Voting Now Open for the 2018 Ass Clown of the Year!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, today is the official start of the selection campaign for

The 2018 Ass Clown of the Year

By December 21st (the Left-Cheek Ass Clown for December, and the last biweekly award for the year) I will have named 25 individual awardees in 2018, all of whom are eligible for the annual award. Of course, if there's someone I missed or someone you like better, you are free to vote for the write-in candidate of your choice. Here are the basic ground rules for the Ass Clown of the Year voting, unchanged from previous years except as noted:

- Chicago Rules apply: you may vote as many times as you want, for as many candidates as you want. You may cast votes on behalf of yourself, your family members, your friends, your pets, your friends' pets, or anyone else, living or dead. In the interest of fairness, I ask only that you not cast more than ten votes at any one time for any one candidate ... just vote more often.

- You may vote for any of the 25 biweekly award winners (the first 24 are listed below, and the last will be announced in the blog on December 21st), or for anyone else you wish. SPECIAL NOTE: Donald Trump, having been presented a lifetime achievement award last year, is no longer eligible for selection, regardless of how much he may deserve it. There are plenty of other candidates, many of them in the Trump administration or in Trump business and legal circles, who deserve your votes, too.

- You need not be legally authorized to vote in the United States. The law doesn't matter to the Administration, why should it matter to you?

- Photo ID is not required. If you are concerned that the Russians (or the Chinese, or one or the other political party) will manipulate the results to undermine the integrity of the award without such identification, consider that conspiracy theorists who are already convinced that elections are rigged will assume that any IDs presented will be phony, anyhow. And in any case, integrity is a quaintly outdated concept in today's political world in which "facts" require no proof other than conformity to one's preconceived notions. I worry more about my fellow citizens than I do about the Russians.

- Votes will be accepted from now until 11:59 PM on December 31st. You may vote by leaving a comment on any blog post between now and then; by sending me an e-mail; by sending me a PM or leaving a comment on Facebook if we are connected there; or in person if we should happen to meet. If you choose to cast your votes in person, be advised that your candidate's chances of winning are enhanced by the provision of adult beverages and tasty snacks. Yes, it's bribery, but in today's political environment that's okay unless the other side is doing it.

I will provide periodic updates on the balloting as necessary, and will announce the 2018 Ass Clown of the Year in this space on Tuesday, January 1st, 2019.

Here are the first 24 Ass Clown awardees for 2018, and the dates of their awards, in case you want to go back and review the citations:

1/12/18 (Right-Cheek) - Richard Wolff
2/2/18 (Right-Cheek) - Representative Devin Nunez (R, CA)
1/16/18 (Left-Cheek) - The White House Staff
3/2/18 (Right-Cheek) - Senator John N. Kennedy (R, LA)
3/16/18 (Left Cheek) - The GOP Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
3/30/18 (On-Crack) - Cambridge Analytica
4/13/18 (Right-Cheek) - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
4/17/18 (Left-Cheek) - Fresno State University Professor Randa Jarrar
5/10/18 (Right-Cheek) - Michael Cohen
5/25/18 (Left-Cheek) - Representative Mo Brooks (R, AL)
6/8/18 (Right-Cheek) - Virginia Congressional candidate Nathan Larson, The BCB Wall Breaker, and Televangelist Jesse Duplantis (Triple Award)
6/22/18 (Left-Cheek) - The Entire US Government
7/6/18 (Right-Cheek) - Senator Mitch McConnell (R, KY) (Fourth Award)
7/20/18 (Left-Cheek) - Representative Jason Lewis (R, MN)
8/3/18 (Right-Cheek) - Q-Anon and Its Credulous True Believers
8/17/18 (Left-Cheek) - Omarosa Manigault Newman
8/31/18 (On-Crack) - Representative Duncan Hunter (R, CA) and Margaret Hunter (Joint Award)
9/14/18 (Right-Cheek) - "An Anonymous Senior Official in the Trump Administration"
9/28/18 (Left-Cheek) - The Senate Judiciary Committee
10/12/18 (Right-Cheek) - Senator Mitch McConnell (R, KY) (Fifth Award)
10/26/18 (Left-Cheek) - The Republican and Democratic Parties (Joint Award)
11/9/18 (Right-Cheek) - An Unnamed Monster
11/23/18 (Left-Cheek) - White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Third Award)
12/7/18 - (Right-Cheek) - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Let your voice be heard! Vote early! Vote often! Help me heap dishonor on the Ass Clowns who work so hard to Make America Groan Again.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo