Right-wing talk show host Mark Levin recently had on Jason Salzman, co-author with Ben Cohen of “50 Ways YOU Can Show George the Door in 2004.” Levin proceeded to spend the entire five minute segment trying to get Salzman to admit that Cohen is a liar in that he sells ice cream and it’s a contributor to heart disease and Ben is not “coming clean” to this fact. In fact, Levin conducts some quick, back-of-the-envelope math and comes up with the accusation that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream likely contributes to the deaths of 10,000 people per year in this country, and then compares this 10K figure to the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq (approaching 1,000) and hopes to use this twisted logic to put the number of dead soldiers in perspective.

What can you say? Where do you begin to take apart this garbage? Salzman barely makes any come backs to Levin’s line of “reasoning,” mainly because it’s obvious Salzman can’t believe what he’s hearing and is brain-locked. I myself was simply dumbfounded. Levin even attempts to equate selling ice cream to selling tobacco (not mentioning that for one, nicotine has been shown to be as chemically addictive as heroin or cocaine – unlike anything found in ice cream).

The other obvious difference is people can choose to eat ice cream, or not. Our soldiers don’t have the luxury of choice: they sign up and then must go and fight wherever and whenever they’re told.

It’s these same morons on the right that pontificate about how our educational system is in the toilet and how the country is going to hell in a hand basket. The above example of astute thinking should serve to show in what parts of society our educational system has failed.

(Of course, like most right-wing hosts, Levin could not spend the time to address the issues brought up in the book, the many lies and distortions of GW. Nope, instead their tactic is to distract their listeners and employ a three-card-monte move where they hope to skim along on the surface up to November and that their listeners will just go along for the ride, not expecting or demanding anything more).