All hail the vaunted "liberal media."
WaPo's ridiculous "fact checker" has again made a farce of the exercise, giving John McCain three Pinocchios- out of a possible four - for falsely alleging that the US forces in Iraq have gone down to "pre-surge" levels.
This is the same rating - three Pinocchios - that Obama received for the grevious error of confusing Auschwitz with Buchenwald in the context of recounting a story that had been passed on over the decades through Obama's family.
To make this vapid exercise even more galling, the brilliant fact-checker at WaPo initially gave Obama four Pinocchios for his mistake...even though the error did not diminish the overall truthfulness of the point Obama was making. Later he was persuaded to reduce the punishment to three Pinocchios.
By contrast, for McCain to state that U.S. forces have drawn down to pre-surge levels is fundamentally false and misleading, and relates directly to an issue of critical - perhaps paramount - importance in this election. And yet, as the fact checker admits, initially he "was inclined to give McCain a maximum of two Pinocchios for his misstatement about troop levels in Iraq."
While the whole "Pinocchio" rating system is really just a gimmick, and not to be taken particularly seriously, the contrast here is striking. It underlines not only the inability of the MSM to distinguish between trivial issues and important ones, but more important, it highlights the MSM's repeated refusal to hold McCain accountable for his gross distortion of the situation in Iraq.
The myopia is even further highlighted by the self-congratulatory statement at the end of the explanation of the McCain misstatement:
Pointing to Obama's recent misstatement about his uncle liberating Auschwitz, [McCain's shill] says that all candidates should be held to the "same standard." I agree. Three Pinocchios.
Our impartial media hard at work!