"I am the most powerful woman in America." -- Nancy Pelosi

Or so she was quoted on the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh's program, the Washington Times, and just about every rightwing blog in the country. So naturally I believe that she never said it.

It took quite a bit of googling to come up with an alleged transcript of what what she said. From Rush via Sibby Online:

RUSH: This is yesterday in Washington. One of these numerous brunches, lunches, cocktail parties, teas that Pelosi attended. It was an afternoon tea. Five hundred women -- it was actually a thousand-dollar a ticket fund-raiser -- and here's a portion of Pelosi's remarks.

PELOSI: I thought you were going to say when you placed my name in nomination for speaker, you said, "She will be the most powerful woman in America." Now, I want you all to join me in how I acknowledge Rosie's introduction. (Laughing) All right, let's hear it for the power.

So, someone at an afternoon tea/fund raiser, introduces Nancy Pelosi as the most powerful woman in America, which she arguably is, and she jokes about it. What an egotistical megalomaniac, right? Pam at Atlas Shrugs, in a video blog, related the quote as "I am the most powerful woman in the world", which she renders in a funny German accent.

There are two varieties of wingnuts. The first, and smaller group, are people like Drudge and Rush, who know damn well they are deliberately twisting and misreporting the facts for political purposes, and the second is the vast majority of wingnuts who endlessly repeat these invented factoids because they are stupid. Rush or Sean or whoever said it, and every other wingnut in the country mindlessly repeats it, so it must be true.