What do Stalin, Mao and Obama Have in Common? Nothing.

Over the past several years, as President Barack Obama has occupied the White House, his detractors have ceaselessly labeled his policies as communist or socialist. Pundits like Glenn Beck often carefully choreographed imagery of the Soviet Union’s hammer and sickle flag, or the Nazi’s swastika when referring to Mr. Obama and his policies. The notion that Democrats support socialism has become a foregone conclusion in conservative communities. As one who formally studied economics and political science at BYU, hearing these terms twisted far from their actual meaning, and observing the comparison of programs like Medicare and the Affordable Care Act to Stalinist Russia, make me cringe. For Republican strategists, the purpose in making such comparisons to the genocidal regimes of Stalin, Mao, or Hitler are obvious- striking fear in their largely uninformed constituents. This messaging strategy has worked marvelously as more and more Americans now simply refuse to even consider the merits of any policy proposal that the GOP punditry has labeled “socialist” or “communist.”

Shutdown Antics Threaten Constitutional Order

The current shutdown of the federal government and upcoming showdown over the debt ceiling has caused many people to ask who is to blame for this gridlock. The media, in its effort to try to report both sides of the story, often end up giving balanced treatment to an unbalanced phenomenon. What we have is an extremist element within the minority political party that refuses to accept the results of the previous elections. Leading up to the shutdown, House Republicans demanded defunding of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) in exchange for passing a continuing resolution budget that would fund the rest of the federal government for a brief period. Republicans also threatened to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised that could result in a catastrophic default on our national debt if their demands are not met. In making these demands, Republicans are attempting to thwart the Constitutional order of our government while threatening financial and economic chaos.

Pregnant Rape Victims Should Turn Lemons into Lemonade- Sharron Angle

Tea Party extraordinaire and Nevada Republican candidate for US Senate Sharron Angle recently told a reporter that she thinks teenage rape victims should make "a lemon situation into lemonade" by carrying their pregnancies to term. This radical does not think that there should be a legal abortion exception for rape or incest. Instead, she thinks these situations should be left solely to Divine Providence.

Questioner: What do you say then to a young girl... when a young girl is raped by her father, let's say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?

Angle: I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.

Her interview with radio talk show host Bill Manders goes even further:



I can respect someone's view when they feel that the government should prevent elective abortions (though I may not agree with it- as I stated in my Culture of Life posts, I am neither Pro-Choice, nor Pro-Life as I have not completely decided my view of the government's role in regulating elective abortion). But to say that a girl who has been raped by her father cannot have the option to an abortion, that the government and society will compel that girl to carry her pregnancy to term, is truly cruel and unusual punishment. (Of course a pregnancy resulting from a rape should not automatically result in an abortion. The point is that especially in such a scenario, the decision should lie with the victim, not with the government.) Sharon Angle is nut to espouse such a view. But I'm grateful she's being honest about what she believes. A simple examination of some of her public statements shows she is absolutely a far right-wing radical. She's in favor of abolishing Social Security. She recently said that the unemployed were "spoiled," and that as senator, she would do nothing to help with unemployment.



The good news is that Sen. Harry Reid is now leading in the polls, because of a recent focus on Angle's extreme policy positions.