Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

I thought I'd offer tonight's meme because I think it's good to know a little something about the cretins who vote to take away a woman's right to choose. Tennessee's Rep. Scott DesJarlais is your classic, typical hypocritical republican these days. We've all heard of Missouri's Todd Aiken, the "If it's a legitimate rape" guy, a former member of the House Of Representatives that the Republican Party proudly put up as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2012. And, Alabama seems to have a whole mob of state legislators who, judging by their legislative handiwork, don't think that incest and rape are necessarily bad things. Some of these knuckle-draggers don't even seem to have much of an understanding of how babies even happen, but, keep in mind that people actually voted for these people because they feel they represent what they think about these things. We now even have another jackass in Missouri who has just introduced the concept of "consensual rape" to the world. Here he is. Here's Missouri Republican State Rep Barry Hovis, a former law enforcement official, as he spoke during the debate on his state's abortion ban-

Most of my rapes were not the gentleman jumping out of the bushes that nobody had ever met. That was one or two times out of 100. Most of them were date rapes or consensual rapes.

"Gentlemen" rapists? "Consensual rapes?" "My rapes?" Hovis and his republican defenders now claim that he "misspoke" but who, short of meth heads and stroke victims, misspeaks three times in such a short statement?

But, hey, let's not forget poor ol' Scott DesJarlais! He's the star of this meme. Although the news about him is a bit old, I'd feel bad for him if he was forgotten in all of the current examples of Republikookery. You can see all you really need to know about this assclown above, but here's a few more details: He's a doctor. And, surprise, surprise, he's also a Christian. According to his divorce papers, his affairs included 3 co-workers, 2 patients, and (say no more!) a drug representative. Not to worry, though, DesJarlais tells people that "God has forgiven him." Whew! That's a good thing! I mean ya just can't imagine those wacko voters in Tennessee voting for him if God hadn't forgiven him. All of this leaves me with only one question and I ask it not out of jealousy but incredulity: How is it possible that at least six women wanted to have sex with this prime example of human physical (That smile reminds me of Eric Trump) and mental deformity? Maybe it's all some sort of Tennessee thing. I guess if they think he'd be good enough to vote for, then he's appealing enough to fuck. it's all about low local standards.

What Right Wing Former Wrestling Coach Jim Jordan Is Up To Now

UPDATE: After being turned down flat and mocked from every direction they turned yesterday, Jordan and Meadows threw up their hands, raised the white flag and buried their own absurd, self-serving resolution to impeach Rod Rosenstein. Now they're going to try to get a vote holding the Department of Justice in contempt.


Randy @IronStache Bryce frightened Paul Ryan out of his reelection plans and he's retiring from Congress instead. But Ryan is working hard now to make sure his party isn't obliterated in November. It's no longer a question of keeping power in the House-- that's long-- but of how many dozens of seats the GOP is going to kiss goodbye. Trump is an albatross and the Republican generic poll numbers are murderous. This week Ryan was looking at numbers for his own state where just 36% of likely voters say Trump is doing a good job-- the same number who say that in Michigan, two states that the Kremlin stole for Trump in 2016.

Ryan picked a clone (a corporate lawyer who used to be his driver) to try to defend the seat against Bryce. Ryan's superPAC, Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), isn't getting anywhere and instead is spending money to push an unelectable minor candidate against Bryce, last week by releasing a fake poll pretending the Democratic primary was tied, and this week was in the field with a push poll promoting the weak Democratic candidate who backed Hillary in a district that was firmly in Bernie's corner.

Meanwhile, Ryan is trying to contrast the mainstream of the House GOP with the extremists. He's using the extremists' latest call to impeach Rod Rosenstein to do that. One top GOP staffer told me that the 11 Republicans behind the move are "mostly seen as psychos... and pests." The leader of the pack is Ohio Republican Jim Jordan who's embroiled in 2 cases, spanning decades in which he protected child molesters who were having their way with under-age boys under his care. So far Jordan himself hasn't been accused of sexual relations with under-aged boys but almost a dozen men who were on a wrestling teach he coached have come forward to say he protected the man who was molesting them. In the other case, his staffer, Wes Goodman, was eventually forced to resign from the Ohio state House when it came out, so to speak, that he was having sex with young conservative boys who were impressed with his closeness to Jordan.

When he went on the attack against Rosenstein-- nothing more than a protected way to obstruct justice and derail the Mueller investigation-- Jordan complained about evidence being withheld. "Enough is enough," he whined. "It’s time to hold Mr. Rosenstein accountable for blocking Congress’s constitutional oversight role."

The same GOP House staffer who told me the whole bunch of them are considered "psychos" and "pests," also suggested I look into who exactly was working with Jordan on this. Scott Desjarlaid, a Tennessee doctor who used to drug his female patients and have sex with them when they were semi-conscious, was another misfit behind the push to destroy Rosenstein. "Given many opportunities to cooperate with Congress," he said in a statement, "Rod Rosenstein has demonstrated a chronic inability to answer questions important to our investigation of alleged criminal abuses of intelligence services under the previous administration. Even under subpoena, the Deputy Attorney General has refused to produce necessary documents, because they implicate top Department of Justice and FBI officials, including himself. His own role in fraudulent warrants and wiretapping the President’s campaign is a major conflict of interest that renders him unfit to oversee the Special Counsel or DOJ. Removing Mr. Rosenstein from office is the only option left to Congress."

Ryan made light of their caterwauling by noting to the media that Rosenstein's behavior doesn't rise to the status of a "high crime or misdemeanor," and is basically laughing at them. He told reporters he has no intention of allowing a vote on it. Jordan-- the ex-wrestling coach (like Denny Hastert-- who was eventually put in prison for raping underage boys after denying it for decades, as Jordan has so far)-- is running for the top Republican in the House. In fact, many Republicans say this unserious attempt to impeach Rosenstein-- if they really wanted to do it, it would have been a "privileged motion"-- accomplishes 2 things for Jordan:

1- diverts attention away from his sex scandal
2- helps him promote his bid to replace Ryan in the leadership

One member of Ryan's team, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), who would like to run for Ryan's job himself but is afraid he won't be able to overcome Kevin McCathy, is gambling on backing the far right extremists on this one. He announced yesterday that he supports Jordan and Meadows on impeaching Rosenstein.

Wrestlin' by Chip Proser

Yesterday, in a column in the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin came right to the point-- the top take-away from all this is that The GOP Isn't Fit To Govern "[T]here has been," she reminds her readers, "no finding that Rosenstein is in contempt of Congress or that he has broken any regulation or law. The impeachment resolution is pure piffle. (“A Justice Department official said Wednesday that only one committee request has been formally denied-- a demand to see the unredacted Justice Department memo detailing which Trump associates are under investigation by Mueller and for which potential crimes. Officials declined that request because, they said, providing it could compromise ongoing investigations.”) Not even House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) thinks that the resolution has merit."

Indeed, former Justice Department officials and legal scholars have fretted that Rosenstein has been too accommodating to congressional requests. “The ironic thing about this push is that Rosenstein has done far more to satisfy what are really inappropriate requests from House Republicans than DOJ has ever done before,” former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller says. “It’s been clear from the beginning that Meadows and company weren’t interested in anything other than shutting down the Mueller investigation, and this ridiculous move makes it even more obvious.”

The damage here is being done not by Rosenstein, but by irresponsible, hyper-partisan congressmen. Former White House ethics counsel Norman Eisen and Fred Wertheimer, founder of Democracy 21, recently wrote about the impeachment gambit:

Key House Republicans are abusing their offices and the public trust to blindly provide protection for [President] Trump. They are doing so instead of working to get to the bottom of the worst foreign attack on American elections in our history.

They need to be called on their scandalous efforts to undermine the Mueller investigation and ignore Russia’s cyber invasion of our democracy. A bipartisan outcry greeted Trump’s Helsinki betrayals. We should be hearing protests at least as loud and bipartisan in response to this parallel-- and equally unmerited-- attack on American law enforcement right here at home.

It is not Rosenstein who should be removed from office, but rather, the House Republican members who are obstructing an ongoing investigation of the Republican president and his cronies. While their actions are protected (most likely) under the "speech or debate" clause (preventing criminal prosecution or civil suit for actions that would otherwise be actionable), their pattern of conduct (cooking up a misleading memo about the FISA warrant application for Carter Page’s surveillance, exposing a confidential intelligence source, smearing the FBI) amounts to multiple blatant attempts to thwart an entirely legitimate investigation. If anyone in the White House is conspiring with them to interfere with the investigation, such individuals could be investigated for obstruction of justice.

“This is a cynical, corrupt effort to kneecap the legitimate investigation of Jordan’s and Meadows’s ally, the president,” Eisen tells me. “Their gambit is entirely divorced from the reality of Rosenstein‘s compliance with congressional requests , which has been quite good on his part. For that reason, it is highly likely to fail.” He observes that a similar effort with “the same actors previously tried the same ploy with another set of baseless allegations, against IRS Commissioner [John] Koskinen. They were defeated by an overwhelming bipartisan vote and the same thing will likely happen here.” He concludes, “Unfortunately, real harm will be done to an outstanding public servant and to law enforcement itself in the process. Jordan and Meadows surely know that and are proceeding anyhow to protect the president. What a betrayal of their oaths-- and their country.”

...Ironically, Republicans have been arguing that if Democrats ever get control of Congress, they will tie the place up with bogus impeachment hearings and create gridlock. No, Republicans are doing that all on their own. “It’s a PR stunt that nobody who knows anything about impeachment could take seriously,” says constitutional scholar Larry Tribe. “But it will do great harm anyway by contributing to the degradation of the impeachment power, making it harder to use when it is truly needed to rein in a would be-dictator.” Referencing his book with Joshua Matz, To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment, Tribe tells me this is why he and Matz argue that “casual and frequent impeachment talk can damage the already frayed fabric of our dangerously polarized polity.”

Trust Jim Jordan? by Chip Proser

"Dangerous Woman" Gayle Jordan Defends Constitution In Tennessee!

Back in January Gayle Jordan, a cutting edge candidate for southern Tennessee's 14th senatorial district (including Ardmore, Fayetteville, Lewisburg, Murfreesboro and Shelbyville) penned a guest post for his about her campaign, Running Blue in A Red State. Trump won her district by 50 points... but she explained why she is undaunted by the challenge. This week our old friend Aleurophile follows up for us with a new post contrasting Gayle with her crackpot GOP opponent, Shane Reeves. Please read it through and if it inspires you, please consider contributing to her campaign by tapping on the Blue America state legislative thermometer on the right. Aleurophile is rightfully impressed with Gayle's campaign and, now that she has won her primary, is looking forward to the special election on March 13.

Shane Reeves is her GOP opponent. He touts himself as a successful small businessman and a novice to politics. Well, he inherited his family’s pharmacy business and recently sold it for $66 million. His father was mayor of Murfreesboro, the largest city in the region. In other words, Shane Reeves misrepresents himself rather seriously. That’s the polite way of putting it. Or, maybe like Hope Hicks he tells "little white lies"-- bless his heart (as we say here in the South)!

Reeves also opposes Medicaid expansion for Tennessee, favoring public-private partnerships (see our own Zen Trainer's heart-felt plea for Medicaid expansion-- and opposition to Shane Reeves-- here. And why wouldn’t he? In July 2016, Reeves’s own company, TwelveStone Health Partners, was given $1 million of taxpayers’ hard-earned money in a "reimbursable grant" to fund 200 jobs (so you may reimburse taxpayer money, but you don’t have to? Gee, wonder how that goes?).

Do you like people who hang their clean laundry in public? I kind of don’t like it. 

Whatever happened to the GOP belief in the virtues of a free and competitive market? Didn’t we used to hear an awful lot of Republican bleating about how the Obama Administration was picking winners and losers? This little waltz of corporate welfare was orchestrated by Randy Boyd, currently a candidate for governor and then commissioner of Tennessee Economic and Community Development. After he got the money, Reeves donated $5K to Boyd’s campaign. According to the Tennessee Star article that is my source for all this, the grants are supposed to be given only in exceptional cases and the newspaper could get no comment from Boyd on what made Reeves’s case exceptional. The paper reports, too, that as of September 2017, Reeves was employing only 122 workers, not the 200 he’d contracted to hire.

Punching Nun’s marketing strategy for Shane Reeves’s company TwelveStone Health Partners To promote his company, Reeves has hired a marketing firm called Punching Nun Group, which obligingly places its clients’ strategies online together with clients’ favorable comments. We can see that Reeves whole-heartedly applauds their plan that he use leadership positions in the community to expand so as to better compete with mom-and-pop businesses (if perchance you can’t read the tiny print go here). Or at least that’s what the garbled grammar says to me. So, while Reeves may tout himself as standing up for small businesses, he’s actually in competition with many of them (healthcare is a major economic driver in central Tennessee) and has already shown a predilection for using his political connections to create an unfair advantage for his own business. If he succeeded in helping pass the public-private partnerships he envisions, I wouldn’t want to bet that he’d become poorer as a result.

If that’s not enough, Reeves loves to brag about his “A” rating from the NRA, and sent out this flyer AFTER the Parkland massacre.  Lovely guy, really. And guns for freedom, not hunting. Sounds just a tad militia-y to my ears.

The wheelings and dealings going on behind the sanctimonious facade is all of a piece with Reeves’s adoration of Trump, who he insists holds the same Tennessee values of family, faith, and freedom that he claims are the touchstones of his own moral character.

Hmmm... or is he drawn to Trump, the outrageous bigotted womanizer? Because he sure likes to hang with disgraced and despised Congressman Scott DesJarlais-- and contribute to his coffers. In fact, Reeves has hired DesJarlais’s stepson, Tyler Privette, to work on his campaign. In 2016, Privette served as DesJarlais’s campaign coordinator, so it seems unlikely that he has only a small role on Reeves’s staff.

This cartoon appeared at the time the scandal broke out. DesJarlais did not deny the affairs and ended up paying a fine to the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners for his ethical misconduct.

Personally, if I were Reeves’s campaign manager, I wouldn’t advertise that I drew only a handful of people to an event at which a US Congressman appeared. Just sayin’. 

Remember DesJarlais? He’s the anti-abortion rights arch-conservative family values Christian Republican and doctor who stepped out on his first wife six times including with patients and subordinates and who paid for at least three abortions (details here and here). Hmmm... guess they don’t teach what causes pregnancy in med school anymore.  His defense of the first abortion his first wife had is astonishing: she had a medical condition that made it inadvisable for her to bear children. So even to protect her, he still couldn’t figure out how to prevent her pregnancy? Or, perhaps we should say that the story is not really and truly credible, and DesJarlais is pro-life in DC and pro-choice in Tennessee. Divorce documents from this marriage allege violent behavior by DesJarlais (to some of which he admits) as WaPo reports. DesJarlais’s voting record on domestic violence-- he voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act-- was connected to his past behavior by Democratic opponent Lenda Sherrell. Even Mark Levin called DesJarlais a sleazeball, yet Reeves has contributed $3,000 to DesJarlais and, let’s not forget, hired his stepson.

OK, to summarize: we’ve got a little-white-lie-telling, NRA-touting, Trump mini-me who seems to be positioning himself to use public office for private gain (as I said, Trump mini-me), has kissing-close ties with a disgraced Congressman, and who is doing it all while hiding behind the Bible! Does it get worse? Yes it does!

Tennessee’s Lt. Gov. weighs in, demonizing Gayle Jordan, perhaps in a way that could incite violence against her. I personally will adopt the "Dangerous Woman" tag to go along with "Nasty Woman!"

The Tennessee GOP has launched a campaign slamming Reeves’s opponent, Democrat (and fellow Kossack) Gayle Jordan because she’s an atheist. SHE, we’re meant to believe, is a dangerous woman who’ll undermine traditional Tennessee values!  Given all the above, this is laughable, and it methinks it bears a whiff of eau d’desperation (one could not help but notice, in going through his financials, that Reeves has paid for a poll). Certainly the response from the Twittersphere has been resoundingly pro-Gayle-- and pro-Constitution, I may add-- and several have pledged votes and money to her.  Here's Gayle fabulous response.

And this is where you come in, dear reader! This election in ONE WEEK AWAY-- March 13-- and early voting has already begun (through March 8). Gayle has been running a dynamite campaign, but her opponent is wealthy and she needs our help.

Gayle IS dangerous: she’s accomplished, articulate, compassionate. She’s an Ironman athlete, an attorney, a farmer, a mother of four. Her campaign has gained a lot of steam, so it’s no wonder the GOP is desperate!

Please contribute what you can to Gayle’s campaign. If you’re on Twitter, follow & retweet her to help her get her message out (@Jordan4SenateTN)

Greenbacks needed to flip it blue in Tennessee!

Is Mendacity A Republican Party Core Value?

Every political conservative I ever met was a both a hypocrite and a liar-- by nature. This week we saw the quintessential Republican, Tennessee Congressman Scott DesJarlais (who represents Murfreesboro, Lynchburg, Shelbysville and the suburbs west of Chattanooga), vote against the right of a woman to exercise Choice in her own reproductive health. Only 4 Republicans voted against their heinous bill introduced by closet queen and anti-woman psychopath Trent Franks (R-AZ) but DesJarlais's vote was special. DesJarlais had encouraged his ex-wife to have two abortions and pressured one of his mistresses-- one of several very young patients of his medical practice who he drugged up and raped-- to abort his love child.

But it's on foreign policy that this GOP penchant for shameless, bold-faced lying with such alacrity is most troublesome for the country-- and the world. And they get away with it because their target audience is, by nature, ignorant, self-selected morons who wouldn't know the difference between Paraguay and Laos.

When Reagan ran a brutal primary campaign against President Jerry Ford, he claimed Panamanian military dictator Omar Torrijos, a progressive but anti-Communist authoritarian who worked very closely with the U.S., was a "Marxist" who was grabbing the Panama Canal from the hapless Ford and Kissinger. During the Florida primary Reagan said in Winter Park:

State Department actions for several years now have suggested that they are intimidated by the propaganda of Panama's military dictator, Fidel Castro's good friend General Omar Torrijos. Our State Department apparently believes the hints regularly dispensed by the leftist Torrijos regime that the canal will be sabotaged if we don't hand it over. Our government has maintained a mouse-like silence as criticisms of the giveaway have increased... I don't understand how the State Department can suggest we pay blackmail to this dictator, for blackmail is what it is. When it comes to the Canal, we bought it, we paid for it, it's ours, and we should tell Torrijos and company that we are going to keep it.

But Reagan lost the Republican primary to Ford, and it was Jimmy Carter who sent Ford packing in November. And it was Carter who finished the negotiations Ford had started to hand the Canal and Canal Zone back to Panama. Four years later, Reagan ran against Carter and blasted him for "giving away" the Canal. (Reagan, by the way, had the CIA assassinate Torrijos shortly after he was inaugurated president, not because of Castro or the Canal per se but because the Reaganites believed he was too sympathetic to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas who had recently toppled the fascist Somoza regime the CIA and far right Reaganite elements in the U.S. backed.)

Why bring up Panama-- which the U.S. helped create by using military force against Colombia-- and Reagan now? We're headed into GOP primary election season and this post should serve as a warning in regard to the ceaseless barrage of GOP bullshit headed in our direction about places that most of their base are frightened of and/or know nothing about-- from Libya, Yemen, Iran, Syria, and Iraq to Venezuela, Russia and any other miserable country the candidates can use to frighten paranoid right-wing imbeciles. 

Good example: the line of unadulterated bullshit Rubio and Cruz are feeding hapless GOP audiences about the negotiations with Iran.

Three rebellious foreign policy hawks pushed for a tougher Iran bill. In the end, two of them-- both with 2016 hopes-- gave in to the overwhelming consensus in the chamber.

The Senate easily passed legislation Thursday that hands Congress a formal review of any U.S.-Iran agreement to limit the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for relief from sanctions.

GOP Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and maverick freshman upstart Tom Cotton, had pushed to make the bill stronger. But even though they were denied the chance for votes on their amendments, Rubio and Cruz ultimately agreed with the Senate consensus as the bill passed 98-1, with only Cotton voting against it.

...[I]n the end, Republicans agreed with the bill that provides oversight, more information for lawmakers, and at least an avenue--however unlikely to muster a veto-proof majority-- to try and block the potential agreement that many GOP lawmakers contend will be a bad deal.

All four of the Senate GOP 2016 candidates-- Rubio, Cruz, Rand Paul, and Lindsey Graham-- were cosponsors of the initial version of the bill introduced in late February by Corker and Democrat Robert Menendez, then the Foreign Relations panel's top Democrat.

It seems safe to guess that we're in for endless heaps of Iran campaign bullshit ahead.

DesJarlais Won His Primary By 38 Votes-- But That Hasn't Gotten The DCCC's Attention

Monday morning, Tennessee state Senator Jim Tracy conceded the August 7 Republican primary that had left Scott DesJarlais ahead by by 38 votes; Tracy won't be asking for a recount. So DesJarlais, a doctor whose reputation has been harmed because of a series of scandals involving women patients who he drugged up and had sexual affairs with-- even forcing one to have an abortion (which as a far right Republican zombie he loudly opposes… at least for other women. So the Republicans couldn't quite knock off the wounded and bleeding DesJarlais. Will a Democrat take him to pieces? Steve Israel, chairman of the DCCC, who spends his time collecting money from lobbyists and Big Business special interests while pretending that he's trying to win back the House, has nothing to say about TN-04. In his world that central Tennessee district that stretched from the Nashville suburbs (Rutherford County-- including Smyrna and Murfreesboro-- where 40% of the voters reside) all the way south and east, past Shelbyville and Winchester to the suburbs of Chatanooga.

TN-04 was Democratic territory until the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse saw the defeat of reactionary Democrat Lincoln Davis, first elected in 2002. Davis, an NRA supporter who is vehemently anti-Choice and virulently anti-gay. During the campaign, he bragged out voting with the Republicans against the Affordable Care Act and against the Democrats' energy legislation. He had one of the worst voting records of any Democrat in Congress. So Democratic voters didn't show up at the polls-- and he suffered a humiliating defeat, 57.1% to 38.6%-- after outspending DesJarlais $1,411,746 to $923,280.

Two years later, the DCCC recruited another reactionary, Eric Stewart, a crooked state senator who was later convicted on a theft charge. He was only able to raise $710,407 against DesJarlais' $1,260,459 and DesJarlais beat him 128,500 (56%) to 101,944 (44%), not a prohibitive margin. Apparently it never occurred to Steve Israel to see what would happen if they ran a Democrat with progressive values. Earlier today he sent out a fundraising letter for one of his ghastly conservative candidates: "As Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, my job description is (sorta) simple: Elect Democrats-- ESPECIALLY in the toughest races out there." But, not TN-04.

Even a weak candidate like Stewart was able to win 2 of the district's 16 counties, Van Buren and Warren and hold DesJarlais to a 53-47% margin in mammoth Rutherford. But the DCCC and the Beltway conventional wisdom media types wrote the district off entirely, even as Israel started spending money in much redder, much less likely districts.

This cycle Jim Tracy raised $1,468,783 against DesJarlais, who only managed to bring in $447,015. DesJarlais was forced to spend almost all of it on his 38-vote win. WIth the DCCC ignoring the district and discouraging donors to help Democrat Lenda Sherell, she still managed to out-raise DesJarlais with $470,786. The DCCC and the braying asses in the trade press who belch out their talking points say there is no chance for a Democratic victory in November. "In the current district and political environment, there's not a Democrat alive who could win this race, no matter the GOP nominee. It's not so much redistricting as the visceral dislike of President (Barack) Obama and the national Democratic Party that has gripped rural Tennessee in the last decade."

But Sherrell, 67, says she's run the numbers and can see a path to victory. She said data show that one-third of the voters in the 16-county district vote based on the candidate more than the political party, and 54 percent of the voters are women.

By persuading independent voters, turning out the Democratic base and expanding the electorate through voter registration, Sherrell believes she can win. And while she said she doesn't plan to remind voters of DesJarlais' specific indiscretions-- issues that don't seem to have made a difference in the GOP primary-- she does plan to tell a story about his values-- and hers.

"Frankly, Scott DesJarlais and I are vastly different," she said. "This district deserves someone who is of good moral character, someone who takes an oath and upholds it, someone who you can trust to respect their clients, their colleagues, their co-workers. When I was an auditor and a controller, I was entrusted with multimillion-dollar budgets. For me, it was a sacred trust. This is how I will represent the district. So that's the difference."

Nothing controversial there-- until you examine it through the prism of DesJarlais' past.

A 2001 divorce filing, most of which was released after the 2012 election, showed DesJarlais, a physician who has publicly opposed abortion, urged his former wife to end two pregnancies. He also had affairs with patients and encouraged at least one of them to have an abortion.

Sherrell says she doesn't need to spell out those details because "everybody knows that" by now. But other parties may not show the same restraint. She said her campaign has been in regular contact with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is "extremely supportive," though it hasn't "sent us a check" yet.

…"They were arguing (during the primary campaign) about who was more conservative and who opposed Common Core first," she said. "That's not germane to how voters make decisions."

At a "listening tour" stop Monday in South Pittsburg, where DesJarlais lives, Sherrell talked to a small but appreciative crowd in terms that wouldn't have been out of place in a speech by a Kennedy in the 1960s: Neighbors helping neighbors. Community members looking out for one another.

"When we see a need in our communities, we don't sit back and complain," she said to the leaders of EYES (Educating Youth Ensures Success), an after-school program at a low-slung building in a park where dope dealers used to reign. "We step up."

That kind of appeal to community good will, to brothers helping brothers, could propel Sherrell to victory, supporters say. Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, a Democrat who represented South Pittsburg and Marion County for five years in the Tennessee Senate, came to the event to see old friends and endorse Sherrell, who volunteered on both of Obama's presidential campaigns.

Berke said Sherrell represents the small-town, neighborly qualities the area is all about.

"We want someone in Congress who's going to fight for those values," he said. "The best of what I see in Marion County is also what Lenda has to offer."

DCCC… crickets. And Nancy Pelosi has still not fired Steve Israel.

Democrats Are Unprepared For A Rare Opportunity To Win A Senate Seat In Tennessee

Anti-immigrant Know Nothing Joe Carr (R)

Tennessee's congressional districts are so gerrymandered that Democrats can only win in the state's two districts that are primarily in big cities, Nashville and Memphis. And in Nashville, the Democratic incumbent, Jim Cooper, is a conservative corporate-friendly Blue Dog who votes with the GOP very frequently. Statewide, it's not as clear cut, although the state has trended red in recent years. Democrats lost every presidential race in Tennessee after Bill Clinton's narrow 48-46% win in 1996. And last year, Obama did worst of all, failing to even break 40%-- down 3% since his 2008 drubbing there by McCain.

In 2012 Republican Bob Corker didn't have a legitimate Democratic opponent and trounced right-wing psychopath, Mark Clayton, 64.9- 30.4%, who ran as a Democrat without the party's backing. When Corker first ran, in 2006, in a Democratic year, he beat another conservative Democrat, corrupt Wall Street shill Harold Ford (who scored nearly 48%). The state's senior senator, Lamar Alexander, a former governor and U.S. Secretary of Education, ran for the Senate when Fred Thompson retired in 2002. The far right opposed him in the primary but he narrowly beat lunatic fringe congressman Ed Bryant and then Democratic Congressman Bob Clement 54-44% in the general. In 2008, he trounced Democrat Bob Tuke, 67.3-32.6%.

The far right of his own party is still after his scalp and teabaggers are howling for his blood again. A couple dozen teabagger groups signed a letter to him this month demanding he retire or be put to the sword face a primary.

During your tenure in the Senate we have no doubt that you voted in a way which you felt was appropriate. Unfortunately, our great nation can no longer afford compromise and bipartisanship, two traits for which you have become famous. America faces serious challenges and needs policymakers who will defend conservative values, not work with those who are actively undermining those values. Quite honestly, your voting record shows that you do not represent the conservative values that we hold dear and the votes you have cast as Senator are intolerable to us. Furthermore we have serious doubts about your ability to fix our problems since you have played such a significant role in creating them.

The Little Plaid Book you authored contains very sage advice on politics. Rule #297 is especially important because you advise anyone running for office to “Serve two terms, then get out.” Are you willing to follow your own advice, or will you fall into the mire of hypocrisy?

As you are likely aware, there have been polls conducted that show your vulnerability. While no viable contender has yet emerged, it is becoming more probable with each passing day that one will rise to the challenge. When a serious contender eventually does enter the race, the moment their fundraising capability makes them a viable candidate, your re-election is in serious jeopardy.

Therefore, we urge you to conclude your long and notable career by retiring with dignity instead of fighting against a serious conservative primary challenger who would expose to all Tennessee voters the actual history of your voting record.

Sincerely,

Sevier County Tea Party
Tea Party of Lincoln County
Gibson County Patriots
Benton County Tea Party
Carroll County Tea Party
Jackson Madison County Tea Party
Dickson County Tea Party / 912 Project
Obion County Tea Party
Stewart County Tea Party
Tennesseans for Liberty (Madison County)
Volunteers for Freedom (Henry County)
We the People (Tipton County)
Rutherford County Tea Party
TN 9-12 Project
Caney Branch Tea Party
TN Republican Assembly
Smoky Mountain Tea Party Patriots (Blount Co)
McMinn County TEA Party
North Sumner Tea Party
Tennessee 8th District Tea Party Coalition

And the candidate they had in mind, right-wing extremist Joe Carr, started leaking the word that he's in on Monday and then made the announcement Tuesday on Ralph Bristol's WTN-FM show that he's given up his bid to ouster Scott DesJarlais and that Alexander is his target instead.

Carr was unable to raise much money against DesJarlais but he's hoping that national teabagger groups hate Alexander enough to finance his primary. He's best known in Tennessee for being a vicious anti-Hispanic bigot and a total NRA shill.

Alexander had a competent and appealing response out yesterday in the Tennessean. But if a clownish sociopath like Carr wins the primary anyway, it's not likely that many independents-- and even some mainstream Republicans-- will vote for him. That opens the door for a Democrat. But what Democrat? The DSCC doesn't have anyone yet and local grassroots Democrats know who they want-- Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke-- but fear he won't do it. Berke was a popular state senator who was just elected to be Chattanooga's mayor a few months ago. He's probably the only plausible Democrat in the state who could take the seat. I wonder if Harry Reid has called him. I bet not.

And so what if he was bad at spelling in school? Tennesseans aren't hiring him to win spelling bees; they want someone to turn back the hands of time and keep progressive and change from ever darkening their doorsteps. But he should at least know how the spell the office he's running for, no?

The Lamest Ducks In The House-- A Beltway-Eyed View

Accidental Congressman Gary Miller, California's Confederate sympathizer

This week, Roll Call points to California Republican Gary Miller and Tennessee date rape drug doctor Scott DesJarlais as being the two incumbents most likely to lose their seats in 2014. Close behind are detestable Blue Dog reactionaries Jim Matheson (UT) and Mike McIntyre (NC), New Dem Ron Barber (AZ) and GOP fringe loon Mike Coffman (CO). The retirements of these four characters by their constituents who be steps in the right direction for making Capitol Hill a better place-- even if we would need 2-300 retirements like this for it to actually make Congress function on behalf of the American people.

Gary Miller, of these four, is the most likely to be working as a lobbyist after 2014. He is an accidental congressman-- as well as an extremist crackpot, a crook and a confederate Civil War reenactor. So how did Miller come to represent a district, CA-31, where Romney only managed to get 40.6% of the vote? The district, which includes Upland, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, Colton, Redlands, Loma Linda and Rialto, is a minority majority district (44% Hispanic and 11% African American) and should have gone to a Democrat in 2012. The DCCC and California Democratic Party botched it up and 4 Democratic contenders in the open primary split the vote so badly that two Republicans, Miller, who represented a neighboring district previously, and state Senator Bob Dutton wound up with the most votes and went on to the general election. Redlands Mayor Peter Aguilar, the heavy favorite, didn't get a chance to compete in the general, where Miller beat Dutton 82,212 (55%) to 66,603 (45%).

So Aguilar is running again and it should be a slam dunk, right? Sure... because everything in politics goes just as its planned. Meet defeated Blue Dog Joe Baca, who was hounded out of office in 2012 by Mike Bloomberg. Baca is an NRA stalwart and Bloomfield, in effect, bought the seat for another conservative Democrat-- although an anti-NRA one-- then state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod. Her voting record, in terms of progressive issues, has been at least as bad as Baca's, if not worse. And now Baca says he wants to run in the open primary against Aguilar and Miller. Oh, dandy.

DesJarlais, a physician who was having sex with multiple patients-- some who he gave drugs and one who he encouraged to get an abortion-- is widely viewed as an embarrassment and he's likely to lose a primary... unless there are multiple candidates. State Reps Joe Carr and Kevin Brooks will probably run but right now state Senator Jim Tracy is the favorite and he outraised DesJarlais 4 to 1 this quarter. Obama won just under a third of the district in 2012, down from 35.8% in 2008 and TN-04 (Murfreesboro, Shelbyville, Winchester, Cleveland and Smyrna) is not a good fit for Democrats. In 2012 DesJarlais-- even under the cloud of scandal-- beat Democrat state Sen. Eric Stewart 128,500 (56%) to 101,944 (44%). So far this year, no Democrat has emerged as a candidate. So this will just be replacing one wingnut with another wingnut.

Ron Barber, a right-wing Democrat, has a pitiful voting record that is sure to deflate Democratic voters. He's foolishly banking on attracting Republicans with his Republican voting record, but the GOP candidate, Martha McSally, he just managed to beat by a nose (143,173- 141,771) in 2012 is probably running again-- and this time Obama won't be on the ticket to draw Democrats to the polls.

Mike Coffman also just scraped by in 2012 (47.8% to 45.8%) but this year he'll be facing popular former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff in a blue-leaning district. (Obama won CO-06-- which includes Littleton and Centennial south of Denver, Aurora east of Denver and Brighton north of Denver-- 51.6%- 46.5%.) The DCCC is all in on Romanoff and this is considered a "must win" top priority race for them.

As for the two nearly extinct Blue Dogs, this is what Stuart Rothenberg had to say in his report for Roll Call:

Two incumbents who were almost given up for dead (politically, that is) last cycle but survived-- Democratic Reps. Jim Matheson of Utah and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina-- are likely to face stiff challenges again. Either or both could move to the top of the vulnerability list next year.

Democratic partisans may pooh-pooh the danger to both incumbents in 2014, noting that we have heard reports of their problems before and saying that if the two Democratic congressmen won with an unpopular (in their districts) president on the ballot, they certainly can win again against the same opponents in 2014.

Republicans can counter that unsuccessful 2012 Utah Republican nominee Mia Love didn’t run nearly as good a race as GOP strategists had hoped, and she’ll likely have a better campaign-- and be a better candidate-- in a rerun.

The same, of course, could hold for the unsuccessful GOP nominee against McIntyre last year, David Rouzer. Rouzer, then a member of the state Senate, lost to McIntyre by a mere 654 votes in 2012.

Both McIntyre and Matheson vote with the Republicans on crucial issues as a default position. Matheson has the single worst voting record of any Democrat in Congress this year-- a ProgressivePunch score of 21.05, tied with right-wing GOP freaks like Matt Salmon (R-AZ) and Tom McClintock (R-CA) and worse than 14 other Republicans, including... crackpots Louie Gohmert (TX) and Phil Gingrey (GA) and Staten Island Mafia figure Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm! McIntyre scores a 38.89, also worse than Grimm! The sooner these two are gone from the Democratic House caucus, the better off the Democrats will be.