This Week's Nutball Award Goes To.......

...the 55% of respondents in a Democracy Now poll who said the term "socialist" describes President Barack Obama "well" or "very well." Thomas Rheil reports for Talking Points Memo.

Have months of Fox News hyperventilating and right-wing fear mongering over our supposed socialist-in-chief finally paid off? A majority of voters now think President Barack Obama is a socialist, at least according to one new poll.

Peyton Craighill, a senior associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a firm that does polling for Democracy Corps, attributed the surprising number to voters' impatience with the lagging economy. "It probably has to do with the fact that people are very unhappy with the dire economy and the fact that the budget deficit is quite large," Craighill said. "People who don't like the man are going to use any label they can to ding him, even if they don't think he's a socialist in the vein of the Soviet Union or China."

Anyone describing Obama as a socialist is either resorting to name-calling to smear him or doesn't know the meaning of the term. If Obama was a socialist he would have nationalized the big banks during that crisis or pushed for a single-payer health care system. He reportedly didn't consider either of these moves.

--Ballard Burgher