In the health care debate, liberals are fond of citing polls that show, they say, that people like individual aspects of Obamacare, but do not like the package as a whole. They conclude that voters are behaving irrationally, because if all the parts are good than obviously the whole must be good. From this line of reasoning, they deduce that if Congress passes Obamacare, then people will realize they really liked it all along. Alas, the logical premise is false. There are valid reasons why one might like the parts, but not like the whole.

Republicans are warming up to the possibility of winning back Congress in this year’s elections. The advice from nearly every pundit and political leader is that it is not enough to just be anti-Obama. To win, all say, Republicans must put forth a plan to solve the country’s problems. This wisdom ignores the success of Democrats in the last election, who ran entirely on blaming Bush for everything and offering very little beyond amorphous “hope and change.” Elections are indeed won based upon little more than not being the last guy. The problem arises when it is time to govern.

9/11 Truthers do not tire. They diligently maintain their own laws of nature independent of those known to scientists and engineers. Rather than try to make a conspiracy theory that agrees with the established laws of nature, Truthers maintain natural laws that fit their theories. Much of Truther lore is built around claimed properties of steel and thermite that contradict established knowledge.

There is a difference between a lie and a mistake and also between hypocrisy and just playing the cards you are dealt. These conceptual differences arise regularly in political debate, and now in in the health care debate. Let’s start with hypocrisy.

The current debate on health care is confusing. I focus on five central issues. The debate would be improved if these specifics were in the forefront. My points are, (1) heath in the US is more a product of lifestyle than the care system, (2) insurance company profits are a trivial part of health care costs, (3) justified changes in insurance regulations do not require the much large health care package, (4) a person will not be able to keep their present health insurance if employers drop the option, and (5) critical details of the new system are not disclosed.

As a true-believing ideologue, Maddow might be expected to dismiss contrary evidence as a pack of lies. “Of course Hayden denies it. What would you expect?” “Only $1 million? That’s not what we hear.” It is the stock and trade of conspiracy theorists to dismiss contrary evidence as “obvious lies.” They are pronounced lies because they contradict the theory. … Maddow went beyond that. Maddow’s concealing the contrary evidence entirely crosses the line between errant analysis and outright propaganda.

Liberals argue that the conventional definition of "news source" used in studies of journalism should be broadened to include opinion programs, so that conservative talk radio and Fox News commentary will be counted. If that definition is adopted, the bias is still overwhelmingly liberal. For example, the viewership of the liberal-biased network evening news is by itself more than all of Fox News and conservative talk radio combined, and when everything is totaled there is more than three times as much liberal slant in media as conservative.

There is a religious doctrine of Young Earth Creationism (YEC), whereby some people believe that the Bible says that the earth was literally created about 6,000 years ago. I am not arguing that that doctrine is necessarily false. I am arguing that if it is true, then when God created the earth he put in place a vast amount of evidence that the earth is many millions of years old. Moreover, the evidence is well coordinated, in that diverse evidence points to a consistent time line for events in the earth’s history. The evidence cannot be explained by scientists having made just a few key mistakes.

My method in building the spread sheet was to begin each year with the balance from the previous year, adjust the balance with investment gains or losses, and finally add the contributions for the year. … The stock market provided more excitement than Treasury Bills. The $216K in contributions grew steadily to be worth $613K at the start of 2009. The stock investments lost a heart-stopping plunge from $1,740K last year, but nonetheless still had $1,093 at year end. So despite the worst market year in the 45 year period, the stock investment was still 78% ahead of Treasuries.

Today, House Speaker Pelosi gave her fifth version of what she knew and when she new it with respect to disclosure of enhanced interrogation techniques. Her various accounts have been contradicted by other members of Congress and by the records of the meetings. She has consistently claimed that she was told by the Bush Administration that they had determined that specified enhanced interrogation techniques were legal, but that she was not told that they were actually used. Other members of Congress maintain that it was clear they were being used. Moreover, a later briefing disclosed information obtained from Abu Zubaydah through concurrently acknowledged use of waterboarding.

It is nonetheless not clear that Speaker Pelosi is lying. It may well be that what she is saying is just how she remembers it. …