The position of the Republicans in the budget negotiations is an outrage to every responsible citizen in our republic. Let's get some facts straight:

The debt is money already spent

We owe it. For the Republicans to even threaten that America will flake on its obligations borders on treason in my book. At the very least they are taking an un-Constitutional position by trying to force our nation to skip out on its debts. See the 14th Amendment. This act alone strikes me as more than enough grounds for impeachment hearings on the lot of them.

Oh, and regarding taxing the wealthy....

Job creation is tax deductible

That's right. Every dollar that job creators invest in job creation is tax deductible now, and tax deductible even if the Bush tax cuts are repealed. It's the dollars that job creators keep for themselves that would be taxed. If they create jobs, they don't have to worry about it.

Comic: XKCD http://xkcd.com/512

Not that I claim to know more than Pope Benedict's first-person Nazi expertise, but his claim that Nazis were about atheism is somewhat bizarre:

The Pope used this speech to warn Britain about "aggressive forms of secularism" and "atheist extremism" in society. He recounted Britain's stand against the Nazis, then stated "As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the Twentieth Century."

In a few short sentences, Benedict threw down a gauntlet by linking the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany with atheism. While, to be fair to the Pope, the Nazis had no real love for Catholics, Nazi Germany was a religious state. The Nazis drew upon both Christianity and Pagan influences. Nazi paraphernelia proudly proclaimed Gott mit uns (God with us). Nazi propaganda routinely referred to political enemies as atheists as a means to vilify them, and Hitler himself is reported by at least one close aid to have confirmed his Catholicism late into the war.

Not only has the Pope bought into the lie that the Nazis were atheists, but apparently he has forgotten the history of an organization he was part of, both as a member of the Hitler Youth and as a member of an anti-aircraft gun crew.

Speaking the lie to the Pope's claim are the various Nazi artifacts with Christian iconography and messaging on them.

Perhaps the Pope should have talked about Stalin. After all, the Soviet Union was an atheist totalitarian regime. But perhaps Stalin did not suit the Pope's purpose for various unknown reasons.

They claim to be about "getting the government off of our backs." The problem here is that the Tea Party seems to be salivating at the opportunity to enact on the state level laws that prohibit equal rights for gays, women and even racial minorities. Listen past the opening salvos about big government and you realize that what the tea baggers really want is to replace federal government authority with state government authority. Their central assumption is that states have inherent rights but individuals do not.

Witness their reactions to last week's court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act as applied to Massachusetts:

A spokeswoman for one of the biggest Tea Party umbrella organizations, Tea Party Patriots, said that social questions were not part of their mission.

“As far as an assertion of states’ rights goes, I believe it’s a good thing,” said Shelby Blakely, executive director of The New Patriot Journal, the group’s online publication. “The Constitution does not allow federal regulation of gay marriage just as it doesn’t allow for federal regulation of health care.”

“But I don’t want to come off saying I support gay marriage,” she added.

No of course not. In fact, the social gains of the past 50 years seem to be in the crosshairs of tea baggers from Rand Paul to Sarah Palin to Sharron Angle.

And then there's tea bagger heaven: Arizona, where "papers please" is not a line from a Nazi in a World War 2 movie but rather a populist mantra.

This is not libertarian. This is authoritarian.

Let's look at a definition of Libertarianism:

Libertarians believe that individuals should have complete freedom of action, provided their actions do not infringe on the freedom of others.

—Encyclopedia Brittanica

Libertarianism describes a range of political beliefs that advocate the maximization of an individual's ability to think and act with few constraints from large social structures, such as government,[1][2][3] and the minimization or even abolition of the state.

—Wikipedia

An advocate of the doctrine of free will

—Mirriam-Webster ("libertarian")

The Tea Party, with it's stated goal of establishing greater authority to state governments, is not libertarian. In fact, when you look at the code words, off-the-record remarks, and actions of Tea Party leaders and supporters, it becomes clear that the Tea Party is actually about authoritarianism. To the Tea Party, the federal government's oppression is that it prevents them from oppressing gays, oppressing women (especially with regard to healthcare), and oppressing racial minorities.

And yet the Beltway crowd seems to buy into the claim that the Tea Party is libertarian.

E.J. Dione seems to think the Tea Party makes the common mistake:

The rise of the tea party movement is a throwback to an old form of libertarianism that sees most of the domestic policies that government has undertaken since the New Deal as unconstitutional. It typically perceives the most dangerous threats to freedom as the design of well-educated elitists out of touch with “American values.”

In a fascinating article analyzing the Tea Party — and the prevalence of women tea baggers — Ruth Rosen identifies some disturbing characteristics:

One important difference, however, is race. At Tea Party rallies you don’t see faces with dark complexions. Another important distinction is that men and women are drawn to this sprawling movement for a variety of overlapping but possibly different reasons. Both men and women seem to embrace an incoherent “ideology” which calls for freedom from government, no taxes, and an inchoate desire to “take back America,” which means restoring the nation to some moment when the country was white and “safe.”

She goes on to note how the conservative brand of "feminism" isn't quite the feminism that states that "Feminism is the radical idea that women are people." On the contrary:

Here is a great irony. Since 1980, when the backlash began attacking the women’s movement, young secular American women have resisted calling themselves feminists because the religious right-wing had so successfully created an unattractive image of a feminist as a hairy, man-hating, lesbian who spouted equality, but really wanted to kill babies. Now, Palin is forcing liberal feminists to debate whether these Christian feminists are diluting feminism or legitimizing it by making it possible to say that one is a feminist.

When I read what women write on Christian women’s web sites, I hear an echo from the late nineteenth century when female reformers sought to protect the family from “worldly dangers.” Frances Willard, leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, urged millions of women to enter the public sphere in order to protect their families, to address the decadent consequences and casualties of capitalism, to win suffrage, and to fight for prohibition, all in the name of protecting the purity of their homes and families.

For many contemporary evangelical Christian women, their motivations are similar. They want to enter the public sphere or even run for office to eliminate abortion, protect marriage, contain sexual relations, oppose gay marriage and clean up the mess made by the sexual revolution. [Emphasis added.]

This doesn't sound like liberty. It sounds like vesting greater freedom to state governments so they can oppress entire classes of people with impunity.

Am I wrong? If so, I'd love to see some proof.