Have You Noticed How Good the Economy Is Doing Lately?

It's almost a truism of liberal American journalism: Homelessness is only a crisis when a Republican is in the White House.

It's just as true that economic news automatically improves when a Democrat is running for re-election. Witness yesterday's USA Today (the only major newspaper readily available in this newspaper-starved capital city).

Lead story on the Business section: "'Jan. Barometer' predicts good year."

Apparently, if stocks do well in January, the year will end on an upbeat market-wise. Good news to all, right? Well, maybe not. Get past the sunny headline and subhead and you find analysts warning -- eight paragraphs into an 11-paragraph story -- that "in the very unpredictable and volatile financial world we live in" the prediction might be less than sound. That doesn't stop the paper from spinning its cheerful way.

The centerpiece of the section is about "record numbers" of Chinese tourists coming to the United States on bucket-list vacations, a record fueled coincidentally enough, by "steps announced last month by President Obama to speed up visas that should result in even more Chinese arrivals." Boy howdy that Obama is the best American president ever! And look, even the January stock market prediction says so!

Gov. Rick Scott has been doing an admirable job promoting Florida as a tourist destination and place to do business, particularly with our South American neighbors, and all credit to him. But the fact is, the vast majority of Middle America, outside sunny climes like Florida and Southern California, and world heritage sites like the Grand Canyon, needs a lot more than Chinese visitors to keep their communities going -- like, say, an economy not being strangled by their own government.

That won't change the narrative you're going to be hearing over the next 10 months:

Obama good; Republicans bad. Trust us.

The only better slogan I can think of is the bumper sticker: "Obama. It could have been worse."

Could it have been?

As someone who's spent his entire adult life in the news business -- with the brief exception of doing honest work in my teens as a dishwasher -- I can tell you, this is the kind of garbage you're likely to be seeing until the November election from our liberal news colleagues.