For a fleeting instant, I thought a maybe....just maybe....GOPUSA.com wasn't a shill. Maybe it was just a random Republican cheerleading site, a la Washington Times. But reading through their archives, it becomes crystal clear that GOPUSA.com was not and is not a "news" site, but rather an organ specifically designed to disseminate Republican propaganda and targeted to the destruction of the Democratic Party. Yeah, it's a long read. But hang in there.
First, let's debunk the myth that GOPUSA.com started as news site. Fuck that.
Courtesy of webarchive.org, we learn that
this is their true mission:
The main focuses of GOPUSA.com are simple:
1. To provide news, information, and commentary which promote the conservative, Republican agenda
2. To help Republican candidates, office holders, activists, and businesses get their conservative message out to the Internet community, and
3. To provide high-quality and innovative multimedia design and maintenance services at competitive prices.
GOPUSA.com was founded by Bobby Eberle and Bill Fairbrother in 1999. The team has over 15 years of combined Internet and multimedia experience as well as over 20 years of combined political experience in the Republican Party.
Non-biased my ass. Their explicit mission at inception was to provide "news" which "promotes" the GOP agenda. That explains the carbon-copying White House Press Releases, eh? At first, the site was a unabashedly partisan site. It's first "news" section was one called "Bush News", which was a collection of Bush press releases and speeches which...come to think of it, isn't much different than what Talon News is today.
OK. Next let's look at some of GOPUSA.com's "news" and "commentary."
CAUTION: READING BELOW THIS POINT MAY MAKE YOU WANT TO HURT YOUR COMPUTER. PLEASE DON'T. IT'S NOT THE COMPUTER'S FAULT.
Let's begin.
First off, anyone who has Alan Keyes as a contributing commentator automatically gets put in the "lacking all credibility" pile. Second, head on over to this page and look at Colin Hayes' cartoon series "the Leftersons." With family names like Stalin, this is how GOPUSA.com presents a liberal family:
Non-partisan news site, eh, Mr. McClellan? Let's take a look at the prolific GOPUSA.com writers:
Courtesy of GOPUSA writer Lowell Powll, who says our Party should be renamed the "Saddamocrat" Party:
[Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Washington State)] six months ago visited Baghdad,
embraced fellow socialist Saddam Hussein, and declared from the Iraqi capital that President George W. Bush was a liar...
Other leading Democrats have been equally eager to support Saddam Hussein by attacking America's Commander-in-Chief.
But Daschle's stupidity is exceeded by his hypocrisy....No wonder that so many thousands of South Dakotans call their Senator "Tom Dashole."
...In the shell bursts of this conflict, we can see clearly illuminated a large faction of the Democratic Party that shares the French desire to weaken, belittle, damage and perhaps destroy the United States.
This faction deserves a name to distinguish it from the waning number of Democrats of a party founded by Thomas Jefferson who still love America.
Saddemocrats is what I call these clearly anti-American Leftists who attack President Bush and are as eager as the French to keep Ba'athist socialist Saddam Hussein in power.
Some will dismiss them as a fringe, the loony extremist wing found in any political movement, and if we look only at wacko egomaniacs such as Kucinich and McDermott this seems apparent....But if the Democratic Party is not the Saddemocratic Party, why are its congressional leaders Saddemocrats Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle? Why are these reckless extremists in control?
Here is a "news" article by Teresa Martin, explicitly stating liberal organizations have ties and support terrorism:
In the last six months, many Americans have participated in anti-war rallies. Yet, would those joining the marches be willing to work for a communist-related effort? ...
Not In Our Name is another popular anti-war organization. It is supported by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO). The IFCO, a non-profit organization, accrues over $1 million annually and
supports Cuba's Fidel Castro. The IFCO previously supported an organization led by
Sami Al-Arian...arrested for his support of the Islamic Jihad. Previously, he has led rallies for Abdel Aziz-Odeh, Islamic Jihad founder, and Sheikh Abdul Rahman, mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing.
International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) stems from the International Action Center (IAC). Intelligence officials report that the IAC is a front for the Worker's World Party (WWP).
According to a recent Fox News report, the WWP supports North Korea... Stephen Schwartz of FrontPageMagazine.com reported in January that* the WWP is on record for supporting the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989*...ANSWER leaders staunchly defend indicted Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic.
Patterns such as these are not new, however. Prior to 1941, "Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese militarists bankrolled similar 'peace movements' in the U.S.," wrote Schwartz....
And here is Kerri Houston, GOPUSA.com's finest, opining on the "peace movement":
The "peace" movement is a spork. You know, that hybrid utensil of unknown origin and dubious utility whose parts seem to have no logical relationship with each other.
Like the spork, the anti-war demonstrators are an amalgam -- in this case, a combination of manipulators and the clueless.
The movement also shares composition with this plastic implement -- artificial, fake -- and is equally as useless...
[ANSWER] is a downline front group for the Stalinist Workers World Party...These people could care less about the potential war -- they are anarchists battling America and everything it stands for and using the Iraq situation to stick their jackboots in the door of America's youth....
Most parents whose children are participating in "peace" rallies probably have no idea that their kids are being mixed with a batch of hardcore Marxists and Stalinists.
Mike Bayhan, can you please tell us what GOPUSA.com thinks of "Hippie Logic"?
All over the world, with the homeland not being exempt, tens of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets to scream, in many instances in crude and belligerent forms, their opposition to America's military action in Iraq. ...
The same [Hollywood] glitterati who cried to the media about their right to be as obnoxious as they want to be about America's "oppressive" president would learn the true meaning of persecution if they tried to do the same thing in Iraq towards Hussein.
American leftists, who were nowhere to be found when President Clinton decided to bust skulls in Serbia without UN backing, have cited that this operation was illegal because Bush did not receive the UN's endorsement...
Some liberals, blinded by their partisanship, have even taken to praising Hussein as one of the most progressive leaders in the region because women are allowed the same rights as men in the workforce... Somewhere in the bowels of hell, Herman Goering is wishing these people were around to sit as jurors during the Nuremberg trials...
Unsurprisingly, Communists, Socialists, and Palestinian sympathizers have been visibly present at the forefront of these marches... Because many of the participants in these marches are your garden-variety anti-Americans, they are probably not as much anti-war as they are looking for an excuse to vent their "Yankee go home" sentiment and to act like a bunch of hooligans.
Steve Miller casts Democrat (sic) leaders as "rich white" racists
Now that they have had their clocks cleaned in the 2004 elections -- they are getting even more radical with their liberal mantra.
I want to thank them, they have shown their true colors as racists and obstructionists. Anyone that watched any of the Condoleezza Rice hearings could only come to one conclusion, Senators Kennedy, Biden, and Boxer sounded like racist fools. If a black person isn't liberal they are an Uncle Tom or Aunt Jamima...
Have you noticed that all of the democrat senators opposing these nominations are RICH WHITE people? Not only rich white people -- but people that got handed their money -- they never had to work to earn it.
When Dr. Rice's confirmation did get to the full senate -- who but ex-KKK grand poo-bah Senator Byrd weighed in on the nomination. This guy is a racist through and through, and a senior leader of the Democrat party.
Bill Dillon, please tell us what the ACLU is for...
What is ACLUs purpose? To replace our Founders' destroyed natural institutions with those of its own brave new world just as the Social Marxists seek to do.
Oh, and let's not forget those fun polls that are on this "news" site! A poll for governor lists a diversity of choices such as Randy Graf (R), J.D. Hayworth (R), Tom Patterson (R), Rick Romley (R), J. Fife Symington (R) Undecided or favor someone else. "Favor someone else" I guess means you want one of those Saddemocrat Communist Socialist Marxist fellows.
And from the archives, we get this shocker. GOPUSA.com linked (affiliated with?) the "Republican Study Committee", which is "a group of over 95 House Republicans organized for the purpose of advancing a conservative social and economic agenda in the House of Representatives.". GOPUSA.com had the RSC's logo featured prominently on its site and even had a whole page reserved for direct feed of House Republican reports. Oh, and also a nice logo linking to the National Republican Steering Committee as well.
This is a "news" site? It links FreeRepublic under its "news" links.
GOPUSA.com has every right to publish this filth on the web. As long as it's not slanderous or libelous, they have First Amendment rights just like the rest of us. But what infuriates me is that they have the temerity to label this "news". They have the audacity to call themselves "columnists" and "reporters". And what infuriates me is that a few lefty blogs are the only ones with the balls to call them on their bullshit.
They have every right to write this, but they have a duty to label it accordingly. Not "news". But pure, Grade A, government certified "propaganda."
For everyone thinking that Guckert is an isolated occurrence, here is you wake up call. The propaganda written on GOPUSA.com & Talon "News" is straight out of the 1950s playbook. It is part of a coordinated campaign to cast anyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh to the fringe of society, stripped of power and influence. It is part of the plan to cast us as terrorists. It is part of the plan to demonize us, to vilify us, to take the Swift Boat tactics to the next level and persecute ALL liberals and progressives as "dishonorable, traitorous, and a danger to American values."
Propagannon is not about gay prostitution. As Meteor Blades astutely observed, it is about the prostitution of the facts. If we cannot come together, as citizens of this nation, to stop a propaganda and anti-American outfit like GOPUSA.com, then we may as well call it a day, retreat to the corner, and give up any notion of fairness and truth in this c country.
Do you want your children to grow up thinking GOPUSA.com is "news"? Because that's where we are headed. The line between propaganda and "news" is deliberately being blurred, and unless we stand up and fight it NOW, we will have lost our chance.
"Fact factory" FOX news has gained legitimacy. The vile, mad rantings of Ann Coulter have gained legitimacy. The bigoted, Oxycotin-tinged ravings of Rush Limbaugh have gained legitimacy. And with GOPUSA.com & its propaganda outfit, Talon News being granted White House access day after day for two years, the fascist wing of the Republican Party has gained legitimacy.
At some point, it has to stop. At some point, we need to stop rolling over and saying "there's no point" because if we don't do something NOW, there WILL be no point. There will be no point in reading the paper, it will all be Guckertlike Xeroxing of GOP press releases. There will be no point in turning on the TV because CSPAN will be covering Rev. Moon conducting ceremonies on the Senate floor. There will be no point in leaving your home because you're a Liberal, a leper to be avoided, a dog to be beaten into submission.
If we don't stand up here, where ALL the evidence weighs in our favor, where it is so clear that something unjust and deceptive is afoot, then when will we stand up to the fascist wing of the GOP?
Our goal is a simple one. Strip GOPUSA.com and Talon News of its legitimacy, expose its "writers" for the shills they are, and investigate why the White House wanted them in the briefing room.
Let's not let this chance--this duty--to pass us up.
Oh, and Eberle...if you're reading this--which I'm sure you are, being a closet Dkos fan and all--- fuck you, you anti-American, fascist asshole.