Sarah Wins!

Biggest quitter? No. Biggest nitwit? No. Sarah Palin wins Politifact‘s Lie of the Year contest for her “death panels” Facebook posting. Congratulations Sarah, it’s a well-deserved dishonor.

Here’s what Queen Sarah said:

As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we’re saying not just no, but hell no!

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

This earned Politifact‘s pants on fire rating. Politifact traced the origins of the lie as well. It went from a Washington Times editorial to health care bamboozler Betsy McCaughey (well known here for her bizarre Daily Show appearance). The idea knocked around Republican circles for a while but Palin’s Facebook ghost writer was the first to use the term “death panels.”

Quick question for the media here: why is Sarah Palin’s Facebook page considered a source of important policy statements?

The rest:

Here are the runners-up:

• With 12.3 percent of the vote, a claim by conservative talk show host Glenn Beck that John Holdren, President Barack Obama’s top science adviser, “has proposed forcing abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.”

• With 8.7 percent of the vote, a claim by Orly Taitz that a birth certificate showed that President Obama was born in Kenya.

• With 7.1 percent of the vote, President Obama’s statement that “preventive care saves money.”

Rounding out the rest of the finalists:

• 5.8 percent: The shout of “You lie!” by Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., in response to President Obama saying health reform would not insure illegal immigrants.

• 3.2 percent: The claim that Page 92 of the House health care bill “says specifically that people can’t purchase private health insurance after a date certain,” said by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.

• 1.7 percent: The claim that “When one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft,” said by Vice President Joe Biden, when fears of swine flu were prevalent.

• 0.5 percent: The claim that an amendment to the House health reform bill “puts new restrictions on women’s access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market even when they would pay premiums with their own money,” said by Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.