Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Brace Yourself Sanders Supporters, It's Going to Get Ugly. [View all]NJCher
(35,928 posts)Your mistake is assuming that in public discourse a person has to be absolutely precise. That is not the case. It is only the case for scientific or formal academic presentation. I will amend Bernie's statements to be absolutely precise (he is under no obligation to be that precise) so you and others can see what I mean.
Bernie said: "I have voted against all of Trump's military budgets."
You are trying to say that because he missed one vote, this statement makes him a liar.
For Bernie to be truthful in your eyes, he could say "I have voted against all of Trump's military budgets except for one where I missed the vote and so therefore there is no record for that one vote."
However, if he went into this amount of detail, eyes would glaze over. For written presentation he should put an asterisk noting he was not present for one vote. For oral presentation, he need not explain to that degree.
You are doing what's known as splitting hairs. Here, from the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, is the definition, and it is what you are doing: " the act of giving too much importance to small and unimportant differences in an argument." Another source: "If someone splits hairs, they argue about very small details or find very small differences between things which are really very similar."
Your second mistake is assuming that in oral discourse one must be absolutely precise. There is no such obligation in that mode or channel of communication.
------------------
In your second example, about per capita health care spending, here is what Bernie said: "we still spend twice as much per capita on health care than any other country."
To make Bernie 100% correct, he would have to amend his statement to the following: "we still spend twice as much per capita on health care than 98% of other countries."
Urm....that's not exactly what I would call a "whopper."
Do you really think there is a significant difference in those statements? Bernie could actually use the second statement, the one I have rephrased, and have the same impact.
Again, hair splitting.
Your argument is made even weaker when one considers that Bernie made no reference to the countries in the OECD. There are 195-196 countries in the world to which he probably referred.
-------------
Tax return. I couldn't get to the Washington Post because of the firewall, so I searched for other forms of this article and I found this:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0416/fact_checker040516.php3
Having read it, you are again splitting hairs to be able to call him a liar. He released 2014 because they had not yet done 2016. What is wrong with the following?
There is one entry from 2014 available for Sanders on the Tax History Project website: a Form 1040 (a summary of his federal income tax return) and a one-page Vermont state income tax return. The campaign referred to this entry when we inquired about Sanders's claim.
Sanders and his wife reported a total income of $205,617 in 2014. The vast majority came from his Senate salary ($156,441 after contributions to savings and health insurance). They paid $27,653 in federal income tax and $7,903 in Vermont in 2014.
The couple received another $46,213 in Social Security benefits, and $39,281 of it was taxable.
Let me break the news to you gently: anybody who has been in Congress as long as Bernie has and who is reporting these pitifully small amounts is not hiding anything. He is operating in a culture (the Congress) where half its members are millionaires.
I just looked at my 1040 and what was on the pages behind it. For the life of me, I could not see any place on that return where one could hide something embarrassing. Go look at your own and tell me differently if you can.
I'm seeing a pattern in your record of his "lies." Your examples are misrepresentations themselves. I wouldn't exactly call them "lies," but they stretch the boundaries of credulity. No serious person who reads them with a critical eye is going to walk away from your examples and think that Bernie is a liar.
I'd tackle your last one but it is obvious it's the same-old same-old as what you've tried to promote as a "lie" and it won't measure up to the standard. Waste of my time.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided