Back in the day, when I was in elementary school, if you answered the teacher’s question incorrectly you got a swift smack on the back of your head.

Jon Caldara? Get yourself some headgear.

In this installment of the most profane, intellectually-stunted, and ludicrous statement made on Colorado talk radio today, Newsradio 850AM’s Caldara blows a basic school lesson — get your facts straight. On his November 28 show, Caldara launched into this exchange regading New York Rep. Charles Rangel’s recent statement that military recruits from his state tend to be minorities and young people from low income communities:

CALDARA: When you look at Rangel’s quote, he says they’re coming from places with high unemployment, as if to imply that they have no other choices. Of course they have choices. For every two recruits that come from poor neighborhoods — the poorest — three of them come from the richest neighborhoods. We have a pretty good spread of people who want to go into the military. Now, do you agree with Charlie Rangel — is that, is that what I’m going to hear? Let me give you the quote again, that “[i]f a young fellow has an option of having a decent career or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life he would not be in Iraq.” Is that something you agree with?

CALLER: No, I wouldn’t say that he wouldn’t bet his life, because I know that there are many soldiers out there who are educated people who do bet their lives every day –

CALDARA: And when he says of recruits that most of all of them “come from communities of very, very high unemployment,” do you believe that as well?

CALLER: Well, if you look, the majority of the people are coming from the South right now and that’s 40 — I think it was 41 percent, that the Heritage Foundation report said come from the South. And I think that that is a big part of that statistic right there.

CALDARA: These are communities with very, very high unemployment? Let me tell you, in America right now, there are very few communities that have, quote, very, very high unemployment. There is no high unemployment.

CALLER: Exactly.

CALDARA: We forget what it was like under the Carter years. We forget double-digit unemployment rates — 13 percent. There is no high unemployment rate. It — what Rangel is trying to tell us is that the people who are going into the military are somehow victims and that they don’t have other choices. I, I hope you’re not silly enough to buy into that.

Whack!

The truth: the unemployment rate during President Carter’s term was never higher than 7.1 percent.

Smack!

The truth: the unemployment rates were significantly higher under President Ford (1975 — 8.5%) and President Reagan (1982 — 9.6%).

Crack!

h/t Colorado Media Matters.