Yes, words can be used to “mean” things that are false
Is it just a “shade of meaning” to imply that both Trump and Harris are scheming to violate the 22nd Amendment? Both sides do it! Maybe the Democrats are worse!
Is it a “shade of meaning” to claim the Democrats want a “ten year term” for one of their presidents, when everybody knows the legitimate constitutional terms are four years?
Come on, now you’re just strawmanning. Setting conspiratorial thinking aside, it was clear from context that
is using the word “term” in two distinct but perfectly valid senses. The first two uses of the word clearly refer to Constitutionally defined presidential terms, while the last is being used in the sense of “total length of a fixed duration”. The word term means both things. Which one is which is absolutely clear in context, even within the same sentence.
This reminds me once of an argument I got into with a guy who refused to acknowledge the existence of “sandy loam”, because “sand and loam are, by definition, distinct”.
(Don’t @ me about the political angle, I’m just here for the grammar.)
that’s not what the word “grammar” means either
presidents serve four year terms, not ten year terms
that makes it more misleading
once “counting a term against her” has been brought up, such a term cannot be 10 years
Hillary Clinton just referred to Harris’ performance as “the lieswatter.” Nice.
This is getting way off topic, but:
Everything in language is in deference to pragmatics.
If I asked you the question, “Which president served the longest term in office?”, you would answer, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” It is simultaneously true that FDR served the longest term in office and that he was elected President four times, serving three and a bit presidential terms.
What a reasonable person would not do is say, “Actually, all presidents serve the same term in office – 4 years – unless that term is cut short.” Doing this requires a fundamentally nonpragmatic – and dishonest – interpretation of the text. Leaning on technical definitions in nontechnical speech is a sure sign of being wrong, because (surprise) nontechnical speech is not technical, and as such is not bound to technical terminology.
Similarly, in this case, when someone says, “Harris could serve the final 1.99 years of Biden’s first term, then get elected to two more terms, and end up spending a term of 10 years as President,” this is an accurate statement. To suggest that “term of 10 years as President” implies some abrogation of the Constitution is a deliberate act of misreading. And it’s crappy rhetoric, to boot.
This is a fact. I grew up in the heart of the oilfield in Alberta, and there is no amount of information, facts or science that will convince people in my hometown that anything at all could be wrong with things like fracking or tar sands. The current premier of Alberta is doing the political equivalent of ‘hope and bluster hard enough and it will come true’ about the ‘return’ of profitability to the oil sands, which just isn’t going to happen.
Of course any interruption or delay to the promised good times returning are because of the others - be they environmentalists, socialists or whatever boogeyman can be arranged. Certainly not oil speculators or producers.
Yes. I was shouting at the radio. I wanted the moderator to drone continuously over him, “Mr. Vice President, your time is up.” As indeed it is.
It’s been that way in West Virginia coal country for decades. PA used to have the steel mills, but them shuttering leaves our blue collar workers left with the gas-fields as their sole hope for decent pay and something resembling a prideful, “manly” type of work. I’d love to see the solar industry boom in a way that makes panel installers feel like cowboys, because then maybe we’d see some buy-in from people who can’t see other options and define something like solar as being inherently inferior because it’s from the left and maybe not a back-breaking, soul-crushing, planet-destroying way to earn a living. Maybe we just need some country musicians to start writing songs about the romantic danger and solitary dignity of office work.
Now if only the Biden Harris campaign store would make their lie swatters the size of say, baseball bats or canoe paddles…
People seem to be getting up to ‘some antics’, here.
I’m comfortable with the Democrats keeping the number of Supreme Court justices to no more than 40 if they win both houses.
I see what you did there!
It’s not the number of voters, but who they are and where they are. There are major fracking booms in the swingier parts of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Youngstown has repeatedly voted down a fracking ban. There’s a much smaller number of people who will stay home in those states because of their support than will not support a candidate who promises to take their job away.
Sure them, but far from them alone. There’s a legion of people in the pipe rolling plants, gas facilities, machine shops serving the industry that are directly employed and a much larger number who believe that their restaurants and real estate offices depend on the fracking industry. I was reading an article about the boom and one of the things that stood out to me was that Youngstown went from roughly 4% higher unemployment than the national average to almost tied with the average.
Pence successfully pointed out the Democrats’ only plan for the court is to pack it
That’s not accurate. At lease one other notion is instituting 18-year term limits for SCOTUS members.
Probably most to the point, Pence was angling to get an admission either way, that a Biden administration would or would not pack the court. If she indicated yes, that becomes Trump campaign red meat for the right; if she indicated no, that becomes Trump campaign chum to cast in the water and try to split the left.
Not directly answering that question was the best move. And not only for campaigning; it really is too early for Democrats to commit to OR refuse those kinds of fixes after the GOP has bent every possible interpretation of Constitution and process to pack the court with nuts.
A PBS commentator summed up Pence’s performance, and persona, nicely: “He has perfected the breathy earnestness of saying nothing.”
Hyenas. They eat bones and excrete great blackboard chalk.
The More You Know
Every accusation, a confession.
Completely on-brand.
Every woman who has ever had to deal with the Mike Pences of the world, regardless of her political leanings, recognized herself in that smile-while-we-say-that as we attempt to hold the floor, while speaking. I know I recognized it, and when I checked in with my friends who are women, we all commiserated. Yuck. 
