Sidebar: And the Nominees for PLOTY are...

Well, one nominee.  My educated guess is that PolitiFact (PF) might  just  make this the 2011 Lie of the Year because they can show (1) Democrats can make PolitiFact Lie of the Year as well, (2) its “inverse” relationship with the 2010 Lie of the Year (that “Obamacare” is a government takeover versus the privatization in “Ryancare”), and (3) the similar label (Obamacare versus Ryancare). The $12,500 is incidental; it is the “voted to end Medicare” that is the focus of the lie and makes it a "contender."

The "ending Medicare" part continues to make the rounds among various Democratic politicians as a “talking point”—for example, at PF Rhode Island and PF Wisconsin—and their debunkings by PolitiFact have caused it to face an avalanche of bias charges from both sides—Conservatives on Obamacare and Liberals on Ryancare.

Both deal with that slippery slope of ideological beliefs with regard to where it slides into that abyss of the unknown, a.k.a. the death panel (which was the 2009 Lie of the Year), as Republicans would like you to believe, where a government-appointed panel decides that you’re too old and unstable, or your condition too far gone, to give you care….or is it going to be the death panel of the free market: if you can’t afford healthcare, you die. (That’s really what Democrats need to emphasize: we have death panels today, they are the medical directors at insurance companies who for the sake of profit deny the insured treatments that might save their life, and the 44,000 people estimated to die annually simply because they cannot afford health insurance.  I'd also like to get into the fact that there is no, and never will be, a free market in healthcare, but that's another long post.)

This will be close to or at the heart of the 2012 presidential debate, and part of any local elections that may go on this year; it's already shown to be a major factor on why the Republicans had some come uppance from the Democrats in several special elections in May, particularly one in upstate New York where the voters were predominantly Republican.   It’s why the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for a vote on Paul Ryan’s Budget. So unless something else big happens between now and the end of the year 2011, that’s the one that has my vote….and I think we’ll hear more about it again once this debt ceiling charade is over.