All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 14, 2007 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:20
August 14, 2007, Tuesday, Hour #3
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Actually, make that 9, 10, and 11, and we'll go back to 6 and 7 and 8 in due course.
Greetings, folks, and welcome back, Rush Limbaugh, meeting and surpassing all audience expectations, which is no mean feat on a daily basis.
Thrill and delight to have you with us, 800-282-2882.
If you want to be on the program, the email address, rush at EIBNet.com.
Mr. Sterling, when is that Republican YouTube debate now?
Is it in November, like the 28th, something like that?
Yeah, some...
Here it is, here it is.
I just found this.
The on-again, off-again, Republican version of the CNN YouTube debate will be held November 28th.
See, I was right.
Even when I think I'm wrong, I'm right.
Two-hour debate held in St. Petersburg, Florida.
CNN announced yesterday online users were urged to submit their questions.
The debate had been scheduled for mid-September, but Rudy and Mitt said they couldn't participate because of previous campaign commitments.
I got a bad feeling about this.
I think it's a joke when the Democrats did it.
It's going to be a bigger joke when the Republicans do it.
But they're going to go ahead and do it.
ABC News Sunlin Miller is reporting that in an interview in August's edition of the Progressive magazine, Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former senator the Breck girl, takes candid shots at the other candidates battling for the nomination against their husband.
The problem for me with the other candidates is I don't know what it is that drives them.
I should think the president has to be somebody who has that kind of vision outside themselves.
Elizabeth Edwards praised her husband, the Breck girl, for apologizing for his vote in favor of the Iraq War and questioned Senator Hillary Clinton for not doing the same thing.
The Brett girl's wife said she even in the New Hampshire debate said, I made a mistake.
People are looking for a meaculpa from her.
And when she buried a line like that, I give her credit for saying it, but when she buries that line, we're electing a leader of the free world.
And just like the votes on this last funding bill, we're looking for a leader, said the Brett girl's wife.
And while Obama was in the Illinois state legislature and not the Senate in 2003, Mrs. Edwards equally questioned his motives.
Obama gives a speech that's likely to be extraordinarily popular in his home district.
Then he comes to the Senate and he votes for funding.
So you're going to get people behaving in a holier-than-thou way way.
She also was no holds barred on the issue of health care.
She said Hillary is saying we need to develop a political will, referencing her own personal battle with cancer and the stories she's heard from other patients who can't afford health care.
She said of Hillary, she hasn't been talking to people if she thinks we need to develop the will.
We do not need to develop the will.
I know what Mrs. Clinton says.
I know what she means when she says we need to develop the will, the political will.
What Mrs. Clinton is saying is she knows the American people are not for it.
And so to a liberal, the political will is finding a way to fool them and force them into accepting it.
Elizabeth Edwards thinks that everybody does want it, and she's wrong.
Taking aim at Obama, Mrs. Edwards continued, I don't know why it took six months, but I'm glad he has a health care plan now.
It doesn't cover 15 million people.
If you're one of those 15 million, it's not universal for you.
The fact that he says he'll fix it later, that's not the kind of bold response we need in a problem that's important to America.
She added that any divide in the Democrat Party this year among the candidates is a difference between actual Democrats and rhetorical Democrats.
Sometimes it seems that we have these beliefs, but it turns out it's like a Hollywood set.
It's a facade.
There's no guts behind it, said Mrs. Edwards, who asserts in the interview, you listen to the language of what people say, particularly Obama, who seems to be using a lot of John's 2004 language, which is maybe not surprising since one of his speech writers was one of our speech writers.
His media guy was our media guy.
These people know John's mantra as well as anybody could know it.
They've moved from hope is on the way to the audacity of hope.
I'm constantly hearing things in a familiar tone.
So she thinks Obama's stealing from her husband's campaign.
But you read this, folks, I'm sure you listen to it.
You just have to shake your head in amazement.
The Breck girl is having its routine now.
The Breck girl's having his wife go out after his enemies.
It's like she's a stage mother or something.
His nails weren't dry, or the hairspray can was empty or some such thing.
How does he get his wife to talk mean to his foes?
What a dude this guy must be.
You imagine those Muslim terrorists, Vladimir Putin, Akhmadini Zad are shaking in their assorted footwear when they think of an Edwards presidency.
In fact, the Breck girl was asked about that on the Today Show today.
Meredith Vieira interviewed him.
Says, your wife has been described as your backbone, your biggest advocate, certainly no shrinking violet.
She's taken on everyone from Ann Coulter to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama.
Is that part of campaign strategy, or is that just Elizabeth being Elizabeth?
Yeah, I give up on the strategy.
No, we've been married 30 years and I've known her longer than that.
And the whole time I've known her, she's been exactly the same person.
She speaks her mind.
She says what she thinks.
Most of the time we agree.
Sometimes we don't agree.
But we always love and respect each other.
Oh, well, you know, they say what it is.
I just...
I have trouble believing this is not a strategy.
Folks, you know, running for president is a very serious thing.
You cannot.
You just can't have people running all over the place.
It's your wife or your husband or whatever.
You can't have them running all over the place mouthing off.
It's too risky.
It has to be somewhat coordinated.
The way these consultants button these people down and give them these things to say and so forth.
That's why this is fascinating.
The consultants are giving these things to Elizabeth Edwards to say and not the Breck girl.
Last night, he was in Iowa at Dan's pizza restaurant.
He was doing his Fighting for One America bus tour, and the seasoned citizens were the audience, and he left them sweating for 20 minutes in the heat because he was late.
And here's why.
I want to know what we can do to warm this room up a little bit.
Surely we can get the heat turned up a little bit.
And surely we can snack a few more people into the back, right?
Because there are a bunch of them outside who couldn't get in.
You want to know why we're standing at a great example of global warming and why America's not dealing with this in a serious way is because the oil companies, the gas companies, the power companies stand between us and doing what needs to be done.
Oh, this is dangerous stuff.
This is just, I actually think this guy believes it because they were his targets when he was a trial lawyer.
I think he actually believes it.
It's all equated to global warming.
You know, I've always had this philosophy.
If you say you're going to be somewhere at a certain point, you be there.
If you show up late, to me, it's a sign of disrespect of the people that you have told and committed that you would be somewhere at a certain point.
And if something comes up and you're not going to be there on time, then you call them and you say, I'm on my way.
I'll be there as soon as I can.
One more last night from Iowa in Dan's pizza restaurant.
Here's the Brett girl tipping off the Democrat general election strategy.
This is what I'm going to say to the American people.
You see this person?
I'm trying to think.
They're all men.
You see this man?
He is George Bush on steroids.
He will give you four more years of the war in Iraq, four more years of what you're paying for health care now, four more years of what you're paying for gas now.
Is that what you want?
Or do you want something different?
We're not going to let them run away from this president.
We're going to hang George Bush and Dick Cheney around their Republican nominee's neck, and they're going to carry them the entire campaign.
I'll tell you that.
Okay, so they're going to run against Bush and Cheney.
Edwards says they're going to run against Bush and Cheney, which is really no big secret.
That's all they've been doing since 2001.
Back here in just a second.
Much more ahead.
Get this headline from USA Today.
To Democrats, Rove more Dangerous Outside the West Wing.
Carl Rove may be leaving his roles as a hard-nosed strategist and bookish policy expert in the Bush White House, but that doesn't mean Democrats can rest easy.
Carl outside the White House is more dangerous to Democrats than Carl inside the White House, said Donna Brazil.
Her view is that Rove will have lots more free time now to dream up ways to boost President Bush's standing, rebrand the GOP, and conquer the 2008 electoral map.
Do these guys have it on their brain or what?
They are literally utterly paranoid, obsessed with rage and hatred for Karl Rove, which I'm going to tell you what it all boils down to.
That quote from Donna Reed, Donna Brazil sums it up for me.
They are scared to death of Carl Rove, and they have been for all of these years.
They fear.
When you listen to these people talk about Rove on television, I want you to understand the prism through which they see the man.
They are scared to death of him.
John and Kerry, North Carolina, as we go back to the phones, welcome to the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hey, Army Ditto's Rush.
How are you?
Fine, sir.
Thanks much.
Hey, I got a question for you.
A little contradiction.
You can help me with my income taxes, perhaps.
With the possible expansion of the SHIP program, we're going to be covering, quote, children until they're 25.
But as a taxpayer with two kids, my kids stopped being kids when they were 16 for the federal income tax child credit.
When are they kids?
When are they not?
Depends on the federal program.
When it comes to your taxes, your kids stop being 16 to 16.
Of the SHIPS program, you're going to be qualified as children at age 25 and under.
So you think there's probably no hope that they'll let me keep claiming my kids until they're 25?
No.
What's your total family earnings?
A little over 100.
Is it over 80?
Yes.
Okay, then you don't qualify.
Parallel is kind of a rhetorical question anyway.
Yeah, I know, but you don't qualify for the ships.
It's too bad.
I know.
I'm one of the lucky ones.
That is an interesting question.
We're going to have to see what the president does with this when these clowns get back from their recess and start moving forward on it.
Because it's a pure incremental way of getting to universal health care.
And this is a pretty big bite, folks, that they are taking.
When families of 80 grand or less, I think it's actually 82,000 qualify.
All this is, is your neighbors paying the health insurance for your kids if you have kids 25 and under and your family income is $82,000 or less.
Now, you think making all this up, and I'm not.
This is in the bill, and there's lots more to it.
This is where the cigarette tax increase is going to go up by a dollar a pack, and where the cigar tax is going to go up from five cents a cigar to $10 a cigar.
And as you know, as we discussed yesterday, cigarette sales are down.
It's attributing the cigarette sales here to the fact that taxes are already sky high.
Sure, that's a factor, but it's also because there's no way you can smoke them anymore.
But the point is, tobacco products are going to be the golden goose that they're going to kill in order to fund a program.
And when that happens, they're not going to kill a program.
They're going to go tax the rest of you.
See, this is just, it's all part of the setup.
Who could possibly object to those evil cigar and cigarette smokers being taxed?
Most people, I don't know, if you don't smoke either one, you don't care.
That's what I was talking about when the show opened.
You couldn't care less.
You go ahead and tax them dirty, rotten, filthy people killing me with taking that smoke.
Make them pay, make them pay.
Plus, it's a good thing.
Health care for children.
You're thinking you're not have to pay for it.
You won't have to pay for it.
The evil cigarette and cigar smokers will.
Guess what's going to happen?
At 10 bucks per cigar tax, they're not going to sell enough to fund the program.
Never mind what it's going to do to the cigar business.
At a buck additional in tax on a pack of cigarettes, when you take the existing sales, it's already declining.
What is going to happen then?
I mean, let's face it, most of the people smoke cigarettes downscale Democrats.
They're exceptions, of course, but their budgets only go so far.
What the Democrats are counting on, what everybody's counting on here is, well, they're addicted.
And they'll spend whatever they have to to buy this stuff.
They won't have any choice.
They're addicted to it.
Most people smoke cigarettes want to quit anyway.
This will just be an added incentive to do it.
And so what happens?
When the expected revenue from these giant new wonderful taxes on evil cigar and cigarette smokers fail to produce the needed revenue to provide health insurance for all kids in this country, 25 and under, who are in poor families making $82,000 a year or less, do you think they're just going to cancel a program?
Ha!
They're going to come after you.
They're already targeting me because I smoke cigars.
They're already coming after you.
They're going to come after you because they're going to have to.
Can't kill the program.
So while you sit there and you rub your hands together in glee at all the new taxes that these evil people that smoke cigars and cigarettes are going to have to pay, understand it down the road, it's you who are going to be paying for them.
Woody in Arlington, Virginia, you're next on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Hello.
Rush, you are the best.
You are the master.
It's a pleasure to be on your program.
Thank you, Woody, very much.
I actually, as you said, live at Arlington right outside of Washington, D.C., and I'm calling about this new tax that libs have forced down our throats.
The bad driving tax.
Exactly right.
If you go 15 miles per hour over the speed limit in Virginia and you're a resident here, you're fined $1,000 on top of the speeding ticket.
Right.
And I read an article yesterday that a woman got slapped with this tax while she was driving to the hospital and she was pregnant.
Right.
She thought her wire was breaking.
Right.
Saw that.
I called my elected officials.
$1,050 tax she got.
It's absurd.
I actually called my elected officials, Rush, and I spoke with my delegate and state senator, Bob Brink and Patricia Tyser.
They claim they don't have enough money in tax revenue to maintain infrastructure.
Just like you said a few weeks ago with the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, this is straight out of the liberal playbook.
Right, it is.
It is.
And so this is an incremental tax.
People who don't go over 15 miles an hour beyond the speed limit can say, well, make them pay.
They are endangering the rest of us by speeding.
They should pay a fine and a tax rate.
This is how the Democrats have figured out these comprehensive ways to get things done where you go for everything in one shot, going to bomb out.
But if you go after increments, because they can play on class NV and they can play on the sin, like poor driving, dangerous driving, road ragers, really soak them.
Yeah, I'm tired of the streets being dangerous and so forth.
Then they'll come up with, they've already put the SUV tax, the gas guzzler tax, this kind of thing.
But they never have enough, do they?
They never, Woody, when they have a budget shortfall like this, this Alderman in Chicago, $217 million budget deficit.
Well, we'll just make the bottled water buyers and consumers pay that rather than be more responsible with their spending.
You're exactly right, Rush.
Well, I did see that story: $1,050 fine for a woman speeding to the hospital because her water broke.
Woody, I appreciate the call.
Who's next on the program?
Where are we?
We're going to Linda in Dallas.
Linda, I'm glad you waited.
Welcome to the program.
Rush, you were talking about Hillary this morning, you know, mucking it up with the nurses.
Yeah, yeah.
I know that I heard it on your program back when she was trying to get her original health care.
She was speaking to a group of nurses, and one of the nurses spoke up and said, Well, if you do that, some of us nurses are going to lose our job.
And she said, You will just have to find another profession.
So why are they, you know, being so nice to her now?
Well, because we've got audio this coming, I don't have a chance.
This is 48 seconds, and I'm not going to have a chance to answer your question and play the audio.
So play the audio after the break.
Okay.
But the reason they're being nice to her now is because her plan's not on the table.
Oh.
Number one, it'll be back on the table, but it isn't on a plan.
By the way, that plan, folks, the Hillary healthcare plan, doctors and nurses are going to be told where they were going to be assigned to cities and even specific hospitals.
And that's when nurse said, well, who's our job?
We can't do that.
Well, then find a new profession.
Yes, right.
Well, what's changed is that plan's off the table, everybody thinks.
And the nurses are unionized.
And she's the chosen candidate of big labor.
Well, I tried to find it on the computer.
I looked and looked and looked and looked.
And I thought, well, I've got to call Rush and remind him of this.
Well, I'm glad you did.
I'll never forget that whole healthcare plan.
It was just Elizabeth, what was her name?
Oh, she married Wilbur Ross.
I can't think of it.
She likes McCroy McCorry.
She dissected that thing from front to back, and it was.
It was worse than what the Soviet Union did to people.
I will.
Because we love making the complex understandable here.
We're talking about taxes, and I get this headline.
This also from USA Today, states and cities are frustrated by gamblers spending their money elsewhere.
They are putting casinos in or near major cities to maximize tax revenue.
They are not content to just take our money.
Now they want to get us addicted to gambling, from lotteries to casinos.
Here is a quote from Janice Hellard, the Economic Development Director in Sumner County, Kansas, near Wichita.
We are sick of people from Wichita driving through our county on the way to casinos in Oklahoma.
We want some of the action.
Her county is one of four places in Kansas recently authorized to have casinos, although none have been built yet.
Today, 40 states have casino gambling.
Some holdouts may join soon.
Massachusetts is moving toward permitting casinos for the first time, a change that could lead to more casinos throughout New England.
Well, what's changed the equation in Massachusetts is the residents are fueling the growth of giant casinos in Connecticut.
Also driving growth, states are loosening restrictions about where casinos can locate and how they can do business.
The days of casinos being located outside of major cities, such as in tourist destinations, often in economically distressed towns, are coming to an end.
Illinois legislature considering authorizing a casino in Chicago.
And you know what the price of a bottled bottle of water will cost inside those casinos in Chicago?
All right, Mrs. Clinton, two things.
We've got some audio soundbites here.
But first, Senator Clinton cites her experience, doesn't she?
She's running for the presidency.
She cites her experience as First Lady has compelling reasons why voters should make her president.
So why does she have locked up in the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor nearly 2 million pages of documents covering her White House years?
They're locked up in a building in Little Rock, obscuring a large swathe of her record as First Lady.
Her calendars, her appointment logs, her memos are stored at her husband's library and massage parlor in the custody of federal archivists who don't expect them to be released until after the 2008 presidential election.
A trove of records have been made public detailing Clinton White House attempts to remake the nation's health care system following a request from Bill Clinton that those materials be released first.
Hillary led the health care efforts in 93 and 94.
But even in the health care documents, at least 1,000 pages involving her work have been censored by archive staff because they include confidential advice and must be kept secret under a federal law called the Presidential Records Act.
And that's a genuine, it's a true law, but remember, it didn't apply to Dick Cheney, did it?
In his meeting on energy.
Oh, no, this stuff never applies to Republicans.
Oh, Mrs. Clinton has perfect rights, Presidential Records Act.
Why we can't do this?
So anyway, it's a little strange.
Clinton's hide more things.
Handy FBI files never got his medical records.
Now Hillary's covering up over 2 million pages, hiding of her record as first lady while out there running on experience.
Folks, you would just have to take her word for it.
Which I'm sure is good enough for some of you.
Art to the audio soundbites on the Today Show today.
This is a montage of correspondent Andrea Mitchell and co-host Meredith Vieira reporting on candidate Hillary Clinton being a nurse for a day.
Healthcare is one of Hillary Clinton's biggest mistakes.
So what better way to respond than to work a day in the shoes of a hospital nurse?
Learning the ropes from nurse Michelle Estrada at St. Rose Hospital in Henderson, Nevada, part of a critical makeover for a candidate far out front in national polls, but still viewed in a new CNN Gallup poll as less likable than Barack Obama.
It is very rare, of course, for a presidential candidate to show up and spend so much time on one visit putting on a nurse's lab coat.
Andrea, I understand that she ended the day, the senator, by actually washing the dishes before she left.
Is that right?
She did.
She pitched right in.
She was clearing the table, washing the dishes, helping set the table.
She got her hands wet, and it was a rare moment for a presidential candidate spending, as I say, hours and hours on this one visit.
And really, why?
Are you not curious at all, Andrew, as to why she would do this?
No, we just marvel at the fact that she did.
Oh, isn't she unique?
Oh, isn't she different?
Why, she spent the whole day with the nurses and washing the dishes.
What a woman, girl, guy, whatever she's trying to be, according to Elizabeth Edwards.
She's in there because nurses have full memory and knowledge of this disastrous health care plan of hers.
Plus, she's being loyal to union employees.
So after this setup, They talked to Mrs. Clinton.
Andrea Mitchell interviewed Hillary, and she said, Carl Rove, with a parting shot, said that you are fatally flawed as a candidate.
Well, aren't we glad to see him go, I think, is the answer to that.
You know, I am thrilled to be running this campaign and to be getting the response that I'm getting all over the country.
And there was an Associated Press report quoting Democrats saying that you might pull down the ticket.
Well, I'm ahead, and I'm winning, and I'm gaining support everywhere I go.
And I don't think I have any right to anybody's vote.
I have to earn every vote, and that's what I'm doing every day.
She did not answer the question, ladies and gentlemen.
Actually, she does think she's entitled to everybody's vote.
That's the whole market being a liberal.
Birthright is power.
Anyway, to the phones we go, this is Howard in Oklahoma City.
You're next, sir.
Great to have you with us on the EIB network.
Thank you for taking my call, Rush.
Yeah, yeah.
You realize that you alone are going to be the demise of the cigar industry in the United States.
Because of you, the Democrats are targeting cigars because you are a cigar smoker.
Well, I am the nation's most prominent cigar smoker.
Maybe right next to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And both of us can afford the tax, as Bill Clinton would say.
But the cigar industry, but with a $10 per cigar tax, the cigar industry is doomed.
So, you know, Cigar Aficionado magazine will go out of business.
And it's all your fault.
Well, just so you know, I did take the blame for this when I first heard of this tax, because I do think there's a little of it that's personally targeted.
But believe me, most of it's not.
They actually believe that cigar smokers are the upper crust, super rich guys that couldn't care less than they'll go out and pay for it.
And it's just like the yacht tax.
You know, they passed the luxury tax back in the 90s on such things as yachts and things, and people didn't stop buying them.
They just went someplace where there wasn't a tax.
And the people that ended up getting hurt were the people that make the yachts.
And they had to rescind that tax, that tax on jewelry items and a number of other things.
And that's where they really goofed it up.
You put a luxury tax on jewelry and you've angered the female population.
And that's, you know, they all, the Democrats out there crave the women's vote.
And if the word got out that Democrats are the reason they're not getting diamonds and rubies and so forth for their birthdays, anniversaries, divorce presents or what have you, then all hell breaks loose.
So that and the yacht tax combined, I don't think this is ever going to see the light of day.
I don't think a $10 tax on cigars will ever see it because it would put the cigar business out of business.
I don't doubt the Democrats would like to do that.
They target enemies and set out to destroy them.
Exactly what they say Karl Rove does is precisely what they do.
This is Red Dog in Seneca Falls, New York.
Mega Dittos, Rush.
How are you doing, Red Dog?
I'm fine.
Upstate New York, Seneca Falls, birthplace of women's rights.
We have a big national park here.
Hillary and Bill have been here a couple of times.
My comment was, can we get to the Indian Reservation and buy cigars where there's no tax?
You know, it's interesting because you can do that with cigarettes.
No tax on cigarettes at Indian reservations.
I have a gas station that the Indians own one mile from my house.
Buy a pack of cigarettes there, cartons of cigarettes there.
Gas is cheap.
They don't have to pay no tax.
I don't know about inside the casinos, though.
I've never been, I've never been, other than in Las Vegas, I've never been to a casino in this country.
And I've not been in an Indian casino.
I know of, anyway.
I've not been to one, but they're going to build them up here in New York.
They've got to deal with Spitzer.
It's going to be down in the Catskills.
I know.
Just did a story out there, Red Dog.
They're building them everywhere for tax revenue and so forth.
I heard that while I was waiting.
And if it's, but they're not all going to be Indian-owned casinos.
Indians will own them and they'll have handlers.
Well, maybe the one you're talking about.
There's a big one up there, Tigers coming up to play in the tournament at the Turning Stone.
That's about 90 miles from us.
It's Oneida Nation.
Oh, yeah.
Are you going to go?
I'll decline.
Okay.
Well, I'll tell you, this whole Indian casino business is funny.
Well, it's not funny, but you're close to how these things got structured, regardless.
I'm going to have to check into that.
I'm sure you can buy.
I really should.
You know, I don't know because as I say, I've not been in any casino outside of Las Vegas.
I mean, I've been into a casino.
I did a speech one down in Louisiana for Hal Sutton and David Thompson at a charity thing, but I just walked through to a private meeting room and went to a ballroom, did the speech, and left.
I didn't go in the casino.
I think it's the only Indian.
I may have been one out in Palm Springs.
No, I've just driven by that one.
Snerdley's been in an Indian casino in Seattle with totally tax-free cigarettes, but you didn't buy a cigar, so you don't know if cigars are tax-free.
So one great thing about casinos, you can still smoke in them, and the people in them don't care.
I mean, it's starting to get some little nimrods in there.
Well, that's one of the great things about going to Las Vegas.
You go to the casino, light up your cigar, play, and everybody accepts it.
It's cool.
It's like a flashback to the old days when people weren't panicked and trying to tell everybody how they had to live and so forth.
But Snerdley says it's Seattle tax-free on the tobacco products.
Yeah.
40 miles outside Seattle.
This tax-free business, it may exist, but trust me, it ain't going to last, even for the Indians.
And their casinos.
Somebody help my memory in there.
The last time we had a report on racism among officials in sports, what sport was that?
Was it basketball?
Oh, yeah.
Right.
White officials call the game differently than black officials.
Right.
Well, get this.
This is from the Austin American Statesman.
There's a study out there that finds that the umpires and pitchers' race matters when calling balls and strikes.
First, one study claimed that basketball, oh, there it is.
Basketball refs were racially biased.
Now a new study by a University of Texas professor says baseball umpires are guilty of discrimination too.
Major league umpires are more likely to give favorable calls to pitchers who share their same race or ethnicity.
According to University of Texas economics professor Daniel Hammermish and his team, they found in the study of 2,120,166 pitches over three seasons.
A report comes three months after another scholarly study found racial bias among referees in the NBA in regards to calling fouls.
White umpires, who researchers said account for 87% of the league's umps, were more likely to give a called strike to a white pitcher than to a pitcher who is Hispanic, African-American, American, or Asian.
How did they know?
Do you realize the flaw in this?
Can somebody, Brian, you're a sports guy, what's the flaw?
They examine 2,120,166 pitches.
You got a black pitcher and a black ump.
Now, what is the flaw here?
Or you got a black pitcher and a white ump.
What's the flaw here?
Who but the ump knows what a strike is?
The researchers aren't down there watching the pitch.
I haven't read this whole story, but don't you have to have some sort of a way to determine what the pitch really was?
Because you have to assume that the ump's getting it wrong.
If they call more strikes in favor of similar ethnic pitchers, then it would stand to reason, would it not, that they're calling some balls strikes.
So, how do the researchers know that some of these pitches are not strikes?
And other way around, you got a white ump and a black pitcher, black ump and a white pitcher.
Take your pick.
There's nobody that really knows.
I don't think there's not a camera in the world, even these super duper slow-mo things in the SPN, they still don't give you the exact angle.
I didn't read the whole story here, but I must be missing something.
I actually only printed out the first page because the whole thing's passionately ridiculous.
Just another attempt to keep the country royal to nothing.
It's racism in baseball, racism in basketball, racism in America.
We so suck as a country.
Racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia.
Everybody in this country is a reprobate.
We don't deserve to be a country.
We're such a bunch of slime buckets.
Racism in the national past.
Well, a former national past.
And next thing you know, we're against surveys on the pass interference calls in the National Football League.
And the white side judges and the linesmen or whatever, the back judges are going to be calling more pass interference calls on black cornerbacks than white.
There may not be any white cornerbacks in the NFL.
Well, they'll come up with a way.
There might not be any more white cornerbacks.
Jason Seahorn was the last one that was the New York Giants.
It was really speedy and so forth.
I think there are a couple out there.
I'm just hoping that.
Now, there are a lot of safeties, you know, Adam Archuletta and his, but quarterbacks, I'm talking about Brian.
Brian's gonna go, oh, has he stepped in it?
Now, I haven't stepped in anything.
This is crazy.
You would have to know, out of all these 2,160,000 pitches, whichever one was a ball, which one was a strike.
And you'd have to see every one of them from a certain angle in order to ref the umpire, blew it, was cheating.
Tom in Indian Trail, North Carolina.
Welcome, sir.
I got about a minute, but I wanted to squeeze you in.
Hello?
Yes.
I'm still here.
Okay, I got about a minute.
I got 55 seconds now.
Good.
You know, Tom, what did you want to say?
I want to talk about Roe v. Wade, 1972.
How it's gone bananas.
What do you mean the Democrat Party's gone bananas?
Yeah, both.
Well, that's well said, and I agree with you.
Well, let me tell you this.
When Congress passed R.V. Wade, it was considered the woman had a right to an abortion.
No, Congress didn't pass Roe v. Wade.
That was a Supreme Court ruling.
Forgive me, but I'll tell you, some of these people from North Carolina, you just never know.
Now, let me explain this North Carolina comment.
I got a friend that sends me an email today saying, well, how come you're taking so many North Carolina calls today?
And I said, that's not the question.
We get calls from everywhere.
Or she said, how come you're getting so many?
You only get calls from everywhere.
We take the best we can get.
And then, so it was just an inside joke.
And I really apologize because I love North Carolina.
As everybody knows, it's just an inside joke.
Have a great day.
▲
Export Selection