Call it the triumph of the "new normal."

At Reuters today, after today's first revision of third-quarter gross domestic product showed that the economy grew by an annualized 2.1 percent, up from the late-October estimate of 1.5 percent, reporter Lucia Mutikani and Editor Paul Simao demonstrated that they have completely given in to the artificially lowered expectations of past seven miserable years. Despite the fact that annual growth in the U.S. economy averaged 3.4 percent from 1946-2007 — a period which included ten recessions — and that it has seen four-year spurts averaging over 4 percent several times in the past three decades, the Reuters pair claims that its "long-run potential" is now only 2 percent, thus making today's 2.1 percent result "respectable."

The "fact-checking" press has become a parody of itself during the past several years.

It's not only because of their irritating penchant for putting statements by Republicans and conservatives under a twisted microscope while ignoring drop-dead obvious falsehoods delivered by Democrats and leftists. It's because, among other things, the fact-checkers often admit that a statement is true, but then proceed to essentially say, "So what?" They also take policy goals articulated by candidates, which may or may not come to pass, render an opinion that it can't be done, and then pretend that they've actually proven something. An example of each annoying habit was found in Tuesday evening's Associated Press "fact check" of statements made by Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush during the most recent Republican presidential candidates' debate.

On Thursday, the government reported that the nation's economy turned in yet another quarter of poor economic performance, estimating that its gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the third quarter.

The business press almost universally downplayed the news, and told readers that the fourth quarter will be better. No one talked about how much the tepid growth of the past six-plus years since the recession officially ended has been sacrificed in the name of misguided and dangerous Keynesian stimulus. As is so often the case, an editorial at Investor's Business Daily did that, performing a job the press has consistently refused to do.

If you're a few hours late catching up on reports on economic data at the Associated Press, one of the best ways to determine whether the news was good or disappointing is to see whether the story's headline and opening blurb are still present about four hours later among the wire service's "Top (usually 10) Business News" items. The good-news items will usually still be there; the disappointing ones will usually be gone.

Sure enough, as of about 12:30, Martin Crutsinger's dispatch in the wake of the 8:30 a.m. Durable Goods report from the Census Bureau was no longer a Top Story. That's because, even though Crutsinger did his level best to ignore pertinent facts and try to pin the blame elsewhere, the news was awful.

Hillary Clinton was in Alabama a few days ago. As she has in the past at least two other times when south of the Mason-Dixon line, she decided that she could drop the letter "g" from several of her "i-n-g" words while affecting a sort-of Southern accent.

This time she was in Alabama. Mrs. Clinton cut the "g" from the at least the following words she has no trouble fully pronouncing when she's in other areas of the country: having ("havin'"), saying ("sayin'"), working ("workin'") and saving ("savin'"). She also bizarrely put the accent in the words "recession" and "depression" on the first syllable. No one in the establishment press appears to care about this apparent region-based condescension, though to be fair the video involved (but no related story I could find covering what she said in it) is from the Associated Press.