Pete Peterson's pet dog, the smarmy David Walker, just appeared on MSNBC (or whatever they're calling it these days) to try to conflate the nation's economic problems with the debt so he can push "bipartisan" solutions like cutting Medicare and Social Security. To whip up the hysteria, he tries to compare our financial situation to that of Greece - even though any comparison is just plain old wingnut craziness. But hey, when you're trying to steal the financial safety net of millions, whatever works!

Steve Kornacki pushes back a little, even though he makes it sound like a matter of opinion and not basic facts:

David, I think I want to challenge the premise of what you are doing here a little bit. I think some people can make a case, pretty strong case, that it is not really a deficit crisis that we have right now. It is a jobs crisis, and it is a demand crisis in the economy. People who don't have money because they don't have jobs or afraid of losing their jobs and they are not spending money.

If you can get the economy moving by getting people spending their money again then it is a windfall of revenue and the picture wouldn't look nearly as bleak. I'm looking at, you know, interest rates on government bonds are kind of ridiculously low right now, which to me says if you have a demand crisis and you have the nonexistent interest rates, isn't this the time for government to spend more money and not to be worrying in the immediate short term about deficit but to be stimulating the economy through spending so you get demand up and you get spending going again and get revenue coming in.

WALKER: We have a short term problem and structural problem and we need to deal with both. The short term we need to get economic growth up. We have to deal with our unemployment and underemployment challenges. Yes, that can justify additional target investment that are effectively implemented, even if they exacerbate the deficit in the short term as long as they are coupled with a clear credible concrete and enforceable plan to deal with the large and growing structural deficit that lie ahead driven by demographics and healthcare costs. By the way, in comparable full and fair accounting, there is only one country in Europe that has higher total government debt to GDP than we do, that's Greece, and we don't want it follow their example.

This is a really easy way to know someone is trying to sell you rotten fish: They compare us to Greece.

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There are so few people I actually admire these days, and one of them continues to be Paul Krugman. Put him on a panel with a bunch of right-wing talking heads, and he's usually going to be the only person who nails them on their zombie talking points. Like this morning, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, when he put corporatist robot Carly Fiorina, George "His Hair Was Perfect" Will, and David "If Only We Could Slash Social Security" Walker in their places.

If you watch, you'll see Krugman's trademark move: He looks off to one side as if he's so exasperated, he can't even bring himself to look at someone who's so stupid - or so careless with the truth.

Today, he did three very important things. He called out Caroly Fiorina on her made-up "data shows" that people leave states with high taxes, firmly rebutted David Walker's contention that the new Social Security report proves the program is in trouble and need of overhaul, and he completely destroys George Will's vastly uninformed and careless recommendation that Social Security be indexed to life expectancy.

Obviously, he doesn't take Fiorina seriously - and neither should you. She keeps making sh*t up: She says "data shows" and then lies. Krugman just batted her away, like a cat with a mourse. Then he explained to Walker (as if Walker didn't already know) that all the Social Security report showed is that, like the rest of the country, the bad economy is affecting Social Security. (Walker, in case you didn't know it, is Pete Peterson's chief lackey and the person "centrists" keep pushing as a third-party candidate for president. His latest vehicle, Comeback America, is another version of America's Townhall, whose purpose was to build popular support for cutting Social Security and Medicare.)

And then, after prissy blueblood Will lectured that Social Security was created during a time when retirement averaged two years, and now it was closer to 20, proving that since people were living much longer and we needed to index payments to life expectancy, Krugman just knocked it out of the park.

No, it's only the upper income population that's living longer, he said. And this just goes back to the issues of income inequality.

Game, match, set.