By Christine Schwen

Welcome to the December 4 edition of the Wire. Unfortunately, readers hoping to get another three hours of Limbaugh goodness before the weekend are out of luck; today's show was guest-hosted by Mark Belling. Belling opened the show by reading the weather report from Drudge. This boded well for the rest of the show.

The snow in Houston taken care of, Belling criticized the report that November saw the strongest employment report since January. Belling still felt the report was bad news. In addition to criticizing the improved job market, Belling criticized President Obama for “asking for ideas” that could create jobs. He complained Obama should already know how to create jobs, and short of that he should listen to Limbaugh and his guest hosts. Belling's first idea: “Stop doing everything you're doing.” Quite the comprehensive employment plan.

In addition to the jobs report being bad news, and the jobs summit being a bad idea, Belling also announced that that stimulus was a failure. This is because a stimulus-funded road widening project in St. Francis, Wisconsin, created only temporary jobs, and also there's less parking now. Clearly, Belling reasoned, this is evidence the stimulus has failed.

After a break, Belling repeating his criticism of Obama's job summit. He called the summit a pretty clear indication that Obama doesn't know what he's doing. If only Obama would “stop doing everything.” Next, Belling returned to attacking the stimulus, calling it nothing more than a payout to Obama's political cronies.

Belling then took a call from a listener who argued that tax cuts are all we need to turn the economy around, using the tax breaks for filmmakers in Michigan as an example. Belling added some kind words for Detroit:

BELLING: Well if you want to make a movie about Afghanistan, you could go to Detroit. You've got a lot of wide open spaces and tumbleweed blowing around there> You don't have any actual economic activity going on because nobody wants to invest in cities like Detroit.

Jokes about the struggling people of Detroit aside, Belling agreed that Obama should have just cut taxes. As evidence that Obama and the Democrats in Congress are all wrong, Belling falsely suggested that there weren't tax cuts in the stimulus, arguing that they did “everything they could” to keep tax cuts out of it. Considering that more than a third of the stimulus was made up of tax cuts, it doesn't really seem like they did "everything they could."

Belling then followed in the proud conservative tradition of criticizing the economy in order to sell gold. Next, Belling attacked government jobs, claiming they don't count.

Belling's plans for ending the war: “We have to kill them,” and “Let's bring Cheney back”

At the top of the second hour- Belling announced he was make an “incredibly important policy point” using the two big tabloid stories of the week:

BELLING: I think I can take the two big tabloid stories of the week, summarize them in 10 seconds, and make an incredibly important policy point at the same time. Here's -- I'm only the fill-in, so it might not work, but I'm going to give it my best shot. Why didn't Tiger Woods want his wife to talk to the police in Florida? The same reason Obama doesn't want Desiree Rogers talking to Congress about the crashers at the White House. It's the exact same reason. Tiger didn't his wife talking because she'd be telling things that they didn't want anybody to know, and Obama doesn't Desiree Rogers, who is the social secretary at the White House, under oath talking to Congress because she's the person who knows how those crashers got in. It's the same story. Whenever someone doesn't want someone else to talk, the answer is always the same. It's because they know what the person's going to say. How'd I do? It wasn't 10 seconds, but did I not tie those two stories together perfectly? You want to get the bottom of that crasher story, you've got to get Desiree Rogers. In fact, I'm going to get to that later on.

Wow, that was quite a “policy point.”

Next, Belling marveled that Obama escalated the war mere weeks after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Also, because Obama “modeled his whole war plan after what George Bush did,” Belling decided this means “the whole world's upside down.” Belling continued to rant about how Bush was right about the surge for a while. Belling claimed “they were turning the surge into D-day.”

Then, channeling Limbaugh, Belling praised ... himself:

BELLING: It took two and half years to do it but then we did it, and D-Day was considered the turning point of World War II. Just as the surge is now being defined as the defining moment, the turning point of the war in Iraq. Isn't this beautiful stuff? The Obama administration, trying to convince a reluctant country that the war in Afghanistan can be won because he is going to model his policy after that of President George W. Bush. The beautiful thing about being a conservative is not only having the confidence of knowing you're right when you're expressing your opinions at the time you're expressing them but of also being able to sit back and watch the inevitable -- and it happens on every single issue -- in which liberals come around to your point of view. They never, ever will say, you know, you guys were right. They'll just grab the idea and act as though their total and adamant opposition to it never actually happened. Surge worked. Policy's going to be just like the surge.

Following the break, Belling turned his masterful analytical skills to foreign policy. First, he claimed that Bush never put a timetable on Iraq; an assertion I think Bush may disagree with. Then, Belling asserted that Iraq settled down because “we killed most of the bad guys,” so, Belling argued, we have to stay in Afghanistan until we kill all the bad guys:

BELLING: If we're going to send troops in, they have to have a goal and here's a goal that Barack Obama will never utter. Their goal has to be to go and kill as many Taliban as possible. If the goal is to permanently get rid of the threat of the Taliban returning to power in Afghanistan, there's only one way to do that: We have to get rid of Taliban. Running them into Pakistan or running them into another country doesn't solve anything because the moment we leave, they can come back. We have to kill them.

He can talk about all he wants about the flowery words about helping build up the Afghan government, build up the Afghan security forces, protect the Afghan people, but we're not accomplishing anything unless we go out and kill Taliban. That's what the surge in Iraq was. We looked -- went after Al Qaeda, we went after the old remnants of the Baath Party, we looked -- went after the insurgents that came in from Syria, we found them in the neighborhoods of Baghdad and the other cities, blew those neighborhoods up, killed them, got the survivors to run out into the desert where we will killed them.

Iraq settled down because we killed most of the bad guys. I don't see anything in the policy of President Obama in Afghanistan that this is going to be a killing process. He's talking about all the wrong things and he's then setting a deadline that he gets to run away. If he's so determined to run away from Afghanistan, he should run away now.

This reminds me of Nixon in Vietnam. Nixon came in, in 1969 and didn't do anything to win the Vietnam War and bailed out four years later. Costing a lot of Americans their lives and accomplishing nothing in that four year interim.

This rant continued for a while. In the name of brevity, let's just say that Belling is displeased that Obama created a timetable for withdraw, and would not like to see Afghanistan become Vietnam. I think we can all agree on that last point.

In a continuing effort to provide the president with practical advice, Belling developed a new plan for Afghanistan: Contract Bush, Cheney and Halliburton to run the war. He argued that because Bush's plan was just to “kill all you guys,” Iraq went well, but because Obama “doesn't have the stomach for the fight” things are now getting worse.

Continuing with his Afghanistan commentary, Belling noted that Afghanistan is corrupt, and that the Afghanis are a tribal people, and have never done well with a centralized government. He did not note how those difficulties are dealt with in his “kill the bad guys” strategy. Then Belling explained to a caller that Obama spent his whole life making fun of people who believe that war is sometimes necessary and that dealing with this war is just not in his makeup. After the caller shared his belief that Obama's problem is that he has a disdain for America, Belling complimented him for making good points. Belling then argued that Obama's going to screw up the war Afghanistan, because he's not really into it in the first place.

Belling finished out the hour by reading George Will's criticism of Obama's strategy for Afghanistan. Belling agreed with Will that Obama created a “non-strategy,” one that Belling doesn't think Obama buys into. He then repeated his assertion that Obama is using Bush's strategy. Since Belling expressed admiration for Bush's policy but disdain for Obama's, it wasn't clear whether he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. He then added that he thinks Obama is “scrambling” and “running blind.”

How Muslim-sounding names make Belling think terrorist

Belling kicked off the third hour by returning to the stimulus. Belling claimed that the $787 billion stimulus package, “which [he] like[s] to round up to a trillion,” cannot now be spent on anything else, and that proves that Obama is not competent to be president. Belling then compared Obama's “incompetent” cabinet with Bush's first term cabinet, “the A-Team of veterans who have been around the block.”

Next Belling turned to the state dinner crashers. Joining Glenn Beck, Belling decided there was something wrong with this story, because “the Secret Service didn't suddenly become morons.” Belling then inexplicitly added that “this never would have happened when Hillary Clinton was the first lady.” Belling is particularly suspicious of the story because White House social secretary won't testify before Congress, unlike Bush administration officials -- who were so cooperative with Congress.

Next, perhaps concerned that his show had been a little too tame up to this point, Belling engaged in a little racial profiling. Belling claimed that because gate crasher Tareq Salahi has a “Muslim-sounding name,” it isn't “a stretch to think that he could have been a terrorist”:

BELLING: Desiree Rogers is being asked to testify about the gate crashing at the White House. The administration isn't allowing her to be questioned. Why? Is it because she's the one who gave this couple clearance outside of approval? Or is it because she'll be asked how many other times did people get in that weren't on the list?

The man involved in this crashing had an Arab-sounding surname. It is not a stretch to think that he could have been a terrorist. Al Qaeda or rather the terrorist movement, has infiltrated the United States Army. A major in the Army, only several weeks earlier, committed a massacre at Fort Hood, yet anybody can just walk into the White House? This speaks to me of a question of competence of the people who are running this administration.

Then Belling reported that the Secret Service told Congress this week that the number death threats against President Obama are approximately equal to the number of threats against previous presidents. Belling was pleased about this, but that didn't stop him from shouting.

Belling then began talking about the big-mouth carp, for some reason. Not this one, though. He must feel some affinity for animals with big mouths.

After the break, Belling repeated the common conservative refrain that by granting clemency for Maurice Clemmons, Mike Huckabee took himself out running for the presidency in 2012.

Finally, Belling told an off-track betting story that he'd been teasing throughout the show. It turns out the New York state-run off-track betting operation has run into financial trouble. Why did Belling tell us this? Obviously, it was because of health care. Apparently a state's failure to run off-track betting means that the federal government cannot “run” health care. It's all so clear now.

Belling then asked: “Was it as good as I said it was [going to be]?” It's not clear whether he was referring to the OTB story or to his entire show, but I can speak for the entire Wire when I say: No.

Zachary Aronow and Kate Conway contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.

Highlights

Outrageous comments

BELLING: The president, given the fact that he has no executive experience and had only been in the federal government as a senator for a couple of years, needed to surround himself with a bunch of old goats who knew what they were doing.

As despised as Vice President Cheney was, President Bush made a brilliant decision when he chose Cheney to be his vice presidential running mate. Cheney brought nothing politically to the ticket, he was from Wyoming, his other home state is Texas, the same one as Bush. Cheney's a boring guy, he's not inspiring, he's not somebody that go out there and really rally the troops. He was chosen because of his competence.

Whether you agree with Dick Cheney or not, no one would argue that Dick Cheney didn't know the ins and outs of the federal government. The cabinet that Bush chose for his first term was the A-Team of veterans who've been around the block.

Look at Obama's team, Hillary Clinton's the Secretary of State? She's barely been in the Senate longer than him, she had no experience at foreign policy. And who's running the White House? The Chicago Gang, Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, that crowd. They're no more capable of running the federal government than I am of winning the Indianapolis 500. They are in over their heads. They thought because they were so smart that all of this would come so easily.

The gate-crashers story -- people are looking at this thing the wrong way. This is not a tabloid couple getting themselves more fame and fortune by busting into the White House. This is a presidential administration that is totally dysfunctional. No one has ever, I think in my lifetime, said that the Secret Service is incompetent.

[...]

BELLING: These lefties have to be having internal conniptions right now. They're trying to convince everyone that they can be as good at running a war as President Bush. If so, I've got some advice for them -- Dick Cheney's not really doing much of anything right now, bring him in as a consultant! Let's bring Cheney back! And once we get things going, let's hand out a few contracts over there to Halliburton. You want to run the war our way. Bring in President Bush, he'll tell you how to do it. The whole team's still available as long as you're going to copy the Iraq War plan.

Ego on loan from Narcissus Rush:

BELLING: It took two and half years to do it but then we did it, and D-Day was considered the turning point of World War II. Just as the surge is now being defined as the defining moment, the turning point of the war in Iraq. Isn't this beautiful stuff? The Obama administration, trying to convince a reluctant country that the war in Afghanistan can be won because he is going to model his policy after that of President George W. Bush. The beautiful thing about being a conservative is not only having the confidence of knowing you're right when you're expressing your opinions at the time you're expressing them but of also being able to sit back and watch the inevitable -- and it happens on every single issue -- in which liberals come around to your point of view. They never, ever will say, you know, you guys were right. They'll just grab the idea and act as though their total and adamant opposition to it never actually happened. Surge worked. Policy's going to be just like the surge.

Enemies list

BELLING: Desiree Rogers is being asked to testify about the gate crashing at the White House. The administration isn't allowing her to be questioned. Why? Is it because she's the one who gave this couple clearance outside of approval? Or is it because she'll be asked how many other times did people get in that weren't on the list?

The man involved in this crashing had an Arab-sounding surname. It is not a stretch to think that he could have been a terrorist. Al Qaeda or rather the terrorist movement, has infiltrated the United States Army. A major in the Army, only several weeks earlier, committed a massacre at Fort Hood, yet anybody can just walk into the White House? This speaks to me of a question of competence of the people who are running this administration.