Sitting in for Rush Limbaugh for the second day in a row, Mark Belling spent the entire first hour of today's show decrying a jobs report that showed that employment rose by 431,000 in May and that most of those jobs went to government workers. Belling informed his listeners that President Obama "hates manufacturing." When a caller said that Obama is calculating rather than stupid, Belling stated, “That's the great debate: Is Obama deliberately wrecking things or does he not have a clue?”
Belling spent much of the second hour interviewing Rep. Paul Ryan, whom Belling described as “the ideological leader of the Republican Party.” During the interview, Belling expressed concern that some Republicans are afraid to express their ideas because the public might reject them, and he gave Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "credit" for “acting on some of their destructive, radical ideas.” Ryan stated that we are moving quickly toward a “cradle-to-the-grave welfare state” and that Obama has “abandoned American ideals and moved us toward a European-style socialist welfare state.” The interview also gave both Belling and Ryan an opportunity to repeatedly promote GOP websites.
Belling kicked off the third hour with a diatribe about how “frightening” it is that Obama is “in over his head” and surrounded by a “very amateur group.” He later repeated the right-wing falsehood that Colorado's Andrew Romanoff was offered three jobs by the White House. For the bulk of the third hour, Belling focused the discussion on the near-perfect game thrown by the Detroit Tigers' Armando Galarraga, which was broken up by a missed call by umpire Jim Joyce. Belling ruined a relatively interesting discussion of the situation by throwing in a pointless political jibe at the end, saying that White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' support for awarding Galarraga a perfect game means Gibbs also should support letting voters correct their “mistake” in 2008. At least one listener wished he would have stuck to sports.
Highlights from today's show:
Rush fill-in Belling says Obama “hates manufacturing”
Lindsay Blitstein contributed to this edition of the Limbaugh Wire.