New Poem: NEVER ENDING PANDEMIC RAMBLE

 the pandemic never ends because of ego and frailty the refusal to correct course when the wind shifts after the Mission Accomplished sign is posted on billboards all over our once great nation and the CDC can’t climb down from its don’t need to wear masks indoors redwood tree and the GOP climbs only a few inches down its covid vaccine is bad because Trump wasn’t re-elected mountain 

Tucker Carlson gets his braying ass handed to him in Montana and all he likely thinks is look at the impact  my irresponsible shit-talking has on the nation that some random guy got in my face and it went viral and the libs still know my name and writhe in pain because Rupert and Lachlan continue to have my back and all I care about is good television and I’m Harry Lime in THE THIRD MAN on top of the Vienna Ferris Wheel with no worries whatsoever about the tiny unvaccinated people way down below who believe they’re self-determination martyrs—and they are dying from the words coming out of my and my network’s mouth

Tom Braden: RIP.

Veteran journalist Tom Braden passed away at 92 years of age: http://news.aol.com/article/crossfire-creator-tom-braden-dies-at-92/413953?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl1link5http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fcrossfire-creator-tom-braden-dies-at-92%2F413953

Braden will be best known for the memoir EIGHT IS ENOUGH, which was turned into a 70s hour-long dramedy with Dick Van Patten playing a fictionalized version ("Tom Bradford")--plus being the liberal POV standard-bearer on CNN's CROSSFIRE (Patrick Buchanan was the conservative antagonist).

For better or worse, CROSSFIRE inaugurated the cable-news standard of hosts and interviewees talking over each other and posturing for the sake of "good television." But at least Braden (who had a Golden Age of Journalism sense of gravitas) and Buchanan's tenure wasn't as cartoonish as the show's later period with Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson. And the show's demise was allegedly triggered by Jon Stewart's public dressdown of Begala and Carlson: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/01/4509.ars