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April 3, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
34:18
April 3, 2006, Monday, Hour #3
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And we're back in the fastest three hours in media, the Rush Limbaugh program, uh, fastest week in media, most listened to radio talk show in the country, a program that meets and surpasses all audience expectations on a daily basis.
A thrill and a delight to be with you.
President Bush is on his way to the pitcher's mound in Cincinnati to throw out ceremonial first pitch today.
It's opening day.
And there he goes.
Standing ovation and a sold-out ballpark in Cincinnati.
It's a totally rousing welcome, and it would make anybody who reads presidential polls uh a little curious.
Rousing welcome, standing ovation.
The Cubs and the Reds uh about to open it up in the National League in uh in Cincinnati.
Greetings, my friends.
Here's a phone number if you want to be on the program 800-282-2882, and the email address rush at eIBNet.com.
Coming up in this hour, Senator McCain, as I predicted, I'm just surprised it's happening this soon.
The media turning on him.
They can't understand why he's trying to build fences with Jerry Falwell.
They think Fallwell is worse than Louis Farrakhan.
Uh and that Pat Robertson's worse than all of them.
And uh so they're just beside themselves here.
And we'll have audio sound bites of uh Senator McCain with Tim Russert on Meet in the Press yesterday.
We also have a Gorbasm coming up in this hour as we go back to our update archives, Mikhail Sagavich Gorbachev back out there now, echoing Bill Clinton and his criticism of the United States.
But first, ladies and gentlemen, as you know, we've been working feverishly on coming up with an update theme for um uh the ports deal uh story.
It has achieved update status because it's going to be around for quite a while, and here it is.
We have finally decided on our boy Paul Shanklin put this together.
Sitting in the ports of Dubai to take off on Otis Redding's sitting on the dock of the bay.
That man was so great.
Otis Redding.
He was just so great.
That's sitting on the dock of the bay.
That's Paul Shanklin, S-H-A-N-K-L-I-N.
He's got a website, get all of his parodies there.
Now, for those of you listening on the podcast, unfortunately, we are not allowed to play the parody, suspend a bump.
No, don't use a bump.
Uh, we're not allowed to play parodies uh that that feature music in them on our podcasts because we're not licensed for that form of distribution.
We do pay an ASCAP BMI license to broadcast.
Actually, the local stations pay that.
Uh we we uh uh well yeah, we all it we all pay it, uh, but we the the podcasts and that that new form of uh uh delivery system uh has not yet been licensed, and so that's why we can't play musical parodies uh on our podcast.
But just sit tight, folks, hang in there and be tough, because it'll it it's that that's gonna change as the rest of the world gets up to speed with us.
Here we are in the cutting edge of podcast evolution, technological evolution in general, as well as societal evolution.
But there is ports deal news today, and it is this.
The French have snuck in under the ports deal radar to snatch up a telecom equipment maker that does have U.S. military ramifications.
And we told you about this deal a week or two ago.
Francis uh France's uh Alcatel SA will acquire rival telecom equipment maker Lucent Technologies in a $13.4 billion stock swap that would form an industry powerhouse with a product line broad enough to entice customers into a consolidating telecom industry.
Company leaders said yesterday they plan to shed 10% of the combined workforce.
That's about 8,800 jobs.
You know, the French are all excited now, they can fire people.
Uh and uh well, the yeah, the the the they're not watering down the deal too much, are they?
Well, uh oh, Chirac did.
He suspended, so they can't fire anybody anymore.
So the French once again buckled to the let them eat cake crowd.
How about that?
Well, you were more informed than I, Mr. Sud Sturdley.
Here's the here's the here's the impact for us.
To address U.S. security concerns about Bell Labs.
Bell Labs is the loosened research arm that does sensitive work for the Pentagon.
The French company, Alcatel, and Lucent announced plans to form a separate independent American subsidiary managed by a board of three American citizens vetted by the U.S. government.
Because of the recent Dubai ports controversy, uh guy said we may see some lingering Issues in Washington in regards to foreign investments.
So U.S. defense work now obviously in jeopardy, ladies and gentlemen, as the French have taken over the company which owns Bell Labs.
Well, if they're a French company, there's no question they're going to employ Arabs.
Uh uh.
I just uh I had to pass it on.
And now, ladies and gentlemen from the archives.
That's the Trumpet fanfare.
He's back.
He's in the news.
Mikhail Segaevich Gorbachev.
Here's our Gorbasm theme.
Here's our Gorbasm theme.
By the way, do you realize that managing port terminals is something Americans just won't do anymore?
Thank you.
So for those of you new to the program, what's a Gorbasm you wonder?
Well, we got to go back to 1985, I believe.
86.
The left, the media is scared to death that Ronald Reagan's going to push the nuclear button and detonate us all.
They're desperately hoping for a summit between Reagan and a Soviet leader since Reagan took office.
But Reagan refused to meet with Soviet leaders because they kept dying on him.
But finally, a young and vibrant leader with a big birthmark on his forehead that happened, by the way, to grow, as did Soviet expansionism came along.
Mikhail Gorbachev.
They agreed to have a summit in Washington.
And so that day arrived, and the Lucian 62 jetliner, technology to build, by the way, stolen from Boeing.
Lands out at Andrews Air Force Base.
You got State Department people out there, get the media out there.
Everybody just excited.
They can't but contain themselves.
Gorbachev is coming.
Gorbachev is coming.
The world is safe now.
Because finally somebody responsible in the world will convince President Reagan not to push the nuclear button.
They really thought this.
So that Ilyushin 62 jetliners taxiing in from the runway.
They roll the steps up to the front door of the airplane.
The door opens.
A collective gasp is heard from the assembled crowd as he steps onto the top step.
Mikhail Segevich Gorbachev arrives to save the world, and a collective Gorbasm was heard and experienced by the collected leftists at Andrews Air Force Base.
All right, let's get on with the...
Let's get on with the Gorbazm news.
Former Soviet leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Mikhail Gorbachev has turned 75.
Bitter that the end of the Cold War.
Would you turn down the Gorbazm theme just?
Yes, thank you.
Turn bitter that the uh Cold War has left the United States with what he called a superiority complex.
It's spoken just like a true leftist.
It would be in everyone's interest if that big country America recovered from that disease, he said.
Now get this.
Gorbachev, who launched the democratic and economic reforms that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, described the end of the Cold War as a gift that the United States is squandered.
Mikhail Gorbachev did nothing to end the Cold War.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did it, but to this day, modern history writers accord that honor to Mikhail's uh Mikhail Gorbachev, the uh the launch of democratic and economic reforms that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union see that.
He tried to reform a socialist communist system and it led to the downfall.
Media doesn't like that.
They wanted communism to reign supreme and triumph.
He tried to hold on to communism by doling out a little freedom here and there.
You can't do that.
Once the people get freedom, they don't want any more oppression and tyranny.
And Gorbachev had no choice.
We had infiltrated that society with uh blue jeans, Dallas reruns, and a number of things which put the lie to everything Soviet leaders had told their people for 50 years.
Listen to the ABC treatment of the same story.
Gorbachev.
The headline laments U.S. arrogance.
Mikhail Gorbachev's magnetic brown eyes shine as brightly as ever.
That sort of reminds me of the story the Washington Post did on Clinton about how his tight jeans were crackling with power.
Out on Coronado Island.
Magnetic brown eyes shine as brightly as ever, and he speaks with the same passion about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As he prepares to mark his 75th birthday on Thursday, the man who ended the Cold War, says ABC.
By the way, the writer of this story.
Actually, it's ABC, not it's the Associated Press.
Vladimir Isachenkov.
The man who ended the Cold War, dream on fled, and launched democratic reforms that broke the repressive Soviet regime.
That was not what he intended to do, folks.
Continues to enjoy the limelight, globetrotting on behalf of his political foundation and environmental group and taking part in charity projects.
I met Mikhail Gorbachev in Houston at uh George Bush 41's 80th birthday party uh two or three summers ago.
And we posed for a picture.
And damned in that picture, we'll put it on a website.
The birthmark ended up on my forehead.
Okay, back to the phones.
I want to thank all of you for patiently waiting.
Uh, Las Vegas and Scott, it's your turn on the EIB network.
Hi.
Thank you, Rush.
Megadiddle to you.
Thank you.
I just wanted to share your common sense and inner knowledge regarding that Sharon Stone movie, and let you know that just for one person's perspective in Las Vegas, that's me, many members of my family, and a lot of people I know.
We're not going to go see that movie.
And it's only because of that warped moral statement she made on sexual activity for children, and that's the only reason we're not going to go.
And we were looking forward to going to it before that, but we're going to make our point of it.
What did she say?
She said something about oral sex is okay for kids because it's not really sex or something like that.
Well, she said she said, if you have to do it and you get yourself where you can't say no, do the oral sex.
And it just ticked me off.
Oh, she that's right, she was advising young churin of uh of that.
That's right.
Well, she lost the city.
So add that to the mix then, because she said a lot of things that are that are that are I mean, they're just dumb.
She just said some dumb stuff in the process of promoting the movie.
Well, I it it just I don't know that she's ever said anything smart.
That's not the point, Mr. Snerdley.
The point is the timing of her dumb statements did not help the movie.
It uh it just you know the the I well, yeah, I know you can blame the movie company.
That's what I said earlier.
Who in the world turned her loose to say this kind of stuff the week before the movie comes out?
And old Scott here is right.
You know, telling a bunch of kids if you can't resist the urge to have sex, just do it or just have oral sex and so forth.
Uh but again, this is all being discussed here because the director of the first movie is defending this this the sequel.
It's like 3.2 million dollars over the weekend.
It's a bomb, folks.
It's a just a total bomb.
Well, there's another thing, too, folks.
We gotta be on who is it that goes to movies these days?
We know movies are marketed for young people.
We know they're made for young people.
They always have been, they always will be.
So you've got your average 19 to 21-year-old guy who's the target here, or f 18.
I mean, what is it?
I don't know what the rating of this movie is.
Say 18, 21, maybe 22.
And these guys, you know, they're just hopeless.
Every their whole life is a fantasy.
They fantasize with everything because they don't have it in reality.
It hadn't happened to them yet.
Well, you you put some 48-year-old babe on the movie screen and say these guys, yeah, she's gonna get naked.
You may as well tell them a senior citizen's gonna get naked.
A 19 or 21-year-old looks at a 48-year-old is their mother, in some cases grandmother, if you're from realinda.
And so it just it's it missed the boat on uh on a on a whole lot of levels.
Aside from did anybody stop to think I haven't seen it.
Maybe it just isn't any good.
Maybe the movie just isn't any good.
Uh, you know, one of the things movie theaters less or studios love more than anything is word of mouth.
Uh in fact, these actors that hate doing these pre-publicity interviews and premieres will all say that that doesn't matter if ill of means if the movie isn't any good, if the audience doesn't like it, word of mouth is what sells the movie to come out of there, wow, tell their friends, should have seen what I just saw.
I'm gonna go back and see it again.
Wow, is it that good?
Yeah, well, let's go together.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yahoo.
It obviously didn't happen here.
It opened up the first night with one point two, then tapered off to like one point and oh and then tapered off to 750,000.
Uh if there's any word of mouth on this movie, it's don't waste your money.
And so now Hollywood has to come out and defend this and blame the culture and which they're doing is well, a bunch of puritanical conservative Christians out there.
That's uh you look at the political leadership at the top.
That that's what's dictated.
We can't do our erotic movies anymore.
Susan in Richmond, Virginia.
I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Hello.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call.
You bet.
Um I just wanted to to sound off a little bit on the immigration debate and sort of turn back to that subject that you were talking talk about.
By all means, go right there.
Well, I think as far as the guest worker program, I think there's some things that um people need to remember.
We already have close to forty percent of the Mexican workforce in the United States today.
And I don't think most people realize that.
And when you talk about a guest worker program, we tried that back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
It was called the Broquero program, and it brought millions of Mexicans to work in American agriculture.
Yeah.
And it was a miserable failure.
As it was in 1986.
Right, absolutely.
Absolutely.
But the the Mexica's number number two source of revenue after oil exports is all of the remittances that go back to that country from immigrants living here.
Something like fifty-eight billion dollars a year goes back to Mexico.
So there's a huge capital flight from immigration here that we have now.
And the idea that these are jobs that Americans just won't do, I think is is just a lie for the American.
In fact, I have I'm glad you I'm glad you reminded me that I've got the breakdown here of uh uh from the Pew Hispanic Center of what the jobs that they do.
And of course, we know that that uh uh apparently Americans will not do port terminal work.
Uh where we had to sell a company uh out of Dubai of terminals uh because Americans don't do that.
I don't know what Americans do anymore, except media.
Anyway, Pew Hispanic Center, more than forty percent, about four point four million people of the twelve million supposedly here have arrived within the past five years.
They account for about one in every four farm workers.
They hold 17% of all jobs in cleaning and building maintenance, 14% of all construction jobs, and 12% of food preparation jobs.
Now I don't you know with Dick Durbin was on earlier and he said that uh become neurosurgeons.
I don't see that here.
I don't see what percentage of our neurosurgeons are uh uh well, neurobiologist, yeah, neurobiology, whatever, but whatever.
I don't see that category here among the uh illegal uh immigrants.
But he said they are our future.
You know what's going on here, Susan.
They're just pandering to what they think is gonna be a huge block of future voters.
We'll be right back.
Yes, as we always do here, ladies and gentlemen.
That's the uh that's one of the many daily objectives here of uh me and your crew at the EIB network back to the phones of Manhattan Beach, California.
This is Steve.
Hello, sir.
Hello, Maha.
Thank you so much for taking my call.
You bet.
And uh I like to call you God's substitute teacher.
But I was wondering if you would share with us the uh predictions for the opening day for for the major league season.
Predictions for opening day.
Well, predictions for the season.
For the predictions for the season.
Uh oh, geez.
I'm I you know what?
I am woefully unprepared.
Well, sorry to hear that.
Yeah.
No, but I gotta tell you the truth.
I I couldn't begin to tell you who I I think oh, let's see.
Uh American League East.
You gotta go to the Yankees.
Well, I'm I got I got a problem with their pitching staff.
I I think the Yankees pitching staff's gonna let them down.
They're starting pitching.
I that's they've got this this powerful lineup, but I think they haven't the they haven't replied.
That that's that's that's that's a this is a toughie.
Uh long season like this.
Who do you think?
I'd be more into you, obviously have studied it.
Well, I certainly pray and hope that the Red Sox are uh the American League champions, and I would uh be delighted To see uh a rematch of two thousand and four with St. Louis um over in the National League.
I do think the Cardinals are the best team at baseball.
You'd have to agree with that.
Well, you gotta agree with that.
Come on now, you gotta agree with that.
Well, I I did I was prepared to listen to you.
I I didn't want to uh be the one prognosticating.
I wanted you to.
Well, I mean, but I don't know, you're a football uh uh big football player I can't get you to help out with baseball.
I have to I have to be honest with you.
You know, this is I hope you understand this.
I worked for a baseball team for five years.
I wor I worked a long time ago, from 1979 to 83, it was Kansas City Royals, and I was uh I was in sales and marketing for most of it.
I was also in charge of ceremonial first pitches and choosing national anthem singers.
It was a very important job, and it hasn't been the same since I left.
Well, they're not haven't been.
No, they haven't either.
But uh I I'll tell you the the uh uh the thing that happened to me when I worked for the baseball team, long days, especially during homestands.
We had the business day, which is a nine to five business day, then the game day, and my responsibility the last three years I was there was director of scoreboard operation.
So it was it was a long, long, long, long day, and I can remember a couple years of the end of the season hoping the team didn't make the playoffs just to return to some normalcy, and and we the when I got so close to it that the magic of being a fan, there was no mystique left.
There was there was no mystery to it left.
There was no I mean it knew everything.
Um I knew what was in the sports pages in the papers was half the story, ten percent of the story.
Uh and uh it just it just it just took away some of the ingredients necessary to uh to be a fan in the pure sense, and I haven't gotten it back from for baseball, which is why I don't want to get anywhere near working for a football team.
Uh I I don't want to know what goes on there.
I want to keep it on the pedestal I have it rather than learning it may not deserve to be there, uh, if if that's the case.
And I'm only just now, like the last two years, able to actually sit and watch a baseball game on TV and and get into it.
Uh-huh.
Well, thank God uh for the baseball fan because uh President Bush gets treated the the uh appropriate way um when he does.
I'm not running down baseball fans, and I'm not I'm not I don't condemn anything anybody likes.
Country music that's fine with me too.
It's your taste, you like it.
I'm not gonna condemn it.
Classical music, if you like baseball, that's that's fine.
I think, you know, the the thing I I did promise on Friday to talk about uh this this Barry Bonds business because USA Today and some others you had the typical civil rights groups out there trying to say that this uh uh steroid investigation is purely race motivated, and they're trying to get bonds so that it doesn't break uh Babe Ruth's record.
And I think, you know, here here's a uh here's the the interesting thing that I got into a little trouble because of my McNabb statements about the media and race.
Uh and uh and and and how they're they had a hope vested in black quarterbacks doing well, and I still believe it's true.
I think I've been vindicated countless times since the episode happened.
But now here comes this business with Bonds, and and there's some people saying that uh the the steroid criticism and the focus the investigation on him is purely motivated by race is absurd because they can't stop him.
There isn't time to stop him from beating Babe Ruth.
Babe Ruth has 714 home runs and bonds is relatively close.
He could beat that this year.
If he plays 120 games, um he could beat that, and no investigation is gonna be completed with action taken against bonds that will wipe him out this season.
I just don't believe they're gonna move that fast on it.
In fact, George Mitchell has been appointed by Bud Sealy to do the investigation.
He's on the board of the Red Sox are crying out loud, the number one opponent and enemy of the Yankees, and there are two people on the Yankees who are gonna be implicated in this investigation of Bonds because they were you know all part of grand jury investigation, Jason Giombi and Gary Sheffield.
So if Mitchell comes out and says anything about the Yankees and have to have to suspend people or whatever, uh that's it this is a this is a mess.
To uh to investigate this.
They're investigating this book uh and and all this.
The media largely driving.
I don't think the fans care.
Fans are showing up in droves.
Fans love to see big bomb Home runs.
Fans aren't worried about it.
Maybe a couple here or there, but you never hear the fans complaining about it.
But the holier than now righteous moralist leaders in the media have been raising hell about all this for years.
Right.
But the bottom line in the race business is this.
The guy they're actually trying to stop Bonds from defeating is Hank Aaron.
Aaron has 755 home runs and Hank Aaron was black.
Now, how can it be racial if they're trying to keep Barry Bonds a black guy from beating Hank Aaron, who's a black guy?
In the home run race.
The Babe Ruth thing, a babe Ruth is traditional and uh uh all that, but the home run king in Major League Baseball is Henry Aaron.
And he's of the same race as Barry Bonds is.
So I just I think this is like Cynthia McKinney.
You know, that the civil rights movement better learn to look forward and move forward.
Here's Cynthia McKinney, who's who's just a lunatic, uh, regardless of her race.
He had a big press conference today.
She got she got she slugged a Capitol Hill security guy last week because she didn't go through the metal detector, and he didn't recognize her, and they're out there making it sound like it's Selma, Alabama today in their press conference.
They're making it sound like it's a civil rights movement of the 60s.
She may as well be Rosa Parks.
And she's out there speaking.
She's the victim.
Her lawyer said she's the victim because she's black and she's in Congress.
Well, it's totally absurd.
In the United States of America in 2006.
It is totally absurd.
But yet they continue to play the same race card the same way, and it's not gonna work any longer.
It's not gonna work politically the way it did uh uh even as recently as 10 or 15 years ago.
The the day has come and gone, and it it just doesn't work.
The uh what?
What oh, this Mr. Snerdley wants to know what is the director's scoreboard?
I've I was uh not director's scoreboard, I produced the game.
The director of scoreboard operations is a club employee, and you've got people that run the video and run the graphics in charge of the ball and strike count up there.
We play the music between innings, uh, we do the rallying of the fans.
I'm the one that directed all those things to happen during the course of a game.
Uh you know.
More than one person.
You've got a whole crew of people in there.
You've got the jumbotrons now, you've got the individual scoreboards, you've got people playing uh uh music, uh commercials, some people run commercials on uh on their video trons between innings and so forth.
Yeah, there's a lot going on in there.
And it's you know, it's uh it's key.
I I remember one time I got yelled at Kansas City by the manager, Kansas City, well, a lot of times.
I got yelled out.
I've told you this story before.
I'll tell it again for those of you who are new to the uh to the program.
My first year, I'm director of group sales.
We got the largest group in the history of the of the year.
Every year is Olatha, Kansas.
They'd be sell tickets out there for their big night of the year, and they were so big that we did pregame ceremonies with them differently than other groups.
We took the whole organizing committee out on the field, we line them up, uh, third baseline, first baseline behind the pitcher's mound.
Have a microphone actually on the field, and I'm the guy doing the introductions and announcing what great job the Olatha Night Committee's done and all this sort of stuff.
Normally this happens in the PA booth.
But we're doing it down on the field because they're so big, it's an incentive to keep them doing it every year.
I mean, 7,000 of them.
Saturday night place sold out 40,000 people.
And uh, you know, I'm a little nervous.
40,000 people doing this, and there's a delay on the on the from the sound cluster, speaker cluster and uh center field.
Uh so you hear yourself uh half second after you say you've got to really stay focused on what you're doing.
I was so focused on doing that I forgot to take a baseball out for the first pitch.
So I didn't know I didn't have the baseball, just totally slipped my mind.
Uh and this is like the 20th first pitch ceremony I had done that season.
It's just not like this on the field.
So I turned to the guy who's gonna throw the pitch.
Okay, Tom, let her rip.
But he says, I don't have a ball.
So we're stuck out there.
I've just called for the first pitch, there's no baseball.
So I had one or two choices.
I could leave and go to dugout and get one.
I knew if I did that there wouldn't be one when I got there, or I could ask for one on the PA system.
So I asked for one on the PA system.
Every baseball and every bag in the dugout came thrown out of there.
The players in the disc had the best time.
The O'Latha Knight Committee scattered all over the outfield chasing these baseballs.
Meanwhile, I read down, I pick one up, feel like a ground ball, give it to the guy.
He throws the first pitch while all this is happening.
And the whole committee, it must have been 75 people out there.
And they're running all over and 40,000 people are laughing themselves silly.
Now, because I have a healthy dose of showmanship in me, I think this is cool.
Doesn't bother me.
I got upstairs and I was greeted with frowns of disapproval by Oprah Management.
This is not the way it's supposed to happen here at the Kansas City Royals.
The other incident was the crowds at the ball game are notoriously uh reserved.
They they didn't really make a whole lot of noise.
So one day, Jim Eymon, who actually entered the data in the computer that went up on the scoreboard just before they had the VideoTron, the big jumbotron.
I said, Jim, put the thing up there, says, let's make some noise.
Put it up there, and the crowd erupted, just started cheering.
That scoreboard door opened, and the PR director came in and started lashing me.
We don't artificially affect the atmosphere at Royal Stadium.
Take that BS down and don't ever put it up again.
Okay.
So I had my I had my share of troubles uh doing the job, but it was still five years I wouldn't trade.
You know, because of the people I got to meet and the uh experience that uh that I uh got to have.
I think it set me up for everything that was to follow, by the way, which came uh when I got back into radio in 1983.
I'm a little long here, folks, so I got to take a quick timeout.
We'll be back and continue in just a moment.
Stay with us.
All right, now stand by on these sound bites, because I'm gonna get these McCain sodden bites in.
I've committed to doing that, I'm gonna do it.
But first, uh Henry in Pittsburgh.
Hello, sir.
Yes, Rush.
Yes, sir.
We're on the program for you.
Thank you.
What is wrong with professional athletes using steroids?
They're paid millions of dollars to perform at a high level, and I think it's clear the steroids improve athletic athletic performance.
So what's wrong with uh these athletes using steroids under a doctor's care?
You don't think it's cheating?
Uh I mean if the aim is to increase athletic performance, again, there's no doubt they work.
Uh professional sports is entertainment, showmanship.
Uh I'd say why not.
This is this is one of the uh interesting things with it.
I have if you look at attendance, the fans don't seem to be upset with any of this.
They're showing up in record numbers.
Uh yeah, here pockets of it.
But I've, you know, you can make you could make, and I'm not advocating steroids here.
I I but I I you could go back to the early days of the game, and uh did those did those uh guys back then work out and they have gyms and personal trainers and build themselves up using uh machines that exist today that didn't back then.
Uh we've monkeyed with we've we've jacked up the baseball.
There have been periods of time and seasons we have a dead ball, we have a live ball, we've had home runs jump out of the park one year, next year hardly any by comparison.
We've toyed with the height of the pitcher's mound, give pitchers an advantage or disadvantage.
We they they they've monkeyed with this game over the years in any number of ways to try to stimulate offense or to harm it, depending on uh you know the powers that be that run the game and how they react to it.
I mean there's something about putting a substance, human growth hormone in your system uh that is considered to be unnatural and cheating.
Uh and and that's there's a stigma that's always going to be attached to that.
And I guarantee they're never going to legalize them.
Uh they're never they're never gonna get to the point go ahead and do it, even though there's questionable data on whether or not they're actually harmful.
Uh you have all kinds of different medical opinions tell you, no, there's no proven link to steroid use and damage.
Others say that's BS, of course there is.
Biggest example, Lyle Alzado, football player, Oakland Raiders, Cleveland Browns, died of brain cancer.
He blamed it on steroids, but there's not a doctor around who can say, yep, his brain cancer is because of steroids.
Um, I got to get to these McCain sound bites because I've uh the the media is turning on him, folks.
They can't understand he's flip-flopped on tax cuts, he's flip-flopped on Jerry Falwell, and I told you this is gonna happen.
And uh the this actually very beneficial for McCain as far as the uh Republican base is concerned, because they don't like the mainstream press.
It was on Meet the Press yesterday, Rustert.
You're now voting for the tax cut that you not voted for.
You came out and said we should teach intelligent design in classes as well as evolution.
Jerry Falwell, you're now giving the commencement address at Liberty University in May.
You believe Falwell's still an agent of intolerance?
The tax cuts are now there and at voting to revoke them would have been to not to extend them, would have meant a tax increase.
I've never voted for a tax increase.
Well, that's important.
But they wouldn't do the meeting.
But for the record, it would have gone back to tax rates that you had supported.
Yes.
But the economy had adjusted.
The tax cuts were there.
And uh if it it would have been and the what that's the way it was designed, would have been tantamount to a tax increase.
And that's the and that's a fact.
And I've never voted for a tax increase in my life, with the exception of the tax.
I do things because I think they're right.
Yeah, and the next question.
Under McCain, by the way, he added this.
As regards to Reverend Falwell, which is the major thrust of your comments, um, I met with Reverend Falwell.
He came to see me in Washington.
We r we agreed to disagree on certain issues, and we agreed to move forward.
I believe that uh speaking at Liberty University is no different from speaking at the new college or or Ohio State University, all of which I am speaking.
I speak at a lot of colleges and university.
Do you believe that Jerry Falwell is still an agent of intolerance?
No, I don't.
I think that Jerry Falwell can explain to you his views on this program when you have him on.
You know, Falwell Robertson doesn't matter, but we people will never ask somebody why do you support Calypso Lewis?
Louis Farrakhan.
Uh Russert won't let go, though, telling him here he thinks he's losing credibility as a maverick and with his base in the media.
I think most people will judge my record exactly for what it is, where I take positions that I stand that I stand for and I believe in, whether it be climate change, whether it be torture, or whether it be a number of other issues with which I am in immigration.
Uh I don't think that my position on immigration is exactly pleasing to the far-right base.
I will continue to take positions that I believe in and I stand for.
And I recognize that a lot of my credibility is based on that.
And I think most Americans will judge me by my entire record.
Finally, McCain Russert says, could we have two wars at once?
I'm going to evade Iran.
I think we could have Armageddon, but I think that that if we handle this right, and our European allies stand with us, and the Russians and the Chinese uh stand with us, uh sanctions might do the job.
And I am confident that this administration will exhaust every effort before contemplating seriously a military option.
And that's it, folks.
The honeymoon's over.
He's praising Falwell, he's praising Bush, he's praising tax cuts.
Uh media is not going to continue to hoist this guy up as the maverick and the great moderate that can unite the differences in this country.
It's over.
As always, my folks, it was uh just better than almost anything being here with you and doing this program.
And we'll do it again tomorrow.
And I'll look forward to seeing you then.
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