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" This was the moment when I decided not to watch any more of the pregame studio shows prior to tonight&amp;#039;s State Of The Union address. Long about 8:10 this morning over on liberal MSNBC, Joe Scarborough brought on a few folks, including Cokie Roberts and defenestrated GOP chairman Michael Steele and, this being part of the NBC News operation, where the most important thing to talk about is starving granny in the name of &amp;quot;reform,&amp;quot; they began talking about entitlements again, and things quickly slipped into uselessness when it became plain that old Squint hasn&amp;#039;t yet gotten over the spanking that Paul Krugman gave him a week or so ago on that very topic. You may recall that Squint was so taken aback by Krugman&amp;#039;s disrespect for Green Room conventional wisdom that he took to the pages of Tiger Beat On The Potomac to continue the debate without fear of rebuttal by someone who knows what he&amp;#039;s talking about. So, yesterday, with Cokie and Michael on set, and confident that he was surrounded with enough suckers to feel safe, Squint once again returned to the notion of Paul Krugman Is Not As Smart As Me. &amp;quot;We had Paul Krugman on last week,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Nothing wrong with Medicare.&amp;#039; And he&amp;#039;s got all these disciples, all these bloggers eating Cheetos. We have conservatives denying science on climate change and liberals denying math. I don&amp;#039;t know what&amp;#039;s worse.&amp;quot; Cokie and Michael and the inexcusable Mark Halperin meeped their agreement while Mika seemed to drift off to that happy place that sustains her through the endless morning. Remember now. All Krugman did was point out: a) that people had been crying wolf about The Deficit for 20 years, and b) that all the evidence indicates that austerity is the worst possible solution to a sluggish economy. Among the people who agree with Krugman, by the way, are those junk-food junkie bloggers at the International Monetary Fund. Deficit cutting in advanced economies is an important reason why global growth is expected to barely improve this year. The International Monetary Fund last week projected global growth of just 3.5% this year, a slight pickup from the estimated 3.2% growth in 2012, due partly to budget tightening in the U.S. and Europe. The International Monetary Fund expects advanced economies to expand just 1.4% this year, compared with 5.5% growth among developing economies.  That not how you get on teevee, people. UPDATE -- Squint&amp;#039;s having a bad day. Now Jonathan Chait is after him, and we learn that Squint doesn&amp;#039;t know the difference between the Council On Foreign Relations and Chait&amp;#039;s mom. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a17461/joe-scarborough-wrecks-the-morning/>