Tales of the Unexpected, featuring PolitiFact

 Crossposted from Sublime Bloviations

You have to love PolitiFact's fact-challenged statements about itself.


Now:

We’ve consistently ruled in the past that the economy is too complex to
assign full blame (or credit) for job gains or losses to a president or a
governor.

Then:

Our ruling

Pelosi compared a select time frame in the Obama administration against the entire length of the Bush administration -- a methodology that treats the two presidents unequally. The irony is that if she had used better methodology, she would have had a sounder argument that more private-sector jobs were created under Obama than under the Bush administration. For her general point, we give Pelosi some credit. For her methodological sins -- repeated at least three times -- we give her thumbs down. On balance, we rate her statement Half True.

There's consistency for you.

The NRCC makes a statement that's correct but represents cherry picking and gets a "Barely True."  Nancy Pelosi makes a statement that's also correct, represents cherry picking and gets a "Half True"--with no mention of docking Pelosi for crediting President Obama.  On the contrary, PolitiFact itself recommends an alternative method for giving President Obama credit for his job creation numbers compared to those of his predecessor.



Jeff adds (3/02/12): For the record, there's at least some consistency in these two articles: Both were written by Louis Jacobson, and both were edited by Martha Hamilton.