A funny thing happened on the way to the congressional switchboard earlier this week.

[babylonsister]

"Alert the patriots: Tyrants are ruining our country!"
Posted by Kate Pickert Friday, March 19, 2010 at 6:36 pm


A funny thing happened on the way to the congressional switchboard earlier this week.

On Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh told his listeners to call Congress and tell them to vote no on health care reform. That's no small thing. With his millions of fans, this is the kind of advice that could crash the congressional phone system.

But Rush made a critical error in his activism and it revealed an insider trick about grassroots organizing and showcased the absolute hatred some of Rush's listeners feel about Democratic health care reform. Stay with me here – I promise the payoff will be worth it.

FamiliesUSA, a pro-reform activist group, has a toll-free number on its web site, telling supporters: “Call your elected officials at 1-888-876-6242. Tell them that Americans deserve better than the status quo. We need quality, affordable health care NOW.”

People who call this number, however, don't actually reach elected officials – at first. They reach a recorded message that begins, “Thank you for calling your representatives and your senators. Please urge them to vote yes on health reform…” After the pro-reform message, the call is routed to the actual capitol switchboard. The purpose of this is to two-fold: To give callers a kind of script to say when they do reach members and senators and to spare them the cost of a long-distance call.

Unfortunately for Rush, he gave out the toll-free FamiliesUSA number on his show on Tuesday, which meant his anti-reform listeners got a pro-reform message when they tried to call Congress. So many Rush fans called the FamiliesUSA number on Tuesday that it caused a massive spike in call volume, which was immediately noticed by the group's telephone re-routing vendor. Not wanting to pick up the tab for anti-reform calls, of course, FamiliesUSA immediately shut down the number and got a new one, which is posted above and now functioning as intended. (FamiliesUSA executive director Ron Pollack says the cost of that brief spike is in the thousands of dollars. “It's an ironic form of flattery,” he quipped when I reached him earlier today.)

more...

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/19/alert-the-patriots-tyrants-are-ruining-our-country/

[NWHarkness]

1. Unfortunately for Rush?

Bullshit. That was a deliberate ratfuck intended to take down the FamiliesUSA phone operation.

When will these morons in the traditional media ever learn?

[my2sense]

2. Exactly! - That twisted POS knew exactly what he was doing n/t