Historic Cubs Win Achieves the Impossible: Glenn Talks Sports

November 03, 2016

Writer

The Chicago Cubs achieved the impossible. Okay, yeah, they ended their 108-year-old losing streak by winning the World Series, but more incredibly, they actually got Glenn Beck to talk about sports.

"Is Chicago the only city that has two baseball teams?" Glenn asked Thursday on his radio program.

Brilliant sports talk, no, but sports talk nonetheless.

"No, the Mets and the Yankees, perhaps," Co-host Stu Burguiere answered as gently as possible.

What fascinated Glenn most was the world of 1908.

"The Constitution still mattered. Taft was our president . . . a fat man," Glenn said.

Glenn later corrected that Roosevelt was still president in 1908, with Taft sworn into office in 1909. One thing's for sure, the times have certainly changed.

Read below or watch the clip for answers to these questions:

• Could a fat man (or woman) be elected today?

• Did New York ever have three teams?

• Did income tax exist in 1908?

• How did Glenn and Stu turn a baseball conversation into one about taxation?

• How old was Jeffy when the Cubs first won the World Series in 1908?

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: Is Chicago the only city that has two baseball teams?

STU: No.

PAT: New York.

STU: The Mets and the Yankees perhaps.

GLENN: Good. Good. That's a question I could have answered.

STU: Yeah, you could have answered. Dodgers and Angels.

PAT: Sort of in the same city.

GLENN: Were they always like this because of the White Sox and the Cubs? Do they predate the two teams?

STU: I don't even understand this question.

GLENN: The Dodgers come from New York?

PAT: Yeah, they did. Yes, they did.

STU: We know that.

GLENN: So then did New York then have three teams?

PAT: No. They got the other --

GLENN: They got the Mets.

PAT: After the Dodgers.

GLENN: After the Dodgers. Right. Right. Stu.

STU: Well, yes. Did they have three at one point very early on?

JEFFY: They may have.

GLENN: Uh-huh. See. This is a question that maybe should be asked more often.

STU: Right. But you obviously couldn't answer it.

GLENN: Oh, yeah. I can. I can. I'm with you. I'm not sure if they had three at one time or not.

PAT: I'm pretty sure they didn't. But...

GLENN: So when was the last time the White Sox were in?

STU: The one in 2005, I think.

PAT: Yeah, they beat the Astros in 2005.

STU: But, I mean, the Cubs -- 1908. We went through the list of what had happened since, you know, the --

GLENN: The progressives weren't a thing yet, really.

STU: I mean, think about this -- it's incredible.

GLENN: The Constitution still mattered. Taft was our president.

(laughter)

A fat man.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: Taft. When was the last time we had a fat man as president?

PAT: Taft. Taft.

GLENN: Right? I saw an ad for Taft. I saw a poster for Taft. And what was his first name?

JEFFY: William.

PAT: William Howard.

GLENN: Yeah. All it said underneath it was Bill. And it just had his -- it was like an illustration of him. Just his face. But they included his double chin.

And I thought to myself, "You couldn't reduce the double chin in the illustration? Nobody thought that was a good idea back then. Nobody was like -- he's a little fat. Can we make him a little thinner in the poster?" That was a good-looking man. It didn't matter. It didn't matter.

PAT: Yeah, it didn't matter.

GLENN: Boy, how far we have fallen. Or have we? Have we? Because look at the two candidates we have.

PAT: That's exactly right. I'd rather have a fat man. I'd rather have Chris Christie.

GLENN: I --

PAT: Over these two -- oh, my gosh, in a heartbeat.

JEFFY: Ooh.

GLENN: Yeah, I think I would.

PAT: In a heartbeat. I mean, I never thought I'd say I'd vote for Chris Christie --

GLENN: Between these two, I think I would.

PAT: Of these two --

STU: I mean, I still wouldn't vote for him. I would not vote for Chris Christie, although he would be a better president.

PAT: If he was up against Hillary Clinton, oh, I would.

STU: I wouldn't. I would never vote for Chris Christie.

GLENN: I think you could talk me into it. I think you could talk me into it.

PAT: I think I would have been talked into it by now.

GLENN: Yeah, I will tell you, the corruption stuff on her is just frightening.

JEFFY: Nothing on Chris Christie though.

GLENN: I know. I know, but Chris Christie is --

JEFFY: Yeah, but Chris has only got one state. Big deal.

GLENN: Yeah, he's totally corrupt as well. But she's just at a different level.

STU: This is 1908. Cubs win the World Series. Dow closes at 60.

PAT: Sixty. Wow.

STU: The Dow closed at 60.

PAT: Wow.

JEFFY: The Wright brothers -- it was five years after their first flight. The Model T.

PAT: So were you paying for your second bag on -- on Delta by then?

STU: No.

(laughter)

STU: The Model T had just come off the assembly line.

GLENN: But not really. They weren't really a success until like 1918, were they?

STU: I don't know.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: I'm just -- the world's tallest building. Of course, everyone remembers it, the Singer building, lower Manhattan. Forty-seven stories tall.

PAT: Gee.

STU: Forty-seven stories. Taft, of course, president, as we mentioned. Bette Davis, born.

GLENN: Born. Wow. She was old when I was five. Wow.

STU: Let's see.

JEFFY: Fox did a thing. Al Capone was nine. You know, things like that, that was doing.

STU: Yeah, yeah, Al Capone was 9.

JEFFY: Babe Ruth was 13.

STU: Babe Ruth was 13.

PAT: Jeez.

STU: They started -- in 1904, which was a few years before. They were in the middle -- it was when it started, but they were in the middle of building the Panama Canal. I mean, Jack Jackson was the heavyweight champion. Oh, May 10th, 1908, the first Mother's Day. That was at the Methodist church in West Virginia. I don't think it was national until later on.

GLENN: Yeah.

STU: But it was the first one there. I mean, that's pretty incredible. I mean, that is a complete different world. 1908. That's a long freaking time.

[break]

GLENN: We have a correction here on a couple of things. You're right. '08 was the election. '09, Taft was in. Roosevelt was still president in '08.

STU: Right. And also correct that there were three teams in New York with the Giants.

GLENN: Right.

PAT: We knew that.

GLENN: Because the Giants --

PAT: The Giants.

STU: We always make fun of the fact that they call them -- still call them the New York football Giants.

PAT: There are no baseball Giants in New York. There's no need for that anymore.

STU: Right. But there was at one time.

PAT: There was at one time.

GLENN: There was. That's what I knew, and I was wondering why you guys were not bringing that up.

STU: Also, important questions that came in, including what -- how old was Jeffy when the Cubs first won the World Series in 1908.

PAT: That's a good question. How old were you then? Sixty-nine?

JEFFY: 1908 was the year?

STU: Yeah, do you remember?

GLENN: Back in aught eight.

PAT: The first aught eight.

JEFFY: It was somewhere after the first 50.

STU: Also, income tax did not exist in 1908.

GLENN: Yeah. Right.

STU: I mean, think about what a different country this is. The freaking income tax. It's still to this day -- and I know Glenn rails about the Progressive Era. You do that all the time, obviously, with real reason. But the idea that this country was able to pass a constitutional amendment to allow itself to be taxed, allow itself to have its money ripped off their own pockets is one of the most inexplicable things in history.

GLENN: No, it's not. No, it's not.

STU: Yes, it is.

GLENN: How did they do it?

STU: They lied, of course.

GLENN: About? What did they do?

STU: I mean --

GLENN: They pitted the rich against the poor.

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: And they said it's the evil rich people. And it will only be them. It will never be over 5 percent.

STU: Or, ten. Right? I thought it was 10 percent.

GLENN: I thought it was five. Five or 10 percent.

STU: Whatever. It was very low.

GLENN: Five or 10 percent. It will never be over this low percentage, ever. And it will only be for the very wealth -- the wealthiest 1 percent. That was 1913. By 1919, the tax was 95 percent.

STU: It was 7 percent in 1913.

GLENN: Seven.

STU: And then by 1916, it was up to 15 percent. Then there was a slight rise in 1917, when it went from 15 to 67. There's a little bit of a bump there. Some people may have noticed it.

GLENN: Yeah, but that was only for the war, Stu.

STU: That only lasted one year to be fair. The next year was 73 percent.

GLENN: Right. But it was only for the war.

STU: Yeah.

GLENN: And then that whole thing went back to 7 percent for just the wealthiest 1 percent.

STU: No. Never again.

GLENN: No, it's not.

STU: Never again. Never close. Yeah, weird.

GLENN: Really? Sounds like a lot.

Featured Image: A Chicago fan sits on top a street pole as people gather to watch the Chicago Cubs take on the Cleveland Indians in Cleveland in game seven of the 2016 World Series, outside Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois late on November 2, 2016. Ending America's longest sports title drought in dramatic fashion, the Chicago Cubs captured their first World Series since 1908 by defeating the Cleveland Indians 8-7 in a 10-inning thriller that concluded early on November 3. (Photo Credit: TASOS KATOPODIS/AFP/Getty Images)

BLOG

CDC: Coronavirus outbreak in US is not a matter of if, but when

BLOG

Glenn Beck: Bernie Sanders and 'Bros' are more dangerous than we ever imagined

BLOG

VIDEO: Both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama are radicals, but there's one HUGE difference

Biden backs yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences

The number of people serving life sentences now exceeds the entire prison population in 1970, according to newly-released data from the Sentencing Project. The continued growth of life sentences is largely the result of "tough on crime" policies pushed by legislators in the 1990s, including presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Biden has since apologized for backing those types of policies, but it seems he has yet to learn his lesson. Indeed, Biden is backing yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences—mandatory drug treatment for all drug offenders.

Proponents of this policy argue that forced drug treatment will reduce drug usage and recidivism and save lives. But the evidence simply isn't on their side. Mandatory treatment isn't just patently unethical, it's also ineffective—and dangerous.

Many well-meaning people view mandatory treatment as a positive alternative to incarceration. But there's a reason that mandatory treatment is also known as "compulsory confinement." As author Maya Schenwar asks in The Guardian, "If shepherding live human bodies off to prison to isolate and manipulate them without their permission isn't ethical, why is shipping those bodies off to compulsory rehab an acceptable alternative?" Compulsory treatment isn't an alternative to incarceration. It is incarceration.

Compulsory treatment is also arguably a breach of international human rights agreements and ethical standards. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have made it clear that the standards of ethical treatment also apply to the treatment of drug dependence—standards that include the right to autonomy and self-determination. Indeed, according to UNODC, "people who use or are dependent on drugs do not automatically lack the capacity to consent to treatment...consent of the patient should be obtained before any treatment intervention." Forced treatment violates a person's right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment.

It's a useless endeavor, anyway, because studies have shown that it doesn't improve outcomes in reducing drug use and criminal recidivism. A review of nine studies, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, failed to find sufficient evidence that compulsory drug treatment approaches are effective. The results didn't suggest improved outcomes in reducing drug use among drug-dependent individuals enrolled in compulsory treatment. However, some studies did suggest potential harm.

According to one study, 33% of compulsorily-treated participants were reincarcerated, compared to a mere 5% of the non-treatment sample population. Moreover, rates of post-release illicit drug use were higher among those who received compulsory treatment. Even worse, a 2016 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that people who received involuntary treatment were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those with a history of only voluntary treatment.

These findings echo studies published in medical journals like Addiction and BMJ. A study in Addiction found that involuntary drug treatment was a risk factor for a non-fatal drug overdose. Similarly, a study in BMJ found that patients who successfully completed inpatient detoxification were more likely than other patients to die within a year. The high rate of overdose deaths by people previously involuntarily treated is likely because most people who are taken involuntarily aren't ready to stop using drugs, authors of the Addiction study reported. That makes sense. People who aren't ready to get clean will likely use again when they are released. For them, the only post-treatment difference will be lower tolerance, thanks to forced detoxification and abstinence. Indeed, a loss of tolerance, combined with the lack of a desire to stop using drugs, likely puts compulsorily-treated patients at a higher risk of overdose.

The UNODC agrees. In their words, compulsory treatment is "expensive, not cost-effective, and neither benefits the individual nor the community." So, then, why would we even try?

Biden is right to look for ways to combat addiction and drug crime outside of the criminal justice system. But forced drug treatment for all drug offenders is a flawed, unethical policy, with deadly consequences. If the goal is to help people and reduce harm, then there are plenty of ways to get there. Mandatory treatment isn't one of them.

Lindsay Marie is a policy analyst for the Lone Star Policy Institute, an independent think tank that promotes freedom and prosperity for all Texans. You can follow her on Twitter @LindsayMarieLP.

BOMBSHELL: 'It wasn't just Hunter,' Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden was target of Ukraine corruption investigation — and he has the evidence to prove it

President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani joined Glenn Beck on Tuesday's radio program discuss the Senate's ongoing investigation into former vice president Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and reveal new bombshell documents he's currently releasing.

Giuliani told Glenn he has evidence of "very, very serious crime at the highest levels of government," that the "corrupt media" is doing everything in their power to discredit.

He also dropped some major, previously unreported news: not only was Hunter Biden under investigation in 2016, when then-Vice President Biden "forced" the firing of Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, but so was the vice president himself.

"Shokin can prove he was investigating Biden and his son. And I now have the prosecutorial documents that show, all during that period of time, not only was Hunter Biden under investigation -- Joe Biden was under investigation," Giuliani explained. "It wasn't just Hunter."

Watch this clip to get a rundown of everything Giuliani has uncovered so far.

Use code GLENN to save $10 on one year of BlazeTV.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

Revealing Bernie’s dark side — one 1980s quote at a time

For most Americans, the 1980s was marked by big hair, epic lightsaber battles, and school-skipping Ferris Bueller dancing his way into the hearts of millions.

But for Bernie Sanders — who, by the way, was at that time the oldest-looking 40-year-old in human history — the 1980s was a period of important personal milestones.

Prior to his successful 1980 campaign to become mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders was mostly known around the Green Mountain State as a crazy, wildly idealistic socialist. (Think Karl Marx meets Don Quixote.) But everything started to change for Sanders when he became famous—or, in the eyes of many, notorious—for being "America's socialist mayor."

As mayor, Sanders' radical ideas were finally given the attention he had always craved but couldn't manage to capture. This makes this period of his career particularly interesting to study. Unlike today, the Bernie Sanders of the 1980s wasn't concerned with winning over an entire nation — just the wave of far-left New York City exiles that flooded Vermont in the 1960s and 1970s — and he was much more willing to openly align himself with local and national socialist and communist parties.

www.youtube.com

Over the past few weeks, I have been reading news reports of Sanders recorded in the 1980s — because, you know, that's how guys like me spend their Saturday nights — and what I've found is pretty remarkable.

For starters, Sanders had (during the height of the Soviet Union) a very cozy relationship with people who openly advocated for Marxism and communism. He was an elector for the Socialist Workers Party and promoted the party's presidential candidates in 1980 and 1984.

To say the Socialist Workers Party was radical would be a tremendous understatement. It was widely known SWP was a communist organization mostly dedicated to the teachings of Marx and Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Among other radical things I've discovered in interviews Sanders conducted with the SWP's newspaper — appropriately named The Militant (seriously, you can't make this stuff up) — is a statement by Sanders published in June 1981 suggesting that some police departments "are dominated by fascists and Nazis," a comment that is just now being rediscovered for the first time in decades.

In 1980, Sanders lauded the Socialist Workers Party's "continued defense of the Cuban revolution." And later in the 1980s, Sanders reportedly endorsed a collection of speeches by the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, even though there had been widespread media reports of the Sandinistas' many human rights violations prior to Sanders' endorsement, including "restrictions on free movement; torture; denial of due process; lack of freedom of thought, conscience and religion; denial of the right of association and of free labor unions."

Sanders also traveled to Nicaragua and met with socialist President Daniel Ortega. He later called the trip a "profoundly emotional experience."

Comrade Bernie's disturbing Marxist past, which is far more extensive than what can be covered in this short article, shouldn't be treated as a mere historical footnote. It clearly illustrates that Sanders' brand of "democratic socialism" is much more than a $15 minimum wage and calls for single-payer health care. It's full of Marxist philosophy, radical revolutionary thinking, anti-police rhetoric, and even support for authoritarian governments.

Millions of Americans have been tricked into thinking Sanders isn't the radical communist the historical record — and even Sanders' own words — clearly show that he is. But the deeper I have dug into Comrade Bernie's past, the more evident it has become that his thinking is much darker and more dangerous and twisted than many of his followers ever imagined.

Tomorrow night, don't miss Glenn Beck's special exposing the radicals who are running Bernie Sanders' campaign. From top to bottom, his campaign is staffed with hard-left extremists who are eager to burn down the system. The threat to our constitution is very real from Bernie's team, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before in a U.S. election. Join Glenn on Wednesday, at 9 PM Eastern on BlazeTV's YouTube page, and on BlazeTV.com. And just in case you miss it live, the only way to catch all of Glenn's specials on-demand is by subscribing to Blaze TV.

Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is editorial director of The Heartland Institute and editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.

Candace Owens blasts leftist cancel culture: 'Godless', 'societal atom bomb'

Candace Owens, BLEXIT founder and author of the upcoming book, "Blackout," joined Glenn Beck on Friday's GlennTV for an exclusive interview. available only to BlazeTV subscribers.

Candace dropped a few truth-bombs about the progressive movement and what's happening to the Democratic Party. She said people are practically running away from the left due to their incessant push to dig up dirt on anybody who disagrees with their radical ideology. She explained how -- like China and its "social credit score" -- the left is shaping America into its own nightmarish episode of "Black Mirror."

"This game of making sure that everyone is politically correct is a societal atom bomb. There are no survivors. There's no one that is perfect," Candace said. "The idea that humanity can be perfect is Godless. If you accept that there is something greater than us, then you accept that we a flawed. To be human is to be flawed."

Enjoy this clip from the full episode below:

youtu.be

BlazeTV subscribers can watch the full interview on BlazeTV.com. Use code GLENN to save $10 off one year of your subscription.