Saturday, June 8, 2013

Rundown for June 8, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they review the week in news. With school out for the summer, there had been a few incidents where so-called “zero tolerance” in schools has gone over the edge. What had happened to put it over the edge? Also, the big story this week is the Tea Party coming before the House Committees and speaking on the harsh treatment to them by the IRS. What was said during the hearings? The hearing also included a classic meltdown by a Democrat and a royal beatdown on the Democrat by a Republican. What happened? Those questions and more, including the ever popular Schmuck of the Week, on today’s show.

Come join us for the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 Central. I will be in the chatroom, which is at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live, 30 minutes early for a little last-minute show prep and also to meet the audience. If you want to engage the conversation during the show there are three ways you can do it:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype in to OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. Every week we try to condense 7 days worth of news into 2 hours, and have a good time doing it.

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Saturday, June 1, 2013

Breitbart Rule 13: Believe in the Audacity of Hope

Andrew Breitbart has given us all the tools to help defeat the Complex, but he gives us one more thing to believe in. Hence his 13th and final rule in the Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

13.) Believe in the audacity of hope: It's too bad President Obama is such a joyless, politically correct automaton, because he's terrifically agile with his prepared words. To paraphrase his victory speech after the 2008 election, the rise of the New Media alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It cannot happen without you.

It can't happen without hope for America and faith in its people - two things Obama and his leftist ilk don't have, which is why they try to shut it down in others. We have the power to unravel the Complex and destroy the Institutional Left. It won't be easy. It will take time and effort, and there will be false starts and roadblocks, but we'll do it, because we have to do it. Apathy in the face of determined Frankfurt School/Alinsky/critical-theory-trained activists is national suicide.

As one who loves to shine a light on the progressive left and become a rod for the truth and for conservatism, Breitbart wrapped it all up in a short, simple paragraph. We indeed have the power to unravel the Complex and destroy the Institutional Left. However, we also know that there will be times in which for every step we take forward, we take 4 steps back. Right now is NOT the time to give up and give in to the Left and even to those on our own side. We need to get out there and take the fight to them and push them back. If we do not, then it is just national suicide because the Frankfurt School/Alinsky/critical-theory-trained activists like the Occupy movement, like the Organizing for America group, like the Move On crowd, have had the upper hand for close to 3 or 4 decades now. Yes ladies and gentlemen, this change had not been done overnight but over time. Remember what Kurt Dillon said in the book Escape to Freedom by AJ Reissig:

A long time ago, one of the Soviet Leaders...and I can't remember which...said that Americans will never jump from capitalism to communism. However, if American leaders dished out small doses of socialism, then the American people would one day awaken to find they have communism. We didn't get here overnight, and if all of the socialist changes had taken place at once, the people would have had none of it. But a gradual change...most people didn't realize it was happening.

We are at that path as we speak, and even Alexander Tytler spoke of it about 250 years ago:

TytlerCircle"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.
"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:
"From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

Breitbart must have known and realized that we are on our way back to bondage, which is why he came up with the Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries as a way for us to destroy and dismantle the Media Complex and the Progressive Left, as well as the kooks on our own side. All we have to do is not be afraid and to go out there, putting our knowledge of the Primer to good use.

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Rundown for June 1, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring you the week in news. The #ObamaScandals just keep adding up. When will they become a breaking point for the Administration? Is it fair to compare Obama to Nixon? Also, Bret Baier of Special Report had gotten a very sweet treat from a candy company. What was the treat and why did he get it? And Tony Katz, a good friend of Own The Narrative and also of Red, Right, and Blue, is launching a venture into the late-night talk circuit. What is that venture, how can we help? All that and more including your calls and the Schmuck of the Week coming up today!

Tune in for the fun and frivolity that can only be had during the day on Red, Right, and Blue at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 Central. I will be in the chatroom (which you can access via http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes prior to the show for a little last minute show prep and also a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype in to OTNNetwork
  • Use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN if you are on Twitter

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. The show is very unpredictable and you never know what we are going to say next.

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Saturday, May 25, 2013

Breitbart Rule 12: Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth

As Andrew Breitbart had come to the close of his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries, he brings about a VERY important issue and rule which many on the left do NOT want to think about, which is why they rely on Alinsky Tactics and smears.

12.) Truth isn't mean. It's truth: I know that some of you are going to feel rotten about using some of these tactics. We can ignore the tactics, but the left will continue to use them to their benefit; just as the Frankfurt School relied on the good nature and honesty of Americans who wouldn't engage in un-Christian tactics in order to achieve their massive victory, the left continues to rely on our honesty and aboveboard good nature in order to achieve theirs.

We can't let them.

We start by uncovering the truth and telling everyone about it. I'm not religious, and I'm certainly no theologian, but if there is one thing in religion that speaks to me, it is the idea of absolute truth. In fact, the word truth has meaning only if it's absolute. And absolute truth will set us free from the grip of the Complex, because the Complex lives in the clouds, in the theoretical heavens - the Frankfurt School was successful only because they were able to shift Marxism's basis from real-world predictions to descriptions of supposed historical processes, making Marxism unfalsifiable. We have to falsify their theory by presenting unvarnished truth after unvarnished truth until the light dawns on everyone just how right we are.

In my travels on Twitter, I have met many who spread lies about anything and everything, and when I confront them with the truth they call me racist, mean, or say that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Then when I provide them with links which show where I know what I am referring to they proceed to say that the site or blog has errors even though it is a HIGHLY REPUTABLE site which many use. One of the many things I also like to bring up is that “Common sense dictates …” which I use to say that those who even have any sort of common sense and decency would look at what is read and determine for themselves if it is true or not. Sometimes people just need a 10 pound sledgehammer of common sense upside the head or a cheese grater of decency right in the yambag region to see that what they had said or read has been wrong. However, there are times in which you have to use it on people more than once to try to get it to sink in. No matter what, we need to reach out to people with the truth, and for those who do not want to hear it, well all we have to do is channel our inner Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men and let them have it.

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Rundown for May 25, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring you the week in news. The IRS was pulled into a hearing by the House Government Oversight Committee. What happened, and what is the backlash from it? Also, the Tea Party protested in front of the IRS buildings all over the country. Why did they do that? What news did it generate over talk radio and also in the Federal Government. All that plus your calls and the ever popular Schmuck of the Week.

Come join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 Central. I will be in the chatroom (which you can access at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep and also a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation there are three ways to do so:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype in to OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN to interact

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. Come listen to the man that John LaRosa of FourTier Strategies calls “the most distinctive voice on conservative talk radio”

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Saturday, May 18, 2013

Breitbart Rule 11: Don’t let them get away with ignoring their own rules

Not only did Andrew Breitbart say Alinsky was right about ridicule being man’s most potent weapon, he also agreed with Alinsky on another rule. Hence, Rule 11 in the Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

11.) Don't let them get away with ignoring their own rules: Alinsky is right again. They set up this PC Complex, and they have to be held accountable to it, if only for honesty's sake, and we're the only ones who will do it. Joe Biden is still vice president of the United States even though he called the first black president "clean" and "articulate." Harry Reid is still Senate majority leader even though he said Obama was "light-skinned" and could drop his "Negro dialect" on cue. Until his death in 2010, Robert Byrd was "a lion of the Senate" even though he was a former Kleagle of the KKK. If these had been Republicans, they would have been hounded from office. They're Democrats, so they're not.

But that doesn't mean we can't hold them responsible for breaching their own standards. Every time they say things like this, we need to force them to back down and apologize, and we can't allow their allies to let them off the hook with excuses about how they stood for the right policies. Frankfurt School tactics can't work here - standing for liberalism doesn't mean you're allowed to violate the conventions of PC. At the very least, we need to force these hypocrites to stand up against their own PC regime in order to defend themselves.

Over the past 10 years or so, there had been a vast difference in the way Republicans and Democrats are handled. Among the ones I can think of:

  • Trent Lott (Republican from Mississippi) was forced out of the Senate Republican Leadership because of his words at the celebration of Strom Thurmond’s (Republican from South Carolina) 100th birthdate.
  • Mark Foley (Republican from Florida’s 16th District) resigned from the House because he was caught in bed with a minor.
  • John Ensign (Republican from Nevada) resigned from the Senate because of ethics violations.

These were forced out of office while the Democrats only get a slap on the wrist. What makes these three different from the Democrats Andrew mentioned in his rule? The fact that the Democrats can do anything, even get away with murder (a la Hillary Clinton with Vince Foster and Whitewater, or Obama with the Ambassador and company in Benghazi as well as Navy SEAL Team 6 which killed Osama Bin Laden) at every turn.

We need to turn the tables on the Democrats and make them live by the EXACT SAME set of rules that they expect us to live by. If we do not, then they will run roughshod. In sports, both teams play by the same set of rules. It is time those in politics do the same thing.

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Rundown for May 18, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring the week in news. This week the House of Representatives had a couple of interesting hearing on the IRS targeting Conservatives. How did the IRS defend itself? Were there any outstanding moments during the hearings? They will answer those questions and more. Also, the first presidential power rankings for 2016 came out. Who landed the top spot? Of course, presidential dogwasher Jay Carney had stuck his foot in his mouth once more. What did he say and what is the backlash from it? All that and more including the ever popular Schmuck of the Week will be featured on the show.

Join us today for another hot edition of Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes prior for some last-minute show prep and also a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are 3 ways to do so:

  • call 832-699-0449
  • Skype into OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter, use the hashtag #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a liberal. This is one show which peels back the rancid onion that is the Obama Administration.

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Saturday, May 11, 2013

Breitbart Rule 10: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon

It is rare to see someone on the right agree with Alinsky, but in studying him and also Rule For Radicals, it is clear that Andrew Breitbart had found a way to use Alinsky’s rules to OUR advantage. Hence Rule 10 in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries:

10.) Ridicule is man's most potent weapon: Here, Alinsky and I agree. It's the truest of Alinsky's statements, and it's the most effective. Tina Fey, not the MSM, sullied Sarah Palin's image. Chevy Chase brought down Gerald Ford. Jon Stewart brought down Bush.

And we'll bring down Obama, but not unless we're willing to get unserious. Stuffy old white guys wearing bow ties and talking about the danger of national deficits don't get much done - talented people who can translate political chaos into merry pranksterism do.

We have seen the Left roll out a few people to impersonate our presidents or even political heroes. Case in point is Tina Fey with the legendary Saturday Night Live skit where she impersonated Sarah Palin with the ever popular saying “I can see Russia from my House” which many low-information voters think that those words actually came from Sarah Palin’s mouth.

 

That video goes to show that the Left has the keys to pull out the merry pranksterism on America and get away with it. That is one of the ways they won in 2008 and again in 2012. We have to turn the tables and take the merry pranksterism away from them. I had seen a couple of ways that we could do it. One main person who can do such is Reggie Brown who does a WONDERFUL impersonation of Barack Obama.

Another way is what the WWE had done to promote Capitol Punishment, their Pay Per View which was held in Washington DC in June 2011. They had spliced some clips of Obama’s press conferences with questions pertaining to their Pay Per View.

We can do the same in our own way, but the key is to not just talk about it but actually DO it. Instead of being a stuffed shirt spouting off numbers and pretending like we know what we are talking about, we need to let our hair down and just have some fun doing what we do best.

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Rundown for May 11, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring the week in news. The House Oversight Committee had hearings on the Benghazi attack of September 11, 2012, and they will review the hearings. Also, the White House talking points on Benghazi were scrubbed 12 times. Why did the White House do that? What are they hiding? All that and more including your calls and Schmuck of the Week..

Come and join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes before the show for show prep and also for a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show there are three ways to do it:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype into OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. So much had happened this week, and you do not want to miss a single second as we attempt to condense seven days of news into two hours.

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Saturday, May 4, 2013

Breitbart Rule 9: Don’t let them pretend to know more than they do

Just as we should not pretend to know more than we do, as I had discussed last week, we should not let the Left pretend to know more than they do. Hence Rule 9 in Andrew Breitbart’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries:

9.) Don't let them pretend to know more than they do: This is really the converse of the last rule. Your opponents will pretend to be experts if you don't, but that's okay, because you can always puncture their balloon with one word: why. Asking them to provide evidence for their assertions is always fun, and it's even more fun asking them to provide the sources for that evidence. Attacking the fundamental basis of their arguments if fun, too - if they tell you health care is a right, ask why. Liberals don't have a why, other than their own utopianism and their dyspeptic view of the status quo and America. Reason is not their strong suit - emotion is. Force them to play on the football field of reason.

As Andrew said, there is one word which we can use to puncture the false narrative propagated by the left, and even a few kooks on our own side. That word is why, a simple three-letter word with a lot of power and oomph behind it. If we ask why they think that, then they will have to come up with a reason. As we all know, reason is not their strong suit because they always rely on emotion. Granted, the kooks on our own side say their strong suit is reason, but in the conversations I have had with them, it seems like they do not have a reason except “Read the Constitution!” and “We need to get back to the Constitution!”

THIS is where doing research and knowing what we are talking about comes into play. The more research we do and the more we know, the better we can be at puncturing the false narrative that is out there. I know that in my own conversations at first I had not had a lot of good research on my side to puncture their balloon, but over the past year I had read and listed all of the sites and articles I had read. This way, if people say something that I know is false, I go right to a certain article and show them where they are in error.

This is also handy in the classic “He said, She said” cases as well. One thing I had been doing since 2006 is saving every conversation I have with people, whether in a chatroom or even on instant messenger. This way if they say something which they had been corrected on in the past I can go right to the file and say that this had been talked about before and that they were wrong then and are still wrong.

We have the tools to force our opponents to play on the football field of reason. The thing of it is do we have the WILLPOWER to confront them and force them to play on that football field of reason, or are we afraid to do it?

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Rundown for May 4, 2013

RedRightBlueBannerJoin Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they bring the week in news. This week they will discuss the White House Correspondence Dinner last Saturday as well as Ben Shapiro v. Piers Morgan Round Two. They will also go over the contrasts of George W. Bush and Barack Obama and speak on the latest battle over ObamaCare.The show’s editorial will feature the latest rule in Andrew Breitbart’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries. All that and more including your calls and the ever popular Schmuck of the Week.

Come join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which can be accessed at http://www.ownthenarrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some final show prep and also for a meet and greet with whoever enters. If you want to engage the conversation on the air, there are three ways to do it.

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. This is one show you do not want to miss if you are a REAL AMERICAN!

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Saturday, April 27, 2013

Breitbart Rule 8: Don't pretend to know more than you do

After giving us a few tips on owning the narrative, Andrew Breitbart also gave us a few tips on how to keep the narrative. Here is Rule 8 in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

8.) Don't pretend to know more than you do: This one trips up conservatives all the time. We want to argue policy because when we know policy, there's no way they can beat us, because all they have is their lexicon of name-calling and societal expulsion. We have reason on our side.

But just because we have reason on our side doesn't mean that everyone is quipped to be Charles Krauthammer or Michael Barone, policy wonks who can pull facts from the Office of Management and Budget out of every orifice. Most of us aren't experts on the latest budget package or stem-cell line regulation, but that doesn't mean we're powerless - it means we get to play Socrates, asking pointed questions rather than citing facts we may not be sure of.

One of the low points of my media life was getting a call after the nomination of John Roberts for the United States Supreme Court. A producer from CNN's now-cancelled Aaron Brown Show asked me to go on TV and discuss the wisdom of President Bush's choice. I remember taking a Civil Liberties course at Tulane in summer school. As I recall there was a case called Mapp v. Ohio. That was the extent of my then-qualifications to pontificate on such legal matters. I am not sure what demoralized me more: that I was asked to do so by a leading cable news network, or that I readily accepted. Had Wikipedia not been invented, I would have had nothing to say. But I did, and I survived. My takeaway from the revealing moment about the low standards for TV punditry was that if I valued my career, I would only accept media invites where I could dictate the terms of engagement (i.e., bring my own stories, my own perspectives, etc.) or where I could change the subject to war footing.

By avoiding talking about that which I do not know, perhaps I limit my ability to appear on more shows. But I definitely limit my ability to screw up.

Put another way: don't be the guy with a knife at a gunfight. It rarely ends well.

Now this is VERY important in the arena of social media as we look at Facebook, Twitter, and the various message boards and sites that we visit. There are many people out there who claim that they know it all and that their way is the best, but is it really? Now I will get more into that in next week’s editorial but one thing I will say about it is that we might not know everything, but we need to not pretend or give others the false impression that we do.

This is where research comes in. Many out there do not take the time to go into the research and actually back up what they talk about with facts or they do but get it all jumbled up. We need to do our research every time we find an idea or a narrative that people are putting out as false and then disprove it with what we had researched. Then and only then can we beat the progressives and the Alinskyites at their own game.

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Rundown for April 27, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Billie Cotter as they go through the news of the week. This week they will be talking about the Boston Bomber getting Mirandized, the vindication of Andrew Breitbart, as well as Rule 8 in Andrew’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries, and the return of Crossfire (this time with Stephanie Cutter on the left and Newt Gingrich on the right) on CNN. All that and much more including your calls and Schmuck of the Week.

Join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which is located at http://www.ownthenarrrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep as well as a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype in to OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter but unable to be in the chatroom, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. This is one show which is stacked full of information that you do not want to miss.

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Saturday, April 20, 2013

Breitbart Rule 7: Engage in the social arena

One of the best things I like about Andrew Breitbart in the short time I had followed him on Twitter prior to his untimely death is how engaged he was on Twitter. And with that in mind, he made Twitter (and indeed Social Media as a whole) one of the key points and rules in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

7.) Engage in the social arena: My first instinct about Facebook was my first instinct about Twitter was my first instinct about MySpace. I was right about MySpace - it sucks. I was definitely wrong about Facebook and Twitter.

Using my "ubiquity" rule, the citizen journalist isn't always reporting in the ledes, headlines, and paragraphs form. Sometimes a tweet or a re-tweet can grant an idea more legs. Sometimes a status update can lead to the mother lode. Yes, there are slick advisers falsely promising a social networking Gold Rush, but well-socially-networked person can soon carry more weight than a household-name columnist at your local news daily.

Building a movement used to take time, but now it can be done in a few hours with with the right connections and the right posts on a few websites. Take, for example, flash mobs. These are gatherings spawned over the Internet on hours' notice, and they gather thousands of people, whether it's for snowball fights or for rioting in the streets of Philadelphia.

The Tea Parties have used the power of social media to get their message out there in a new and incredible way. There are no leaders to the Tea Party, which is a great thing, and there's no formal program to the Tea Party - it's truly a party of the people, and originally, it was based on conservative people partying. If any liberal attended a Tea Party event, they'd be shocked to see that it isn't a KKK rally; it's a social gathering of thousands of like-minded people of all races and ages, people looking for others who believe in the same values.

It's also particularly true in Hollywood, where socializing is the basis of business. That's why I've tried to put people in Hollywood together, and it's already spawning actual creative projects. Seek out other people and build an army.

If you think on it, this rule is a culmination of the three prior rules. After all, Andrew’s fourth rule was about not letting the Complex use their PC lexicon to characterize you and shape the narrative, which is what the Left has been known to do on Social Media. His fifth rule was about us controlling our own story and not letting the Complex do it, which is all about owning the narrative. And to wrap up the trifecta, his sixth rule was all about ubiquity being the key to keeping the narrative. Now, what is one way to do all of this? The best way I can think of is by using the power of Social Media to defeat the Left and own and keep the narrative.

On today’s show, I will be having a panel on this very topic. On it will be the following:

If you want to engage the conversation, there are three ways you can do so:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Contact OTNNetwork on Skype
  • If you are on Twitter, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and  #OTNN 
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Rundown for April 20, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Daniel Richardson (filling in as producer for Justin Kendall) as they present a very special show. Today they will delve into how Social Media and how conservatives can use it to bolster victory in 2014 and then in 2016. This will be a show panel, and the panelists include John LaRosa of FourTier Strategies, LLC, Diane Sori of The Patriot Factor who has had problems with Facebook, Stephen Maloney who is a Social Media advocate as well as the Administrator of a few Marco Rubio groups on Facebook, and Miryam Shabak who is the Admin of Help GOP Master New Media 4 Victory group on Facebook.

Join us for Red, Right, and Blue today at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom (which is located at http://www.ownthenarrrative.com/live) 30 minutes early for some last minute show prep as well as a meet and greet. If you want to engage the conversation during the show, there are three ways to do it:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype in to OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter but unable to be in the chatroom, use the hashtags #RedRightBlue and #OTNN

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell an Independent The battle for 2014 and 2016 is crucial, and it starts with who controls Social Media

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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Breitbart Rule 6: Ubiquity is key

It is one thing to own the narrative. It is another to KEEP the narrative going. And for that you might need a little help. Hence, Rule 6 in Andrew Breitbart’s Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

6.) Ubiquity is key: As a capitalist and as a web publisher, pageviews are a desired commodity. But when playing for political or cultural keeps, impact matters most. And, when ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBC and the dailies are working against you and ignoring you, ubiquity is a key weapon That means developing relationships with like-minded allies or even enemies and news junkies and allowing them to share in the good fortune of a good scoop.

While the crux of a story can be weaponized and launched on one of my websites, there are often peripheral angles that can be developed elsewhere with a separate but related media life of their own. For instance, the acorn story was unbelievably complex. A key component of exposing the scandal was a detailed analysis of ACORN's structure and its past scandals. I knew legal minds were needed to weigh in on these aspects. Patrick Frey, who runs the indispensable Patterico website, created a parallel line of attack, not just against ACORN, but against its myriad defenders, who lied and misdirected to try to kill the story. The ACORN story couldn't have been the success it was without others - talk radio and alternative news outlets that were invested in the story and could deliver scoops of their own. So I planted scoops with what business school types would call my "competitors," and I watched the story explode, my pageviews would go through the roof, and my brand flourish. Sometimes the best ideas are counterintuitive.

I love living in Los Angeles and not DC, because in DC there are too many fighting over too little ground for their own fifteen minutes. The scarcity mentality is strangling the growth of the conservative movement. From outside DC, I can see that ubiquity is about growing the pie for everyone, spreading the stories, the channels of distribution, the resources around so that the entire movement can benefit, because our chunk of the public square gets bigger and bigger each time we break something huge.

While we all have different viewpoints or perspectives as to what conservatism is, one thing to remember is that we are all in the same fight. That is what the Left does, and they succeed by coming together for a common purpose. The problem is that conservatives are so divided that it gives the Left a chance to gain the edge on the narrative. Note what Andrew had said: “developing relationships with like-minded allies or even enemies and news junkies and allowing them to share in the good fortune of a good scoop.” That means spread it around. If you find something newsworthy, it does not help to keep it to yourself. Rather, post it on your social media tools and get the word out there. In next week’s editorial I will go more into how to engage in social media as Andrew has it as his Rule 7, but developing relationships with like-minded people who are also news junkies can allow them to share in the fortune of a good scoop is key.

One of my good friends who likes to share in the fortune of a good story is Patricia Baber, who used to be my co-host on this very show. She is one who hunts down stories on relatively unknown sites and put them out on Twitter, then it gets picked up by her followers and spreads to others. I even do the same thing when I do my news aggregates on my rant blog. But on that I do not take all the credit for it but rather give credit to Robert Stacy McCain of The Other McCain who has a blog entry entitled "How to Get a Million Hits on Your Blog.” In fact, Stacy has Rule 2 which he calls the “Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around" where he says:

Reciprocal linkage is the essential lubricant that makes the blogosphere purr with contentment. If somebody's throwing you traffic, you should either (a) give them a link-back update, or at a minimum (b) keep them in mind for future linkage. Because you don't want to end up on the wrong end of a kharmic unbalance in the 'sphere, where you're always taking and never giving.

The Other McCain has a whole plethora of articles and the like to link to on your own blogs and also on Social Media outlets. I know I usually do it, but the past couple weeks I had slacked off because of certain things away from the computer. However, I am making a concerted effort to go back to doing it. The key is, will you be ubiquitous or will you be a loner in this war?

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Rundown for April 13, 2013

Join Rick Bulow and Daniel Richardson (filling in as producer for Justin Kendall) as they review the week in news. Today they will Melissa Harris-Perry’s comment about the kids belonging to the community, as well as Obama releasing his budget which many say is a 2014 election ploy. Also, Senator Mitch McConnell (Republican Minority Leader from Kentucky) had his office wiretapped and a Democrat had implicated a progressive activist group behind it. All that and much more including your calls and Schmuck of the Week.

Join us for the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom at http://www.ownthenarrative.com 30 minutes early going over some last-minute show prep and also answering any questions on the show. If you want to engage the conversation, there are three ways to do it:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype in to OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter but unable to access the chatroom, you can use the hashtag #RedRightBlue and #OTNN and I will read your tweets on the air.

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a liberal. With all that happened this week, you know I am going to go off on a major rant that you do not want to miss.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Rule 5: Control your own story – don’t let the Complex do it

Just as Andrew Breitbart did not let the Complex use its PC Lexicon to control him and shape the narrative, he then went one step further and did not let the Complex control whatever story he had. I present to you, Rule 5 in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries.

5.) Control your own story - don't let the Complex do it: A one-and-done story isn't worth anything. One fact can be posted on the Internet and flushed down the memory hole faster than anyone can imagine. How many incredible pieces of journalistic revelation have been lost because they weren't properly presented to the public?

Serialization is good. Van Jones was taken down by Glenn Beck because Beck had the goods - and because he revealed them piece by piece. He got Jones and his defenders to come out of the closet and attack him. Then he calmly laid his cards on the table, one by one.

It's the same strategy I saw Arianna pursue during the Larry Lawrence scandal. People came out of the woodwork to attack her as a scurrilous human being slandering a dead war hero. And she smiled and let them come at her. Then she put her evidence into the public eye bit by bit, keeping the story alive. Feeding the media is like training a dog - you can't throw an entire steak to a dog to train it to sit. You have to give it little bits of steak over and over and over again until it learns its lesson. That's what Arianna did.

It's the same thing Drudge did with Lewinsky. He broke the story in pieces rather than in a long essay laying out all the facts, and he didn't let the media's cries for him to reveal all his information control his decision-making process. Instead, he controlled the media.

The important thing to remember here is that the media are like a leech hanging on the back of the news makers, and the news makers have every right and ability to feed that leech little by little instead of letting it suck them dry all at once. Keep your story alive by planning its release down to the minutest level.

The main thing to remember is this: we need to OWN THE NARRATIVE at every single opportunity. I am of the belief that owning the narrative is not just a fancy saying or something that can be focused on for an hour or so a day or even a week. Rather, owning the narrative is a way of life, one that lives with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. Owning the narrative has been a part of my life ever since Andrew died, and it will remain in me until I take that eternal celestial dirt nap.

During the 2012 election I had dealt with the third party supporters, as I had mentioned last week, and every time they said something which mentioned Romney and Obama being the same I just calmly said they are not and showed them links a little at a time. In fact, one person even called me Rick “The Narrative” Bulow because when he would ask me what I am doing, I told him that I am calmly owning the narrative.

When Marco Rubio was mentioned on Romney’s VP short list and the birthers came out of the woodwork saying he is not eligible, I had calmly said that he is, and debunked their articles a little at a time with certain links of my own. And in fact just recently I had seen a thread on a site which mentioned a paper from the Congressional Research Service on natural born citizenship and presidential eligibility. Now what is funny about it is that I had brought up that paper in another thread on the same site and got bashed for it. So I had waded in and mentioned a couple of things about eligibility, and wound up getting banned from the entire site. Am I upset about it? Yes I am; however, one thing I did not do when I commented was let them own and control the narrative. The only way the Complex can own and control the narrative after being confronted with facts is to shut you up. And online, apparently that means banning someone from sites.

If we want to win in 2014 and then in 2016, we have to own the narrative, whatever it may be, at all costs. Remember that owning the narrative is not just a fancy saying but a way of life.

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Rundown for April 6, 2013

Join Rick Bulow as he goes through the week in news. Today he will be discussing the failure of the border with Mexico. Even Ed Henry got into it with White House Spokesman Jay Carney during a press conference. There is also the ongoing battle between America and Common Core/CSCOPE. This time, it is with homeschooling. Also, with WrestleMania 29 just under 36 hours away, he will give his picks on the matches, specifically focusing on the Heavyweight Championship between champion Alberto Del Rio and challenger Jack Swagger since Swagger is proclaiming that if he wins there will be a “new” America. All this and more including your calls and the ever popular “Schmuck of the Week” coming up today.

Join us for the fun and frivolity that is Red, Right, and Blue at 1:30 PM Eastern, 12:30 PM Central. I will be in the chatroom at http://www.ownthenarrative.com 30 minutes early going over some last-minute show prep and also answering any questions on the show. If you want to engage the conversation, there are three ways to do it:

  • Call 832-699-0449
  • Skype in to OTNNetwork
  • If you are on Twitter but unable to access the chatroom, you can use the hashtag #RedRightBlue and #OTNN and I will read your tweets on the air.

Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Hell, tell a Liberal. Every second on Red, Right, and Blue is intriguing because you just never know what I will say or do next.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Breitbart Rule 4: Don't let the Complex use its PC lexicon to characterize you and shape the narrative

Andrew Breitbart was a lightning rod to the left, and he reveled in it so much that he made it Rule 4 in his Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Revolutionaries:
4.) Don't let the Complex use its PC lexicon to characterize you and shape the narrative: If you've got a big story, the Complex will do what it always dies: attack you personally using the PC lexicon. You immediately become a racist, sexist, homophobic, jingoistic nativist. Don't let them do it. The fact is this: if you refuse to buy into their lexicon, if you refuse to back down in the face of those intimidation tactics, they can't harm you. You're Neo in the hallway with Agent Smith after he figures out that the Complex is a sham - the spoon isn't bending, he's bending. Once it hits him that he's not bound by the rules of the game, he can literally stop bullets. You can stop their bullets because their bullets aren't real.
Leftist assassins like Max Blumenthal, a one-trick hit man, have tried to label me and many of my allies as racists. I don't let them get away with it. I don't just call them out. I make sure that my righteous indignation registers on the Richter scale. I don't pull out my record on civil rights or my black friends. I simply point out that what they're doing is pure Alinsky and that it has no basis in fact or reality, and that they're showing themselves to be racists in their own right by citing race every time they meet someone with whom they disagree.
While I was at the 2010 CPAC, I was confronted by Daryle Jenkins of the One People's Project based on my defense of James O'Keefe - he had been slandered online as a racist by Blumenthal because he had attended a conference at the Georgetown Law Center that included racist Jared Taylor, John Derbyshire of NATIONAL REVIEW (who ripped into Taylor for his racism during the forum), and African-American conservative Kevin Martin. At the event, O'Keefe sided with Derbyshire and Martin against Taylor.
Anyway, here's how the incident went down:

Andrew Breitbart v. Daryle Jenkins at CPAC 2010
Breitbart: Max Blumenthal is a political hit man. What he does is he rapes the reputation of people mercilessly. He makes scurrilous, unsupportable accusations against people and he smears them using the political correctness he learned so well in the post-modern academy and the politics of personal destruction he learned firsthand from his father, Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal. He destroys people. He isolates threats to the reign of the far left and the reign of his father's cabal of Clinton/Podesta and the organized left. He's a vicious guy. He falsely slandered James O'Keefe as a racist, we disproved it -
Jenkins: How did you disprove it, sir?
Breitbart: I'm being interviewed right here.
Jenkins: I'm the one who put that story out there first.
Breitbart: Well, then, you suck.
Jenkins: You're lying. You're lying ... He was at that white supremacist forum.
Breitbart: It wasn't a white supremacist forum.
Jenkins: Yes it was!
Breitbart: Then why was Kevin Martin there?
At this point, Jenkins started pointing his finger inches from my face and moving his face close to mine. It then devolved into a series of accusations regarding details of the event. Finally, Jenkins got to his point:
Breitbart: Are you accusing me of being a white supremacist?
Jenkins: I'm accusing you of being a racist, yes I am.
Breitbart: Okay, have a nice day, buddy. Will somebody please take this guy out of here? You punk.
That was it. Jenkins walked away.
The key to the conversation was that I didn't start defending myself against his baseless charge of racism. I dismissed it out of hand as ridiculous because it was ridiculous. He was a punk for leveling that kind of charge without any basis whatsoever. I don't let my enemies characterize me without any evidence, and you shouldn't let them characterize you. Name-calling is their best strategy, and if you don't lend it credence, and instead force them to back up their charges with specifics, you win. Revel in the name calling - it means you've got them reduced to their lowest, basest tactic, and the one that carries the least weight if you refuse to abide by their definition of you.
There had been many times I was called racist or un-American for posting articles against Obama. The reason (according to those who called me racist) is because I do not like Obama because he is black. As Martin Luther King Jr. said during his famous “I have a Dream” speech, there should be a day when people are judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character. And judging on Obama’s past, it is clear that the content of his character is bad for America. However, many people only see skin color and as such they do not see the content of the character.
Currently I am battling many who say Marco Rubio (and now even Ted Cruz) are not eligible for president because they are not a natural-born citizen, and have even been accused of being an O-bot or an Obama supporter. Those people are even accusing me of using Saul Alinsky tactics. I tell them to back up their claim and some of them do, but on the majority many are held silent because they realized they had been forced to using low, base tactics to back up their claims.
When I am called names because I do not support Obama or any liberal for that matter, I calmly (at first) let them know that they have no specific claim to back up their charge. Then I move on to saying that they really have no claim if they resort to name-calling. Then and only then do we win and put the Complex on their heels, thereby owning the narrative which they tried to shape on us.