willard speaks truthiness, willard speaks truthiness

Source images from here and here

"I mean, is there anything at all in Romney’s stump speech that’s true? It’s all based on attacking Obama for apologizing for America, which he didn’t, on making deep cuts in defense, which he also didn’t, and on being a radical redistributionist who wants equality of outcomes, which he isn’t. When the issue turns to jobs, Romney makes false assertions both about Obama’s record and about his own. I can’t find a single true assertion anywhere."
— Paul Krugman
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"Politicians repeat the same messages endlessly (even when it has nothing to do with the question they've been asked). Journalists repeat the same opinions day after day.
     Can all this repetition really be persuasive?
     It seems too simplistic that just repeating a persuasive message should increase its effect, but that's exactly what psychological research finds (again and again). Repetition is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion. In fact it's so obvious that we sometimes forget how powerful it is.
     People rate statements that have been repeated just once as more valid or true than things they've heard for the first time. They even rate statements as truer when the person saying them has been repeatedly lying (Begg et al., 1992).
     And when we think something is more true, we also tend to be more persuaded by it. Several studies have shown that people are more swayed when they hear statements of opinion and persuasive messages more than once."
— PSYBLOG
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Around 4 p.m. on Oct. 17, 2005, Stephen Colbert was searching for a word. Not just any word, but one that would fit the blowhard persona that he was presenting that night on the premiere episode of Comedy Central’s 'Colbert Report.' He once described his faux-pundit character as a 'well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot,' and the word he was looking for had to be sublimely idiotic.
     During the rehearsal, Colbert was stuck on what term to feature for the inaugural segment of 'The Word,' a spoof of Bill O’Reilly’s 'Talking Points.' Originally, he and the writers selected the word truth, as distinguished from those pesky facts. But as Colbert told me in a recent interview (refreshingly, he spoke to me as the real Colbert and not his alter ego), truth just wasn’t 'dumb enough.'  'I wanted a silly word that would feel wrong in your mouth,' he said.
     What he was driving at wasn’t truth anyway, but a mere approximation of it — something truthish or truthy, unburdened by the factual. And so, in a flash of inspiration, truthiness was born."
— Ben Zimmer, The New York Times Magazine
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right there in black and white

"(CNN) If there were any doubts about how important South Carolina is to Rick Santorum's Republican nomination hopes, he erased them on Sunday.
     Speaking in ominous terms, Santorum urged a crowd at Stax Original Restaurant in Greenville to make their voices heard in the January 21 primary and vote for the one true 'Reagan conservative' in the race.
     'You have an opportunity in this election to speak very loudly,' he said. 'You are going to see this race coming into South Carolina with a lot on the line.'
     Santorum called the 2012 election 'the most critical election maybe since 1860' -- the election that presaged the Civil War -- and said the stakes could not be higher in November.
     In an implicit shot at GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, Santorum said South Carolina must vote for a candidate who offers a 'bold stark contrast' to President Barack Obama."
— NEWS 4 Jax.com
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"Republican Newt Gingrich told a Georgia audience on Friday evening that the 2012 presidential election is the most consequential since the 1860 race that elected Abraham Lincoln to the White House and was soon followed by the Civil War.
     Addressing the Georgia Republican Party's convention, Gingrich said the nation is at a crossroads and that the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama would lead to four more years of 'radical left-wing values' that would drive the nation to ruin."
— Associated Press (via MSNBC)
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"The United States presidential election of 1860 was a quadrennial election, held on November 6, 1860, for the office of President of the United States and the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners.
     In 1860, these issues finally came to a head. As a result of conflicting regional interests, the Democratic Party broke into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided and dispirited opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured enough electoral votes to put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with very little support from the South. Within a few months of the election, seven Southern states, led by South Carolina, responded with declarations of secession, which was rejected as illegal by outgoing President James Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln. Four additional Southern states seceded after the Battle of Fort Sumter."
— Wikipedia
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kiting near the ceiling

1936 edition of Monopoly (from: Recycled Thoughts from a Retro Gamer)

"Very soon, Congress will raise the debt ceiling. If it does not, it would be the greatest unforced error in American history, a self-inflicted wound that is as disastrous as it was avoidable.
     Suppose, however, that the tea party gets its way, and the debt ceiling is not increased. What are President Barack Obama's options?
     We are having a debt-ceiling crisis because Congress has given the president contradictory commands; it has ordered the president to spend money, and it has forbidden him to borrow enough money to obey its orders.
     Are there other ways for the president to raise money besides borrowing?
     Sovereign governments such as the United States can print new money. However, there's a statutory limit to the amount of paper currency that can be in circulation at any one time.
     Ironically, there's no similar limit on the amount of coinage. A little-known statute gives the secretary of the Treasury the authority to issue platinum coins in any denomination. So some commentators have suggested that the Treasury create two $1 trillion coins, deposit them in its account in the Federal Reserve and write checks on the proceeds. [...]" — Jack M. Balkin, CNN
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"The largest denomination banknote ever officially issued for circulation was in 1946 by the Hungarian National Bank for the amount of 100 quintillion pengő (100,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 1020; 100 million million million) image. (There was even a banknote worth 10 times more, i.e. 1021 pengő, printed, but not issued image.) The banknotes however did not depict the numbers, 'hundred million b.-pengő' ('hundred million trillion pengő') and 'one milliard b.-pengő' were spelled out instead. This makes the 500,000,000,000 Yugoslav October dinar and 100,000,000,000,000 Zimbabwean dollar banknotes the notes with the greatest number of zeros shown.
     The Post-World War II hyperinflation of Hungary held the record for the most extreme monthly inflation rate ever — 41,900,000,000,000,000% (4.19 × 1016% or 41.9 quadrillion percent) for July, 1946, amounting to prices doubling every 13.5 hours. By comparison, recent figures (as of 14 November 2008) estimate Zimbabwe's annual inflation rate at 89.7 sextillion (1021) percent.,[17] which corresponds to a monthly rate of 5473%, and a doubling time of about five days. In figures, that is 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000%."— Wikipedia
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