In a unanimous 10-0 vote—that’s all five Democrats joining in too—the Office of Congressional Ethics delivered a potentially fatal body blow to Rep Shelley Berkley that may have unceremoniously ended her always tepid run for US Senator from Nevada.

<–Shelley Berkley is many things but she doesn’t rise to the level of the US House’s most corrupt member, Charles Rangel of New York whose corruptions and couldn’t-care-any-less voters have protected him for over 4o years!!!

Rochelle-y has quite a way to go to reach his level of magnificent corruption!!!

She probably can’t politically survive the now full House Ethics Committee probe (she’s no Charles Rangel!)—the very first member this current Congressional panel will fully probe—much less the cascade of negative ads to come which she herself invited.

<–The shooting star that has always been Shelley Berkley has now entered the atmosphere and is burning from friction as bright as ever as she falls to earth soon to become mere clinkers of dust and debris on the desert floor once she hits bottom this fall!

Few saw her political career ending in quite this way and only she can save it now.

Never once during her self-described selfless crusade to help kidney patients at UMC did she ever mention that she and her spouse were to have also benefitted greatly—and quite handsomely—from her use and abuse of power.  Had she fully disclosed every step of the way, she wouldn’t be where she is today.

This was long before the John Ensign meltdown and during a chaotic time at UMC that saw it end its Oncology efforts for local cancer patients but inexplicably keeping its kidney dialysis on-site for illegal aliens stealing services from our public hospital instead of moving those efforts off-site to another location so as to block this nearly 1 million per year theft of care from taxpayers.

It wasn’t just the Republicans who pushed the probe either, but scores of very angry families who watched Shelley Berkley openly favor illegal aliens stealing dialysis over local taxpayers in need of cancer treatments, all without so much as an afterthought from her.

The oddest of circumstances given that many in Shelley Berkley’s family died too young of various cancers including her own mother in 2003.

<–Way, way back in the day when she was still Rochelle Levine, Shelley Berkley had a big honkin’ afro and looked like Pam Grier and Dr Angela Davis before she went for the bald Communist chick look!

Back in 2003, she still possessed and publicly maintained a touch of the irascible old Rochelle Levine only to see the old Ms Levine die on the vine soon after too.

Those were heady days for Shelley Berkley too; she was Congresswoman for life enjoying Dr Larry’s millions while living in great luxury in one of the valley’s exclusive enclaves.  Dr Larry Lehrner—in return for the great graft gifts his wife was freely providing—held his nose and even changed his voter registration to Democrat despite being a lifelong Republican even for years after they had married in 1999.

‘Where much is given, much,much more was expected’, may be her political epitaph now.

Several people angrily popped in back then and the papers did some stories and today, illegal aliens are still stealing kidney dialysis treatment from us at UMC, Dr and Mrs Lehrner are substantially wealthier because of   her graft inducing advocacy for her husband’s practice, and a number of people died—perhaps too early—as UMC exited Oncology for a long while so that Shelley and Larry could have even more money for themselves.

Fair or not, that’s exactly how things look to regular non-political people and perceptions are people’s reality.

<–Shelley Berkley’s conducts then were peculiar even by Nevada’s lack of any kind of standards and many openly speculated then that there was a ‘dependency issue’ regarding the severe osteoporosis she suffers. 

People thought she looked ‘wigged-out’, and sounded ‘loopy’ during the exact time her All Larry, All Day Enrichment Program was in full swing!

Maybe she thought she was dying at the time too and wanted to provide even more for her family though they already had more than what anyone could spend in a normal lifetime.

And when John Ensign imploded over his extra-marital affair, the political winds blew her into position to seek his seat and seemed outlandish—even by Nevada’s outlandishness—given that everyone in the state knew and smelled the odors of her political misconducts two years prior.

She had to have known her fortunes would change with the US House changing in 2010, but she never gave a firm no about running for senate and scared off Catherine Cortez Masto who Harry Reid Inc wanted to run against Dean Heller.  

<–She had to have known the Republicans would exploit the gifts she had freely given to them too and that Harry Reid would provide to them the knives for insertion into her back for daring to defy him too!

I did the best that I could to talk Shelley Berkley out of running in many humorous and serious blurbs here and in person.  I played, I teased, I joked, I cajoled, but she chose to run abandoning the House Ways and Means Committee seat that benefits Nevada’s industries, perhaps defiantly now that I think about it.

Harry Reid openly supporting Catherine had to have stung her even though Shelley and Harry have always hated each other despite the public Hollywood air-kisses each gives to the other.  He detests her star power and fierce affections she engenders from partisans, and she hates his dark, racist, manipulative, and misogynistic ways.

Each is the antithesis of the other with absolutely nothing in common besides their party affiliation and state of residence.

What’s chilling and inexplicable about what Shelley Berkley did to enrich she and her husband was that this was all so avoidable had she simply disclosed every step of the way that her family’s bottom-line stood to gain substantially by all of her official actions.  There’s no evidence whatsoever that Shelley Berkley—a lawyer—ever bothered to seek the advice and consent of her House leadership or their counsel, that she ever bothered to run it by her Committee chairs or their counsel either, that she spoke with or sought opinions of anyone…other than Dr Larry Lehrner.

<–Nevada’s Grumpy Grandpa is a truly evil man and his DNA and fingerprints are all over Shelley Berkley’s troubles and she knows it!!!

That’s quite astonishing!  How could such a smart woman act so stupidly?  These are the reasons why the panel’s vote was unanimous—Shelley Berkley gave no one from her own party any wiggle room at all—at least that’s how it may seem to the untrained, inexperienced political eye.

Shelley Berkley would have survived with a likely reprimand had she stayed put in the US House and that begs the questions of just how far did Harry Reid go to ensure that Shelley Berkley would get publicly slapped down just as the final sprint to November began?

It’s all mighty tidy for Harry Reid, isn’t it? 

<–Sister  Mary Catherine Cortez Masto was so frightened by the giant egos of Harry and Shelley battling it out that she soiled her habit!  I’m gonna have to go to confession for this one, I think!

What a great way for him to return the favor of Shelley taking over NVDEMS and its apparatus.  What a special return favor for her daring to not follow his orders, thus scaring Sister Mary Catherine Cortez Masto so much, she peed in her pants out of fear getting between these two gigantic egos.

One dying before the other was the only way this was going to go in Shelley Berkley’s favor once she dared to publicly cross Harry Reid and decided to challenge Dean Heller.

Harry Reid holds considerable sway over the Dem US Senators from Ohio and New York who in turn hold considerable sway over their House colleagues on the Ethics Committee who voted against Shelley Berkley.

Mighty tidy indeed! 

Harry Reid’s fingerprints and DNA are on everything and he currently smells like the rotted carcass he has always been when crossed.  To believe that Harry Reid is as pure as the driven snow here is to believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy too and WatchdogWag readers are far too smart a group not to know this a fact of political life here.

<–Harry Reid preferring a ‘Jewess’ from New York over a fellow Mormon isn’t even allowed to be considered here folks!

Shelley Berkley may survive if she does what no politician ever seems capable of doing:  Simply saying ‘I’m sorry, I should have been more candid and disclosed more than I did which was not at all.’  She may lose a few votes that were never hers to begin with, but it will rally her dispirited troops and throngs of supporters to have her back when she needs it the most and when they need something to get motivated about given Obama’s likely loss in Nevada and perhaps nationally.

She’ll also need to fire the in-way-over-her-head Jessica Mackler immediately and bring back those she knows and trusts to go to battle for and with her who are eagerly waiting in the wings to come back.

Then again, Shelley Berkley may not give a damn either and instead has her eyes focused on even more money chairing one of the Gaming giants or the LVCVA or something even more lucrative than the US Congress where she broke no laws because Congress exempts themselves from the laws we mere mortals must follow.

<–My guess today would be that Shelley Berkley fights like a wet cat, tosses all of the no-talents off of her current team, grabs the reins of her own campaign, and battles until she collapses onto a pile of cow manure in some alfalfa field up north without so much as a smudge on her sparkly shoes!

This isn’t Shelley vs Dean anymore and it may have never been that; its Shelley vs Harry and it’s in her hands now how this will play out this fall.

Michael Zahara
7/12/2012
www.WatchdogWag.com