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[Video: Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Sept. 18, 1968. Some things never change.]

It's coming up on the end of the year, another mark in our arbitrary division of infinity and a popular excuse for giving out awards.

Not all of them the kind you'd want to put on your resume.

For decades, Esquire magazine complied an annual list of Dubious Achievements. It was a compilation, played for laughs, of the dumbest stuff that had made the news over the past revolution around the sun.

For much of that time, even during his years away from the spotlight, Richard Nixon was the face of the Dubious Achievements. And not just any Nixon face, but a particularly odd photo of him, with a maniacally happy look that was not typical of the usually taciturn politician.

The caption was always, "Why is this man laughing?"

Monday is the day set for the release of another sort of dubious achievement award. Not from the snarks at Esquire, but from the much more serious folks at PolitiFact. It is time for the Pulitzer-winning online fact-checkers to reveal their 2015 Lie of the Year. But, like Tricky Dick, the winner may well be laughing. Because telling a good lie seems to be a political plus these days.

As with some other end-of-the-year selections, such as The Salt Lake Tribune's Utahn of the Year, the public is invited to weigh in through an online poll before the responsible editors make their final choice.

And right there, on PolitiFact's list of Lie of the Year finalists — in between Donald Trump, Donald Trump and Donald Trump — is Utah's own right-wing media darling, Rep. Jason Chaffetz.

Note that the title is Lie of the Year, not Liar. So all the possible winners are not people, really, but statements. In past years, the modern version of Rowan and Martin's Flying Fickle Finger of Fate has gone to things said by Sarah Palin (Death panels), Barack Obama (If you like your health care plan you can keep it), Mitt Romney (Jeep is moving its factory from Ohio to China) and, last year, to everyone who said Ebola was going to kill us all.

The fib Chaffetz is being singled out for this year is the infamous No-Y-Axis chart that he apparently thought would catch the leader of Planned Parenthood unawares by purporting to demonstrate a falsehood, namely that the national family planning organization is doing ever more abortions while offering ever fewer cancer screenings.

The fact that Planned Parenthood boss Cecile Richards was instantly able to call the numbers out as fakes was part of what turned a hearing designed to skewer her and her organization into a victory for reproductive rights. It also made Chaffetz the butt of a flurry of jokes all over the blogosphere and for TV pundit/comics.

Chaffetz has a lot of competition in the Lie of the Year survey. There are four Trump statements in the PolitiFact poll, plus three from Ben Carson and one each from Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid.

Throughout this presidential campaign, PolitiFact and other political lie detectors have been very, very busy, pointing out all manner of untruths spoken by Trump, Carson and fellow Republican presidential contenders Carly Fiorina, Ted Cruz and others.

There have been so many bald-faced lies spouted by the candidates that Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post has labeled Decision 2016 the Fact-Free Campaign. And others, even folks one might expect to be jaded by the whole business, are stunned at just how many lies politicians can not only tell, but be caught in, and stay in the race.

PolitiFact has checked 76 recent statements from Trump. Not one was rated True. There were 18 Mostly True or Half True, 42 Mostly False or False and 16 Pants on Fire. Yet in spite of that litany of lies, or because of it, Trump remains at the top of the polls for the GOP nomination. Coming up behind him is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose PolitiFact rating is nearly as bad. Candidates who do comparatively well on PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter — Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Chris Christie — have polling numbers in the low single digits.

Richard Nixon is still laughing.

George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, told his mother she should not vote for Richard Nixon in the election of 1960 because, "He has a fierce face." gpyle@sltrib.com