The First Ass Clown Award of 2015

You will recall, Dear Readers, that I decided last year to go from naming a single Ass Clown of the Month to naming an awardee every other week. The number of potential awardees in the running, and the need to keep the award as topical and current as possible led me to this decision. The problem, of course, is what to call the award. "Ass Clown of the Month" or "Ass Clown of the Week" has a nice symmetry to it, but what do I call an award presented every two weeks? "Ass Clown of the Alternate Weeks" doesn't sound very well, nor does "Biweekly Ass Clown." As a result, I've decided to simply refer to the dishonoree as the "Ass Clown." If nothing else, it'll keep things simple so we don't confuse Mike.

And so it is that I announce, with appropriate fanfare, the first Ass Clown for 2015 ...

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell*

Senator McConnell exceeded even his own extraordinarily high standards of hypocrisy in an Op-Ed article he wrote for CNN this past Wednesday, in which he declared that under the new Republican majority in Congress "... A lot can be achieved if President Obama and his party work with us to advance common-sense jobs ideas for the middle class." This is pretty entertaining rhetoric, coming as it does from the individual who once said that the Republican party's top political priority was ensuring that President Obama would be a one-term president ... not common-sense jobs for the middle class, not health care for the middle class, not national security, but undermining the sitting President.

Here are a few other choice quotes from his article:

"... bipartisan progress can only be achieved if President Obama is interested in it." It wasn't possible over the last two years because Senator McConnell himself said and his party demonstrated that they weren't interested in it themselves.

"The president's supporters are pressing for militancy, not compromise. But they need to understand that democracy isn't about what you can get away with, it's about what you can achieve together." Mr McConnell clearly understands the concept of political militancy, given that the Republican Party has a loud, unruly, and very militant extreme right wing that appears to have no interest in compromise of any sort, and I must have missed all the times that the Republicans worked with President Obama to "achieve (something ... anything) together."

In his first speech to the new Congress, Mr McConnell said that, "... obstruction by the Democratic majority is against the traditions of this body and it needs to end. Because if Democrats truly want to get anything done this year, they're going to have to learn how to work with us." Perhaps the Democrats will learn this lesson, but they surely won't learn it from the example set by the Republicans.

While there is certainly a good deal of blame to share for the dismal record compiled by our elected reprehensives over the last few years, Senator McConnell's astounding ability to blame his opponents for exactly the type of behavior he and his party have carried out for the last two years indicates a remarkable command of creative hypocrisy and ludicrous historical revisionism. He has richly earned his title as our first Ass Clown of 2015.

As a final observation, I expect that I will attract some negative feedback for selecting Senator McConnell rather than Cherif and Said Kouachi, the savage religious bigots who murdered twelve people in France they believed had insulted their religion. The reason is simple: as I wrote yesterday, it's a matter of perspective ... the Kouachi brothers are religious fanatics who believe their faith permits - indeed, encourages - them to murder those who give offense. They are, like so many of their extreme co-religionists, beyond reason and humanity, and naming them as ass clowns serves no purpose. Senator McConnell, however, methodically uses his political power not to serve the American people, but to impede the work of Congress for his own political agenda. His blatant hypocrisy and cynicism exemplify the very worst of ugly ass clownery.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* This is the third award for Senator McConnell ... he won monthly awards twice before, on June 25, 2012 and on April 11, 2013. At least he's accomplished something.