With the World Series around the corner, let us resort to a baseball analogy with the economy.

Some great hitters know when some pitchers are going to throw certain pitches. They study the pitchers. They know that Lefty Lefkowitz hunches his shoulders when he is about to curl in a slider. And when Joe Smitson sniffs a few times, his rocket ball is next.

These days you can get a heads up on the economy by listening to the President. And by reading the liberal columnists. You can detect what is coming by what their complaints are.

Recently the President began to flog the Republicans for holding back growth in the economy. For gumming up the recovery.

Taking their cue, liberal columnists chimed in. Headline for one – in the Daily Beast – was “The Republican Party is Destroying America.” Headline for one in the Washington Post was “Cold-hearted GOP Threatens Economy”.

About the same time some leaders in Congress chimed in with similar blame-game remarks.

Voila! Only after all this did Ben Bernanke reveal the Federal Reserve saw some discouraging signs with the economy.

The scenario is that the President got the secret scoop that things were not so cheery in the economy. He conferred with his advisors. Most of them are PR types. Master of spin. And spin is of utmost importance these days.

The spin guys developed the message. They passed it along to favorites within the media. They alerted the senior politicians. Thus was the blame machine fired up in advance. This is called controlling the narrative.

Suppose the President got first word that a meteorite was going to crush California. The spin doctors would create the message. They would sneak it to favorite columnists. They would prep the Prez. And we would hear him blast Republicans. For cutting budgets for meteorite forecasting.

All this before the news arrived that a meteorite Fresno was doomed. When Fresno got fried the GOP would look pretty bad.

Well, the President just did the equivalent on the economy. Before any further bad news arrived, he blamed the GOP for it. And warned by White House PR guys, the columnists did the same.

Next came the hint of the bad news to come. The Fed said it detected some not-so-good things about the economy.

Therefore they would keep interest rates low for a while longer.

You may be skeptical of all this. But if you follow the cookie crumbs back on various events you will see this pattern.

And you may doubt the White House PR guys collaborate with media types like this. If so, you might want to expand your reading or viewing. The hush hush message from the White House PR machine will be that the GOP is “…resorting to a Hail Mary pass…” on some issue. Next day two dozen commentators, reporters and columnists will refer to “Hail Mary” desperation by the GOP.

Hey, the other side does the same. If you miss Rush Limbaugh today, tune in Sean Hannity or one of the other conservative radio guys. Or check out the conservative columnists. You will often see the same phrases, same arguments over the issue du jour. Or, more likely, the issue to come.

This is like watching Lefty hunch his shoulders. When you hear somebody “pitch” something, you should know what “something” is coming next.

From Tom...as in Morgan.