The big news of the day is that Daniel Schorr passed away. He was a Walter Conkrite figure, but he came after Conkrite and could never be that big. But he had that kind of credibility. I thought he was a good commentator, and he gets much kudos for his work. I give NPR a big thumbs up for dredging up some tape of Daniel appearing with Frank Zappa, at Frank's request, enough to give him legend status in many minds.

I do think that the shows did not grab the obvious big issue that has surfaced this week - the have/have not divide. Wasn't it funny that first the Shirrad video tape overtook the airwaves. But talk about lipstick on a pig! Or maybe this was more like a pig on lipstick? In any case, it was a poker bluff that cheated everyone for a second, but then, when they figured out they'd been cheated, called off the game and took back their chips.

But the ultimate issue is that there are two Americas, just like, dare I say it...John Edwards....said. The haves and the have nots. And things are NOT equal for the two worlds. Anyone who tries to minimize the differences in everything from economic opportunity to political influence to social justice is either a have or blind in one eye and can't see out of the other. And a strict reading of the constitution - the kind that the so called tea partiers think that our courts should always give - could suggest that this kind of disparity is unconstitutional. But, hey, we won't go there.

I have to admit, though, that i found it extremely interesting that in the center of the Shirrad incident, the USA Today had a headline story about how the motor voter law from the Clinton era actually required that social aid agencies offer to register voters, but that for the past more than decade, federal social aid agencies had ignored that but now they are getting sued and being forced to do it, meaning that an ever increasing number of low income people were being registered to vote - the highest percent economic demographic in the country in lack of voting. So, any percent of increase in registration and voting stands to affect the politics more in favor of the democrats.

Oh yeah, and the last several days this week the stock market has gone up several hundred points. And, today gas prices flew up after dipping down yesterday. What's that all about? But, the so called "economic indicators" of late haven't been too bad, and stocks were down, so people bought in. But why should that make oil prices go up automatically? Isn't that price fixing?

But the point I'm trying to make is that it seems the mainstream media is being so quick to turn congress over to the republicans. I've been saying for a long time so don't be so fast to do so. We'll see in November. Maybe I'll end up with a lot of egg on my face. Or maybe it will be someone else with the egg.