As for contradiction number one, I would add from the blog “However, as a matter of fact, we at Google have made some progress in both areas.”. Notice the “some progress”, which adds to the confusion.

Could this all just be a matter of the guidelines won’t change until that “some progress” is complete? Also it seems Google is saying webmasters are botching the rewrites so don’t do it.

I don’t think the third contradiction is apples to apples, but it isn’t worth arguing over.

The most disconcerting point for me came from the second contradiction where Google stated, “Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static.” The use of “hiding” in reference to URL rewriting implies some nefarious act when the end result benefits users and presumably prior to this post, search engines themselves.