To wit: He frames his entire piece within the realm of "health reform," as if the debate is between those in favor of health and those who oppose it.

He asserts that polling on reform was "never as negative as portrayed," but fails to cite any factual information to support his assertion.

He refutes the first of the "myths"--that the proposed legislation amounts to a government takeover of one-sixth of the nation's economy--by lamely pointing out that the federal government "already pay[s] for almost half of American health care." By Krugman's fallacious logic, the claim of nationalization is a myth because we already have a degree of nationalization in the system. Furthermore, he fails to mention that the federal...

I see. You "don't care whether he's talking about this right now or not. It's not his top priority to address the nation every time some dumb-bot terrorist gets arrested."

Yet I'm sure you find it perfectly sensible for the leader of the free world to go popping off his big yap about a local law enforcement issue in order to score points with his race-conscious constituents.

That's the point Mr. North is trying to make: The President of the United States is so busy campaigning for himself and his increasingly unpopular statist agenda that he is missing (or ignoring) opportunities to address issues of far greater importance to the nation as a whole.

One question for you to ponder: assuming the MSM has a vested...

Balanced wrote: "[I]t simply can't be argued...It has been widely reported. Everyone knows."

Is that what passes for logical debate in your neck of the woods? Begging the question, establishing opinion as fact, appealing to authority?

Somewhere out there is a middle-school student missing a persuasive essay graded "C-".

(I'm normally more civil, but I just can't take it anymore.)

The disparity between stimulus spending on the private sector versus the public sector is further proof of the FDR-style system of political patronage adopted by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party since gaining the majority on Capitol Hill in 2008.

In addition to both directing 20 percent more stimulus funding per capita to states voting for Obama in 2008, and directing stimulus funding by a 2-to-1 margin per capita to those counties voting for Obama rather than McCain, Washington, D.C. has at last count directed nearly $4,000 per capita of the stimulus funding back to itself.

The political class has thus far received the highest level of stimulus spending in America, and the consumer confidence of its...

Where to begin? Claims based upon facts not in evidence. Hyperbole. Fallacy of composition. Argument from authority. The belief that majority opinion trumps contradictory fact. And a healthy dose of non sequitur to muddy the water of logical discourse.

No offense, Phylo, but your style of argument is a near carbon copy of that used by those carrying water for the "settled science" of AGW. I would highly recommend you read some of Dr. Sowell's book-length works, not only for their content, but for their logical construction of argument. Basic Economics is a fine place to start.

And thanks, Georgetwin in MD. Your list of stumpers is terrific.

The logical fallacies of the left are self-imposed blinders used by those who wish to protect their state of willful ignorance.

Common among the rhetoric of those who refuse to allow logic and facts to influence their worldview are: fallacies of composition (i.e., the select people interviewed in the crowd outside the free clinic were "victims of circumstance," therefore all the people outside the clinic are victims of circumstance); non sequitur appeals to emotion (i.e., because a television news report shows people with "emergent conditions" lining "eight abreast" outside a free clinic, we must make health coverage mandatory for all; straw man arguments (i.e., resistance to pending legislation is wrong because Reagan gave a...

Check out http://www.wattsupwiththat.com to find out more about CRU's recent removal of relevant data that until now has been available to the public for years. CRU cites increased traffic and bandwidth concerns as the reason.

Checked out the Annenberg analysis (I had some extra time this morning). Funny thing: it reads more like an editorial than a fact-check. With the "broad scientific consensus" trope as its touchstone, the article asserts that the CRU info does little to refute the findings of "leading scientists [who] are unequivocally reaffirming the consensus on global warming".

As an example of good fact-checking, the article--to borrow from one of its own headings--misses the mark. It presents half the picture as the complete view and draws erroneous conclusions as a result. The author states as fact that "scientific consensus has only become stronger as the evidence for global warming from various sources has mounted," disregarding the...

Sorry, compadre. Had to step away for a few hours. If you're still around, here's my retort to your own: your argument suffers from a number of fallacies, not the least of which is that it has little to do with the current debate--it's a red herring.

"Strange every Republican presidential candidate in 2008 was peddling the exact opposite."

Red herring.

"It was the Republican-controlled Congress of the 1990's, six of Bubba's eight years had a Republican Speaker of the House, the last six and most important, that ruthlessly cut our national security down to the bone. Those Clinton administration defense cuts were actually Republican-controlled Congress defense cuts. These defense cuts put this nation in grave...

Congress appropriates. The president executes said appropriations.

Clinton had little choice but to execute the fiscally conservative appropriations of the Republican-dominated congress, lest he appear at best an obstructionist and at worst a lame duck during his tenure.

A more accurate statement would be, "the Republicans in Congress during the Clinton administration were more fiscally conservative than the Republicans in Congress during the Bush years."