{"id":1159,"date":"2004-03-23T11:12:22","date_gmt":"2004-03-23T18:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/character-counts-dont-lie\/"},"modified":"2004-03-23T11:12:22","modified_gmt":"2004-03-23T18:12:22","slug":"character-counts-dont-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/character-counts-dont-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Character Counts &#8212; Don&#8217;t Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"FactCheck.org Bush accuses Kerry of 350 votes for 'higher taxes' -- higher than what?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.factcheck.org\/article.aspx?docid=159\">FactCheck.org Bush accuses Kerry of 350 votes for &#8221;higher taxes&#8221; &#8212; higher than what?<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Summary<\/p>\n<p><b>The President <i>misled<\/i> voters and reporters in a March 20 speech<\/b> when he claimed that Kerry &#8221;voted over 350 times for higher taxes on the American people&#8221; during his 20-year Senate career. Bush spoke of &#8221;yes&#8221; votes for &#8221;tax increases.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>But in fact, Kerry has not voted 350 times for tax increases, something Bush campaign officials have falsely accused Kerry of on several occasions. <b>On close examination, the Bush campaign&#8217;s list of Kerry&#8217;s votes for &#8221;higher taxes&#8221; is padded.<\/b> It includes <b>votes Kerry cast to leave taxes <i>unchanged<\/i><\/b> (when Republicans proposed cuts), and even <b>votes in favor of alternative Democratic tax cuts<\/b> that Bush aides characterized as &#8221;watered down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Bush&#8217;s defenders will sneer at this analysis by the independent FactCheck.org, with copious supporting documentation. The Radical Right despises  nuance, subtlety, anything that is not black and white. Apparently, they&#8217;re not too concerned with <b>a President who lies<\/b>. As one apologist said, &#8221;it&#8217;s not a lie if Bush <i>believes<\/i> it.&#8221; No, that would make it a stupid remark instead of a lie. So much better. Bush may not understand everything he says, but he is responsible for its truth.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve heard <b>Republicans<\/b> say Bush will say anything to get (re)elected. And yet they&#8217;ll vote for him, won&#8217;t they. mjh<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FactCheck.org Bush accuses Kerry of 350 votes for &#8221;higher taxes&#8221; &#8212; higher than what? Summary The President misled voters and reporters in a March 20 speech when he claimed that Kerry &#8221;voted over 350 times for higher taxes on the American people&#8221; during his 20-year Senate career. Bush spoke of &#8221;yes&#8221; votes for &#8221;tax increases.&#8221; &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/nada\/dump-duhbya\/character-counts-dont-lie\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Character Counts &#8212; Don&#8217;t Lie<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dump-duhbya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}