Maggie's Farm

A reader reminded me about the Kettle Fallacy (aka Kettle Logic) in a comment about the contradictory defenses of Obamacare. It is a so-called informal fallacy - flawed premises rather than logical errors - whose name derives from, of all people, Sigmund Freud.

It would term this fallacious effort as a sub-category of the "baffle them with bullshit" informal fallacies. Via Wiki:

Freud relates the story of a man who was accused by his neighbor of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition and the three arguments he offers.

    That he had returned the kettle undamaged;
    That it was already damaged when he borrowed it;
    That he had never borrowed it in the first place.

The three arguments are inconsistent, and Freud notes that it would have been better if he had only used one.