You know what’s REALLY a racket?

Right wing screaming heads who’ll say anything — regardless of how preposterous, offensive or harmful — to make a goddamn buck, that’s what.

Take these choice July 16, 2008 comments from syndicated radio screamer Michael Savage, for instance. After gibbering about how “minorities” turned asthma into a “money racket”, Savage got to the money shot:

Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.

What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.”

. . . Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.

You know who REALLY didn’t have a father around to tell him not to act like a fucking douchebag moron, screaming and crying like an idiot? Michael Savage, that’s who.

Our friend Zach over at Blogging Blue, himself the father of an autistic child, verbally slaps Mr. Savage about the head and shoulders here. People like Michael Savage almost make you want to call a constitutional convention for the purpose of reconsidering certain portions of the First Amendment. But Zach reminds us that real cure for false, evil speech is truth.

Just say no to Sharpies

A local teevee station brings us this delightful tale from the goose-stepping, brown-shirted police state that is Westminster, Colorado.

Seems that an eight-year-old student at Harris Park Elementary School used a Sharpie marker to color a spot on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. An idiot teacher sent the kid to the principal’s office when she saw him smelling the marker and the colored spot on his shirt.

The principal surely introduced reason into the situation by patting the youngster on the head, sending him back to class and giving the teacher a private, gentle talking-to about the dangers of overreaction, right?

Of course not. In true kneejerk “zero tolerance” fashion, the principal suspended the kid. The petty bureaucrat in question, a willfully ignorant fool by the name of Chris Benisch, “stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.”

Yep, that’s right: substance abuse. Smelling those Sharpie fumes, Benisch wrote to the kid’s parents, could cause the youngster to “become intoxicated.” Huffing Sharpie fumes, he claimed, “is really, really, seriously dangerous[.]“

So why do I accuse Mr. Benisch of willful ignorance? The teevee reporter did what the idiot bureaucrat couldn’t be fucked to do: The reporter called a toxicologist and asks whether inhaling Sharpie fumes can result in intoxication. The answer, unsurprisingly, is no:

“I don’t know whether it would be possible for a real overachiever to figure out a way to get high off them,” [Dr. Eric] Lavonas said. “But in regular use, it’s just not something that’s going to happen.”

“If you went to Costco and bought 50 bags of Sharpies and did something to them, maybe there’s a way to get creative and make it happen,” Lavonas said.

The reporter advised Benisch of the toxicologist’s statements. Surely Benisch responded with a contrite admission that he may have overreacted, right?

Of course not. No good petty bureaucrat would ever, under any circumstances, let “facts” or “science” get in the way of unbridled “drugs ‘r’ bad” hysteria:

Adams County School District 50 leaders were unfazed by the poison control center’s medical opinion.

“Principals make hundreds of decisions everyday based on our best judgment. And in that time, smelling that marker, I felt like, ‘Wow, that’s a very serious marker,’” Benisch said.

Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.

“We’ve purged every permanent marker there is in this building,” he said.

There you have it. LIKE , A VERY SERIOUS MARKER. PUNGENT = INTOXICATING. If that’s really his “best judgment,” then the man’s a roaring dumbass. Worse, he appears proud of that fact.

This story makes it abundantly clear that Chris Benisch doesn’t have the mental acumen to scrub public toilets for a living, much less hold a position of substantial authority over other peoples’ children. Hopefully the Board of School District 50 will see that and act accordingly. I kinda doubt it, though.

Tancredo identifies the REAL enemy

Thank goodness for raving madman and former presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO). Without him, we’d go right on believing that the problem in Iraq is the brown Arabs. With him, we now know that the real problem is the brown Hispanics in our own military.

Tancredo’s questioning of St. David Petraeus during a House Armed Services Committee hearing revealed that brown Hispanic MS-13 gangstas are joining the Army and using the military training and experience they get in Iraq to further their nefarious criminal enterprises here.

All terrorists are Mexicans. All Mexicans are terrorists. Don’t you ever forget it.

Kwazy Kwiminals

The homicidally enraged are, by and large, not the sort of folk we value in a civilized society. However, you’ve gotta give credit where it’s due, and these people often come up with extraordinarily inventive ways of committing unintentional suicide.

Take this guy for instance. He entered his ex-girlfriend’s Basalt, Colorado home early Saturday morning and started a fire in the living room. He was also carrying a high-powered assault rifle and a couple pocketfuls of ammo. Why he needed both a fire and such heavy armament is anyone’s guess. The cops speculate that he may have been planning to wait outside after starting the fire and blow his ex’s head off when she ran out of the building.

Whatever the plan was, it almost certainly didn’t include setting himself on fire, running out of the house engulfed in flames, shooting himself in the head, then lying in the yard ablaze while the ammo in his pockets exploded from the heat. Yet strangely enough, that’s exactly what happened.

Tort “Reform” Poster Boy Presses On

Roy Pearson, the soon-to-be-former D.C. Administrative law judge who sued a family dry cleaning business for millions over a pair of pants and lost spectacularly, filed a notice of appeal yesterday. A day earlier the dry cleaners withdrew their motion to recover some $83,000 in attorney fees and litigation expenses. The cleaners said they’d received enough in private donations to cover their costs and implored Pearson to let things lie. Pearson’s response — initiating an appeal — is the latest in a series of idiotic moves that includes rejection of multiple pretrial settlement offers ranging up to $12,000.

WaPo’s writeup is available here.

Tancreffluence

Good Gawd A-Mighty. Check out the door of gibbering headcase and Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo’s campaign office in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Never before has anyone so hamfistedly and in such hoopty fashion attempted to exploit the quadrifecta of fear and hate: Mexicans, Murder, Molestation and Muslims.

Attaboy, Tom. Keep them stoopidz coming. For now, we are still amused.

When ribbons aren’t enough

A thousands thanks to Wonkette for this howler.

Okay, so your Hummer is festooned from stem to stern with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers, “Support our Troops” ribbons, American flags and assorted “In God We Trust” schlock. You hate liberals, gays, activist judges and brown people. When you vote, you vote Republican without question. You shop at Wal*Mart. You eat at McDonald’s at least five times per week. You treat every word that flows from the pens of Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer as divinely inspired. You watch Fox News Channel because, unlike the liberal mainstream media, they’re fair and balanced. Your wife can’t be bothered with “politics” because she’s too busy with child rearing and scrapbooking.

Despite all that, you can’t shake that free-floating anxiety born of doubt that somehow, some way you’re not quite doing your part to fight the War on T’rr’r.

Do you live in Oklahoma? If so, put your mind at ease and make your life complete with:

The GLOBAL WAR ON TERRORISM license plate

For a paltry $37 ($36 for renewals), you can immerse yourself more deeply in the pimping of 9/11 than you ever dreamed possible.