They were at it again. The so-called "mainstream media" on their Sunday news shows, telling the American people what's going on in an objective, journalistic manner.

Oh, sorry, April Fools Day was last week....

Instead, we were treated to more fools on the hill, talking foolish nonsense.

As Nicole Belle explains:

It’s really tempting to talk about the establishment media as a monolith, even though it really isn’t true. But listen to these chuckleheads and tell me that they are not actively colluding to hurt the country.

Jim Cramer, who famously had his stock picks analyzed and found to perform worse than the market average, is convinced he has the answer to our economic and job woes: the Keystone Pipeline!

Fox News Anchor Greta Van Susteren, who oddly showed up on an ABC News show, failed miserably in trying to explain why the Republicans refuse to raise taxes: because we don’t have the money. Go ahead, make sense of that. Luckily, Paul Krugman was there to set her straight on another ‘laughable’ assertion that the Obama administration was strangling businesses with regulations and that was why the March jobs report was so dismal.

Lindsey Graham didn’t pass up another chance to be on the Sunday shows and let us know what a drama queen he is. He vowed to keep up the Benghazi outrage if Hillary Clinton officially runs for president. But that’s not all. He’s really, really encouraged that Obama is willing to let Grandma eat catfood, because he characterized it as the president “showing a little bit of leg here.” Can I just say ew?

Swanson heir Tucker Carlson, the new host of Fox & Friends Weekend, thinks unemployment insurance benefits are unnecessary and wasteful, but his guest John Tamny, editor of Forbes and RealClearPolitics has to one up Carlson by suggesting that scrapping UEI altogether would be the kindest to the poor, because it disincentives them from looking for work.

Hear Nicole Belle and Nicole Sandler with "Fools on the Hill" every Monday morning at 11:20 ET, or archived anytime, at RadioOrNot.com

While still a positive, there's no question that last month's jobs report was disappointing. And financial soooper-gen-i-us (/sarcasm) Jim Cramer knows who to blame. None other than Our Lady of the Sherry, Peggy Noonan.

GREGORY: Let’s look at the numbers here; the unemployment right now is 7.6%, only 88,000 jobs created. You look at the context in terms of recent months, we have that chart as well, you’ve got much fewer than we’ve seen. What’s going on?

CRAMER: This is stunning. Stunning. I think a lot of it had to do with fear-mongering. Remember we had Peggy Noonan on? Not that I don’t…she’s the fear monger in chief. The president did make people feel everything is going to shut down in the country because of the sequester. A lot of the CEOS were scared; a lot of the small business people held back, bankers would tell you that. Only Ben Bernanke, Fed Chief, got this right. He seemed to understand that the country’s hiring is really coming back down.

I know it will shock and surprise you that Peggy Noonan's appearance on last week's Meet the Press included absolutely zero comments on jobs and the sequester, proving once again that Jim Cramer cannot think his way out of a paper bag.

Jim Cramer did also call out President Obama's fear-mongering as well, which frankly, proved to be accurate when he warned that the sequester could hurt jobs. Evidential proof is a concept largely foreign to Cramer. It's interesting that Cramer adopts the framing of right wing blogs to implicate Obama.

There is little doubt that the obstruction and gamesmanship in DC surrounding the sequester, the trumped-up deficit "crisis" and absolute demand from within the Beltway for austerity measures has made an impact on hiring and jobs. Who has confidence in these yahoos in DC anymore to work on behalf of Americans? Paul Krugman:

That deficit has declined from 5.6 percent of potential GDP in 2011 to 2.5 percent in 2013 — that’s 3 percent of GDP, which is a lot of austerity. Not all of that cut has even hit yet — the sequester isn’t in the macro numbers yet — but the rise in the payroll tax is very clearly driving the latest bad numbers, which show big declines in retail.

This is really stupid; as long as we’re at the zero lower bound, austerity is a huge mistake. Yet for what, the third time since 2009, all discussion in Washington has turned away from job creation to deficits (even though the debt problem has largely faded away) and the need for an early Fed exit from stimulus (even though unemployment remains high and inflation low).

Clearly, the answer is to cut Social Security!

Would it be too much to ask NBC News to stop propping up someone with little understanding like Jim Cramer and actually be informative for their viewers?

Is there any economic issue that Jim Cramer actually understands well?

Clearly, his stock tips prove that his understanding of investments leaves a lot to be desired. Jon Stewart simply eviscerated him on The Daily Show, leaving him a quivering mess. Now one would think that would cause Cramer to look much more seriously at his body of work, to show that he actually merits having his own financial show on a financial channel.

But that presumes far too much when it comes to Jim Cramer. Jim Cramer's idea for President Obama to 'fix' the economy? The Keystone XL Pipeline!

You want to put 60 thousand people to work in this country in four weeks because these jobs are there? Keystone Pipeline. But this is a fossil fuel vs greens debate. Why do I say the pipeline does work? Because these pipelines have been the creators, the largest creators of jobs in the last four years. You may hate fossil fuel. You may think it’s ridiculous to be able to have it so that oil and gas are in charge of hiring in this country. But we’ve got tons of oil and gas in the wrong places. You put people to work on pipelines, $60,000 is the minimum that you pay a pipeline worker. You put people to work all over this country. That’s what needs to happen.

Is anyone surprised to hear that just like his stock predictions, Cramer's assessment of the KXL pipeline is similarly pulled from his posterior?

First, TransCanada, the Canadian company seeking permission to build the KXL, estimates only 15,000 temporary jobs, which is only a statistical drop in the bucket when looking at the unemployment rolls, according to a Cornell University study on the impact. Moreover, the same Cornell study claims that long-term, the pipeline could prove to be a job-killer through higher fuel costs (remember, this pipeline is intended for Canadian tar sands oil to get to the Gulf of Mexico to sell to the highest bidder on the WORLD MARKET--none of this benefits directly US oil costs) and potential environmental disasters. One only needs to look at Arkansas to see how no matter how much Washington DC and TransCanada pooh-poohs the risk, the potential is devastating.

And guess what, Cramer? Top job creators in this country? Not oil companies.

But seriously, does anyone expect him to understand anything well any more?

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I realize no one really cares what Jim Cramer thinks, but since he's broadcasting his nonsense out to the numb masses who actually tuned into this shriek-filled freakshow on Morning Joe, I think it's worth nominating him for the award of Liar of the Week over these remarks over what the health care law will and will not do to the economy.

Here's what he said:

CRAMER: This is a... look, I think the debate is a fabulous one to have, but it is completely taking away from the fact that we are going to have a hard time hiring once this plan is put in place. I've had a couple of CEO's come on just in the last few weeks. When you talk about whether they want to hire, this is what they bring up! You know Chipolte which may be one of the great job creators in this country and they pay a lot for their people. This is a company that is very forward.

When I asked them, I said what does Obamacare do for you? They just say, nothing we hope because the Supreme Court has got to say no to it. I mean, this is the front and center of what could derail the economy. […]

Health care reform in general! I'm just saying, look, the issue, the Catholic charities are front and center […]

Business leaders fear this more than anything. They don't want to hire. It's part of the underground economy that's going to develop because no one wants to reform the books, because of Obamacare.

And people have to recognize that this is a front and center issue for every CEO I deal with. And another reason they don't want to hire people here, is they want to hire there. They want to put the jobs in Asia. They want to put the jobs in Mexico, because they don't want to think about how much more it's going to cost them to hire a new person.

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There are moments where I despair for the fate of this country, because it seems to me that we operate from completely different sets of realities based on the same set of facts. Unfortunately, Jim Cramer exemplifies this kind of "make-your-own-reality" within the media. You'd think he'd have learned after his humiliation on The Daily Show. But no, Jim Cramer unabashedly keeps blurring the lines between business reporting and market advocacy.

Cramer came on Hardball on Friday to insist that Wall Street just hates Obama's guts and they're just waiting for that cuddly Republican to get into office before they unleash all those jobs we all know they have. It's all that taxation and regulations that mean ol' Barack Obama insists on inflicting on Wall Street.

CRAMER: Okay, first, I’m going to agree with you, that the market has been fabulous, which is one of the reasons I’m always so astonished when people tell me that the problem is Obama. I mean, it’s clear Washington can be dysfunctional, but Democrats and Republicans not getting together. But when you get offline with CEOs, it’s not just Wall Street, but Industrial America, what they tend to say is, listen, we want to add, we want to hire, we want to grow in the United States, but everything is so up in the air and when it gets to the point where we’re thinking about what Washington’s going to do, we know we’re going to be the loser if President Obama is making the decision, because President Obama does not favor wealth creation and corporate profits. Not, the profits are huge. People have made a lot of money, but that is the rap that I hear.

MATTHEWS: What is it particularly when a banker or a rich guy, anybody who’s got to make thse big decisions—well, let’s look at some of these numbers first, because I think they’re really informative. When President Obama took office January 20th, 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 7949. Today, it closed at 11, 509, up from yesterday. That’s a 31% increase since Obama’s been president. Well, that alone sould be, wow, this guy’s good. And then there’s corporate profits. The New York Times cites a study by Northeastern University, and economist reports, “since the recovery began in June of 2009, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of that growth.” This is the stuff that causes revolutions, from the bottom, not from the top.
[..]
CRAMER: Look, I’m telling you that when you get off the desk with them, they really just feel like, look, if we got a Republican in there, we could really do a great thing in this country by hiring a lot of people.

My rage meter at Cramer's gleeful dishonesty is just redlining. CEOs are telling him privately that they're just waiting for a Republican in the White House to hire people while Americans suffer through massive unemployment? Well then NAME NAMES, Cramer, you dishonest jerk, and tell us just which CEOs are telling you this and who are acting so treasonously. Because Chris Matthews--to his credit, since you apparently don't believe in offering up these facts to these business owners--pointed out all the reasons that Obama could hardly be considered anti-business. These asses were bailed out by American taxpayers, posted record profits, pocketed nice little bonuses...but they need a Republican in the White House to pass that largesse back to the Americans? Well to put it bluntly, eff that.

And eff Cramer and his ridiculous advocacy for Republican lies.

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(video h/t Oliver Willis)

Jim Cramer can hardly contain himself as the market falls nearly 1000 points in the span of a few minutes, and uses Procter & Gamble as an exemplar of how investors can turn a downturn to their advantage.

If ever there was a video that highlights the deficiencies in our 24/7 all-speculation-all-the-time cable punditry corps, this is it. As it turns out, the market drop was hastened, magnified and traders brought to their knees over this:

The selling was exacerbated by a huge drop in Dow component Procter & Gamble (PG, Fortune 500). There may have been technical glitches which caused it to plunge 37% in minutes. P&G's slump was responsible for 172 points of the 992.60 the Dow initially lost.

I have some real problems with this so-called glitch. Let's start with Jim Cramer using it as an object lesson for what to do with a steep market drop. If there was really a "glitch", it would have triggered sharp program trades and hedge fund transactions. Aren't we all glad we're taking Investments 101 this year so we know what those terms mean? As Cramer points out in the video, the price drop makes P&G a "completely different stock" with a completely different set of decision points around buying it.

Now add that reality to programmed trades. Those are trades set up far in advance by investors, executed by computers, and usually in large quantities. It turns into a cascade: The price triggers a programmed trade, which triggers a hedge fund trader's response, which triggers panic on the floor of the Dow, which triggers Cramer sitting at his desk speculating about how to profit from others' ruin.

There are some very real reasons for volatility in the market. A weak Euro, Greece's shaky economy, tightening credit in other European countries and the UK Elections have everyone on edge in a global market setting.

Still, a pricing "error" should not cause a 1000 point plunge in market indices in such a short period of time. I can't help thinking there are speculators out there who made a great deal of money on this.

Private Buffoon: Jim Cramer looked into his crystal ball and saw a huge stock rally after a Brown win. Uh oh.

Womenstake: The 37th Anniversary of Roe and the importance of judges. Evil Slut Clique remembers.

Talk 2 Action: The Ugandan "kill the gays" network organizing in...Newark?

The Intercept: Massachusetts miracle? Follow the money.

Know Your Government: Who's Up for a March on Washington?

Guest round up by Blue Gal, send tips to (new email) bluegal AT crooksandliars DOT com.

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Please support our drive to Fix CNBC and sign the petition. Jim Cramer finally commented on his much talked about appearance on The Daily Show after he was left sitting there, almost teary eyed and speechless when he was confronted by Jon Stewart face to face. His remarks on The Today Show just underscored how out of touch this man is and what lengths he'll go to distort the truth. (rough transcript)

Viera: ...you guys had been cheerleaders for the financial bubble, that you had also allowed CEO's to come on the shows and essentially lie to the American public without really challenging them. I don't want to rehash the whole thing, but did he have a point?

Cramer: I don't think so.

Viera: Not on any of this?

Cramer: Well I think it was a naive and misleading thing to attack the media. We weren't behind this. CNBC in particular has been out front on this"

Viera: So you don't think the media bears any responsibility, Jim?

Cramer: I think there are people that bear so much more responsibility that it's just wrong headed...

Sure, there were a lot of parties responsible for the meltdown of the economy, but that doesn't absolve the news media for turning a blind eye to it, Mr. Jim. Meredith Viera really asked the right questions so good for her and as Cramer bashes Jon Stewart I would like to ask this. Why was he such a coward on the Daily Show when he had the chance to confront Stewart?

Comedy Central makes a good point in there piece : Jim Cramer Attacking Jon Stewart Again From a Safe Distance.

Since Cramer became so outspoken about CNBC's role in the financial crisis, he and Rick Santelli are becoming the poster boy's for it, but Cramer has another huge credibility problem and his name is Lenny Dykstra. Cramer has a lot of juice in the Wall Street world and he promoted Lenny Dykstra like no other. On HBO he said this:

Jim Cramer: “He is one of the great ones in this business. Lenny Dykstra.” HBO: “Lenny Dykstra?” Jim Cramer: “Lenny Dykstra.”

So much so that Lenny was posting his stock picks on The Street. Well, it's now being revealed that Dykstra is possibly a fraud.

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Seriously, is there anyone more annoying than Tucker Carlson? The least self-aware pundit on TV, still nursing his own bruised ego from the thorough spanking he received at the hands of a comedian that took down his show, cried that Jon Stewart is nothing more than a partisan hack in "attacking" Jim Cramer. Mr. "I'm an ideologue, not a partisan" repeats the favorite GOP meme that Cramer was only attacked because he dared to criticize Obama's budget. Hmm ... repeating GOP talking points ... but Carlson's not speaking on behalf of his party, no sirree.

Leave it to Carlson to completely miss the point. Despite Stephanie Miller's and Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik's multiple attempts to reason with the petulant, whiny man-child Carlson devolves into, Tucker can never grasp that the whole event was precipitated by Rick Santelli's rant on the trading floor and that Stewart's focus was not Cramer so much as the responsibility CNBC holds in informing the public rather than giving corporations carte blanche to propagandize on their channel. He's more concerned that Stewart, in his attempt to speak on behalf of the Democratic Party (huh?) is losing 'teh funny,' and will go the way of Lenny Bruce. Double huh?

The best part of the whole segment is after Carlson's plaintive wails (who needs a nap?), Howard Kurtz airs the Crossfire segment where Stewart calls Carlson a "partisan hack", a nice little STFU in not so many words. Perrspectives has more:

Prior to making his case this morning on CNN's Reliable Sources that Stewart is a "sanctimonious, partisan hack" and an operative for the Democratic Party, Carlson on Friday denounced him to the Politico:

Carlson, reached Friday, described Stewart as "a partisan demagogue."

"Jim Cramer may be sweaty and pathetic--he certainly was last night--but he's not responsible for the current recession," Carlson told POLITICO. "His real sin was attacking Obama's economic policies. If he hadn't done that, Stewart never would have gone after him. Stewart's doing Obama's bidding. It's that simple."

Of course, Jon Stewart's weeklong diatribe against CNBC was initially triggered by the network's Rick Santelli slandering troubled home mortgage owners as "losers." And as it turns out, it is Tucker Carlson who has made a career out of doing someone else's bidding. That someone else is the Republican Party - and his father Richard.

The scandal surrounding the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame and the subsequent conviction of Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby provides case in point. Few voices on television were more strident in Libby's defense than Tucker Carlson. But throughout, he remained silent on his father's leadership of the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund.

From the beginning, Tucker Carlson aimed both barrels at Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. In November 2005, he insisted Fitzgerald was "accusing Libby - falsely and in public - of undermining this country's security," adding, "Fitzgerald should apologize, though of course he never will." Reversing his past position in support of independent counsels, Carlson in February 2007 blasted "this lunatic Fitzgerald, running around destroying people's lives for no good reason."

Hey, Tucker "Pot" Carlson, guess what sanctimonious color you are!

John Amato:

At the end of the segment, Howard Kurtz give us his take and informs America that since Stewart is a comedian, he doesn't have to follow journalistic ethics for his humor and thinks Jon unfairly blamed CNBC for the entire economic meltdown. Using a wide brush to paint The Daily Show tries to diminish the impact Stewart had on CNBC because he didn't unfairly criticize them. Cramer's performance justified Stewart's concerns. That wasn't what Stewart was doing at all, but then Kurtz praises Stewart and says talking heads can learn a lot from him in their efforts to get at the truth from our politicians.

Kurtz: He has a way of cutting through the clutter and using clips to show when people were wrong. I think we need more of that.

Ya think?

Oopsie-daisies. Talk about your unexpected consequences. The highly-blogged about tête-à-tête between Jon Stewart and CNBC's Jim Cramer has exposed the very ugly underbelly of how the former hedge-fund manager made money before his TV career. Former Congressman Tom Davis (R-VA) says it's time some investigator takes a closer look at Cramer:

CNN reporter Jim Acosta reflected on limited regulation of hedge fund’s and how they attracted “wealthy investors.” He then turned to former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., once chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, who said Cramer’s the reason hedge funds should be considered for more regulation.

“I think he’s become a poster child for why hedge funds need more regulation and transparency,” Davis said.

When asked if what Cramer said was illegal, Davis admitted that it was not, but “should be. He may well have crossed the line.”

Davis suggested the powers that be “ought to be looking at” Cramer’s confessed manipulation from 2006. “I think the tragedy is over the last few years nobody’s been looking at this at all.”

Wow. A Republican calling for more regulations and ethics over the interests of the oligarchy? Will wonders never cease?