So let's get this straight

This is GOP "logic" ( and I use the term in its most ironic sense ), "We have to get rid of Obamacare by getting rid of President Obama.".

This statement comes from a party whose nominee for the Presidency introduced almost an identical system in his state when he was Governor. In fact his plan also has a penalty for not purchasing health insurance. But now he is against Obamacare and he hates the individual mandate? His own policy? His own law?

How can he say these things with a straight face?

And "We must repeal Obamacare and replace it with sensible healthcare reform". Who in their right mind thinks that is going to happen? If the GOP wanted healthcare reform they would have proposed legistlation a long time ago. But of course they don't ( and will not now ) because they are only interetsed in preserving the status quo. Just look how many GOP types can't even agree with the President when he says that a family should not be one illness away for bankruptcy.

These guys wouldn't agree with him if the President said "Ice is cold and fire is hot."

And you want to replace a man who is at least doing something with a suit who will do absolutely nothing about healtcare reform? Really that's your answer? Scrap everything and then have a commission to investigate healthcare reform and then after two or three years eventually do nothing?

Can anyone say "Simpson-Bowles all over again. And again. And again to the end of time"?

Mark my words that will be the "Romney Healthcare Initiative".

And talking about getting things done.....

If the GOP was serious about jobs being the number one issue to address, they wouldn't be having fucking meaningless contempt of Congress hearings for the Attorney General and then wasting legistlative time with pointless votes to repeal healthcare reform simply to pander to the loons in the Tea Party.

Pandering gets you re-elected, but it never saves a country from ruin. Sometimes you have to do the unpopular thing. These guys should ask the President why it is always better to do the right thing than to bend to the whims of a vocal minority within your party's base.

Saving the country should always take precedence over saving your own job in Washington.

But the GOP don't want to get anything done. What they want to do from now until November is stick it to the President and to hell with jobs, healthcare, education or the environment. Or really to hell with anything right now.

This is going to be five months of shitting on the country for political gain.

What a joke.

And if Romney picks Eric Cantor for VP it will only get 1000% more ugly and partisan than it is now.

The Time Has Come

I really think the time has come to lay some leather on the loons at CitizenLink, Focus on the Family's propaganda wing. I've been listening to their daily "Family News in Focus" broadcast for a while now and you may recall a previous piece when I analyzed how much of the aired comments in their "stories" were either from their own mouthpieces or Focus on The Family's or just from people on their side of  the argument. That number came out as a whopping 97%. Almost a ready made statistical definition of propaganda. My piece certainly showed that what Citizenlink ( via Family News in Focus ) was not providing was anything that could objectively be called news reporting.

Anyways, after writing that blog, I started to watch their weekly ( and sometimes twice weekly ) CitizenLink Report video segment. This has introduced me to a whole new set of liars and prevaricators who show up pretty darned regularly there. So I thought I'd do a piece of the unsavory cast of characters who appear most often on those broadcasts.

I'm doing this as a service to rational thinking human beings so that as Leonato says in "Much Ado About Nothing" if you see such a one, you may avoid him. ( or in some cases, her ).

There is also another occasional video piece CitizenLink puts out called "Stoplight" where they attempt to be humorous with some topic dear to their little hard hearts - more of that later. But suffice it to say their attempts at humor are about as funny as cancer.

So let's start by looking at who's who.

First, there is the principal mouthpiece of the whole rotten organization and that would be "The Weatherman" aka Stuart Shepard. Here is is looking as wild eyed and unbalanced as he does every week.

"The Weatherman"

Stuart is described at CitizenLink as their "Senior Director of Media", whatever THAT means. He's a good talking head. But not because he brings insight, clarity or balance to anything he does, but simply because before joining Focus on the Family in 1999, Stewie was the chief meteorologist at WLEX-TV in Lexington Kentucky. So what he brings to the table is some media savvy and presentation skills. What he has no idea about is what he pontificates on every week as he snipes at Democrats or snidely calls the President a liar. And this is most assuredly his weekly MO - sly and cruel.

And then we have "The Harpy", This is Carrie Gordon Earll.

"The Harpy"

Carrie's job at CitizenLink is as "Senior Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy". Which is just Focus on the Familyspeak for screeching "Republican Shill". There is No GOP talking point she won't push, no anti-abortion position she won't condemn as too extreme. She is simply horrible as an analyst and has no business being associated with any organization that remotely claims to be providing news and information to ill informed people. He middle name may actually be "Agenda" not "Gordon". And why the fuck is it "Gordon" by the way? Doesn't that strike anyone as odd for a girl's name?

Now lest I forget, we have to talk about the Weatherman's right hand man, his go to dude with the 'tude and no clue - this is someone I choose to call "The Old Fool" and he would would be little Tommy Minnery former cub reporter extraordinaire and 100% "pro-family" dumbass.

"The Old Fool"

Without a doubt, my favorite CitizenLink pieces are those produced in the weeks where not much anti-family legislation has come down from the President, because then the Old Fool will do a piece on "Where I went for my Summer Hols" and tell us all about what he doesn't know about Europe and America's relationship to it in the 21st Century. Tom's a 1945 kind of guy. A VE Day and Liberation of Europe from Socialist tyranny kind of guy. He knows about how the French felt towards Americans then, but alas, he has not a freaking clue about how they feel now. These pieces are priceless, with Tom drivelling on about "Freedom" and "Values" and all those nonsensical codewords that other leaders of the rightwing loon movement use to culminate with "Taking Back Our Nation". To when? Probably around 1950 when blacks had no vote - some time around then.

Tom's position at CitizenLink is "Senior Vice President for Government and Public Policy". He desparately needs to retire and let someone do the job who is not living in the past.

Then we have "The Bimbo". This would be the blonde intellectual powerhouse who goes by the name of Ashley Horne.

"The Bimbo"

Poor Ashley, she talks like a Valley Girl and comes across as having the mental acuity of a clay pigeon. Ashley is CitizenLink's "Federal Issues Analyst". Again, as with all CitizenLink's spokesmen, there is no analysis, just talking points. No reasoned argument, no intellectual rigor, and with that godawful singsong voice of the truly dim. As an illuminator of issues, this woman's filament broke a long time ago. Truly she's one of CitizenLink's worst on air perfomers.

And next in the list of hucksters and agenda pushers we have "The Blob". This is the CitizenLink "Education Analyst" Candi Cushman. Candi's photo on the "About Us" section of the CitizenLink website looks so unlike what poor Candi as ballooned up to become. Here is what she looks like now.

"The Blob"

Candi looks like she's actually eaten some of the other correspondents at CitizenLink. I think it can be no coincidence that we no longer hear from Neema Reza and Kim Trobee while Candi continues to grow like some monstrous apparition from Moby Dick. Anyways, Candi likes to push "The Day of Dialogue" program at students in our schools. Something that is clearly not legal as such activities have to be student initiated. But CitizenLink and its analysts are clearly the driving force for this event. CitizenLink trots out the Blob whenever there is the hint of a free donut. No! That's wrong. I meant, "whenever there's an education initiative that might actually help some kids". That's what I meant to say. When that happens, Candi is always there to shout it down. So of course, she's also the anti-hate crimes gal at CitizenLink - the person who believes gays deserve no "special protections" in law. And by "special protections" I mean of course, "any protection".

Then we have perhaps the most dangerous of the CitizenLink experts and that is "The Schnoz" aka the Judicial Analyst, Bruce Hausknecht.

"The Schnoz"

The reason I call Bruce the most dangerous is because he is the most seemingly rational human being amongst the cadre of CitizenLink talking heads. But that is really why you have to watch out for him the most. He's a shill for the Roberts' court for sure and his pieces on Supreme Court cases seemed measured and deliberative, but they aren't really. As with all of these talking heads, whether they are as crass as the Weatherman, as ditzy as the Bimbo or as calm as the Schnoz, they are pushing an agenda, attempting to bend public will to their insidious positions by NOT TELLING THE WHOLE TRUTH on ANY issue they opine on. Bruce is no different. He just sounds like he almost might not be doing that. But in the end, he smarmingly is. So this is what makes him the one to fear.

And now my favorite, "The ex-gay" aka poor little Jeff  "My Wife and Three Beautiful Children" Johnston.

"The ex-gay"



I sometimes feel so sorry for poor Jeff. CitizenLink drags him out to talk "Prop 8" nonsense or have him testify before the Colorado legislature when any Civil Union or Same Sex Marriage proposal is being raised. Jeff himself can never wait to tell you he's a straight arrow now dammit! Whenever he speaks it's two sentences in and he's talking about his "coming out of the homosexual lifestyle" and his "lovely wife and even more wonderful children". And then you actually listen to him speak and you just say to yourself..."Really? You're out of it?"

And you just know as sure a God made little green apples, that when Jeff's area of expertise is not in demand that the Old Fool and the Weatherman push Jeff so bar back into a Focus on the Family closet that he has to give his address as "Under The Lamp Post, Narnia".

So these are the chief actors you might see if you tune into the CitizenLink Report every week as I do. There are a couple of other guys who appear a lot more rarely so they have not blipped sufficiently on my CL-BS radar to merit an expanded piece on them here. I'm talking specifically about Chad Hills the "Gambling Analyst and Abstinence Education Analyst" and Dawn McBane the CitizenLink "Bioethics Analyst".

Not sure how the two beats assigned to Chad actually connect. I guess if you get into too much debt while gambling, it might distract you from having sex? I'm really clutching at straws with that one.

So for me, the people I list above are the principal culprits you might hear ( and see ) on the CitizenLink Report video pieces. Every week you will usually see the Weatherman and and at least one of the other miscreants analyzing away, shilling for the GOP and presenting the worst form of biased argumentation you will hear anywhere on these Interwebs.

Beware them all.

And one last thing - The video pieces called "Stoplight" that I mentioned earlier.

If the CitizenLink Report is inaccurate, misleading and downright weaselly, Stoplight is simply inane babble that once again will prove every time you see one of the pieces, that right wingers have the humor gene removed at birth along with the one for caring about your fellow human beings.

For Stoplight, the Weatherman usually uses either the Bimbo or the Schnoz to make what he thinks are humorous and telling points on some item in the news ( They aren't typically either ). Then to show you it was meant to be so yuck-yuck funny and what a jolly jape it all was, they show the piece's outtakes which the Weatherman thinks are just side-splittingly hilarious but which in reality are as laughter-inducing as pus on an infected lip.

The Weatherman also often resorts to using a prop in the Stoplight pieces. It looks like a Webster's Dictionary, but wait, it's the "Wide Eyed Mainstram Media Dictionary" which he will consult to show the evil powers of  Real Reporters and their dastardly usupation of language to the Liberal Agenda. "Aw shucks Pa! He called a spade a shovel. And that just ain't right".

Fuck me, it wasn't funny the first time the Weatherman pulled it out of his ass to make some point that was profoundly stupid, and it has been equally unfunny on the many subsequent times he has forced it into a Stoplight piece.

The Weatherman just doesn't know how to quit when he's behind the humor 8-ball.

So there you have it, the motley cast of characters from the asinine CitizenLink Report broadcasts and the even more stupid Stoplight videos.

Enjoy them both at your intellect's peril.