Factcheck.org, a non-profit, non-partisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, bills itself as the voters' consumer advocate. The organization checks TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases for factual accuracy and reports its results on its website.

2011 saw quite a bit of spin, deception and "assorted absurdities" on both sides of the political spectrum. Here are a few highlights; visit factcheck.org for the complete "Whoppers of 2011" list, which includes source materials for the various ... exaggerations.

From the Democrats:
• Republicans will end Medicare. Not exactly. The Republican budget plan called for radical changes for workers now under age 55. Starting in 2022, the plan called for federally subsidized private insurance.

• Obama's dying mother. The president repeatedly told the story of how his mother was nearly denied medical coverage for her ovarian cancer when he talked about health-care reform.

In fact, his mother's fight was over disability insurance, not medical insurance.

• Teachers have a higher tax rate than the president. They don't. Based on a $50,000 salary, a spouse and two children (like Obama), a teacher would have paid no federal income tax at all.

From the Republicans:
• The "job-killing" health-care law. Rep. Michele Bachmann put the top estimate at 1.6 million jobs lost, citing a "study that did not examine the new law at all, and showed nothing of the sort." Economic analysts predict a "small" number of low-paid jobs lost starting in 2014 when employers with 50 or more employees either have to provide health insurance or pay a penalty.

• Job-killing "small business" taxes. Republicans have claimed for years that raising taxes on high-income individuals will raise taxes on small businesses and kill jobs. House Speaker John Boehner took the whopper to new heights when he claimed that more than half of the millionaires shouldering such a tax increase are small business owners. "That's rubbish," Factcheck.org states. It's probably less than 1 percent.

• The HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Really, Ms. Bachmann? No.

• Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to prevent "black babies from being born." Thanks, Herman Cain, but it's not true, any more than your claim of 75 percent of PP clinics are in black neighborhoods. Sanger did advocate for birth control (at a time that it was all illegal), and she sadly supported some aspects of eugenics; however, she refused to encourage positive race-based eugenics.

• Barack Obama was born in Kenya; his "certificate of live birth" from Hawaii is a fake; no one knew him as a child; his birth announcement in Hawaii newspapers was a plant. What can we say? Donald Trump.