The Jon Stewart/CNBC feud climaxed last night with “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer supplicating himself to an interview with Stewart.  It wasn’t pretty. And it wasn’t entirely fair to Cramer to take the fall for his network.

I’ve watched CNBC a lot over the past two years.  I even watched Cramer’s show for awhile until I couldn’t stand his hyperactivity any longer.  But Cramer isn’t the problem.  He was, I think, CNBC’s sacrificial lamb, and he probably hurt himself irrevocably by his performance last night.  It’ll be interesting to see if the interview is referenced tomorrow on the network.

But it’s a shame if it ends with Cramer.  He is an entertainer.  He did not, whether on his show or his appearances throughout the day on CNBC, really position himself as a reporter.  He is a stock trading advisor.  Sure, he often talked about investing for the long-term, but more often you have the sense that he’s just picking stocks for you to trade.  Maybe not day-trading, buying and selling the same stock within a day, but that he is advising his audience on what stocks are positioned for an immediate upside.

There are others on CNBC who do claim to be journalists who are nothing more than shills for their Wall St. buddies and their won right-wing politics.

The worst is Charlie Gasparino, the so-called “On-air editor.”  Exactly what is an “on-air editor”?  From what I’ve seen, it means that he tries to edit himself while he’s on air.  If so, he fails miserably.  He is constantly brought on to deliver “breaking news” he’s uncovered from his sources on Wall St..  He no sooner delivers the PR script handed to him by his sources than he starts delivering his opinions about the wisdom of what he’s heard.  And he is unfailingly dismissive of any political view not supported by the titans of the Street.  Yesterday, the token liberal discussing Obama’s economic plans was Robert Reich, who was constantly interrupted by Gasparino who brought up the canard that small businesses will be paying higher taxes because of Obama’s plan to let the Bush tax cuts expire (which is what Bush proposed when he signed the tax cut bill).  The fact is small businesses, defined by those employing 500 workers or fewer, are overwhelmingly either sole practitioners such as lawyers and doctors, incorporated– so the owners’ income is not the profit from the business—or they make far less than $250,000. 

Here’s the clip.  Listen to Gasparino interrupt Reich repeatedly.  It starts at about 3:30.

There are many others at CNBC who should be raked over the coals.  In the above clip, two other right-wingers are represented – Michelle Caruso-Cabrerra and Dennis Kneale. 

And the original “money honey” Maria Bartiromo sucks up to every CEO with pants on.    As an indication of her lack of seriousness, she reportedly has copyrighted the term “money honey.”

I wish Jon Stewart would now let Jim Cramer go and instead go after the rest of the CNBC faux journalists.

Now the big media guys are jumping in with criticism of how CNBC defends the big financial guys.

To watch CNBC today is to enter an alternative universe, where élites are populists, Wall Street is Main Street and bank executives are the oppressed.

The Center for American Progress has produced a new study of American values.  It seeks to address the notion that we are a “center-right” country.  I’ve maintained for a long time that we are not in many ways.  I’ve also argued that asking people if they are conservative or liberal is useless, as the categories don’t predict views on key issues.  As I said yesterday, I think the term “moderate” isn’t particularly helpful to progressives.  In fact, I am not surprised that many people would choose “conservative” as a self-descriptor.  The term suggest prudence and “not radical” or calm and measured.  The same is true of “moderate.”  The CAP study addresses this self-identification a little differently, most notably, making a distinction between progressive and liberal.

In this study, however, the electorate is broken down using a more expansive five-point scale of political ideology that reflects the variety of approaches people ascribe to today. Employing this more calibrated measure, 34 percent of the country identifies as “conservative,” 29 percent as “moderate,” 15 percent as “liberal,” 16 percent as “progressive,” and 2 percent as “libertarian.” After moderates are asked which approach they lean toward, the overall ideological breakdown of the country divides into fairly neat left and right groupings, with 47 percent of Americans identifying as progressive or liberal and 48 percent as conservative or libertarian. The rest are unsure or scattered among moderate and other approaches.

It also suggests that any term does not enable you to determine how people might feel about issues.

Non-college Americans are more populist and progressive than elites on some measures of government and economics and much more conservative on cultural and national security measures.

But most important is what people say about the issues

The rise of progressivism in America is reflected more starkly in direct ratings of various ideological approaches. Today, more than two-thirds of Americans rate a “progressive” approach to politics favorably, a 25-point increase in favorability over the last five years, with gains coming primarily from those who were previously unaware of the term. “Progressive” now equals ”conservative” in terms of overall public favorability (67 percent, respectively).

I’ve only skimmed the introduction.  I’m sure the entire study is useful to read.  You can download it from this link.  But at the very least, look at the table on pages 10-11.  Quite fascinating.

MoveOn and ACORN are joining forces to pressure Democrats who voted against the bankruptcy bill that made it easier for folks to emerge from bankruptcy and allow judges to impose new conditions on delinquent mortgages.

Ads are due to run in districts of the Dems who opposed the bill.  I like the move, but not the language the progressive groups use.

“We think it is significant that progressives are joining forces to hold congressional moderates accountable for their votes affecting working families,” ACORN Executive Director Steve Kest told POLITICO. “We think that it signals how seriously we take these issues in the face of the economic meltdown.”

The liberal coalition doesn’t seem to mind taking on Democrats, though it’s unclear if the ad campaign would extend to backing more liberal Democrats in primaries against moderates like Ellsworth and Hill next year. 

"We were appalled to see some congressional Democrats side with Wall Street while families in their districts are struggling to stay in their homes," said Robert Greenwald, president of Brave New Foundation, an organization spearheading the effort. "That is just unconscionable."

“Moderates” is not a word you want to use against your opponents.  “Moderate” hardly sounds bad.  Progressives shouldn’t use it against anti-middle class, pro-bank, reactionary Democrats. 

And while they’re at it, they should insist Politico refer to them as “progressives,” not “liberals.”  “Liberal” implies a lack of standards, values or limits, whereas progressive implies moving forward, making things better.

For the most part, “moderates refers to wishy-washy Democrats afraid of their own shadows, as this story suggests.  To turn its back on labor after all the unions did to elect Obama and many congressmen and women and senators is unconscionable.  Even if you think workers should be able to have a secret ballot, “card check” is something labor unions earned, and they shouldn’t be denied.

You might be criticized in it.  Everybody else is.  Steve Pearlstein woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday.

Also, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post reviews the recent CNBC criticism, most of which I had posted here, but he adds his own thoughts, which in a rare switch, I agree with.

I have a lot of respect for CNBC’s top journalists. And you could deliver a similar indictment of financial journalists overall — that with some exceptions, they operated on the assumption that the giant banks and mega-corporations were on sound footing and whatever risks they faced were manageable. The most egregious failure, in my view, was failing to fully report on the drastic cutbacks in federal regulation — the SEC’s shift to virtual voluntarism and the rise of a shadow banking system that sliced and diced and swapped paper beyond the reach of the authorities.

Too many of CNBC’s guests are fund managers with an interest in talking up stocks and analysts whose investment houses do business with corporate America.

Well, I’ll go this far with Kurtz.  I will assume that, given their backgrounds and education, that many CNBC journalists could be “top,” for which they should have our respect.  And not all of them inject their opinions.  And some, most notably Dylan Rattigan and Steve Liesman, occasionally inject a progressive opinion, which I like, but is no more defensible. 

Perhaps, it’s the leaders of CNBC who should first be faulted for telling the anchors to inject their opinions.  But until they track back to being good, objective, investigative journalists, I’m withholding my respect.

This has been said before but bears repeating, as it was today in Bob Herbert’s column.

As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher …than in 2005.

Come on, life is better than it was then.  It is – but for one reason only.

The standard of living for the average family improved not because incomes grew but because women entered the workplace in droves.

Which of course, left children in day care.  Now day care isn’t such a bad thing.  But isn’t it ironic that the economic policies initiated by Ronald Reagan and doubled down by Republican presidents and their pliant Congresses helped destroy the traditional two-parent family – with Mom home watching the kids — they claim to champion?

Obama is accused by the GOP and the financial goof balls on CNBC of making the stock market tank.  The chart below (which I hope is readable) shows the market’s fall since its high in October 2007.  I’ve also marked the week Obama was elected and the week he was inaugurated. 

First of all, it’s clear that most of the fall came before his election.  The pundits, of course, focus on the time since his election or inauguration. 

In between the two, you’ll notice a slight uptick from its low of 741 (I’m using the S&P) and a high the first full week of 2009.  It’s been down since then.  The Wall St. apologists would have you believe that Obama’s economic plans have caused the downturn.

But, I, listening to CNBC all day, can tell you that few, if any, of the pundits at the time (not the CNBC faux journalists who think every uptick is the beginning of a huge rally), thought the Dec.-Jan. rally was the turning point.  Often, they would describe this as a bear market rally, which is typical in an extended stock market decline.  Often, severe overselling of securities causes a rally as bottom fishers look to take on some risk.  Other such rallies occurred in the spring of 2008 and last July.  Most of the analysts suggested that either we would go lower or continually test the bottom, which at that time was about 741 on the S&P.  The prevailing wisdom is that we haven’t had the “capitulation” that marks the end of a bear market.  Such capitulation is marked by a high volume decline followed by a high volume upswing.  We haven’t had that yet.

As of this moment, we are at 685, or about another 7.5% of a downturn that, from its height of 1576, is down 56.5%.

Somehow, therefore, the market’s problems are Obama’s fault?

This story will be forgotten by tomorrow, though I’m sure it will be subject of much ranting on anti-immigration blogs. 

I, however, will likely bring it up later in the week, when prosecutors are due to announce a plea agreement with Bernie Madoff.  He faces 20 years in jail.  She got two and a half.  He stole about $50 billion.  She stole “tens of thousands of dollars” and is forced to make what appears to be full restitution.

Let’s see how justice plays out.