Its no surprise that a wingnut cherrypicks evidence, gives a one-sided picture of the facts, and lies.

For every anecdote Mr. Wingnut gives about stories that were unflattering to Republicans, I can dig up 10 that were unfair to Democrats. Ever heard of Media Matters? They come up with thousands of examples without lying and distorting.

Remember Clinton? Remember Gore? Remember Kerry and the swiftboat liars? I rest my case.

What do conservatives say themselves, in their brief moments of honesty?

"I admit it -- the liberal media were never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failures." William Kristol

And its also not surprising to see Mr. Wingnut recycle the old Medicare cut canard. Its not surprising because anyone who has paid attention to Republicans since 1980 (and earlier) knows that they lie habitually.

Before the 1995 proposed Republican Medicare cuts everyone -- Republican and Democrat alike -- had always called a reduction in a planned, already legislated budget increase a "cut." It makes perfect sense to call a reduction in an increase which has already been planned, budgeted, and authorized a cut. You can bet that in the Bush years, before Iraq became an obvious disaster, if there had been a planned troop increase that Congress reduced, the Republicans would have called it a reduction.

The Republicans only began to make a fuss over this when they needed a way to justify the class war they were declaring back in 1995, i.e. cutting money for average seniors in order to pay off their rich friends with tax cuts targeted for the rich.

The question of what is or is not a budget cut over time is complicated by at least two other factors:

1) inflation - which means it costs more money (in nominal terms) to provide the same service over time

2) population growth - it costs more money to provide the same program to more people

Those two factors mean you need an increase in nominal spending in order to maintain a real expenditure.

Thanks Salon for providing us more Slate-like contrarianism. Its so helpful to hear more Republican lies. I haven't gotten quite enough of them in the last 3 or 4 decades.

We know he wasn't god because there is no god. So maybe there was a guy named Jesus 2000 years ago and maybe not. Either way, we know that all the stuff they say about him is a laughable crock of shit and that's the most important point.

What if there was a guy named Bluto Blutarsky 2000 years who told tall tales and said everybody ought to be good to each other? Are you gonna worship Bluto?

"How could God allow less evil? Should he summarily execute child molesters and impose lesser punishment for jaywalkers? Once God created us and gave us free will and the senses to experience his world, he must, by every possible intellectual argument, have given us the right to choose evil over love and grace. The persistence of evil is a failure of man, not God."

Well that is standard issue theodicy, but that position falls apart quickly on examination:

Here are a few of the problems with your position:

1) What about natural accidents that cause suffering? For example, there is an earthquake in San Francisco and a woman gets pinned under a collapsed highway. But she doesn't die right away. Instead her young daughter gets to sit there and watch her die slowly. Why did god have to let that happen?

2) Couldn't god, who is omnipotent, destroy the devil but leave the rest of us with free will? Then why doesn't he?

3) What about psychiatric conditions that eliminate free will? Say someone is afflicted with mania and does things they would never choose to do under normal conditions. Why did god decide we just had to evolve into creatures that are subject to such psychiatric conditions?

4) What's so great about free will anyway? Seems kind of dangerous. Do you refuse to intervene with your children when they are doing something dangerous just so they can exercise their free will? Do you love your children more than god loves his?

5) Again on free will: do we really live in the best of all possible worlds? Couldn't god have designed some sort of variation of free will that accomplishes all or most of what free will does at less cost? At the very least, couldn't he intervene in the most horrendous cases and leave us free in the rest? By intervening in just the .0000001% of free decisions that lead to the most harmful consequences there could be a giant utility gain. Or couldn't god just intervene when necessary but erase our memories so we didn't know he had done it?

Theodicy is so much desperate struggle to retain bullshit beliefs despite their evident stupidity and lack of empirical basis.

I could go on and on. I recommend you check out J.L. Mackie in his book The Miracle Of Theism.