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During her recent interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, Michele Bachmann's statements about torture and waterboarding were not the only outrageous statements the GOP presidential candidate made. She also decided to double down on her recent debate performance, where she said we should "Be more like China, and end "Great Society" programs. During this interview, Bachmann came straight out and advocated eliminating the earned income tax credit, food stamps and public housing.

Naturally during this same interview she was advocating lowering the corporate tax rates and for an extremely unfair and regressive flat tax, because heaven forbid we can't have those lazy poor people out there not paying their fair share in taxes.

From The Des Moines Register article:

In the wide-ranging, hourlong discussion with the Register, Bachmann also touched on numerous policies she would pursue as president, including a review of defense spending, an expansion of domestic energy production, federal regulatory reform and an overhaul of the tax code.

Many of her priorities focus on cuts and reductions to social programs benefiting the poor.

Her tax reform plan, for example, calls for an end to the earned-income tax credit, the tax relief program created in 1975 that can completely offset federal income taxes for the working poor and under certain circumstances could result in a cash payment to recipients.

Such a benefit gives one group of Americans a free ride while burdening another, she said, suggesting it also leads to unsustainable expectations for government benefits and services.

“We’re deluding ourselves if we’re embracing a dependency culture that looks like Greece,” she said.

She also called for a review of the “Great Society” — the raft of federal social services enacted in the 1960s under President Lyndon Johnson. Programs like food stamps and public housing that represent the “modern welfare state” are too expensive and need to be dismantled, she said.

“What I want to do is go through the Great Society programs, and I think a lot of them need to be ended,” she said.

Individual states, she said, could choose whether to provide those services in lieu of the federal government.

Among the federal programs enacted under the banner of the Great Society were the Medicare and Medicaid health care programs, food stamps, Head Start preschool and federal student loans.

Sarah Palin in Des Moines whippin' up fear of communism if heaven forbid Obama gets elected...you betcha'.

Partial transcript courtesy of Sam Stein over at the HuffPo but I thought a bit more of this fear fest was worth sharing than they posted there.

See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record... Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Let us fight for what is right. John McCain and I, we will put our trust in you.

This is pretty rich coming from someone who had no problem "spreadin' the wealth around" from the oil companies to the citizens in Alaska. Complaints of "big government spenders" ring pretty hollow from someone who left her small town $20 million in debt.

And to make this whole thing all the more lovely, at the 2:38 mark in the video, it sounds like one of her supporters yells out "He's a n**ger".

Please.Make.It.Stop. I've had enough of the fear mongering and the race baiting.

I don't know about anyone else, but to me this whole meme they've latched onto with the "spreading the wealth around" comments, and the latest cries of socialism, or communism, or whatever "ism" of the day they want to try to slap onto Obama ... it all just reeks of racism. The dog whistle they're blowing for the folks this hits home with is this: "Obama wants to give your hard-earned tax dollars to all of the lazy Negroes who want to sit home all day and collect welfare while you white people have to go to work every day to support them."

Of course, this is not what Obama is advocating when he promotes tax breaks for the middle class. I truly hope that most of this country has grown as weary of this type of class warfare as I have.

It's pitting one group of working people against another, and against the poor. Divide and conquer. It's all they have left.