Jim Cramer on The Huffington Post

Lesley Stern: How to Live on $0 a Day: Assuaging Rage, One Prick at a Time

2009-11-12T10:53:50Z

If you've lived your life believing that hard work, ethics, observing the golden rule and fiscal responsibility will be rewarded, you're probably a little ticked off right now. Okay, you're probably roiling with rage (especially if you stopped taking your anti-depressants because your insurance company canceled you for being depressed).

A lot of that anger comes from a sense of betrayal and helplessness at seeing people who broke every law of decency living high on the hog while the rest of us are hard pressed to afford a swine flu shot (if we could find one).

The logical recourse is to seek justice. You've appealed to their non-existent sense of decency. You've written your elected officials, attorney general, chamber of commerce and better business bureau. Clearly, you can't afford a lawyer. Crank calls and Internet heckling bring no relief. And while sending offenders cat poop in the mail is satisfying, the postage is costly--there are no bulk media rates for mass poop mailings (which REALLY pisses you off). And try as you might, you can't seem to get your friends interested in storming Wall Street or the Capitol because pitchforks are too expensive.

If you're quivering with rage just thinking about it, it's time to take action. I've discovered a way to calm my ire and achieve a semblance of inner peace without costly aids like therapists, tranquilizers, a masseuse or weapons.

Whether your anger is directed at a TARP recipient harassing you for an overdue $69, a vile CEO, pundit or politician, someone who screwed you over, the neighbor's dog, or the waiter who lied when he told you the chef's special chicken was all white meat, my methods ensure that all bad behavior is met with swift and decisive punishment (finally!). I can't tell you how much better you'll feel. Here's how it works:

Eric Schurenberg: Insider Trading for the Rest of Us

2009-10-27T08:01:20Z

Raj Rajaratnam, the putative head of the alleged insider trading ring at the Galleon Fund, may not have a firm grip on his moral compass. But he clearly knows one thing about stock picking -- namely, that the only way to win consistently is to have information the market doesn't.

Rajaratnam's problem, of course, is how he got his information. In addition to the analysts and money managers at his hedge fund, Rajaratnam maintained a network of informants inside companies and on Wall Street trading desks who were paid to deliver hot tips. The SEC and the U.S. district attorney say that some of those tips included material, non-public information that the informants had a duty to keep confidential. If so, and if Rajaratnam knew that when he traded, he's in trouble.

But note: There's nothing wrong with keeping a network of paid informants in itself. Lots of hedge funds do.

If you trade stocks, that ought to give you pause. You already knew that when you buy a stock you're up against professionals backed by platoons of analysts on Bloomberg terminals. Now you learn that some of your competition also maintains paid networks of insiders turning over market-moving tips, legal or otherwise. And the rest of us have...Jim Cramer?

Want to profit from the Galleon insider trading case? Then take the hint: It's a waste of time trying to beat the pros at the stock picking game. They outgun you, and they don't always play fair. Far better to join them, by investing in low-cost index funds or ETFs, like Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX) , as my colleagues Larry Swedroe, Allan Roth and Nathan Hale repeatedly urge you to do. (As do the likes of Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett.) That way, you're buying the whole market at the market price, which incorporates the collective judgment of all the Rajaratnams, Warren Buffetts and Peter Lynchs who have their money in the market. History suggests you'll beat most pros after fees in the long run. Call it insider trading for the rest of us. Without the perp walk.

Continue reading on CBS MoneyWatch.com

Loral Langemeier: Dow 10,000 - Trick or Treat?

2009-10-26T16:36:36Z

I love Halloween. The costumes, the candy, the totally permissible regression into childish ways. I mean, really, how often do you get to say "Boo!" without looking the fool? Oh, but wait a minute. If you're the Dow Jones Index, you get to say "Boo! I fooled you" often. In my view, Dow 10,000 is a big boo and any investor who believes it's a treat is tricking themselves.

Now let's be clear, I have no problem with the idea of public markets. Heck, access for investors to opportunity and companies to capital is a great thing. I would really like the ability to tie my fortune to several of the fabulous management teams out there. And I am all for avenues of liquidity that allow folks to trade. I have no problem whatsoever with that. But that is not what our current stock market is. Anymore.

Think about it. Who controls the markets now? Is it the sellers? The buyers? The analysts? The companies? Investor relations and public relations professionals? The pundits on TV? For sure it's all of those. And sometimes, it can be just one.

Here are 5 reasons I think the market is a scary:

No Show Numbers. Rarely do the underlying numbers, the fundamentals such as price-earnings ratios, support the stock prices. Current research seems to put a lot of weight on the qualitative while the quantitative is swept under the rug.

The Power Shift. The true buy-and-hold investors live at the mercy of the stock surfers. With the right access and technology traders can shift the current of the markets with a touch of the day-trading-button.

Deranged Direction. The stock market was a great idea that lost its way. There was a time, not long ago, that the stock market was a sound path to wealth. But now there are too many cooks in the kitchen and we are a long way from the pure days of the Dutch East India Company.

Legal Manipulations. Love him or leave him, Jim Cramer is one of the few players on Wall Street willing to reveal that the market is manipulated. YouTube has a great video where Cramer says: "The mechanics are much more important than the fundamentals - who cares about the fundamentals -- the great thing about the market is that it has nothing to do with the actual stocks -- it's just fiction and fiction and fiction -- it's a pretty good game .." And the manipulations can be legal. Sure, the SEC has rules against certain machinations, but they can hardly keep up with, or oversee, all the different market maneuvers that surface every day.

Speed Racer On Steroids. The Dow was created in 1896 at 40.96. It then took 76 years, to 1972, to reach 1,000. 14 years later, in 1987, the Dow hit 2,000. 4 years later, it hit 3,000. 4 years after that, 4,000. Then 9 months later, in 1995, the market hit 5,000. 11 months later, 6,000. 4 months after that, 7,000. (Are you feeling the acceleration? Are your eyes ready to pop out?) In July of 1997, the market hit 8,000. 9 months later, 9,000. A year later, 10,000 was surpassed for the first time. 1 (one!) month after that, in 1999, the market hit 11,000. Then, finally, a bit of a breather, for many reasons economic and political. But then in 2006, the market hit 12,000 and zoomed up to 14,000 in July of 2007. Amazing, right? Click here to see a great chart on this. Were companies and their profits growing that fast? No. There was excitement about a newfangled technology called the Internet, high tech fingers found their way directly in, the media made the market a sporting event, and then all heckaroonie broke loose forever and ever.

THE SOLUTION TO A SCARY MARKET? Invest directly in transparent, tangible assets that don't trade in emotional, irrational, manipulated markets. These are investments where you get right in with the seller, from private equity to commercial real estate to commodities such as oil wells. Way back in the day of whaling companies investors could buy directly in a ship, wait out the catch, and then share in the profits. Simple. The best new way to create wealth might be to go back to the best old way. Consider investing in the whaling ship of another or yourself I call Cash Machines™. By becoming, or investing in, an entrepreneur you stay in control. And keep the tricks for Halloween.

Get answers on direct investing or Cash Machines, call in to my radio show: 877-777-7713, Mon-Fri 7 a.m. PST, 10 a.m. EST. Or listen to the podcasts.

The Entire Financial Crisis In 7 Minutes: iHeartWallStreet (VIDEO)

2009-10-16T16:26:24Z

Clusterstock points us to a new video by iHeartWallStreet, which attempts to distill the entire financial crisis in seven minutes and 15 seconds.

There are some hilarious clips of Jim Cramer in this piece, which melds together some of his worst calls of the crisis. There's one particular damning piece from TheStreet.com in which Cramer claims that, if the entire subprime loan market collapsed, the world would hardly notice. Ouch.

His words: "It has no relevance whatsoever...no one entity is going to be hurt, except for the one guy who ran Bear Stearns." Double ouch.

Watch the entire thing:

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Henry Blodget: Jim Cramer's "Call Of A Lifetime," Revisited

2009-10-16T12:15:59Z

Jim Cramer's stock "call of a lifetime" came 53 weeks ago, on October 6, 2008.

That was the day he abandoned his usual niche-network platform to implore NBC's Today show viewers to dump their stocks because the market was going to plunge another 20%. (It was already down 30%+ from the peak.)

I lambasted this call at the time. Not because I thought Cramer was wrong about the market -- I actually agreed with him on that (see here). I hated the call because, like most of Cramer's advice, it was a market-timing call. And market timing is generally a terrible strategy, especially for individual investors.

A few weeks later, Cramer branded this the call of his life.

But was it really so wise?

The market did plunge after Cramer's Today show call. In fact, instead of the 20% decline he was worried about, it plummeted 35%.

So those who panicked when they heard Cramer's plea felt great for a while. And if they got back in in the spring, they're feeling great right now. For these folks, the call really was the call of a lifetime. (It would have been better if Jim had made it back in 2007, before the market plummeted 30%. And it would have been better if he hadn't called the bottom three months earlier, in July 2008, and told everyone that the bear market was over. But who's counting?).

Of course, 53 weeks later, the market is now back to the same level it was before Cramer made the call. So investors who did not get back in this spring are probably not so happy.

Investors who just ignored Cramer, meanwhile, are far better off than those who sold and did not buy back in. They did not incur any transaction or tax costs, and they collected (and, hopefully, reinvested) a year's worth of dividends at much lower prices. If they kept investing regularly or rebalancing as stocks fell, moreover -- important parts of a wise investment strategy -- they accumulated a lot more stock at lower prices, thus coming out considerably ahead.

Cramer was certainly right about the near-term direction of the market, and, for a while, he saved those who acted on his advice some money. A year later, however, with the market having recovered all of its losses, Cramer's call just looks like noise. And, in my opinion, it stands as yet another clear example of why most investors should avoid market-timing.

See Also: 15 Amazing Stock-Market Charts

Richard Arthur: Time to Sell

2009-10-12T10:16:25Z

If Afghanistan was a stock, we would sell it. Their CEO is a crook, their corporate governance is woeful, and too many of their employees are uncommitted to success. Besides, even if they could actually get a product to market (peace? stability? democracy?) consumers could probably buy it elsewhere for a cheaper price.

Seriously, we should be glad that President Obama is taking the time to think twice before recommitting America to the war and occupation in Afghanistan which, even if wildly successful, will yield small benefit to the American taxpayer.

America lost the initiative in the Afghan theater during the Bush administration. It's easy to point fingers blaming those who got us to this point (so easy that I couldn't resist) --- but the decision to stay or leave Afghanistan shouldn't be a partisan question. The stakes are too high. Also, it is not a question of who's tougher or getting revenge (though I do have a message for the President: get OBL, NOW!!) It is a question of how, from this point forward, America stands to benefit by an extended occupation of Afghanistan, which will entail an enormous amount of American blood and treasure to even have a chance at achieving long-term stabilization.

When America gets out of Iraq and Afghanistan, it will enjoy again its greatest natural strength -- which are the seas. One fact about American power is completely beyond argument is this -- we are a maritime nation. We have taken a long snooze -- since Iraq War I in 1991 -- but it's time that we return to the military posture that fits our strengths and interests. Ships in the water, not boots on the ground. America is surrounded by oceans and friendly nations and is dependent on ocean trade for our economic survival. Though we live on a great continent, the factors that enable our prosperity reside in the greatest "in between space" on earth -- the ocean.

The American people have no desire to plant our flag or our cross in foreign dirt. We are a nation of hard-working shopkeepers, builders, and businessmen. We want to sell the world products ... Big Macs, blockbuster movies and software. And, if it works for the customer, democracy. The most likely cause for war in the foreseeable future will not be a "clash of the cultures" but a clash of appetites. All indications are that we are entering into a period of increasing scarcity of resources -- food, fresh water, and energy. It is foolish to spend our resources and resolve in Afghanistan when we need to focus on retooling our military - trimming our ground forces and increasing our ship building program - to assure our access to resource areas and markets.

Nearly three-quarters of the world is covered by water, 90% of international trade flows across the water and the vast majority of the world's populations live within 200 miles of the sea. Most of America's vital interests involve the oceans or this 200 mile band of adjacent land - all of which are best controlled or influenced by a powerful navy.

If all we are achieving by staying in Afghanistan is keeping them from opening up terrorist training camps, it's not worth it. We can defeat those in ways other than occupation and broad stabilization. Most basic counter-terrorism functions can be accomplished with human intelligence, civilian policing, special force teams and air strikes.

Given their enormous cost and ambiguity -- for land wars to reach the threshold to warrant the sacrifice of our soldiers and the investment of our tax payers, the cost and probability of victory calculus must be compelling. They are not. Even with maximum effort ... who is willing to say that we have more than a 30%...50% chance of victory in Afghanistan? And at what cost would that be? The war in Afghanistan will certainly steal oxygen from other pressing concerns such as the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, the race for mineral rights in the Arctic and Pacific -- not to mention America's ballooning debt and the strength of the American dollar.

I wish that I had all the stage props of CNBC's Jim Cramer so that I could beat a drum and squeeze a bicycle horn to tell you when to wake up ... because this is serious. When it comes to Afghanistan ... sell, sell, sell!!!

Lee Schneider: Stock Picks and Fake Smiles

2009-09-21T22:15:10Z

What if I told you there's a way to pick stocks that is so reliable you'll do better than the experts? But in order for it to work, you'd have to give up something: Your access to information.

Ignorance is power.

In 2000, an investment magazine held a stock picking contest. More than 10,000 people submitted portfolios, some of them professionals with access to loads of data. One portfolio in the contest stood out: it was based on collective ignorance. Researchers asked fifty people to pick stocks based solely on whether they recognized the name of the company. What happened? The stocks picked by people who knew little gained in value by 2.5 percent. The stocks picked by the editor in chief of the magazine, who knew a lot, lost 18.5 percent.

Experts like Jim Cramer are ready to help you become a market expert. Will you make any money? Well, too much information (and too much Jim Cramer) can be a bad thing.

"There's a limit to the information a human mind can digest, a limit that often corresponds to the magical number seven, plus or minus two, the capacity of short term memory." -- Gut Feelings, by Gerd Gigerenzer

Your short term memory is good for about seven things. You've experienced this in Whole Foods if you attempt to shop without a shopping list. You wind up standing in front of the cheese display trying to remember the eighth thing you meant to buy.

If you go with intuition, on the other hand, you tap into something much deeper. Many believe that intuition comes from higher powers. If you listen to it, you will be guided by God, by a universal energy source, or if you are trying to pick stocks, by Warren Buffett.

That may be true, but scientists are learning that intuition accesses the unconscious mind, and that part of the mind is really smart.

A research study has suggested that gamblers who trust their gut instincts are more likely to pick up subtle visual cues from the dealer and other players. To make winning decisions they let the unconscious drive for a while. Less information turns out to be more - especially when things turn unpredictable.

When you are working with an unstable system, like the stock market or a gun battle or both ("How was work today, honey?") having too much on your mind will slow you down. The noise between your ears blocks the wisdom of the subconscious.

This was explored in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink. If a police officer in jeopardy has to think too much, the bad guy shoots him first. If a baseball player performs differential equations in his head to calculate the trajectory and velocity of an incoming fly ball, he'd never catch it. (I think this is the Mets' problem.)

"Woman's intuition, as everyone knows, is a true faculty that most women possess in a form far more highly developed than anything the random male ever acquires." - Ashley Montagu, The Natural Superiority of Women

Women are good at intuition and men are bad at it. You think so? Not so.

In another study, Dr. Richard Wiseman showed 50,000 people photographs of a person smiling. Only one was of a real smile. The other was of a fake smile. Using their intuition, men were able to guess which smile was real 72 percent of the time. The women guessed right 71 percent of the time.

I'm going to sell some stock soon, but I think I'll wait until Warren Buffett is smiling.

Jim Randel: Taking on Jim Cramer

2009-09-01T20:51:59Z

CNBC analyst Jim Cramer recently took on the media for highlighting the risks of ARM reset loans. (See Cramer blog dated August 28: "Housing is back, despite media worries.")

Although I disagree with his conclusion about housing, I do agree with him that the ARM mortgage problem has been minimized by the Fed keeping interest rates low. The risk of ARM resets is that homeowners' mortgage rates will increase when "teaser" periods expire. These resets work off indices, e.g., the one-year Treasury bill; therefore, as long as interest rates stay down, mortgage resets are not a huge risk.

Where Cramer misses the boat is his suggestion that a housing recovery is imminent.

The fact is that we may be bouncing along the bottom of the housing market. I do not think there is a lot further to fall. But, the suggestion of a recovery implies that housing numbers are going to start rising (units and prices) and the fundamentals are nowhere near suggesting such a prediction.

The great majority of sales, both of existing and new houses, which have occurred recently are in the lower end of the market with a huge impetus from the $8,000 tax credit, distressed sellers and historically low mortgage rates. Eventually those artificial stimulants to housing sales will end and then the fundamentals become important: supply and demand and consumer confidence in housing as an appreciating (or even stable) asset.

The problem is that there is nothing on the horizon suggesting an improvement in housing fundamentals in the near future. Perhaps even more concerning than supply and demand numbers is the paradigm shift in how housing is perceived by the consumer and investor. Whereas once home ownership was seen as a sure-fire path to a higher net worth, today people are much more wary (and obviously rightly so). People have learned the hard way that housing values do not always go up and most economists and housing experts believe that it will be at least 5 years or more before housing prices start to rise to any appreciable degree.

Cramer may like housing stocks, but if he is betting his ranch (pun intended) on the fact that housing prices will ever again spike like they did in the early part of this century, he'd better hedge his bets.

Jim Randel is the author of The Skinny on the Housing Crisis, a down and dirty story of how we got into enormous housing and foreclosure trouble. This book was just awarded First Prize in a competition sponsored by NAREE, an organization of 650 journalists.

Jim Cramer: Glenn Beck "A Nice Guy," Advertisers Will "All Come Back In The End" (VIDEO)

2009-08-25T08:32:00Z

Jim Cramer defended Glenn Beck Monday, saying the controversial Fox News host is a "nice guy" and predicting that his boycotting advertisers "all come back in the end" (via TVNewser).

Beck's show has experienced an advertiser exodus over his comment on "Fox & Friends" that President Obama is "racist."

Cramer made his comments about Beck in a conversation with Erin Burnett about the advertising market for political talk shows.

Cramer added that Fox News parent News Corp won't be suffering as the advertisers have merely shifted their ad buys to other programs.

Watch:

Jim Cramer Thinks Food, Inc. Could Inflame The Justice Dept To Take On Monsanto (VIDEO)

2009-08-20T12:45:51Z

Last week, Jim Cramer did a fascinating segment on the seed giant and Roundup herbicide producer, Monsanto. He posits that Monsanto could be a prime target for a Justice Department antitrust action for their monopoly on seeds.

Tom Brennan writes on Cramer's segment:

A series of competition-crushing acquisitions made this biotech disguised as an agriculture outfit the market leader in genetically modified US corn, soybean and cotton seeds. And Monsanto maintains strict agreements with its farmer clients that leave them virtually no choice but to feed at the corporate trough. Plus, the company plans to push through a 42% price increase on its new seeds, and there's nothing these farmers can do about it.

Cramer states he thinks "the government is worried about about the family farmer being destroyed by Monsanto's practices" and Monsanto's action of raising seed prices is "begging the Justice Department to go after them [.....] They are tempting the wrath of Obama."

WATCH:

Cramer also says, Monsanto "better hope the guys at [The] Justice [Department] don't go to the movies" and see the documentary Food, Inc. which takes on Monsanto's practices, along with many other aspects of our industrialized food system.

If you haven't seen Food, Inc. yet, watch a trailer here:

On Monsanto's website, the company calls the film "one-sided [and] biased."

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Jim Cramer's Housing Bottom Call Revisited (VIDEO)

2009-08-12T13:26:42Z

Remember when we passed along Jim Cramer's emphatic call of a housing market bottom? It's time to take another look at Cramer's proclamation.

You may recall that in June, Cramer said, "I am frantically trying to buy multiple properties right now." Cramer went so far as to definitively declare a bottom to the housing market. His words: "This is patently obvious."

Karl Denninger points out just how wrong Cramer was. Take this Bloomberg report from today, for example:

"Home price declines in the U.S. accelerated in the second quarter, dropping by a record 15.6 percent from a year earlier, as foreclosures weighed on values.

The median price of an existing single-family home dropped to $174,100, the most in records dating to 1979, the National Association of Realtors said today."

Here's Denninger:

"Jim, we haven't seen a decline in the second derivative. In fact, housing prices dropped by a RECORD 15.6% in the second quarter....But remember Jim - you promised your viewers that it was over. That it was ok - and safe - to go back into the market. You in fact told everyone last night to buy stocks again, and you were in fact on an unmitigated pumpfest. The facts don't bother you do they Jim? I'll lay odds you won't mention this report tonight on your show, nor will you apologize for being wrong."

WATCH Cramer's housing bottom call from June:

To be fair, Cramer also said in that interview that he was running out to buy Bank Of America stock. Since the interview, BofA's stock price has risen to $16 from $13. Perhaps Cramer should stick to touting stocks.

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Jonathan Miller: Mad "Housing Bottom" Is A Jumbo Problem

2009-06-25T15:43:00Z

In late August of last year, Jim Cramer, a la CNBC Mad Money, predicted the housing market bottom would be reached by the third quarter of 2009. A week later, the prediction was fine-tuned in his widely read magazine article, selecting June 30, 2009 as the official day the housing market would find a bottom. The publication date of the article was September 7, 2008.

During the week this magazine article came out, someone told me they had attended an economic conference and there was no shortage of tongue-in-cheek debate on the Cramer's housing market prognostication. Would the housing market "bottom" on the morning of June 30th or the afternoon of June 30th? Inquiring economic minds wanted to know.

The publication date of the Cramer article, actually marked the beginning of a 10-day window of financial mayhem that became the tipping point for housing. Virtually overnight, the housing market froze and prices fell sharply as consumers and mortgage lenders pulled back.

The 3 key events that defined the 10-day tipping point:

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac fail - On September 7, the Bush Administration announced that the federal government would seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who are in charge of providing liquidity and stability to the housing and mortgage markets.

Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy - A second major investment bank fails in a year (Bear Stearns did 6 months earlier) and files for bankruptcy on September 14, 2008.

AIG bailout - The insurance giant is deemed too big to fail on September 16, 2008 and propped up with $85B.

Fast forward.

June 30, 2009 is fast approaching. However, Cramer has already made the call: Housing Has Officially Bottomed.

He seems to be relying on the Commerce Department's 17.2% housing starts, a highly seasonal and staggeringly flawed metric (ie. It's 17.2%, plus or minus 14.4%). Plus, housing starts are still 45.2% below the same period a year ago and foreclosures continue to rise and many of those purchasers are speculators.

Mortgage rates jumped in the past two weeks as the Fed lost some of its ability to keep rates a record lows while the US Treasury continues to print money to cover all the bailout and stimulus costs. Higher mortgage rates will likely trigger more foreclosure activity.

Housing market trends are usually a lagging indicator, reliant on key drivers such as employment and income, local economic conditions and credit. A byproduct of the recent credit boom, housing seemed to be driving the economy rather than following it, providing the largest portion of new jobs created during the prior administration.

What has changed since the beginning of the credit crunch?

Consumers now need to have a job and now need actual income to qualify for a mortgage, plus they now need cash in the bank to provide a significant down payment. The housing boom from 2003-2007 was actually a credit boom and all of the above weren't important to lenders. Now, thankfully, they are.

Although the recession may end later this year, unemployment is expected to rise for another year and may even exceed 10% before it levels off. Mortgage lenders aren't crazy about lending in a weak economic environment and are being more draconian than ever with much stricter mortgage underwriting requirements (standards more similar to those that existed before the credit boom).

As a result, most buyers have to put 20% down to qualify for a conforming mortgage, $417,000 or less, in a large portion of the country and $729,750 in "high-cost" housing markets like New York.

A mortgage higher than those limits is considered "jumbo." Because secondary market investors in jumbo products have largely disappeared, mortgage lenders for higher priced houses have to hold the mortgages in their own portfolios and can't offload the risk to secondary market investors.

As a result, banks often require 40% to 50% down payments for purchases using jumbo mortgages versus 20% for conforming mortgages. This situation is not improving. That knocks a lot of potential buyers out of the high end housing market, many who would have qualified before the September tipping point.

So it's hard to imagine anyone calling a bottom of the housing market with much conviction considering a significant portion of the mortgage market is not functioning very well, unemployment is expected to rise through the end of 2010 and mortgage rates are rising as the Fed seems to be losing its ability to reign in rates as the US Treasury continues to print money to cover record government spending to stimulate the economy.

While he has had a successful and diverse career, and I admire his candor, perhaps Cramer needs to think about calling the top of his television ratings.

Public Strongly Supports Public Health Care Option

2009-06-19T10:15:46Z

Yesterday, what prompted CNBC's Jim Cramer to suggest that President Barack Obama needed "to go away for a little bit," was a poll, whose numbers indicated that Americans were more concerned with curbing federal deficits than with additional economic stimulus. This data was then strangely extrapolated by Joe Scarborough to conclude that it put "the Obama administration behind the eight ball on health care." That seemed to me like it was a case of waterboarding a poll to elicit a false confession.

To see where the public alignment is on health care reform, wouldn't a poll on health care reform be a tad more instructive? Enter Greg Sargent:

A new poll by a nonpartisan, D.C.-based research group finds truly overwhelming support for the public option. The kicker: The poll was bankrolled partly by previous opponents of health care reform, including one of the nation's best-known insurance companies.

The poll -- which was just released by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a D.C. policy think tank -- finds that a majority (53%) strongly back the availability of a public plan, while another 30% "somewhat" support it. That's a total of 83% in favor of a public plan -- a staggeringly large majority.

Significantly, that poll was commissioned by some of the organizations who opposed health care reform in the 1990s.

Sargent wisely notes that one shouldn't construe these numbers as being "uniformly good for Obama's plan," only that support for a public plan is vast. It seems to me that the fastest way for the White House to get "behind the eight ball on health care" would be for them to follow Tom Daschle's advice and drop the public option.

Nevertheless, all the hue and cry over THE DEFICITS seem to have had their effect. Via Ezra Klein comes the news that the latest version of the health care reform proposal sitting in front of the Senate Finance Committee has gone against the will of the people:

Sources say that it's a major scale-back of the outline they had before. Specifically, subsidies have dropped from 400 percent of the poverty line to 300 percent. Medicaid eligibility has been tightened to 133 percent of poverty for children and pregnant women and 100 percent of poverty for parents and childless adults. The plans being offered in the exchange have seen their actuarial values sharply lowered.

Beyond the changes, this is also the clearest look we've had at the specific policies being considered. There's a fairly strong individual mandate, albeit with exemptions for those beneath the poverty line, those who would have to spend more than 15 percent of income for a plan, and undocumented workers. There are a variety of options for an employer mandate, or the absence of one. Sen. Kent Conrad's co-op idea is up for discussion. There's no public plan mentioned anywhere in the document.

Make no mistake: if health care reform gets watered down into useless marm, the media -- with its newfound and insensate panic attacks over deficits -- will have had a hand in it.

MORE:
The Central Paradox of Health Care Reform [Matt Yglesias]

PREVIOUSLY, on the HUFFINGTON POST:
Speaking of Daschle, man...did I ever call that one correctly.

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Jim Cramer: "Everybody Wishes Obama Would Just Kind Of Go Away" (VIDEO)

2009-06-18T15:40:41Z

Here's a video of Jim Cramer, kicking it with Joe Scarborough, on the issue of healthcare reform. At the ready is a "stunning" poll indicating that Americans were more concerned with paying down deficits than they are about stimulating the economy. Chances are, those Americans are under the impression that the economy is already stimulated, and that attention rightly should be paid now to combating deficits down the line. Naturally, Scarborough turns this into an issue of health care reform: "Don't you think," Scarborough asks Cramer, "that this puts the Obama administration behind the eight ball on health care?" Hey, maybe a poll on support for health care reform would be a better way of placing the issue in context? Probably!

But Cramer insists, without evidence, that "when Americans hear health care reform, it just means tax increases." No chance that Americans think it might just mean, "Oh! You mean I might be able to afford asthma inhalers for my family, and what not?" Not at all! In fact, according to Cramer: "Until we get the economy moving again, I think everybody wishes that Obama would just kind of go away for a little bit."

Seems like only yesterday that the media was telling us that everyone wanted Obama to work on the economy and nothing else, forever. But now it's time to "go away." Surely, this is indeed what "everybody" wants!

[WATCH]

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CNBC's Erin Burnett Compares EFCA to Ahmadinejad

2009-06-16T16:56:55Z

On Tuesday, CNBC's Erin Burnett made a broad comparison between the Employee Free Choice Act and what's going on in Iran. Hearing this, one might think, "Surely she said something like, "The Employee Free Choice Act, if passed, will allow would-be union members the opportunity to organize without the sort of brutal crackdowns and authoritarian intimidation associated with Iran's ruling mullahs and crazypants dictators." No. This is not at all what happened!

Instead, Burnett compared the lack of a "secret ballot" in Iran to the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to form via signed cards. Yes, on CNBC, "card check" equals creeping Ahmadinejadism. This is the sort of perspective that can only be taken by those at a safe remove from the concerns of both American workers and Iranian reformers. Burnett got attaboys from the sage genius Jim Cramer for her heroic observation. As you'll see, their primary concern with the Iranian election is how it will effect the price of oil. I hope that the pro-reform protesters spare a thought for that as they are getting their heads beaten in, because, priorities!

[WATCH]

Of course, traditionally, trade unionists fight dictatorships. Sen. John McCain, sizing up the events in Iran, recently compared it to the fight for democracy in Poland. Well, while we're talking analogies, here's a fun fact: The fight for democracy in Poland was led by a trade unionist named Lech Walesa.

As you might expect, the Service Employees International Union has condemned Burnett's statements, citing "irresponsible journalism" and "reckless reporting." I think "appalling lack of perspective" covers it just as well.

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Politically Erect: Rating The TV Demagogues

2009-06-06T14:10:30Z

Jim Cramer: Buy A House Now, Calls Housing Bottom

2009-06-03T09:47:40Z

Jim Cramer recently appeared on TheStreet.com TV and was certain of one thing: now is the time to buy a house. Cramer, whose stock picking record has certainly drawn its share of criticism, couldn't have been more sure of his call here, saying "I am frantically trying to buy multiple properties right now."

Cramer went so far as to call a bottom to the housing market. His words: "This is patently obvious." Watch the full video here:

Don McNay: CNBC Has Become The Gong Show

2009-05-21T14:03:08Z

"I can't stand it no more"

-Peter Frampton

It's hard to find a more avid CNBC viewer than myself. I've watched several hours a day since the network was invented.

When cable television was a novelty in the early 1980's, I arranged for part of my city to be wired so that stock brokers and financial planners like me to watch FNN in their offices.

FNN was the model that CNBC is based on and many of their best news people spent time at FNN.

CNBC charges premium dollars for advertising because the CNBC audience is highly educated and upper income.

In other words, people like me.

I don't know when CNBC decided that people like me needed to be yelled at.

Jon Stewart did an outstanding piece of journalism (or at least at outstanding piece of journalism by a comedian on a comedy show) when he exposed some ways that the network missed on the economic crisis.

As a (former) daily viewer, I understood the network's biases but never cared as it usually gave me good information.

Now, all they do is yell at me.

I think Jim Cramer started it first. His wild antics were popular for a while. Then everyone on the network started yelling. The network gives unending amounts of time to Larry Kudlow. Not only is a Kudlow a right wing fanatic, he has absolutely no manners. He rudely interrupts guests and yells over them.

If my mother had been his mother, Larry would have spent a lot of time having his mouth washed out with soap.

Now, everyone is doing it. They pop 10 people on the screen at once and you can't hear anyone.

I guess the viewers are supposed to decide a winner, like they did on the Gong Show.

CNBC used to have a small number of big name experts, like "Investment Biker" Jim Rogers, who really knew something about finance and gave them time to talk.

Now they drag in scores of warm bodies that no one has ever heard of. Often they have no connection to the topic of the day.

Today was the tipping point for me. It was a big day in the foreign markets and I tuned in to Power Lunch get some insights.

Instead, Power Lunch was focused on a union bashing topic. They brought on a "Democratic operative" who had no connection to any labor union and paired her with a right wing talk show host.

Each was supposed to get 30 seconds to start. The "Democratic operative" spoke first. She had her talking points and several minutes later, she was still reading them. The camera focused on the other guy and he tried to talk over her. No one tried to stop her or cut her microphone.

Then the conservative guy, who had no connection to any labor or industry groups, went to his talking points.

If there was any information to be gathered out of that exchange, I totally missed it.

Both looked great on camera. Neither had the slightest idea what they were talking about.

I gave up.

I started dialing through the channels and wound up at Fox Business News. At that moment, it was the only place where I could find "fair and balanced" information.

Think about that for a minute.

As the Frampton song says, "I can't stand it no more." I really wish CNBC operated like the Gong Show. They are some hosts, and guests, that I would love to gong off.

I am sure someone high up at CNBC thinks the yelling has merit but they are running off the hardest of its hard core audience.

People like me.

Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is the founder of McNay Settlement Group, a structured settlement consulting firm, in Richmond, Kentucky.

He is the author of Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You When The Lottery. You can write to Don at don@donmcnay.com or read his award winning column at www.donmcnay.com.

McNay is a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table.

Anya Kamenetz: The Trouble With Suze

2009-05-17T22:48:11Z

Generally, I think my fellow Yahoo! Finance Expert gives pretty solid financial advice. Sure, she's compromised somewhat by her endorsements like MyFICO.com, but she seems to genuinely care about helping people, the opposite of an irresponsible stock hustler like Jim Cramer.

However, after reading her profile in the New York Times Magazine, I realized that I think her priorities are totally screwed up. She seems to equate financial security with being rich.

I mean, maybe this is obvious, since she wrote a book called The Courage To Be Rich. But really, that's such BS.

If we learned anything from the past year's fiscal insanity, it's that financial security, financial integrity, and financial freedom have nothing to do with having a ton of money. You have financial security if you are able to cover your basic expenses and save for the future. You have financial integrity if you're not fronting by buying a bunch of crap you can't afford while neglecting your future. And true financial freedom, for life, means the ability to live well within your means, regardless of the fluctuations of the market. These are all dynamic ways of being in the world, not static numbers.

Okay, you might argue that "basic expenses" does require a certain dollar value per year, but I think it's all contextual. You could live on the beach in Goa for $10,000 a year, and as long as you play enough guitar to clear $11,000 in tips, presto, you have financial freedom.

This was the part of the story I found the most galling:

"She has been reluctant to work on school curricula on personal finance, because she says students can't learn empowerment from people who aren't empowered, and teachers, she says, are too underpaid ever to have any real self-worth."

Seriously?? Suze is suggesting that people who go into teaching aren't empowered and don't value themselves because they're too big of losers not to become a stockbroker or a TV personality like she did? Teachers, who do the most important job in our society, have no self worth because they're underpaid? Okay, you might agree that they are underpaid, but objectively in most places in the US they make a solid middle class living, with security and benefits that are unheard-of in most careers. Teaching is an enviable career to a huge chunk of the American public. This is incredibly out of touch.

Suze's right about one thing: young people shouldn't be learning about personal finance from her. This is the same kind of GOP-style, rich-person-worshiping BS disguised as "empowerment" of the common person that got us into trouble in the first place.

Jim Cramer On Jon Stewart: "One Day He'll Answer For It"

2009-05-14T09:02:26Z

Update: The questions are now online. Read all the Q&A here.

Original Post: Jim Cramer answered TIME readers' "10 Questions" this week, and while the full questions, answers, and video aren't yet online, a press release reveals that Cramer had forceful words when it came to Jon Stewart.

WATCH THEIR INTERVIEW AS IT AIRED HERE

WATCH THE FULL, UNEDITED, UNCENSORED VIDEO HERE

Regarding their infamous head-to-head earlier this year, Cramer said:

No one wants to suffer a beat-down. No one wants to be humiliated or embarrassed. I was shocked at [host Jon Stewart's] behavior. I wish he knew about my background, and I wish he knew about a lot of things that I had done, because I think he would've thanked me instead of attacked me...I think the attack on CNBC and the attacks on me were gravely misplaced. It was rather remarkable in that it was so clear that his goal was to just destroy me. One day he'll answer for it.

Cramer has been vocal about his displeasure with Stewart since their March meeting, but this excerpt is the first in which Cramer implies that he will be seeking payback for the treatment.

Watch the video below:

Michael Winship: How Comedy Impacts Politics

2009-05-07T12:43:03Z

In retrospect, we knew we were done for the night Johnny Carson said George McGovern sounded like Liberace.

Those of us working on McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign staff had seen some highs and lows: the extraordinary campaign of primary victories that won him the Democratic nomination; the screwed-up party convention and crash dive when his vice presidential candidate Tom Eagleton was forced to withdraw after revelations of electroshock therapy.

But Johnny Carson making that joke on "The Tonight Show" was the final nail in the electoral coffin. On top of everything else, he was right--George did sound like Liberace.

It wasn't the first time TV comedy had an impact on the nation's politics. Four years earlier, Richard Nixon had emitted an incredulous "Sock it to me?" on the hit show "Laugh In." Millions of Americans thought this proved he was a regular guy -- enough, perhaps, to have provided his narrow margin of victory (Hubert Humphrey, foolishly, had turned down a similar invitation from "Laugh In." Of course, in those days, he still referred to our medium as "the television.").

Now we see Jon Stewart serving up Jim Cramer and the rest of CNBC as rotisserie chicken for their coverage of the financial crisis, David Letterman taking revenge after John McCain cancels an appearance to do an interview with Katie Couric (and lies about it), Tina Fey perfecting a spot-on imitation of Sarah Palin. All of these impacted politics, too. What's different today is that not only is TV comedy commenting on and affecting the news it has become a source of news.

So what does comedy tell us about the truth that the news can't? That's what we're talking about in Washington Friday evening. Stay tuned.

See the show "Writers Speak! A Potentially Regrettable Evening with WGA Comedy Writers," this Friday May 8th, 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm at Washington DC's Newseum. More WGA blogs about the event available here.

Jeffrey Buchanan: Celebrities Hit Auction Block for Human Rights

2009-05-05T10:37:19Z

Ever want to meet Oprah Winfrey? Hop in the pool for a swimming lesson from Michael Phelps? Get fashion advice from Project Runway's Tim Gunn over lunch at Bryant Park? Learn the arts of comedy and paper sales from Steve Carell on the set of The Office? Hone your blogging skills with an internship at the Huffington Post? How about talking politics with the most powerful woman in Washington, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, during a visit to her office or meeting Senator John McCain for some "straight talk"? Make your Hollywood debut as an extra in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood film "Nottingham", starring Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett. Seek enlightenment and meet Richard Gere with VIP tickets during His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 2010 trip to NYC. Or ride in a pace car at the Indy 500 and party with track chairman, Mari George.

Supporters and my colleagues at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights have put together these experiences and much more for our Annual Online Auction. With the help of CharityBuzz, the online auction will raise funds supporting the RFK Center's vital work around the globe. The auction is open now and runs until May 28th with new lots added every day.

Other auction highlights include: Visit Ben Stiller or Robert DeNiro on the set of Little Fockers. Take a one-hour singing lesson with the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin. Take a tennis lesson from the legendary Andre Agassi. Spend a "Day of Fashion" at NY Fashion Week with Vogue editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley. Grab lunch at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills with Warren Beatty. Prepared to be mystified during a private magic show from David Blaine. Watch a taping of The Rachael Ray Show and go backstage. Meet Jennifer Hudson and watch her concert in Nashville. Launch your fashion career interning at Diane Von Furstenberg's NY studio. Attend the Dancing With the Stars finale or dance with former contestant and NFL linebacker, Jason Taylor. Visit the set of House and meet the cast, including star Hugh Laurie. Have dinner with Bill Cosby at Bouley in NYC and enjoy wine from his private collection. Score tickets to the World Series, Final Four and U.S. Open. Get VIP tickets to watch the Washington Capitals or Boston Bruins and even catch a ride on the Zamboni. Watch the New England Patriots take on the Jacksonville Jaguars from the owner's box. Meet Regis Philbin, Chuck Grodin and Alan Alda for lunch in New York. Visit the set of your favorite news shows and meet some of the hosts, including ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 and Larry King Live (and bring home a signed pair of Larry's trademark suspenders), CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Cramer, NBC's Meet the Press and the Today Show, MSNBC's Morning Joe and The Rachel Maddow Show, Fox News' O'Reilly Factor and HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. Or hang out with David Foster and one of his friends such as Andrea Bocelli or Katherine Jenkins or maybe Michael Buble in his recording studio.

Plus much more at http://www.charitybuzz.com/rfk.

The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, www.rfkcenter.org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, provides innovative support to courageous human rights defenders around the world. It assists advocates who have won the RFK Human Rights Award to boldly confront injustices such as modern day slavery in U.S. agricultural fields, torture in Darfur, and the devastation along the hurricane battered Gulf Coast. Every year the RFK Center honors investigative journalists and authors who bring light to injustice through the RFK Book and Journalism Awards. With the Speak Truth to Power program, the RFK Center educates students worldwide about human rights, the courage of its defenders and the power of individual action.

Support the RFK Center by visiting http://www.charitybuzz.com/rfk and bid to give. Visit often and check out the new lots added daily.

Steve Parker: IndyCar's Danica Patrick Makes Time 's 100 Most Influential People

2009-05-02T05:21:00Z

Here's some good automotive news for a change: The Danica Patrick IndyCar racing juggernaut keeps rolling along. And just in time for the biggest auto race of the year.

Time magazine, relying on an Internet poll to determine its third annual list of the top 100 most influential people in the world, named race car driver, advertising icon, Midwest fashion plate and the generally hot Patrick to position #93.

The only woman to ever win an IndyCar race (at Motegi, Japan, 2008) outpaced NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Queen of All Media Oprah Winfrey, FOX's Bill O'Reilly (maybe racing can save the world) and Prince (who, physically, is about the same size as Patrick).

Patrick received 523,545 votes. The magazine noted this is Patrick's first appearance in their Top 100 list.

This past week, Patrick unveiled a new black/orange paint sheme on her #7 Honda/Dallara IndyCar racer, just in time for the upcoming Indy 500

In the PR statement she didn't write, Patrick's people said: "I'm humbled and honored to be on the list with so many other amazing people. I'm grateful to have wonderful people around me that keep me grounded and in the moment. I know I don't say it often enough, but thank you for helping me achieve my goals and dreams while allowing me to be myself in the fast-paced lifestyle I lead."

Why do sponsors always think these drivers have to sound so damn homogenized? I wish the PR people would get out of the way and let ... racers be racers. Racers don't say things like, "the fast-paced lifestyle I lead." They say, "Get out of my way or I'll put you in the wall and kick your freakin' ass." And then they do.

And with the Indy 500 coming up May 24th (which will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the circuit itself, the world's first purpose-built race track; the race's 100th birthday comes in 2011), attention on the sport and its drivers is reaching, well, if not exactly a fever-pitch, we can say that for the first time in over a decade, an American racing series besides NASCAR is getting some attention in the nation's general interest media.

(On KCRW radio's "Left, Right and Center" broadcast Friday, co-host Robert Scheer opined that the Republican Party has become a solidly Southeast-based group with little membership outside that part of the country. "Aha! Just like NASCAR!" I thought).

Patrick in the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition

And right now, the 28-year old Patrick is the uncontested most-popular (and most-interesting and certainly best-looking) driver in open-wheel or any other kind of racing. Smart, skilled, built tighter and sleeker than any race car she drives and with a non-stop and sometimes snarky mouth which her team owners (including Michael Andretti) find tough to control, Patrick simply is IndyCar.

As always, the world press and racing fans see Indy as "the" event of the racing year, surpassing any NASCAR or even Formula 1 race for prestige and excitement.

Even F1's signature event, the elegant, somewhat inbred and royal-tinged street race through the principality of Monaco, can't hold a candle to Indy and its legendary American action and kitsch, with Jim Nabors kicking-off the race festivities by singing "Back Home in Indiana," its celebratory swig of milk for the winner, its row of bricks at the start-finish line, bricks having originally made-up the entire 2-1/2 mile oval and the sheer, vast number of spectators who make the Indy 500 the largest single-day sporting event of any kind in the world.

Patrick's win at Motegi, Japan in 2008 was the first victory for a woman in a major open-wheel racing series

And, oh yeah, there are those 33 cars and their crazed drivers hitting speeds approaching 240 miles per hour on the track's near-one-mile long front straightaway.

Other sportspeople on the Time list included Kobe Bryant (my man) of the Los Angeles Lakers (#9!), Spanish tennis star Rafael Nadal, who at #60 got the ad over Buddhist star Dalai Lama (#61) and Olympic swimmer and conservative target Michael Phelps.

Tiger Woods was in there, too, but I couldn't quite figure out where he ranked. That's because the poll and its results are pretty confusing, maybe intentionally so, to help spread the glory around as many people and categories as possible..

There were categories (Leaders & Revolutionaries, Builders & Titans, Artists & Entertainers, Heroes & Icons, Scientists & Thinkers) and because the voting was done on the Web, one Time editor wrote that, in essence, the results should be taken with more than a grain of salt; in fact, perhaps a mine-full.

President Barack Obama finished in 37th place (one behind good ol' boy Rust Limbaugh, four better than Miley Cyrus) and our own Arianna Huffington took 87th, one position better than White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and within ten places of Pope Benedict XVI, Jim Cramer, Sarah Palin, Bernie Madoff and John McCain. Quite a gang, anyway you look at it.

Patrick is everywhere - this is the cover of next month's SHAPE magazine; it's all in preparation for the Indy 500 and keeping her Big Momentum going

The top vote-getter was moot -- the 21-year-old college student and founder of the online community 4chan.org, whose real name is Christopher Poole. He received 16,794,368 votes.

Danica Patrick, who just this week introduced a nifty new orange and black almost-Halloween style paint job on her Honda-powered Dallara race car, has as good a chance of winning the pole position and this year's Indy 500 as any other driver on the track.

Le Force Danica heads now for what should be the biggest race of her life, May 24's Indianapolis 500, and with the imprimatur of Time magazine to boot. Go Black/Orange 7!

Join us LIVE this weekend on www.TalkRadioOne.com at 5pm Pacific Saturday for The Car Nut Show and Sunday at 5pm Pacific for our exclusive World Racing Roundup! Special guests, your phone calls and all the latest in the world of cars, trucks, motorcycles and motor racing!

Jim Cramer Mocks Krugman And Roubini: "The Professor And Mary Ann" (VIDEO)

2009-04-27T09:40:59Z

CNBC's Jim Cramer declared on Monday that the economy has bottomed out, and took repeated whacks at economists Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini for lacking real-life experience and being consistently dour in their forecasting.

Appearing on Morning Joe, the much-maligned economic pundit applauded the "major transformation" and "great, great job" that Timothy Geithner had done in shepherding the financial system through serious crisis. At one point he called the Treasury Secretary "much smarter than the average bear, so to speak.'"

As for the economy as a whole, Cramer boldly proclaimed that, "yes we have, we've hit the bottom." It was a bit of absolutist optimism that has gotten the CNBC personality ridiculed by Jon Stewart (among others) in the past, and prompted co-panelist Tina Brown to caution against assuming everything was just fine.

It was when asked about those who didn't share his peachy take that Cramer started throwing his haymakers.

"There's this guy Roubini... at New York University, I regard these guys as the Professor and Mary Ann and we're back on Gilligan's island. Let's get serious. Roubini, at 6,300, says the market is going to crash. Where are we now? Krugman, nothing is ever right. Maybe Geithner and Summers aren't morons! Maybe they're not morons! Maybe they figured out something. These two guys have never given them a break. They never have to answer anybody. They don't run any money. They are able to go out there all the time and tell you everything is horrible -- and they're wrong!"

After Brown reminded Cramer that the money-managing geniuses that he has such faith in are the same people who ran the system into the ground, he chimed in once more.

"Tina, they wanted to nationalize every bank in March. It turns out that almost every bank is solvent. They wanted to turn us into Sweden... we cannot be Sweden. We are a major power with huge banks that dominate the world. We can't nationalize them. But that is what the professor wanted. Give me tenure or give me death."

Worst Media Moments of Obama's First 100 Days?

2009-04-23T13:34:39Z

Hey kids! Do you like listicles? And polls? And voting in polls? And reading listicles? And mashup videos of so-called media professionals, behaving as if they were idiot children or egomaniacal monsters from the dark side of the moon? Well, then, this recent initiative from Media Matters has all, or some, of the things you love!

Today, Media Matters is taking stock of the worst media moments of the first 100 days of the Obama Presidency. They're showing a strange faith that no one in the media will be capable of doing something epically boneheaded, I think. I mean, I'd personally recommend you save room for CNN's 100 Daypocalypse and Hologram Zombie Celebration that they've got planned, because I'm forecasting that one to be partly cloudy with a chance of BONKERS.

Still, this is a pretty good list. It includes such classics as:

--Glenn Beck's whimsical arsonist fetish!

--Rush Limbaugh indulges in his anal rape fantasia!

--Pat Buchanan. Wife beating. More or less self-explanatory!

--Rick Santelli rallies the least sympathetic people in America to rally!

--Glenn Beck makes some dude sit in an idling car, because of Al Gore!

--Jim Cramer yammers on about Bolshevism!

--Rush Limbaugh compares unions to Tony Soprano, but fails to explain whether those unions got capped in the last scene. I mean, let's face it, we all have opinions, but that quick fade to black was still pretty ambiguous. And really, Meadow, is parallel parking that hard?

--Glenn Beck mocks the infirm, because people without functioning legs are socialists, leaching off the ambulatory.

--Larry Cudlow sees gangsta gang signs and fist bumps and jive talk, everywhere, even in his dreams, because he is a cosseted tool.

--More Glenn Beck, saying Texas should secede, maybe launch itself into space and fight with Martians, who knows? Has it not sunk in that the guy has got more loose screws than the Ikea Returns Department?

--Dick Morris! What sort of low opinion must you have of yourself to even associate with Dick Morris? I mean, you see this toe-sucking perv coming down the sidewalk, you cross to the other side of the street! Am I right? Seriously!

--Fox Business Channel's longhaired hipster nimrod says something about fascism that's literally the first time anyone in America ever saw him on the teevee because no one watches the Fox Business Channel.

Anyway, here's a funny mashup video. This is America, circa the twenty-first century, and this is precisely why advanced races aren't visiting us, with their cures for cancer.

[WATCH.]

MORE:
VOTE: The Worst Media Moment of Obama's First 100 Days [Media Matters]

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