193.2 - Clown Award: John Boehner

Clown Award: John Boehner

That Good News about the Keystone XL lets us slide easily over into one of our regular features, the Clown Award, given as always for merit stupidity.

This week, the winner of the Big Red Nose is that champion goofball, Speaker of the House John Boehner or as he is more properly known, John Boner.

In a statement issued in response to the veto, Boner repeated the long-discredited lie that the project will create 42,000 jobs, a fanciful figure the State Dept. claimed in its report on the effects of the pipeline, a figure arrived at by, for example, defining one person working on the project for two years as two jobs, including jobs that are already filled but would provide some service or material to the project, and assumptions about jobs created by pipeline workers spending their paychecks locally.

And even the State Dept.'s own estimate of how many permanent jobs the pipeline would create stands at 35. Not 35 thousand, not even 35 hundred. Thirty-five.

Boner still citing that bogus figure of 42,000 jobs would seem to be enough, but not for the high standards of the Clown Award. No, there's more.

He also declared that Obama is "too close to environmental extremists" and "too invested in left-fringe politics."

The image of Barack Obama as "invested in left-fringe politics" is funny enough - Hey Johnnycakes, I freely admit, I am quite aware, that I am on the left-fringe of American politics. And The Amazing Mr. O ain't been seen anywhere around here.

But I have to say that what really got Boner the award - and I have to tell you, this genuinely made me laugh - he said that the "only winners" from the veto would be “bureaucrats, extremist environmentalists and the Chinese.”

Johnny Boner - we always knew it, but thanks for the confirmation that you really are a clown.

Sources cited in links:
http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/national-embarrassment-speaker-boehner-president-obama-s-veto-keystone-jobs-bill
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2014/02/1464-keystone-xl-and-jobs-lie.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/24/us-usa-keystone-idUSKBN0LS2FH20150224
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/keystone-pipeline-veto-obama-boehner-mcconnell-115445.html