Of course the big news of the day across the board was the unexpected, shocking sudden death of NBC News Bureau Chief, and moderator of Meet the Press, Tim Russert. I do share the shock. And I do agree that Russert had a childlike excitement about politics that was contagious. I share that excitement. And I do agree that Russert did great research, and would often catch his guests in obvious contradictions in their publicly recorded and reported statements.

The one obvious exception to this was the Chris Matthews show, and NBC show. At no time during the 1/2 hour Matthews' show did anyone on the show mention Russert's name. HMMMM? One would be brain dead not to notice that! Even the shows on other networks that compete with Meet the Press talked glowingly about Russert.

One thing that was weird about today is that is was a day to tout the conservatives. Matthews' show's panel had what I consider to be all conservatives in various degrees. The most "liberal" of the day was Katty Kay, his every week guest from the BBC, who gets little press coverage in the US, but who always sits closest to Matthews. HMMMMM about that too! I don't really consider her a strong liberal. The rest of the panel, Jim Kramer, the cable TV financial advisor who long ago lost it, Kathleen Parker, and Andrew Sullivan, the voice I guess I would reluctantly trust the most out of the 4. Kramer showed his ass the other day on the Today Show when he threw a hillspell about the evil environmentalists that are stopping the oil drilling in the controversial Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which he said we desperately needed.. In fact, during his hillspell, he claimed that he was a "conservationist" (a code word in the environmental world) but that we needed to drill. That in and of itself told me a lot.

But today he trumped that by responding to a question by Matthews about what stocks he was recommending as saying that he was recommending any and all "oil" stocks. Uh huh! I'm beginning to wonder if this whole oil "bubble" is nothing more than a desperate manipulation of the markets to create political pressure to allow drilling in the Arctic NWR. Clearly Kramer is nothing more than a oilman, and one has to wonder how he got on Matthews as a credible talking head? Talk about a pig in a polk!

If you read anything about peak oil, you come to realize that drilling in the Arctic NWR will do nothing for the regular person, but line the pockets of a few really rich people. Hopefully we've have enough of that.

But why did Matthews have such a panel on the Father's Day a few days after Russert died unexpectedly? Doesn't that indicate a "cats away, the mice will play" attitude? My respect for Matthews has been reduced. It was so obvious and inappropriate. But who was really behind it? We'll probably never know. But it was obvious.

I didn't watch Meet the Press. They were going to have a full hour on Russert, and I already had heard enough. As I have written before, in our TV market, while for years Meet the Press and ABC Sunday Morning were at different times, about 2 months ago, ABC changed the Stephanopolous show times in our market and they now conflict. I watched ABC Sunday morning, because I didn't want all Russert - I wanted some politics too. Life does go on, for better or worse. I think we were a better nation with Russert, but he's gone now.

(It is an interesting question as to who will take over for Russert? I'm going to guess David Gregory is going to take over Meet the Press, although he may not become bureau chief. I think Andrea Mitchell will get that job. But I'm not sure she wants a weekly committment like that. She's getting older and so is hubby, Mr. Greenspan. I'm sure they have plenty of money. If I was her, I'd want to keep some flexibility in my life. But Gregory is still younger and I think hungry. He seems the likely candidate for Meet the Press. But the bureau chief could become a sort of symbolic position for a few years given to Mitchell to show that the glass ceiling as been broken at NBC. We'll see.)

Stephanopolous had John Edwards and Fred Thompson on as initial interviews. The reason he had them on was to ask them whether or not they were interested in being VP? They both said they weren't seeking it but wouldn't rule it out. Other than that, they both served their function as political hacks for their respective parties.

The substance of the discussions on the shows was mostly about the Obama/McCain race. The main discussion was whether or not McCain can win on a campaign of saying that Obama is going to raise your taxes? Most of the people, and I agree, thought that McCain could not win solely on that platform, especially with Obama going around with his speaking skills telling people that he was only going to raise taxes on the richest Americans.

The other issue discussed in all the programs who would be the VP picks by the various candidates. Every single pundit that spoke to the issue said that Sen. Clinton would NOT be the pick of Obama. I don't know how they could be so sure. Interesting though.

Apprarently Karl Rove went on Fox News show (which we don't get) and said that McCain should pick Romney for VP. Considering Rove's standing in the country, that should be the death knell for Romney.

This brings us to Face the Nation. Bob Shieffer took the week off, and Chris Reed took his place. He had nothing but Republicans on the show. It was so biased it was obvious. But, the purpose of the show was to present Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, an Indian-American Republican. This young man is a Ivy leaguer, like Obama, and was also mentioned by Kathleen Parker on Chris Matthews. The GOP is touting him as one of the future leaders of the Republican party. I don't know - he of course indicated that he would be willing to accept a McCain invitation to join the ticket. He's a smart guy, and smart guy so young might be willing to let 8 years go by while he serves a governor of Louisiana and gets more national exposure. We will see.

Goodbye Tim Russert. I will miss you.

While the pundits do wonder how McCain can be as close as he is in the polls with the Republicans being in such low regard, I don't think it's such a mystery. There's still a lot of disappointment in the Clinton camp, and those people aren't yet willing to put their support behind Obama. While I don't exactly understand it, that seems to be how it is. Whether it will take Obama to choose Clinton as a running mate to get them still remains to be seen. I've already spoken to that, although my opinion seems to be at odds with the pundits. Those that spoke today said that Obama would NOT choose Clinton. I guess time will tell. I stand by my prediction, although I have to say in the light of all these pundits saying the opposite, I am questioning myself.