34.6 - Clown Award: Sen. Ron Johnson

Clown Award: Sen. Ron Johnson

And that in fact leads us right into one of our regular features, the Clown Award, given as always for meritorious stupidity.

It leads us in because our first nominee this week is Pat Robertson, who attributed the Las Vegas mass shooting to "disrespect for authority" including, particularly, disrespect for President TheRump.

Quoting Robertson,

we have disrespect for authority - there is profound disrespect of our president, all across this nation. They say terrible things about him - it's in the news, it's in other places.

He also blamed, among other things, "disrespect for our national anthem," which apparently means that Stephen Paddock saw NFL players kneeling for the anthem and went "That's it! Their disrespect justifies me killing a whole bunch of people."

I thought all this was pretty clownish but thent I thought "Does anyone still take Pat Robertson seriously?"

Realizing the answer is "no," I decided to move on to our second nominee, Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, a favorite of the far-right anti-choice crowd who brags about how anti-abortion he is.

Turns out that back in January this "family values" bloviator was having an extra-marital affair with a woman who was concerned she may have gotten pregnant as a result. He told her to get an abortion.

A real clown! But wait, it's really just plain old run-of-the-mill right-wing hypocrisy. And it turns out that he has gone with the "spend time with my family" route and won't run for re-election in 2018. (Update: He resigned.)

So we turn to this week's winner of the Big Red Nose, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Sen. Ron Johnson: Clown

On September 28, when asked by a high school student whether he considered health care a right or a privilege, Johnson not only went with privilege, he also said that food and shelter and clothing should also be considered "privileges," reserved to those who can afford them.

"What we have as rights," he said, "are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Past that point, everything else is a limited resource that we have to use our opportunities given to us so that we can afford those things." He also referred to Rand Paul's statement from a few years ago describing a universal health care system as the imposition of slavery.

So in other words, there's only so much health care - or food or clothing or shelter - to go around, so it's up to you to be able to pay whatever the market demands and if you can't, well, you just didn't "use your opportunities."

Missing from Johnson's blathering was an explanation how you can have a "right to life" if you don't have food, shelter, clothing, or health care.

What was not missing is the fact that Ron Johnson is a smug, self-satisfied, prig - and a clown.

Footnote: Of the 25 wealthiest nations in the world, the United States is the only one not to recognize health care as a right by providing some measure of universal health care to its residents.

And it's worth noting that Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the US has endorsed and had a major hand in creating, says:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.

It's doubtful Sen. Clown Johnson knows - or cares.