Rush Limbaugh admits he is not always right. But he also boasts, again and again, that he's almost always right, as he did on April 22, 2009 in this conversation:
RUSH: John, Charlotte, North Carolina, glad to have you, sir, welcome.
CALLER: Hey, Charlotte dittos and wax awe dittos and all the dittos in between, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Got a question for you real quick.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: Your accuracy rating as stated yesterday or the day before, 99.1.
RUSH: No, no. Documented now to be almost always right 99.
CALLER: Okay. When you started, obviously before you had an opinion, it was a hundred percent. What were you wrong to drop it?
RUSH: It's so long ago. You know, it wasn't just one giant thing. I mean a bunch of small, insignificant things. But they still count if they're offered as opinions. And they're just small, insignificant things that happened over the years. I mean my opinions have been audited since 1988. And so if you want to say, okay, I started out a hundred percent right, why was it that I didn't start out at zero?
CALLER: Well, I guess it's all how you look at it from a math point of view.
Lest you think he was joking about being right approximately 1% less often than God, note that Limbaugh immediately afterward blamed his staff for the 1% when he remarked
Well, you're an optimist. I started out never being wrong because I'd never expressed an opinion. Some would say you start out never being right. (laughing) So I've gone from 100 to 99%. One of the primary penalties that I suffered in my opinion audit -- and it was just in the past two years -- I took the fall for just horrendous mistakes and errors by the staff. I forget, there were two things I was totally misinformed about, I trusted the staff, and when I announced those things, I was wrong. These were factual things. But I then got penalized for expressing my opinion that it was my fault, when it wasn't, it was the staff's. And there was another one. I think perhaps these two, taking the fall for the staff and then saying it was my fault when it wasn't, and I predicted Hillary Clinton would not run for the Senate in New York, all by myself. I didn't have any help from the staff. In fact, the staff argued with me about that, everybody else did. But those two things probably are largely responsible for my opinion audit being only 99%. That's a great question out there, John, it's a great Open Line Friday on Wednesday question.
This was not a one-off deal; Rush frequently reiterates that he is certified to have been right 99% of the time.
A test of his theory recently transpired when the former Royals employee, on October 16 as the World Series was about to begin, predicted
When I worked there, I'll just share with you a little thing here and then, Sarah, I have to move on. But when I worked there, you know, every year you hope you make the playoffs 'cause there's nothing better. The postseason is fun, the excitement, the place is packed, the town's buzzing, it's the best. During a season, you see things -- I did. I saw plays, late-game heroics, home runs that made me think this is the season of destiny, turning an unlikely double play in the ninth inning in Texas, I'll never forget one of those. I got on the phone, when I still used the phone back then, and I said, "This is the year. This is our year. We're gonna make it. Did you see that play?"
I saw so many of those things this season with the Royals, it made me say, even during the playoffs, that this team is destined. And, so far, it's proven out. So the World Series opens Tuesday night in Kansas City at Kauffman Stadium.
So how did that work out, big guy?
Not so well. It seems this symbol of the "Left Coast," the city of Nancy Pelosi and lots of Democrats, has something to celebrate as the San Francisco Democrats defeated that team of destiny in game 7 of the World Series (video from Fox, which televised it).
LImbaugh would have hailed himself had his Kansas City Royals won. He ought either to eat crow, which is possible, given the insignificance of the event compared to passage of the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama's victory dealing with Syria, or the far superior performance on the economy by President Obama than by Saint Reagan. Or he could acknowledge that baseball is simply a sport and therefore is not real life.
That he won't do, and the defeat of the Royals stands as one of the innumerable things that Rush Limbaugh has been wrong about- and therefore a great, joyous event.
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