Another day, another three hours listening to another third stringer scab fill-in for Rush Limbaugh. At least he pulled in a big name guest though: tea party favorite and Arizona Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle. After promoting Angle's website repeatedly, which incidentally contains little more than a giant “donate” button, Belling praised Angle as a “well-informed, great candidate” and told her that she “was fighting the fight of the angels.” Belling later bragged that listeners to the show overloaded the website.
Former Reagan adviser Art Laffer should give Belling a call this afternoon, because I think Belling owes him some royalties for spending the majority of today's second hour discussing Laffer's Wall Street Journal piece from last week. Besides reading the op-ed verbatim, Belling repeated many of the same tired lines like “there will be massive tax cuts” starting in January 2011, that tax revenues soar when tax rates are cut. As Media Matters has tirelessly documented, Obama's budget proposal would raise tax rates only for individuals earning more than $200,000 per year and families earning more than $250,000. Belling was also convinced that all Americans would see the dividend tax rate increase from 15 percent to 39 percent. Again, that is only true for the wealthiest Americans; those making under the threshold above would see dividend rates go to 15 percent.
Belling focused the third hour on the Gulf oil spill, claiming that Obama's “one goal” in the cleanup was “how does he not get blamed.” After a deluge of various complaints about the cleanup effort, Belling theorized that the reason the Obama team hasn't been on the ball is because they're distracted with the Rod Blagojevich trial. No really, he actually said that. Other gems from this hour: BP is a “lefty” company for running ads on alternative energy investment, oil is a “natural substance” which the Gulf will recover from, Obama is exploiting the crisis to pass an energy bill, and Obama “has made things worse” in the Gulf by playing politics.
Highlights from today's show:
Limbaugh sub Belling: Democrats “dug up a fossil” by nominating Jerry Brown in California