I've written here a few times about taking the messaging fight to talk radio. I've told you that I'm training people to call in and take advantage of the opportunities to speak to millions of people at a time about why we are progressive and why the propagandists on the AM dial are wrong.
Well... Today I'm here with good news. We're rattling their cages. They've noticed us and they are running scared.
But we're just getting started. If we continue on this trajectory, there isn't any reason we won't be able to fundamentally change the landscape of AM talk radio.
Honestly, that day can't come soon enough.
Follow me over the jump to hear a few examples of our successes (including one from yesterday's Rush Limbaugh program).
Let's start with the Rush clip. I'll discuss the substance of the call in another post (because it's always worth pointing out when the leader of the Republican party lies so blatantly and indefensibly), but for now I want to focus on the last half of the call.
Here's the trancsript:
RUSH: I got an interesting e-mail during the break. "Rush, I can remember in the past when you had a caller like that, you would try to teach them why they were wrong. Why did you just not ask the guy to hold on and tell him where he was wrong?" It's a great, great question, and in this instance it was simply my instinct. We were talking with somebody who was purposely pig ignorant. We had somebody on the phone who was not interested in being right or wrong. We had somebody on the phone who was nothing but a partisan hack. Not one thing he said was true. The things that he was attempting to tell us he believed, that was not the point. He simply was trying to counter what is being effectively stated on this program.
Let me go back to the first hour and our affiliate in Chicago, WLS, where they interviewed Dick Durbin. Dick Durbin admits that they can't find any Democrat votes for Obama's jobs bill because he has no votes in the Senate from people who want to run for re-election supporting tax increases. He can't find any Democrats who will vote for tax increases right now when they're up for re-election. So you've got one of Obama's lieutenants in the Senate admitting that it's a tax increase bill. There's a talking points blog which is essentially a Democrat outpost, says Obama's job bills increases taxes by one and a half trillion dollars. To the left that's one of its selling points. To the genuine left, not like this guy that called, but to the genuine left, the fact that there are a billion and a half dollars, or one and a half trillion dollars in tax increases is why they like it.
It's the class warfare. They think only the rich are going to get soaked. This guy calls up and he wants to harp on the payroll tax, $250 billion, we've been there and done that. On Tuesday, Obama tried to keep pressure on Congress to consider his $450 billion jobs bill. Dick Durbin, "The oil-producing state senators don’t like eliminating or reducing the subsidy for oil companies." How do you people like hearing that? You hate big oil. You want to get rid of what you think is a tax break, and here's Durbin saying Democrat senators won't vote to get rid of that. Not when they're up for re-election. And then Durbin said there's some senators up for re-election who say I'm never going to vote for a tax increase while I'm up for re-election, even on the wealthiest people.
So I got a guy who is essentially calling me from a blog trying to simply score some political points. He's not interested in what's right or wrong. This guy's just a partisan hack trying to counter the effective dissemination of information on this program. Of course, it's always going to fail. We are rooted in the truth here. We are engaged in a relentless unstoppable pursuit of the truth. The left's only hope is to blur the truth. The left's only hope ever is to pull off a series of lies about what they believe and what their intentions are. This Talking Points memo, Democrat House organ admitting, and they're proudly saying a trillion and a half dollars of tax increases in this bill.
That's why I didn't hang in with the guy, folks, because it would have been like trying to talk to James Carville. I'm not going to change his mind about anything. And that's not why he called. I don't know that he really believed what he was saying. He was just -- (interruption) you think he's a plant? A seminar caller plant. Different subject matter. The other three that we've had this week have talked about different things, but, yeah, there's no question, look, the regime supporters out there are in a panic. And why are they in a panic? They're in a panic because they're getting what they wanted. They got healthcare. They're getting a promise to raise taxes on the rich, and it's dooming them. Their leader would face a landslide defeat if the election were today.
So of course they're going to start calling this program and trying to counterbalance what's happening here. We're just way too effective. That's why I'm not going to waste time talking to the guy. Dick Durbin is the second ranking Democrat in the Senate right behind Dingy Harry and he's admitting he can't get any votes from Democrats because it's a tax increase bill and they're up for re-election.
I'll say one thing for Rush: Great instincts!
The caller was Jim McBride from Network for Progress. I provided him with talk radio training several weeks ago, and he's been burning up the lines ever since. Yesterday, he finally got through the busy signals and reached Rush.
One thing you should have no doubt whatsoever about is that Jim was correct: there are absolutely zero tax increases in the American Jobs Act. (I'll explain more fully in the sister post that reviews the main substance of the call).
Anyway, Rush was also correct about the other "seminar callers". Earlier in the week, Carl Gibson of USUncut reached Rush - and... funny enough... he reached Rush right after he hung up on me. The two of us (I trained Carl as well) essentially took over the second hour of Rush's show. Here are our clips (relevant portions of the transcript are excerpted below):
RUSH: This guy, our last caller, ladies and gentlemen, was reading from (sigh) the fringe, left-wing website "the Daily Kos;" or "Koz," I don't know how you pronounce it. I've never known how you pronounce this. They produced an e-mail that circulated back in 2009 that is Abraham Lincoln talking about labor versus slavery. And what they've done is take this thing out of context, and they've urged every one of their readers to print this thing out and send it to as many people as they know -- and, if they can, get on radio talk shows and read it. It's from January 29, 2009: "Abe Lincoln, Pro-Labor: Send This to Your Republican Friends." That's the link to it from the Daily Kos, and they have to take Lincoln out of context. It's labor versus SLAVERY.
[I posted the entire Lincoln speech here (definitely worth a read and I'll probably do a post devoted exclusively to it). Once again the facts clearly demonstrate that Rush was blatantly and purposefully lying. ed.]
...
That's the way the Marxists would look at it, the way this guy would look at it, and he was reading what the Daily Kos post said to read, could be president, he read it pretty well.
...
RUSH: And now this thing from the Daily Kos. Lincoln is speaking of slave labor, and if these people at Daily Kos actually knew what Lincoln was talking about they would not have posted this.
But here's the Lincoln quote that they think spread all over the country will convince everybody that unions are the way to go. "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
...
But even beyond that, like this last guy from Houston -- by the way, Snerdley, thank you for seminar caller day. We've had, what, three calls today that have all been a bunch of creeps. What is this, creep caller day? This is what's out there today? Snerdley says, "I want you to see what's out there." This is all that's out there? Well, it may be a spam campaign. It could well be.
So yes... We're taking on the most influential man in America, and we've begun to get under his skin. It's just a matter of time before he adapts, but it'll be useless. Next week I'll be training another 25 callers from all across America. We're coming and we won't be stopped.
I'll leave you with two more clips.
This first clip is Rush audio from just before the first YearlyKos convention in 2006. He attacks a caller that is obviously reading from a script. Rush thought it was me - I had been calling him several times a week back then - but he should have known that neither I, or any of the callers I train, will ever read from a script when we call. This poor caller had no idea what Rush was talking about.
This second clip is from the Mark Levin Show. The clip speaks for itself. These guys are afraid of us. And we're just getting started.
If you are interested in receiving this talk radio training... If you would like to be able to reach millions of listeners with a message of your choice, practically whenever you want... If you want to develop a media portfolio of your own... Send me a message. I'll get you trained.