Sharron Angle: Remaking America on the Pinochet Model

Sharron Angle, the Tea Bagger running against Harry Reid for the Senate in Nevada says that we should use Augusto Pinochet’s model of privatization as a guide for reforming our social security system.

Yes, Pinochet, the infamous fascist dictator and Nixon/Kissinger ally who engineered the subjugation of Chilean democracy in the 1970s.

Pinochet seized power from the democratically elected government of  Salvador Allende in a bloody, US backed military coup d’état in 1973.

Through torture, terror, murder, with the assistance of the CIA and corporate America his brutal regime held power until 1990.

This may be where Angle discovered her admiration for the “Second Amendment Solution” that she has recommended for removing Harry Reid and other people she deems “socialists.”

She wants to privatize Social Security along the Chilean model. This from Oskar Garcia at the Associated Press yesterday:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate says the nation’s Social Security system needs to be privatized, and that it was done before in the South American country of Chile.

Angle referred to Chile at the opening of a campaign office in North Las Vegas while explaining previous statements that the United States should phase out its Social Security system.

“When I said privatize, that’s what I meant,” she said Thursday.

“I thought we would have to go just to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done,” Angle said. “However, I’ve since been studying, and Chile has done this.”

The Angle campaign quite naturally tried to walk her statements back a few paces but this puff of steam ain’t going back in the kettle.

Messing with Social Security and Medicare, two of the most successful social programs in our history is not a good path to travel in the upcoming election. Anyone who is watching the mood of the electorate from a vantage point within the confines of say, the inner solar system,  should be aware that an attempt to gut or cut these programs could be suicidal.

In addition to wanting to remodel Social Security according to the template provided by a notorious South American Dictator,  she wants us to cut ties with the UN, shut down the IRS, the EPA and the Department of Energy.

She also wants to deny abortions to women even in cases of rape, and fired a barrage across my personal bow when she said that she’s against legal alcohol.  Give me a minute here, I’m a bit unsteady.

From a transcript of an interview with conservative talk show host Bill Manders:

Manders: I, too, am pro life but I’m also pro choice, do you understand what I mean when I say that.

Angle:  I’m pro responsible choice. There is choice to abstain choice to do contraception. There are all kind of good choices.

Manders:  Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

Angle:  Not in my book.

Manders:  So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

Angle:  You know, I’m a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

The Department of Education is also on her hit list, and she had harsh criticism for the BP oil spill compensation fund, calling it a “slush fund.”

As an election year this one is fast becoming a major “silly season” with all the comic opera tea bagger costumes and addle witted participants.

In addition to Angle we have the constant barrage of Sarah Palin and her Wasillabilly clan,  Marg Baker the state rep candidate from Florida who wants to round up the brown ones “walking among us,” and put them in “internment camps, ” Rand Paul, and the hits just keep on coming.

I was going to mention Louie Gohmert, you know the idiot from Texas who is worried (or says he is… on the floor of the House of Reps) about “terrorist babies.”

I’m pretty sure that when that phrase exited the mouth of this knucklehead it was the first time I had ever heard the words “terrorist and babies” used together.

These people are silly but they’re also very scary, they don’t know the X-files was fiction.

But I’ll save that for another day, I need a drink, while it’s still legal.

I sure wouldn’t want to violate any laws, not with all these “Second Amendment Solutions” in the air.

Originally posted at my site Bob Higgins