Fact-checker Politifact is problematic in a lot of what they do — Rachel Maddow has a long-running feud with them over their version of what is true or false — but this time I think they’ve got it right.

It was a lie told in the critical state of Ohio in the final days of a close campaign — that Jeep was moving its U.S. production to China. It originated with a conservative blogger, who twisted an accurate news story into a falsehood. Then it picked up steam when the Drudge Report ran with it. Even though Jeep’s parent company gave a quick and clear denial, Mitt Romney repeated it and his campaign turned it into a TV ad.

And they stood by the claim, even as the media and the public expressed collective outrage against something so obviously false.

People often say that politicians don’t pay a price for deception, but this time was different: A flood of negative press coverage rained down on the Romney campaign, and he failed to turn the tide in Ohio, the most important state in the presidential election.

PolitiFact has selected Romney’s claim that Barack Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China” at the cost of American jobs as the 2012 Lie of the Year.

And the competition was really tough, too.

ABC News caught Mitt Romney meeting quietly with some of his friends on a yacht in Tampa Bay.

Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign toasted its top donors Wednesday aboard a 150-foot yacht flying the flag of the Cayman Islands.

The floating party, hosted by a Florida developer on his yacht “Cracker Bay,” was one of a dozen exclusive events meant to nurture those who have raised more than $1 million for Romney’s bid. [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Romney was just visiting some of his money while it was in town for the convention.

ABC News caught Mitt Romney meeting quietly with some of his friends on a yacht in Tampa Bay.

Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign toasted its top donors Wednesday aboard a 150-foot yacht flying the flag of the Cayman Islands.

The floating party, hosted by a Florida developer on his yacht “Cracker Bay,” was one of a dozen exclusive events meant to nurture those who have raised more than $1 million for Romney’s bid. [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Romney was just visiting some of his money while it was in town for the convention.

We don’t need no fact-checkers: Ross Douthat looks at attack ads and predicts that the voters will decide who’s really telling the truth.

Oh, and Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate running attack ads.

We don’t need no fact-checkers: Ross Douthat looks at attack ads and predicts that the voters will decide who’s really telling the truth.

Oh, and Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate running attack ads.

Dan Amira at New York magazine looked at the video again and again and says that Ann Romney didn’t mean “you people” when she said “you people” yesterday.

Sounds more like “We’ve given all [stumble] people need to know,” if you ask us. The letter y definitely makes an appearance in there, but the word you does not. Maybe Romney was going to say, “We’ve given all you need to know,” and decided at the last moment to replace “you” with “people.” Maybe she was going to say, “We’ve given all Yosemite National Park visitors a free Romney bumper sticker.” Admittedly, that would be a completely nonsensical thing to say at that moment.

I’ve seen the tape, and I heard “you people.” But the way the sentence is structured, it sounds as if Ms. Romney is conflating “you” and “people” as if she meant to use two different direct objects and said them both. If so, it’s an honest flub; kind of like a typo.

But it’s hard to hear what she’s saying over the noise of the Romney campaign taking the words of President Obama completely out of context and mashing them into an ad that makes it sound like he’s out to demonize small business.

We’ll try to be more careful next time.

Dan Amira at New York magazine looked at the video again and again and says that Ann Romney didn’t mean “you people” when she said “you people” yesterday.

Sounds more like “We’ve given all [stumble] people need to know,” if you ask us. The letter y definitely makes an appearance in there, but the word you does not. Maybe Romney was going to say, “We’ve given all you need to know,” and decided at the last moment to replace “you” with “people.” Maybe she was going to say, “We’ve given all Yosemite National Park visitors a free Romney bumper sticker.” Admittedly, that would be a completely nonsensical thing to say at that moment.

I’ve seen the tape, and I heard “you people.” But the way the sentence is structured, it sounds as if Ms. Romney is conflating “you” and “people” as if she meant to use two different direct objects and said them both. If so, it’s an honest flub; kind of like a typo.

But it’s hard to hear what she’s saying over the noise of the Romney campaign taking the words of President Obama completely out of context and mashing them into an ad that makes it sound like he’s out to demonize small business.

We’ll try to be more careful next time.

I skipped the Super Bowl for the most part (I heard it was pretty good at the end), but I caught a few of the commercials. Some were amusing and some were not, but being in Florida I missed one that’s running in Michigan for the U.S. Senate race there that is just plain racist.

The campaign of former Rep. Peter Hoekstra for U.S. Senate explained a racially charged Super Bowl advertisement they developed – complete with an Asian actress speaking in broken English – as a reflection of China’s increasingly competitive education system.

The campaign of the Michigan Republican hit racial notes as a new advertisement argued that the policies of incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) were helping China to the detriment of the United States.

The advertisement, which will run in Michigan during the Super Bowl and afterward, features an Asian female with a conical straw hat riding a bike through a rice paddy field.

“Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good [sic],” the actress says, in broken English.

“Thank you Michigan Senator Debbie ‘Spend-it-now’. Debbie spend so much American money [sic],” the actress says, without a Chinese accent. “You borrow more and more, from us… we take your jobs. Thank you Debbie ‘Spend-it-now.’”

The Hoekstra campaign called the advertisement “satirical” and explained the broken English in the video as a reflection of China’s increasingly competitive education system.

The first rule of being “satirical” is that if you have to explain that it is satire, it’s not. Also, using cultural stereotypes doesn’t make it “racially charged.” It’s just racist, even if you’re trying to say something nice about the Chinese.

I hope Hoekstra gets his ass whipped.