping to finance a nasty primary by the gentleman described in the ad above, of whom we've written before. Trott is very wealthy-- foreclosing and evicting pay well apparently-- and has already raised $1,099,084 to Bentivolio's $337,190. As of December 31, Bentivolio had $130,133 cash on hand and Trott was already sitting on $710,729. There are also two weak Democrats in the race, Bobby McKenzie (a national security state hack recruited by Steve Israel), who raised $106,826 and Dr. Anil Kumar, who raised $318,780.

Like I said above, the ad is being run by Freedom's Defense Fund, a right-wing crackpot outfit, which spent last cycle on behalf of two far right extremists, Louie Gohmert and Trent Franks. They backed Santorum for president. This year they've only spent on Steve Lonegan in New Jersey and on Bentivolio. There other candidates this year are Annette Bosworth, the lunatic fringe candidate opposing Republican Mike Rounds in South Dakota; Paul Broun in Georgia; Ryan Zinke the teabagger, in the Montana House race; Gohmert again (who has no viable opponent); and Tom Emmer, the most extreme of the 4 Republicans hoping to replace and replicate Michele Bachmann in MN-06.

So far and it looks like the ad cost them just under $7,000 to make. They bought $15,283 worth of TV running between March 12 and March 21, not enough to make any kind of an impression whatsoever. They donated $10,000 directly to Bentivolio. And so far, this cycle they spent $1,233,210 on fundraising… so they are clearly a racket making themselves money by bilking their donors, most of whom are retired seniors. Go Bentivolio! The race in MI-11 is likely to be one of the least relevant races anywhere in America. It should be fun(ny) watching. Unless someone serious jumps in on the Democratic side-- someone like Nancy Skinner, who ran before redistricting in MI-09, a part that is now in MI-11. But could a dream candidate like that actually enter the race? Labor would love it no doubt, but is she too progressive for Wall Street shills like Steve Israel and his cronies who are still pushing that ridiculous former CIA agent who refuses to discuss issues?

2013 in Review -- A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy,* Part 4: A great anniversary approaches!

Plus more "Quote of the Year" nominees

[*TO MEET THE JANITOR OF LUNACY, SEE PART 1]



by Noah

One of the greatest anniversaries in our nation’s history will happen this year. Forty years ago, on August 9, 1974, President Richard Nixon resigned! It was either that or certain removal from office via impeachment, and it was bipartisan. That’s how bad it was. If Nixon wanted to retire with a pension and perks, it was the only way.

The anti-semitism. The racism. The criminality, the paranoia, and the screaming down the halls of the White House. Psychosis. "I am not a crook." Yes you were, Richard, and worse. What a horrific human being! We can be thankful that he is gone, and we can be very thankful that he wasn't the president during the Cuban missile crisis or we wouldn't be here at all.



True story: One day, back in the early '80s, I went to the Fifth Avenue Doubleday record dept. here in NYC. It was on the second-floor mezzanine. When I got there, I immediately saw Tricky Dick at the counter with his daughter and son-in-law Julie and David Eisenhower. No one else was in the department except two very large bodyguards, who always managed to place themselves between me and His Evilness (I discreetly played with that one a bit). Here's the kicker: Nixon was buying blank tape! Tape! The very thing that had sunk him!

There was just one employee, a young kid who was nervous as hell. The kid was so nervous that he dropped all the boxes of cassettes all over the place. Nixon, in an unexpected (by me, at least) display of humanity, said in his distinctive voice, "Ah, that's all right, young man." I will say that other than the irony of Nixon buying tape, I was struck by the fact that he was very charismatic, but then, many psychotic bigots and war criminals are. They always said that Zodiac and Ted Bundy were very charming, and that Adolf dude could sure give a speech!

But there he was, wearing an expensive royal blue overcoat. I wanted to scream, but I knew I’d be thrown over the balcony or something. So all I did was mutter “war criminal” within earshot of one of the bodyguards as I walked out of the store. My desire to purchase anything was gone.

I had seen the man, in person, who, in an act of treason, sabotaged the 1968 Paris peace talks that President Lyndon Johnson was working on to end the Vietnam War. LBJ’s tapes reveal that he knew of the treason that would lead to tens of thousands of addtional American casualties, but he and his VP, Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Party’s 1968 presidential nominee, did nothing. They didn’t want to expose some wire-tapping. Humphrey thought he was going to win anyway, and LBJ was also thinking that America couldn’t handle the knowledge that a presidential candidate was guilty of treason. LBJ was wrong, just as he had been wrong about our ability to deal with the truth of JFK’s murder.

Sleazy cover-up artist Gerald Ford

Not only had the Paris peace talks been wrecked, Nixon -- who said he had a “secret plan” to end the war -- was elected president. Eventually he got some of what was coming to him, but so many got so much that they didn’t deserve. A sleazy cover-up artist named Gerald Ford was handed the presidency, and he in turn pardoned Nixon of any and all crimes, famously saying that no one wants to see the former president in jail. Really?

So many families were destroyed, all because one lunatic had to be president at any cost. I spit on your grave, Dick Nixon.

There’s huge irony to be seen as we look back on the Nixon presidency. The irony lies in the fact that he was a Republican and there is no way he would ever be able to be in today’s Republican Party. Here’s why:

1. Nixon improved Social Security benefits. He increased some taxes on the wealthy, and he also championed finding a way to guarantee a minimum income.

2. Nixon supported a Clean Air Act and affirmative action.

3. Nixon created the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency.

4. Nixon created OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

5. Nixon’s top economic advisor, Herb Stein, is on record as saying, “Probably more new regulation was imposed on the economy during the Nixon Administration than in any other presidency since the New Deal.”

The man had well-documented issues. The tapes and the eyewitness accounts don’t lie, but if not for the complete evil of the treason for which he should have been hanged, or at least jailed, Nixon would be considered a socialist by the lunatics that inhabit the Republican Party today -- not just a liberal, a raving socialist. They would treat him much like they treat President Obama today. That’s a measure of how sociopathic and psychopathic today’s Republicans are. Obama and the Conservadems? They would fit in fine in the Republican Party of the early 1970s. The Janitor of Lunacy is in full force.


Note the blue-penned time and initials from the witness, the bouncing-off-the-walls Nixon's companion of his final days in office, Henry Kissinger.


NEED MORE EVIDENCE OF THE INGRAINED
LUNACY OF REPUBLICANS? HERE ARE SOME
MORE "QUOTE OF THE YEAR" NOMINEES

1. Judge Edith Jones, U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals, Reagan appointee

Sigh, where do the Republicans keep coming up with these troglodytes? Well, in this case, while Judge Jones may “serve” in Louisiana, she’s from the ultimate loonyland, Texas!


“[C]ertain racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime and prone to commit acts of violence.”

And: “Some groups seem to commit more heinous crimes than others.”

Really? Really? If I didn’t know that she had already made it clear that she was talking about African-Americans and Hispanics, I might have thought she was talking about 20th-century Germans, Nixon’s napalm, Stalin’s Russia, 16th-century Spaniards pouring molten gold down the throats of Incans -- or Texans aiming their trucks at Mexicans on their highways, for that matter. Who or what brought this cretin up? And what kind of people invite such a person to speak? This is a judge -- on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, no less? This horror show of a throwback to the Civil War, a Reagan appointee, was even on the short list for promotion to the Supreme Court under both Bushes. Well, no surprise there, is there?

She said this in a talk before the Federalist Society at U. Penn’s law school. I guess she felt comfy as she gazed out into an audience of sheet-wearing Republican morons. What’s next? “Why, I hear them darkies loves pig's feet and fried chicken. And they love our prisons, for the free meals and other free stuff”?

Really, where do they get these people? I guess Judge Judy wouldn’t take the job.

A couple of hundred years ago, people in Europe thought you could tell a person’s criminal proclivities by measuring the size and shape of their skulls. In Republican World, it is still a couple of hundred years ago.


2. John “Where’s My” Boehner, to CBS’s Bob Schieffer


“Well, Bob, we should not be judges on how many laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws that we repeal."

Rrrriiiight, John-boy. Damn all them laws and regulations. They just get in the way of Republican free expression. Now those folks in Florida, they’ve got it right. See a black kid in a hoodie? Blast him! Voting rights? Hah, who needs ‘em? No one important anyway! Employee pensions? Follow the lead of Michigan’s Governor Snyder: Declare the cities bankrupt and steal the workers' pensions and give that money to the corporations! We don’t need no stinking laws. Do the same with Social Security! Obamacare? Why do we want those people to live anyway? They don’t vote for us.

I wonder why.


3. $en. John Cornyn, $enate Republican whip

From a bizarre place called Texas (which translates loosely from the Mexican as “Land of Los Locos”), comes yet another apparently peyote-button-induced word jumble from the $enator. Cornyn seeks to prove that, while Texas has given us straitjacket candidates like Rick “1-2-?” Perry, Louie “The Bestiality Guy” Gohmert, Canadian-born Rafael “Ted” Cruz, and Steve Stockman, the guy who thinks Cornyn is a liberal, nobody does wackobird better than he, his sun-baked self.

Heeeere’s Johnny as he follows the Fox lead in resurrecting ACORN in another deep-digging desperation attempt to destroy Obamacare, orchestrate more deaths by cancer, increase the infant mortality rate, and do all the other fine things on the Big Republican Wish List. They’ve tried everything else except claiming that Obamacare caused Fukushima.


“We’ve already heard some anecdotal reports about Obamacare navigators, including a woman who had an outstanding arrest warrant at the time she was hired, along with former members of an organization known as ACORN . . . . ”
   
Maybe Obama hired that “Cadillac-driving welfare queen” from the mind of Ronnie Reagan too! “Anecdotal reports”? Some guy who knows some guy who knows some guy who got the real story from the Bigfoot family that live in the treehouse in his back yard. Hey, Cornyn, you want true crime? Take a look around you on the $enate floor. While you’re at it, the House of Representatives is just down the hall. You can find someone with a legal problem in any group of size.

You know it’s bad when people reference something they got from Fox “News” as if it were actually factual. Consider the source. We already know what righties think of “community organizers.” They buried three of them in an earthen dam in Mississippi back in 1964.
   

4. Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) and Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI)

I started this post with Dick Nixon so why not end on an impeachment theme too? I’m putting these two together because they’re really just two cheeks of a horse’s ass.

Notice that we have yet another twit from Texas. We'll let him go first.


“If we were to impeach the president tomorrow, you could probably get the votes in the House of Representatives to do it.”

I’m sure Boehner would drink to that, but wouldn’t Ol’ Cheez Doodle Face drink to just about anything?

Now, the guy from Nugentland gets his say. Ain’t free speech grand?


“If I could write that bill and submit it, it would be a dream come true.”

I have to say that if I were a congressman, writing a bill that would create jobs or alleviate poverty and hunger or give people a shot at health care or help children get an education would be my dream come true. I have to admit that I’d also be tempted to write a bill that would send cretins like these two into space -- to one of the big gas giants like Jupiter, where they would be at home. No need to be cruel about it.

And I’m sorry, I don’t really mean to insult horses. That’s just not fair of me. I should have compared these men to cockroaches, the kind that have imbibed too much insecticide and just race around in circles accomplishing nada. If that isn’t an apt metaphor for the current poison-fueled House of Representatives, I don’t know what is.

Oops, there I go again. Sorry, cockroaches.

#

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A PRAYER TO THE JANITOR OF LUNACY*

Part 1: Take a bow, Repugs! (*including Nico's "Janitor of Lunacy") [Monday]

Part 2: Remember when Reagan cut funds for insane asylums? (Storms, guns, bombs, free stuff, and the secret gay life of Obma: Some top Republican lies of 2013) [Tuesday]

Part 3: No Cruz control (Rafael "Ted" Cruz in his own words) [Wednesday]

Part 4: A great anniversary approaches! (Nixon's resignation) (plus more "Quote of the Year nominees") [Thursday]

Part 5: Everyone's a critic, including me -- Some people really try my patience (Bill-O, Howie Kurtz, E. W. Jackson, et al.) [Friday]

Part 6 (and last): In the words of Dan Quayle, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" (Exploiting tragedy for a buck; Miss America's not American?; "Quote of the Year" winner) [Saturday]

And don't forget Noah's recent --
"Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?" [12/22]
"50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles" [12/26]
"A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina" [12/27]

#

Establishment Republicans Move To Take Out Principled Libertarian Justin Amash

The Republican base is restive. They're also dumber than a pile of dog poop. In a recent poll, half the participants were asked if they support Obamacare and the other half if they support the Affordable Care Act. The findings could only surprise someone who considers Tea Party-type Republicans "normal" people: 46% oppose Obamacare while just 37% oppose the ACA." That 9% difference are the hardest core teabaggers. Have you ever gotten into a political discussion with one? Calling them "morons" does a disservice to morons. Every argument comes straight from Hate Talk Radio hosts like Limbaugh, Beck, Savage or Levin-- but filtered through the mind of a parakeet. And most Americans are fed up with them.

As Washington braces for another budget showdown, this time with the threat of defunding the new healthcare law in the mix, the key political force pushing for conservative policies sees diminished popular support. Fewer Americans now describe themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement than did at the height of the movement in 2010, or even at the start of 2012. Today's 22% support nearly matches the record low found two years ago.

In November 2010, days after the Republicans recaptured the majority in the House of Representatives, 32% of Americans pledged support for the Tea Party, or 10 percentage points higher than in the latest survey, conducted Sept. 5-8. Opponents of the Tea Party now outnumber supporters 27% to 22%.

...The poll suggests that the partnership between the Tea Party and the Republican Party may be waning. Although some of the Tea Party's most visible representatives in politics today are associated with the Republican Party, and while rank-and-file Republicans are more likely to call themselves supporters than opponents of the Tea Party movement-- a far greater number identify as neither... Similarly, just as Republicans are mixed in their views of the Tea Party, Tea Party supporters themselves have mixed views about the Republican Party: 55% hold a favorable view of it and 43% an unfavorable view.

...[W]hile Tea Party supporters and activists may not be fully satisfied with the GOP, they feel just as negatively as Republicans do about the Democratic Party, indicating they have little alternative in national elections. However, their frustration with the GOP could result in more Tea Party-backed conservative challenges to Republican incumbents who don't embrace Tea Party principles.

Last month we saw how the Republican Party Establishment in Michigan had decided to try to oust deranged teabagger Kerry Bentivolio with rich foreclosure and eviction specialist David Trott. Bentivolio is a fool and a clown and, other than a few Hate Talk Radio zombies, no one will care about the intra-party coup against him. West of his district, however, the GOP Establishment is trying a similar move against Justin Amash, more a libertarian than a teabagger-- and a smart, principled guy, not a brain-dead freak like Bentivolio. And people will care-- a lot.

[R]ising libertarian star Amash faces a likely challenge from another businessman, Brian Ellis. Like Bentivolio, Amash is short on funds, with just $164,000 in his account.

Ellis, meanwhile, has been promised all the money he’ll need from “a group of people who can give at robust levels,” according to one prominent west Michigan executive. Translation: The leading business and political names in Grand Rapids are backing Ellis’ bid, which he’s expected to announce formally next month.

What these two races have in common is Republican incumbents who are out of sync with their districts; they’re both more radical than their traditionally conservative constituents.

“It’s an early symbol of things to come, as party regulars worry about the effectivenss of these tea party incumbents and their ability to defend their seats from Democrats,” says Saul Anuzis, former Michigan state GOP chair.

Amash is a Ron Paul devotee, an isolationist and an ideological purist. He voted no on the Keystone Pipeline and refused to support a resolution condemning Iran. After he voted against House Speaker John Boehner last winter, he was hauled to the woodshed by some of the most influential Republicans in his district. It didn’t do much good.

Grand Rapids is the very symbol of button-down Republicanism. Amash’s anti-government “vote no” fervor doesn’t play as well there as it does in national libertarian circles, where the congressman is hailed as the heir apparent to the retired Rep. Paul.

Just over a year ago, we looked at Amash and looked at the conservative corporate shill the Democratic Party has put up against him, Steve Pestka, and decided Amash was the better alternative. Amash is still consumed with Republican greed and selfishness and votes wrong on most roll calls, but he's excellent on issues of national security and privacy protection and this year he's voted better-- on crucial roll calls-- than 10 conservative Democrats: Kyrsten Sinema (New Dem-AZ), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Pete Gallego (New Dem/Blue Dog-TX), Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Sean Patrick Maloney (New Dem-NY), Mike McIntyre (New Dem/Blue Dog-NC), Bill Owens (New Dem-NY), Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ), Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT) and John Barrow (New Dem/Blue Dog-GA). This year, Barrow's ProgressivePunch score is 21.70 and Amash's is 40.57-- almost TWICE as good.

It should go without saying the the stumbling, bumbling head of the DCCC, Steve Israel, has failed to recruit a Democrat to run in either district, despite the fact that Obama beat McCain in both districts in 2008.

Right Wing Grifters Are Tapping Into Manufactured GOP Rage Over "Benghazi" To Raise Money For Themselves-- And "Fire" Boehner

"Benghazi" is a Republican Party cudgel, albeit a flimsy one, to use as an anti-Hillary weapon in 2016. Normal people don't pay it much heed but it motivates the far right conspiracy theory fringe who get the bulk of their information from Hate Talk Radio and Fox. And that group has so bought into it that there is now serious blowback against Republicans for not "doing something about Benghazi." This is what happens when children play with matches.

The latest child to get burned dies his hair, employees a discreet plastic surgeon and doesn't look nearly his 63 years. John Boehner is the target of a shady extremist group with their own hyperbolic little super PAC, Revive America. Last cycle the PAC-- apparently typical right-wing grifters fleecing the flock, raised a total of $156,919. The founder and "president" is Bob Adams, a former ALEC advisor who worked for Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign and is trying to get elected to something in West Virginia. The PAC didn't contribute anything to any candidates and the only expenditure that didn't go to themselves was a $20,000 I.E. on behalf of a failed GOP primary candidate for senator in New York, Robert Turner. Last year their only really big donor was a sleazy outfit in Centreville, Virginia, Freeeatscom, Inc ($17,750), the country's most pernicious push-poll and robocall company. Another big donor ($1,000) was reindeer rancher and Santa Claus actor Kerry Bentivolio, now a Michigan congressman.

So far this year, the PAC has raised $11,777, most of it from 3 donors, Robert Rogers, a retired man in Seattle, Gregory McNece in Davis, California and Shirley Xavier in Denver. And this year their big initiative is to "fire" Boehner-- or at least to get people to sign a petition that seeks to oust him for his refusal to appoint a special committee to investigate "Benghazi." They have a radio ad running on fringe Hate Talk shows.

"We need urgent action today by thousands of Americans to fire John Boehner," the ad's narrator says. "Speaker Boehner is personally blocking a special committee to expose the truth about the 911 Benghazi terror attack. It's just enough to make you sick."

The groups says it's "tested" its ad this week on Fox News, Glenn Beck's "The Blaze" program and Mark Levin’s radio show.

"Until Boehner is removed, the Benghazi committee will not be formed," Bob Adams, the head of the PAC, said Friday night in a statement.

Boehner has resisted the calls for a special committee, arguing that the issue can be handled by the existing committees of jurisdiction.

But the pressure is mounting on him to reconsider. More than 170 House Republicans have endorsed the creation of a special panel to investigate the Benghazi tragedy-- an idea first championed by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.)-- arguing that an examination by the normal oversight panels are not enough.

On Wednesday, which marked the one-year anniversary of the attack, Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.) penned a letter to Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) arguing that the families of the four victims-- including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens-- "deserve to know what happened."

"Five committees have conducted investigations, as well as the State Department, but still no one has been held accountable for this attack," Fitzpatrick wrote. "The terrorists remain at-large; and the bureaucrats who fumbled the response remain at their posts."

...Revive America USA, meanwhile, is using their "fire Boehner" drive as a fundraiser.

"There is no limit to what you can donate," Friday's email reminds readers. "Revive America PAC can accept unlimited individual and corporate contributions."