Sadly Beautiful

I have had a few letters from my reader friends asking me where I've been lately and why I missed my usual postings. My absence was due in large part to the recent passing of a dear friend who tragically took his own life and the whole affair really knocked the wind out of my sails.

Over the past weeks, I alternated between anger at him for choosing such a path, and a mixture of sadness with panic at the realization that he was gone forever...I would never be able to call, write or see him again. I also could not shake questions such as: Could I have been a better friend? Were there signs or clues I missed? If I had been more observant could I have changed anything?



Who was Brian to me?

Brian was a fantastic musician and guitar player. We had a mutual admiration in regards to our different talents - he was a technically brilliant guitarist while my strength was in arrangement. Whenever we got together to play, I always walked away having learned something. We also connected over our common musical interests, both having a secret love for old country music and other Americana long before it was retro-hip. I remember learning pieces that only he would appreciate when he heard them. Impressing him meant something to me. He was one of the only people I know, besides myself, who would just as likely listen to Sonic Youth as Hank Williams.

The guy loved to fish and approached it from a Zen-like perspective. Fishing was a way for him to achieve a temporary sense of peace. Some of my favorite memories are the times we went fishing together - although we probably said less than a dozen words to each other once we got to the water.



He was not really political, yet he was one of my most supportive friends when I decided to direct my attention towards things political. That might surprise people - as it surprised me. Perhaps he just saw a friend who was pursuing a passion and could appreciate that. I really treasure his encouragement now and probably should have thanked him more for it. I often complained to him about his cynicism and his typical "artist's disconnect" from the world. His response was to ask me to go fishing sometime with him... I wish I had taken him up on that more often.

Brian was always soft-spoken and I can't recall a time I ever heard him really raise his voice. He could be very funny in a quiet, dry way. His prank phone calls were legendary and he had actual jokes with punchlines. But even with the joking there was a perpetual aura of melancholy around him. Sometimes it seemed as though the time he spent with you was a short break from his real occupation of carrying around some invisible burden. It was as if he was setting down an psychic sack of heavy rocks to make you smile with a joke or a song, share a cigarette, and then he'd move on.




There are those who would probably not want me to write about the troubles in life Brian had. The people left behind want to put a halo on their loved ones. But if anyone knew him at all, they would know he didn't really hide his struggles. He was as complex as anyone else in his situation. There was the good, the bad and the tragic in Brian's life.

Too often I was a partner in crime in what was both of our more self-destructive periods. For better or worse we bonded over this too. All I wish to say about this is that Brian understood that he was probably self-medicating. He wanted to just feel alright for a short time. I doubt it worked.

Brian was a diagnosed manic-depressive. That in itself was nothing shocking. I would run out of fingers (and toes) if I tried to count the people I know with Bi-polar disorder. He liked to refer to himself as simply being "crazy". In truth there are other people who know his "mental" history better than I do. I had only heard second hand about suicide attempts in his past.

Brian liked to act - in front of me at least - as though he had it under control and carrying that invisible burden was all part of being "Brian" (I wish he hadn't). So the plain truth is that I never took it that serious (I wish I had). I know it was not an easy disorder to have but that's how it is for millions of people. And certainly the last thing I would have imagined was that at his age he had not come to some kind of terms with it and could actually do what he did on that awful day. But as an old friend reminded me after the fact, I was not looking at things through the bi-polar mind's eye.




I had noticed that this last year he looked very tired. When he smiled, his expression had to compete with deep cut worry lines on his face. The worry seemed to be winning out. He appeared to be aging faster than the rest of us. When he sang, I noticed his voice had developed a certain shaky authenticity as if he had really been digging deep in his soul. I thought that he had finally figured out how to be comfortable in his own skin. I could not have been more wrong it would seem.

I can only speculate, but now I think he was just plain tired of life. He was tired of carrying that heavy load. He was tired of being on a roller coaster and not friends or fishing or music or loved ones could offer a real respite from the crushing weight.

Still, I could not reconcile one thing: his total loss of hope. Hope was the life raft (with faith) that pulled me back from the edge so many times. It is the conviction that there is an equal chance that something good will happen as something bad happening ...It is my conviction that things will turn around and without hope it is quite possible I would not be here today.

Brian himself had always given me hope in a way...If he could make it through this world with what he had been through and dealt with - then we all could make it.

I could only think of one thing that could ever make me lose hope... that God forbid something happened to my child. I have to wonder what could have been Brian's equivalent to this?

Where did his hope go?

I will never know the answer to this question and I pray I never experience the death of Hope.

Now, my hope for Brian is that at least his soul can finally shed that weight he carried around for so many years. Perhaps now he can really find the peace this world would not give him...



Goodbye Brian.

ANOTHER KIND OF 'COMING OUT'

"I never heard you bashing Clinton or praising Reagan, and if I had, I imagine our friendship would have changed."
-A (former) friend





From what I have heard, coming out to friends and family about being gay is exceedingly difficult. I am inclined to believe that this is the truth. Telling your loved ones that you are part of a biological minority can't be easy- although these days it does not necessarily mean shocked parents won't have grandchildren. These days, there are support groups for parents with gay children, children with gay parents, and 'alliance' groups of all kinds. The media is more than friendly and they are an open majority in some places. So perhaps coming out is not quite as difficult as it once was.

But I will tell you about another sort of 'coming out' that is still quite difficult. This is my tale of a 'political coming out' and the surprising consequences. For many people in America, being right-of-center is no big deal - but when your circle of friends and associates is comprised of various musicians, artists, and non-conformists of all kinds - it's complicated.



I grew up in a house that was proud of its Central/Eastern European heritage and as a result, I was very aware of the the shear terror and genocide caused by the quest for Communist utopias. The oral history passed down through many Polish and Russian immigrant families is filled with the realities of what the 'progressives' in the West are so enamored with- pure death and destruction in the pursuit of social and economic equality. By the age of five, I knew who Stalin and Lenin were and grew up watching the white wash of history regarding the application of socialism. Many of my grandparents generation, who were lucky enough to come here, just couldn't fathom why some folks in America were in such a hurry to emulate such a catastrophe. From this wisdom, I acquired my first maxim which would guide my political thinking for the rest of my life:

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

As relatively recent immigrants, there was the desire to gain acceptance through serving America ( in contrast to being served by America- a mentality rampant today). To my fathers generation this meant joining the military and risking one's life so that there was no doubts about to whom they owed their allegiance. My father took this seriously enough to make every career choice one that served our country throughout his life and this would also leave an impression on me.

Because of my fathers career, my family had the opportunity to have house guests from the FBI, INTERPOL, various generals and other officers in the military, and men who only referred to their employer as "The Company". It was absolutely thrilling for me to listen quietly in the corner of our dim lit, cigar smoke-filled living room, like a fly on the wall, to their brilliant conversations over cognac and my mothers appetizers. They were not spiteful journalists from The Village or Berkeley who would have wet their pants when a car back-fired. These men were political insiders and men who devoted their lives to our nation - and everyone of them knew many who had sacrificed their lives in the line of this duty. Naturally, I could not comprehend everything they discussed. In fact, it took me years to fully understand the significance of many issues they covered. Unfortunately, many of their most dire predictions about the future of our nation has come to pass or are happening right now...

Yes, my upbringing definitely colored my viewpoint. I don't feel any reason to apologize for that. The wisdom of parents is a valuable primary resource - if they care enough to instill values and we are smart enough to listen (too often I didn't). My viewpoint was colored in the same way children of parents and grandparents who survived the Nazi Holocaust have their perceptions colored. (Although my grandfather, father, and I could never understand why the massacre of ten's of millions of people in "class" exterminations was somehow less important than "racial" extermination). See the horrible pictures here after you have finished reading



I was far too busy smoking pot and surfing to join the military or anything like that and
like many people growing up, I assumed that there had to be something flawed in the established values of my parents, society, and religion. I did not reject them outright, but I did set them aside. I decided that they would have to prove their worth and validity. In this way, one could not say I was indoctrinated - my viewpoint would have to be "recolored" by my own experience. As it turned out, there were many incidents that would reinforce the views I had inherited and set aside.



Throughout much of my late teens and twenties I was a absolute train wreck - there is no getting around that. I thought that playing in punk and indie bands was a license to intoxicate myself to near-death. I thought that creativity implied self-destruction. Yet, anyone who really knew me knew I was certainly not a fan of liberal politics regardless of my 'wicked ways'. There was just too many things being said which I knew to be at least historically counter-factual.My attitude at that time could easily have been passed off as the cynicism so popular with my generation and I may have used it as a way out of confrontations. I found it easier to avoid issues when I recognized inconsistencies in my peers politics. I also knew that I was in a very small minority, at least openly, regarding the issues I took a conservative position on. I instituted a personal 'Don't ask- Don't tell' policy.



But what I did do was listen. I listened for years. I noticed that my friends and associates began to define themselves as Democrats by default and many as liberals. I listened to their opinions. I read every tract and zine: from leaflets passed around in Gainesville to Maximum Rock and Roll opinion columns to the New York Times. It was clear to me then that the Democratic party was becoming more openly the party of Socialism. Also, I noticed, among other things, that in spite of the counter-culture's more crass and radical rhetoric, it was just another version and ally of mainstream liberal politics - designed to appeal to the 'angst' of my generation. It was similar to how the KKK utilized skinheads to attract an element they would not usually attract. I was not impressed.

And as I mentioned, there were incidents. Some subtle...some dramatic...



There were little things like a cartoon I saw in High Times magazine of all places...where the illustrator had a drawing of John Lennon singing, "...Imagine no possessions" in his epic song "Imagine". The author then pointed out that by the time of his death Lennon had accumulated tens of millions of dollars worth of possessions - none of which he was willing to part with during his life time. John Lennon was one of my all time idols - but wasn't that typical of the liberal elite! It is about selling a dream. It's about lying down rules for everyone else. It is like Al Gore with his massive carbon footprint telling you to drive a certain car and not to fly so much.




Another incident occurred during an early morning walk on the beach when I came upon a washed up raft constructed by Cubans desperate to escape their socialist 'paradise'. As I inspected the craft, which was no more than plastic storage drums lashed together, I thought about how these people were so desperate to come to America that they crossed the open ocean with a 50% chance of perishing at sea. I found out later that the group included several women and children and that they had lost their meager provisions early on in the trip. Yet why would they come to America? Why would they risk their lives to come to this allegedly racist and callous country? Why would they come to a place where the "rich" exploited the "poor" and only a narrow segment of white oligarchs lived at everyone else's expense. Unless of course none of that was true...


The next day after my walk on the beach, I was recording at a studio away from home. Somehow the conversation turned political and someone mentioned socialism and how Castro was 'making it work'. With the raft fresh in my mind, I was a little confused at that type of thinking. I looked around at all the flashing lights and knobs, the guitars and other instruments, and I felt a little ashamed. People didn't have 'stuff' like this in Cuba (except of course for the political elite). Most twenty-somethings didn't have time to write songs about how miserable they were or how broken their hearts were. They were either trying to survive each day or constructing shoddy rafts to escape. When they did write songs which spoke out against the government they went to jail like the typical case of punk rocker Gorki Aguila.



And here I was, in a town so liberal that no one would question a comment about Castro 'making socialism work', and inhabited by many kids enjoying college on either the government's or mom and dad's dime. Here we were, being 'bohemian', enjoying the fruits of capitalism - the luxury of free time and the luxury to complain. It was as surreal and poignant as seeing the raft itself. Some of us had money, some of us didn't but as kids in America - we were all spoiled.

Still, I was far from being outspoken or even considering myself part of any discernible political platform. I did notice that these fringe crowds I bounced around in, the ones who gleamed with pride over their supposed tolerance and open-mindedness, were actually confined by a fierce orthodoxy of their own. They never had a problem generalizing about "squares", "jocks", or "rednecks" - all of whom they asserted were "bigots" and "prejudiced". The irony in all of this seemed to escape my friends and I quietly called it the "tyranny of the tolerant".

I also recognized that it would be absolute career suicide for someone like myself, who was courting the collage radio and Indie rock circuit, to have an opinion other than what was the prevailing liberal dogma. I held my tongue- yes- but I would never forgot the hypocrisy. And this observation did more to reassure me that I was on the right path.



While I was listening to the people around me, and those who were supposedly our philosophical idols, I got into the habit of reading a lot- but not materials from the people on the side I was heading towards. In fact, I made it a habit to read just the opposite types of books. I went out and bought the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. I bought books by Chomsky and similar cranks. I took out the highlighters and pens and made notes in the margins. I knew that I would have to direct my collage energies towards economics so I could see if any of this added up. It didn't.

At that point in my life I had concluded that I was finished pretending that my silence was some type of general cynicism. I decided that, If asked or directly confronted with an issue, I would give my honest opinion even if it was (gasp) a conservative one. This was a far cry from being on the offensive - true. But I had the suspicion that friendships would be lost should the truth about my persuasion be known. As amazing as it was that I even cared, we were in the doldrums of the Bush years so there was little need to press the issue.

But times...they were a changin'

Stay tuned for part two...

A Few Things To Consider

(Early Blogspot editon may be updated and/or revised 8/11/09)

Because I have been busy working on a project, I have to be brief this week. I do have a few things for you to consider. Also, I thank everyone for visiting this blog as much as you all do. I enjoy your words of support and thoughts. I wish the opposition (I know you Liberals are reading...) would answer some of the questions I often pose to them. As for my fellow members of the "conspiracy" - We have only begun to fight!





1) If a business man came up to you and asked you to invest money from your check, would you do it? What if that business man had failed in every single venture? What if you, your children, and future grandchildren already had to pay just to keep these past failed ventures barely afloat? That answer would certainly be: NO Way! Yet, if you swap 'business man' for the United States Government and investment capital for obligatory tax dollars - this is what the Obama administration is telling you they will do with your tax dollars to fund schemes including a health care plan. How much of a return has the average hardworking citizen ever gotten from entitlement programs?



2) These are turning out to be exciting days in politics! Americans can only be pushed so far and lied to before they start to get angry. "We the People" are actually pushing back. I love that they are calling us an "angry mob"...it makes me feel young again. Americans are smart enough to realize that the health care system needs reform but we actually want to fix it - not make it worse! You don't tear down a house just because it has rotten wood in some places- and you certainly do not replace it with a rickety shack!



3) It is true that the White House has asked it's supporters to inform on those of us who are speaking out. They have asked for devout people to forward emails to them concerning opposition to the Obama's health care scheme. Can you imagine if Bush had done something similar? No, liberal friends, asking citizens to be aware of and report possible terrorism is not any where close to this! There is an outrage.

3) We now have a government in power that hates its nation and hates the ideals which have made us the greatest country in history. Those little, sniveling, liberal elites who consider the Founding Fathers irrelevant, dead white men, are in charge... So, what are you willing to do about it?



4) What the hell is up with all my old 'punk rocker'/'alternative' friends who have turned their backs on our commitment to individualism and now actually trust in the government to 'provide' for society? They have sold out and become 'Tools of State Oppression" (or just tools)! This is truly a sickness and I will explain how it happened soon...




5) I was way ahead of events when I wrote about "Dissension in the age of Obama" some time ago. Please go back and read my blog piece. Dissension is no longer patriotic according to the Left now that their man is in charge. I suppose that would make sense - if they actually believed that their own dissension was ever really patriotic. The age old Marxist trick of classifying any opposition as 'Nazis', 'fascist', right-wing extremist' - is being employed against anyone who disagrees with this administration. That means they cannot meet us on equal terms in the arena of logic so they resort to name calling. Ironically, Hitler's National Socialism would actually envy many of Obama's socialistic ideals.



6) Remember a critical step towards fascism is single party rule which precedes a dictatorship. The democrats are close to controlling all three branches of our government. The political opposition is impotent. The situation is not helped by some wishy-washy Republicans as demonstrated during the Sotomayor confirmation. What will help are "grass roots" movements which the Obama Administration and their Media lapdogs cannot deny or suppress.

7) There is another name for "Racial Profiling"...it's called good police work! If you see a scrawny white boy in a mostly black neighborhood (it could have been me six or seven years ago) then he is probably up to no good. Likewise, a black guy in a mostly white neighborhood should expect to look out of place. It is not racism - just reality. Consider this: I know of many all black neighborhoods but not one all white neighborhood. I also know that a black man can survive a midnight stroll through a mostly white neighborhood. Yes, maybe some one will call him the "n" word when the peep out their window. Yes, the cops might ask him what he is doing. However, there are many neighborhoods where a white person will not survive more than a few blocks without being assaulted or killed. This is the cold truth. If you don't believe me, then I will drop you off at the Liberty City exit in Miami, or some place in the Bronx and you can call me if you survive until daylight.

My Facebook Quiz Experiment

I admit that boredom will sometimes drive me to taking those silly little quizzes on Facebook. I think everyone does, no matter how much we try to avoid them, and we have all wasted 5 minutes in worse ways! If there is even the slightest chance we can learn a little more ourselves than it is worth the time…am I right?

I have made it a point on this blog to stress the importance of people learning about conservatism from actual conservatives. It is simple - the left has an amoral culture in which ends justify means. This in turn makes any kind of lie, character assassination, or contextual distortion permissible.

In spite of the liberal media's smoke screen, when I personally approach a political issue with someone from the inside out – they actually express support for the conservative viewpoint more often than not (although they may not even know it is a conservative viewpoint). What I mean by the ‘inside out” is to begin by identifying our common goal (ie. make health care affordable for everyone). Next, I offer solutions to achieve this common goal and then identify it as a 'Conservative' solution. The key is to disarm the Left's noisily constructed stigma it has attached to conservatism.




The Experiment: I decided to design a quiz which was issue rather than stereotype oriented, and see what results I would get. The quiz would indicate whether people had a conservative or liberal standpoint, on at least the issues it mentions. Understandably, a 10 or 15 question quiz has to rely on generalizations to a certain degree but I avoided the typical ones I have seen in similar quizzes.

In truth, this quiz was primarily geared towards liberals and those who are undecided. If I could get them to recognize for even a moment that they might not really be all that liberal or maybe what they thought we conservatives believed all this time was not quite accurate...this was my ultimate intent.

The Quiz: "Find out where your beliefs put you on the political spectrum! You might be surprised..."

1) Hard-working taxpayer money should be used to pay for health care, food stamps, and other social services for illegal immigrants.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

2) Skin color should be a factor in hiring, university admissions, and government contracts.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

3) Standards and qualifications should be raised or lowered depending on skin color.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

4) The government knows best how to spend the money I earn.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

5) Some groups of people deserve special protection under the law - more than me and my family.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

6) Dictators and terrorists are actually reasonable and just misunderstood.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

7) The federal government has (its own) money to spend on programs for people.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

8) I should be forced to subsidize art regardless of how sexist, pornographic, or offensive.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

9) The government is capable of deciding what an "acceptable" standard of living is for everyone.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

10) Everyone should be forced to pay for government funding of 'medical procedures' and scientific research even if they are morally against it.

a) yes

b) no

c) don’t know

Scoring: I am not sure what formula Facebook used to score people but I imagine it is something similar to this: 1) 6 or more "no's" is a conservative response 2) 6 or more "yes's" is a liberal response and likewise with "don't knows" being an undecided response.

Conservative:

You are individualistic and independent! You trust yourself to know what is best for you and your family. You don't believe that some politicians in Washington should take your hard earned money to spend on what they believe to be moral or workable!

Liberal:

You are a dreamer who thinks that that the government can be trusted to make life fair for all. You think in terms of society rather than the individual. You trust that the government will do the 'right' thing with your tax dollars...once they figure out what the 'right' thing actually is!

Don’t know/Undecided:

You either: really don't care about the world around you or can't comprehend simple political issues. In both cases you are perfect fodder for flashy campaigns and sound byte politics. In other words just the kind of sheep the politicians love!

My User Results: At the time of writing I had 46 users. Of that group less than 12 were friends which I knew to be politically conservative. There were at least 7 friends which I knew to generally consider themselves liberal. Of the remainder, I did not know what their political leanings were but we can at least assume 50% liberal and 50% conservative.

The results of this quiz showed that every single user scored as a conservative! Even those people I knew to consider themselves liberal and voted as such in the past scored as conservatives!

Could you be an unwitting member of the right-wing conspiracy?!


Final Thoughts:

Clearly, the results were interesting but they are not surprising. Why? Because our Conservative ideals make the most sense; they make moral and practical sense. When people, even liberal leaning people, actually take a moment a look at what we want and what our solutions are - they have no choice but to agree with what we have been saying all along. I sincerely hope that a few of those folks who took this quiz, and were surprised to have themselves labeled "conservative", might dig a little deeper next time into an issue. Perhaps they might open their minds and not listen to what Liberals say Conservatives stand for. Perhaps they will listen to what common sense tells them...

The actual quiz on Facebook

The Boo-yah Marxist

Once in awhile something comes up which really blows my mind. Usually it is something that slips under the radar- on the outer edges of some well covered main event. One of these well covered events was the verbal slap-down by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart of CNBC's Jim Cramer back in March 12, 2009. Jim Cramer, the host of 'Mad Money', is the loud-mouthed stock analyst who barks out his opinion to people calling into his fast-paced show. Personally, I could never get into the guy’s whole presentation. The last thing I need to see more of is a sweaty, bald headed freak screaming "Boo-yah!" and any serious investor, who buys individual stocks, is not going to rely on this guys advice. Mad Money is 'irrational exuberance' defined and symptomatic of the carnival atmosphere endemic in our financial markets.

That being said, if you followed this clown’s advice and got burned - It's really hard to feel sorry for you. Sound investing is about making unemotional decisions based on long boring research.

I recommend watching Jim Cramer's appearance on 'The Daily Show' here. It is a great example of the Left eating itself and it is hard to argue when Jon Stewart explains how he is at least a more honest ‘snake oil’ salesman than Cramer. When Stewart tells Cramer that investing is not a game -the crap really hits the fan.

Wait, did I say, “…a great example of the Left eating its self”?

Indeed, I did! If you think that a populist (Stewart) was standing up for the 'little guy' against a typical example of an evil capitalist (Cramer)...you would be dead wrong.

The truth is, Jim Cramer was not the target Stewart and others thought him to be. In one of those ‘under the radar’ things, we found out exactly who this big mouth stock picker really is.

Two months after Jon Stewart humiliated him in front of the world, Cramer appeared in the '10 Questions' feature in Time magazine (read/listen here). Question four asked if posterity would look back on the “financial innovations of the last several decades with regret". Do you know what this supposed arch-capitalist said? He said, "the only guy who really called this right was Karl Marx. Marx understood what would happen if you let the market run amok."

Flabbergasting! This is worse than any horrible stock call Cramer ever made! Karl Marx, who not only lived during a time when the markets, as we know them, either didn't exist or were barely developing, called 'this' right? Karl Marx, who lived during a time when the Hapsburg's and Romanov's ruled, called 'this' right?

Cramer completely drops sail for kook-land when he continues, "Of, course, it was done by right-wing Republicans. They brought our nations to our knees..."

RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANS?! Well, Jon Stewart thinks it was people like YOU, Jim Cramer - Which is kind of funny because normally Jon Stewart is saying stuff like that about Republicans. (Is your head spinning yet?)

The ’10 questions’ article gets even better. When asked about inflation in question five(as a result of the Obama deficit), Cramer defends Obamanomics and says, "...perhaps we learn from history and worry about inflation after we worry about taking a Great Depression off the table." Have you ever read a history book Jim? If you did, you would know that Hoover’s concern over inflation was not the cause of the depression (and this man was giving financial advice on CNBC)!

Another jewel of insanity was Cramer's response to a question six about whether or not young people will be afraid to enter the stock market. His reply is, 'Yeah...Unless we bring back the regulations that we had pre-Bush, unless we prosecute the bad actors..." You mean the bad actors like market-hating Marxists who made a living off of short selling, hedge funds, and stock picking? Hey, that’s Jim Cramer!

Who is this train wreck? We know now, from his own words, that Jim Cramer is not a capitalist - he just played one on TV. I am not sure he is really a Marxist - because that would require an ethos however misguided. What Jim Cramer is in reality, is a greedy worm who is just as likely to make money selling stock tips as he would be informing on a neighbor if he lived in the Soviet Union. He is an opportunist.

There was a calculated purpose on Cramer’s part for saying what he did in the Time article. He does, after all, work for a liberal news outlet and after his slamming on 'The Daily Show' he had to do some damage control. He has a career to think about. In order to please the 'powers that be' in the Drive-by Media, he used the article to 1) protect his network, 2) profess Marxism, 3) blame a right-wing conspiracy 4) support Obama and 5) blame Bush…Ah, the ‘Formula of Celebrity Redemption”. True, it is usually done with more finesse but “Boo-yah” Cramer wasn’t known for being subtle. All he has to do now is lay low, hope this whole "Stewart-thing" continues to blow over and his career should be safe.

Such is life in the media playground of the Left. You never know when it will turn on you to serve its own purpose. Jim Cramer appeared to be an arch-capitalist villain who left The Daily Show with his tail between his legs, but maybe he was always just a delusional Liberal or just delusional. Maybe when he saw how quick a big dog like Stewart could crush him, the Time article was a way to beg for his career back and declare his allegiance to the powerful Left. Who knows? One thing is certain - for God’s sake don’t get stock tips from a Marxist. What's next, a comedian becoming a senator? Oops, too late...