The New York Times reports that gross domestic product — the key indicator of national economic health — fell by 1% in the second quarter of 2009. In a striking departure from its pattern of exaggerating the downside interpretation of all economic news during the previous eight years, the Times is spinning this as great news because the decline is “less than expected”. Readers have to get deeply into the fine print to notice that these initial estimates often turn out to be revised in a negative direction. And readers aren’t told the bad news at all, namely that a 1% decline is still a decline in GDP (i.e. the recession isn’t over yet), that unemployment numbers continue to be painfully high and hiring seems unlikely to recover any time soon regardless of the direction of GDP.

The nearly trillion-dollar economic stimulus package that the Obama administration championed turns out to have been heavily tainted by pork-barrel boondoggles, with payoffs to long-time Democratic party constituencies vastly outweighing actual stimulus spending on infrastructure projects. And even those infrastructure projects aren’t very stimulative due to the slow pace of spending outlays in those areas (the payoffs went through much more quickly, of course).

Obviously, these dark linings on the silver clouds aren’t going to get much ink in the New York Times, nor for that matter in most of the left-dominated blogosphere. We are certain to be told instead that economic skies are clearing, corners are being turned, green shoots are beginning to appear, fill-in-lame-happy-analogy-here. But the clock is still ticking and the Obama administration is going to need more than slanted reporting based on smoke-and-mirrors before the 2010 elections roll around. If unemployment remains at historically high levels, no amount of happy-talk spin from the New York Times will cover it up. And the old standby of blaming Republicans has already gone extremely stale.