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Who would have thought a study that wasn't peer reviewed could have caused so much misery for so many? Stephen Colbert did a great job of taking down the deficit hawks who relied on the flawed Reinhart-Rogoff study, as only he can on his show this Tuesday evening.

Now if we could just get our President and Congressional leaders to quit listening to the likes of Simpson and Bowles, who are still out there pushing a new plan for austerity, even after it was revealed that theirs relied on the discredited research.

Colbert got in a lot of good shots during the segment, but I think this was my favorite, other than what he did with Reinhart and Rogoff's names.

Colbert: Of course they didn't share their data. If they can't use Excel, I doubt they can send an email attachment.

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If anyone is still suffering from the illusion that we get any better programming from public broadcasting than we do from the majority of our corporate media, that is determined to push our politicians into going after our social safety nets, you need look no further than their regular Friday evening series featuring The New York Times' overpaid op-ed columnist and Republican turd polisher David Brooks and their favorite faux liberal, Mark Shields.

This week, Brooks was still carping about how the so-called "fiscal cliff" deal went over and that we didn't get any meaningful deficit reduction from the debacle, or in other words, he's mad that President Obama didn't give away the store and gut our social safety net programs. And for "balance" the viewers got treated to Shields repeating every right-wing trope in the book about how those who would like to see our New Deal programs remain in place are expecting a "free lunch" or being selfish because they don't want to cut Social Security benefits and "don't want to pay" for the benefits they receive from government.

Who needs right-wing Republicans when you've got the likes of Shields out there repeating their talking points for them? And as I've written here along with a ton of others, no mention about what's really needed to solve our deficit problems without balancing budgets on the backs of the poor, working class and elderly. No mention about getting us back to full employment and what policies should be fixed to bring jobs back to the United States that pay a living wage. No mention of the enormous income disparity and concentration of wealth at the top. No mention of the fact that Social Security not adding to our deficit and that there are some fairly simple ways to keep it solvent for decades to come.

Instead it's more talk of who is acting like an "adult" by doing their best to make those gaps between the rich and the poor even worse. What irritates the hell out of me about shows like this is that there are people out there, like my dad, who watch this stuff and think it's unbiased programming because it's PBS.

It's really disheartening to see just how much the Pete Petersons of the world have managed to dominate this conversation, where instead of talking about what is driving up our health care costs, what to do to contain them and whether The Affordable Care Act is going to address those costs once the law is fully implemented, we're seeing discussions on every network from PBS to Fox to you name it in between, pretending as though all of those things exist in a vacuum and the only solutions are for the working class to make some more sacrifices. It's actually beyond disheartening. It's really disgusting and inexcusable.

Transcript via PBS below the fold.

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From the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders -- Deficit Hawk Hypocrites:

Who caused deficits? Some of the same people in Congress who bemoan all the red ink in the federal budget actually created the problem. At a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders called out the hypocrites who showered the wealthy with tax breaks, who let pharmaceutical companies rip off taxpayers, and who launched wars without calling on the country to pay the price.

Don't forget that Bernie Sanders is one of the candidates we're supporting at our Blue America page and you can make a donation here.

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As our own Driftglass rightfully pointed out this week, apparently David Brooks has got his panties in a bunch because heaven forbid anyone is paying attention to what the dirty, filthy, hippies in the Occupy Wall Street movement are complaining about, as opposed to those lovely "adult" "centrists" he loves to carry water for that are calling for austerity measures, despite the fact that, as Driftie noted in his post, there is overwhelming support for taxing ultra wealthy Americans.

Here's Brooks doing his best to spin his way around those inconvenient facts on this weekend's Meet the Press:

GREGORY: But, but, David, David Brooks, this is an interesting poll that shows whom the American people blame for economic problems in the country; 78 percent blame Wall Street, 87 percent blame the federal government. One of the big questions that you've posed about President Obama is, can he run a conventionally liberal campaign, a populist campaign, tax the rich more, and prevail?

BROOKS: No. You know, the most important polling statistic in our lifetime is they ask people, "Do you trust government to do the right thing most of the time?" Through the '50s, '60s, '70s, it was like 80 percent trusted government. Then that drops--Vietnam, Watergate--gets down to like 20 percent under Bush. Well, now it's down at an historic low point of 15 percent. So if you're a Democrat, the party of government, you can't run "I'm the--I'm government, he's the market," you cannot run that campaign. You have to confuse that debate the way Bill Clinton did, the way Obama did in '08, by being post-partisan. What I see Obama doing is being the liberal fighter over the last couple of months, and that may help with the fundraising, but I do not see that winning.

Brooks also ignores the fact that a good part of the reason most Americans don't have any faith in our government working is because that is exactly what Republicans want them to think. They run the government like a personal piggy-bank for their campaign contributors when they're in charge and then they muck up the works and make sure government is incapable of doing anything for working class people while they're in the minority, and with sadly enough help from enough Conserva-Dems aiding and abetting them get away with it.

This country and the voters are not fed up because there isn't enough bipartisanship in our Congress. They're fed up because what bipartisanship there is has meant that conservative legislation has been passed that's doing real harm to the working class and that there aren't enough people in our halls of Congress looking out for their interests.

If David Brooks thinks Americans are fed up with government, he needs to take a look in the mirror with the type of snake oil he's been helping to sell them since he's unfortunately been given a national spotlight to try to gloss over how damaging conservative policies have been to the working class. And if he thinks an earnest attempt to level the playing field a bit and raise taxes on the rich is going to be harmful to Democrats in the upcoming election, I think he should be sharing a bit of what he's been smoking with the rest of us.

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Oh goodie. This is the type of bipartisanship we're going to get to look forward to after the new year. ConservaDems and Republicans both agreeing that more pain needs to be inflicted on the working class. On Fox News Sunday, both Sen. Kent Conrad and Rep. Jeb Hensarling agree that President Obama's Catfood Commission's co-chairs didn't go far enough with their recommendations.

Of course they disagreed on what the recommendations even were or what specifically each of them would do differently. Neither of these two explained how those recommendations or their suggestions here are supposed to get Americans back to work. We've been cutting the tax rates for businesses for decades now and it's created jobs alright, in India and China. Someone want to explain to me how simplifying the tax code is going to stop outsourcing? I'd like to have that "adult conversation" Mr. Hensarling.

WALLACE: Senator Conrad, let me start with you. You voted for the deficit commission plan which would cut $4 trillion by the year 2020 from the deficit. It didn't pass. But you are the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. How much of this do you intend to put in your plan this next year? And what do you think the president is going to do?

CONRAD: What I think is really necessary now is that there be a summit that involves the president. You know, when Judd Gregg and I first proposed this notion of a commission three years ago, we designed it so the president's people were at the table. The secretary of the treasury was the chairman of the commission. The head of OMB was one of the 18.

When we didn't get sufficient votes in the Senate to advance that proposal, the president, by executive order, created this commission but did not include his representatives.

I think if we're going to reach conclusion, we've got to have the leaders of the House and the Senate, Republican and Democrat, and the president or his representatives at the table. And I think that's the next logical step.

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Someone needs to ask Al if he can get President Obama to listen to him. From The Uptake -- Sen. Franken Argues Against Tax Cuts For Millionaires:

U.S. Sen. Al Franken (DFL-MN.) says extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while failing to continue the unemployment insurance program is misguided, especially during the holiday season.

“The choice before us is clear this holiday season—lend a hand to those who simply can’t get by without the help, or give $100,000 in average tax cuts to people making over a million dollars,” said Sen. Franken Friday in his speech on the Senate Floor.

They've got the full transcript posted for anyone that wants to read it.

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Chris Matthews did his best to carry water for Blue Dog Jason Altmire who's trying to get Nancy Pelosi ousted from her leadership position by conflating "centrist" with corporate. I guess this is what Chris Matthews considers a "courageous" Democrat -- killing jobs and refusing to help the long term unemployed.

Sorry Chris but there's nothing "courageous" about sucking off the corporate teet while throwing the most vulnerable of your constituents under the bus.

Representative Jason Altmire: Job Killing Deficit Hawk:

With the unemployment rate near 10 percent and the vast amounts of idle capacity almost everywhere, we have more to fear from deflation than inflation. All measures show that inflation is very low and falling, as would be expected in an economy with so much slack.

In spite of a situation that demands more government stimulus to boost the economy, deficit hawks in Congress are now demanding cuts in spending to reduce the size of the deficit. This effort will slow growth and throw people out of work. Therefore these deficit hawks deserve serious ridicule for doing so much harm to workers and their families.

Today's object of special ridicule is Pennsylvania Congressman Jason Altmire. Mr. Altmire insisted on paring back a package of unemployment benefits and aid to deficit strapped state governments. Altmire told the Washington Post: "We've hit the wall. We've come to the tipping point where we're not going to do anymore... I think the case can be made that there are still more people who need jobs than there are jobs available. ... But what's the limit?"

That's pretty good. The unemployment rate is at 9.9 percent. Prior to the recession, unemployment had not been this high in 27 years, and Mr. Altmire thinks: "the case can be made that there are still more people who need jobs than there are jobs available."

This is not a marginal call. It's kind of like saying that AIG may have become somewhat over-extended. Unfortunately, Mr. Altmire has apparently left planet earth and decided that his top priority is reducing the size of a supplemental appropriations bill.

Altmire and his collaborators managed to squeeze $30 billion out of the bill. If we follow the methodology used in a paper written by Obama administration economists Christine Romer and Jared Bernstein, Altmire's cuts will reduce growth by roughly $50 billion. This will throw more than 300,000 people out of work.

That's a great thing for members of Congress to do -- throw people out of work. It really helps their children also. Mr. Altmire can explain to the kids whose parents are forced to give up their homes that they will have a lower interest burden on the debt (which is not even true). The kids will no doubt thank Mr. Altmire for his consideration.

In fairness, Representative Altmire probably doesn't know squat about the economy. He probably just takes his cue from wealthy friends who enjoy muttering about "fiscal responsibility" when the issue is items like unemployment benefits and aid to state and local governments. But, ignorance is not much of an excuse when you are crafting economic policy. Because of Mr. Altmire's blind pursuit of deficit reduction, hundreds of thousands of people will suffer needlessly and the nation as a whole will see growth curtailed. If ridicule were proportional to the damage done by their policies, given the treatment of Senator Stevens, we would have to start a new television network dedicated to this purpose to ensure that Representative Altmire received the proper level of ridicule.

Transcript below the fold.

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In the Republican response to President Obama's Weekly Address, John Boehner thinks the country has amnesia. He said the Republicans are offering a "new way forward" this election, or in other words, the same tired crap we've been repeating but don't mean for the last two years, and we want our tax cuts for the rich dammit.

I guess John Boehner thinks no one noticed that Republicans never care about deficits until a Democratic President gets elected. These people have no interest in governing. They think government should be used for their and their campaign donors personal piggy banks.

BOEHNER: Hello. I’m John Boehner.

Before I served in Congress, I ran a small business here in Ohio, and I saw first-hand how politicians in Washington can make it harder for small employers to meet a payroll and create jobs.

In the final days of the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised to ‘change this country and change the world.’

Well I don’t know about the world, but here at home, Americans haven’t experienced the change President Obama promised. One in ten of our fellow citizens is out of work. Our national debt has grown by $3 trillion Trust in government has fallen to an all-time low.

These problems didn’t start under President Obama. But instead of fixing them, his policies have made them worse. A ‘stimulus’ spending spree that created jobs in China and El Salvador, while millions of Americans lost their jobs here. A job-killing national energy tax. A government takeover of health care.

All these things have combined to create massive uncertainty for small businesses, the engine of job creation in America, while our children face a future clouded by debt.

Americans are demanding a new way forward in Washington – an approach that neither party has tried.

It starts with cutting spending instead of increasing it; making government smaller and more accountable; and helping small businesses get back to creating jobs again.

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Former US Comptroller and Pete Peterson Austerity Pimp David Walker joined Andrea Mitchell's set on MSNBC to warn all of the peons that we'd better get ready to be paying more in taxes because heaven forbid we can't dare to ask the rich to do any more to reduce the deficit.

He also had some new snake oil to sell all of us with his description of privatizing Social Security; we need to make it "more savings oriented." I wonder if he's been talking to Frank Luntz? That just sounds so much nicer than saying let's turn it over to Wall Street, doesn't it? Maybe he's figured out that calling it "a cancer" like his fellow deficit hawk Erskine Bowles wasn't such a good idea. What Susie wrote in that post deserves repeating in response to David Walker here.

As I keep saying, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program which funds itself. All Social Security needs to stay 100% funded through the next 50 years is to remove the cap on earnings placed there under Ronald Reagan as a perk for the well-to-do, and raise the rate by one percent.

To say that Social Security is part of a "cancer" as Erskine Bowles does, is the same as saying that the United States cannot meet its own bond obligations -- which is decidedly not true. But the Very Serious People, contrary to the facts spelled out by economists like James Galbraith and Paul Krugman, have decided that the best way to deal with their own gnawing sense of economic uneasiness is to grind the boot heel into the backs of the lower classes -- just to show us who's boss!

Here's more of the same nonsense from Walker. These people are determined to raid that trust fund and pretend that the United States can't meet out debt obligations if we don't.

Mitchell: Look the fiscal commission doesn’t even have anything mandatory. It’s all advisory and all the muscle from that commission was taken out because of the disagreements on the hill. Doesn’t that forecast that you’re not going to have the kind of results from this commission that is going to make a real difference in terms of the deficit or the tax climate?

Walker: Well Andrea we’re hopeful that it can make some recommendations based on the super-majority requirement. I believe it’s very possible to re-impose tough statutory budget controls next year that don’t have trillions of dollars worth of exemptions. I believe that it’s possible to reform Social Security to make it solvent, sustainable and more savings oriented.

Realistically, the two tough things that we’re going to have to do, which is comprehensive tax reform and really taking a hard look at health care costs that are out of control. Those are probably not going to be ripe until around 2013, but we need to start getting some points on the board, start doing some things sooner rather than later before our foreign lenders lose confidence in our ability to do so.

Mitchell: Mr. Walker in your recommendation that we extend the tax cuts for the middle class for all the top earners, the 2 or 3% of the top earners, would you do it even if they’re not paid for?

Walker: I think it’s highly preferable if we pay for them quite frankly but it’s important to keep in mind this. If anything is done in that regard, it should be temporary. We should not deceive the American people by letting them believe that their taxes are not going go up once the economy has recovered.

President Obama made a commitment that he wasn’t going to raise taxes on people making over $200,000 or more. That was an unrealistic commitment. Our problem is primarily a spending problem and the resolution to our fiscal challenge is primarily spending, but we’re going to need more revenues and it’s going to have to be more broadly shared than just those that are wealthy.

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Well isn't this just special? Here's the one place Republicans are willing to work with the Obama administration. Destroying what's left of our social safety net and Social Security if they listen to the advice of this debt commission. Here's to hoping it goes over about as well as when Bush did his tour on privatizing Social Security. This is one policy we don't need the Republicans having an opportunity to tout as a bipartisan victory.

I'd love to know which policy wonk in the Obama administration is being overpaid to think this is a good idea or that who they picked to be assigned to the deficit commission such as wingnut Alan Simpson is a good idea.

Swain: You’ve said the deficit issue that are issues number one and number two. Do you… what will it be like to be a national politics in a national era of belt tightening that lies ahead for this country?

Cornyn: I think it’s going to be very tough and one reason why I think we need to fully engage with President Obama, I hope his debt commission which will report December the first comes out with a realistic and effective ways to deal with our mounting fiscal crisis. And I think it’s a good time for Republicans and Democrats to work together to confront this because it’s not going to go away and I think that’s what the American people want us to do and what we need to do.

But it’s not going to be pleasant… uhmm…that’s ah… what we signed on for and what I think you will see Republicans and Democrats do together if the President and the Democrats are serious about it I think we will meet them more than half way.

All I can say is that if Cornyn or the Obama administration thinks that this is going to go over with anyone any better than it did for Bush when he thought it was a good idea to go on a tour talking about privatizing Social Security, they're sadly mistaken. I would also add that watching Wall Street's excesses have done nothing but add to the mistrust of privatizing those accounts. People are now well aware of what would have happened and did happen to their savings when the markets took a dump. And we haven't regulated them to this day after that happening.

Little wonder most people might not want their Social Security checks tied to Wall Street. I know I don't. If either Cornyn or the Obama administration try to heap this type of bipartisan legislation on us in the near future we all need to be picking up our phones and telling them "hell no".