August 17, 2023 • 55 mins
SEASON 2 EPISODE 15: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: America is NOT divided over the prosecution of Trump. The latest polling shows the citizens of this country are DECIDED - by wide margins - in favor of it. They are DECIDED - by wide margins - that he broke the law in Georgia. They are DECIDED - by wide margins - that the 2020 election was NOT stolen from him.
Yet even the news company that paid for the newest polling showing these inarguable conclusions, has to fulfill its fearful, lazy, sacred obligations to the American Media Deity of Bothsidesism by taking this data and headlining it "Americans are divided along party lines over Trump's actions in election cases."
No. The nation is not.
The Associated Press, and other news organizations, are afraid of stating any truth that requires any assessment or evaluation or analysis or risks accusations of Liberal Bias. Bothsideism is afraid of any choice that isn’t “which is bigger: A) an elephant or B) a mouse.” Bothsideism is fearful and lazy and self-interested and it is dangerous and it is in play and even those organizations that actually PRODUCE the evidence that this nation is convinced Trump has broken the law in Georgia, in Washington, in America, and that Jack Smith and Fonni Willis are RIGHT to prosecute him – even those organizations are whispering the results for fear of blowback – or worse, because blowback is TOO MUCH TROUBLE FOR MANAGEMENT.
That Trump acted illegally in Georgia outpolled more innocent explanations by 23 points. Support for the Jack Smith indictments outpolled opposition by 8 points. The percentage believing Trump did not have an election stolen from him is SEVENTY.
There is even polling evidence that Trump not only isn't gaining Republican support because of the indictments but has lost a little.Hell, even Ted Cruz said yesterday he won't endorse Trump in the primary.
But the major news organizations refuse to acknowledge any of this.
Also today: the Trump Court Appearance Calendar is filling up so fast that the hearing to confirm a starting date for the January 6 trial will occur simultaneously with Mark Meadows' hearing to transfer his Georgia charges to Federal Court. There is more on the undying story of Jack Smith scraping Trump's Twitter DMs and who else had access to them. Turns out there's no way for Trump to get a pardon in Georgia until five years after his sentence ends. And we will again identify the unidentified in another edition of Trumple.
B-Block (21:09) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Ron DeSantis now requires parents to sign permission slips or teachers can't call "Thomas" "Tommy." Jordan Peterson and Penguin take bad reviews and put them on the cover of his book (taking out the negative adjectives). And the judge who authorized the raid on the Marion County Record in Kansas has not only been retroactively overruled but it turns out she has a history of DUIs, one she apparently hid from the voters - and the judge who should have jailed her after the second DUI. (29:48) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: Tomorrow will be the second anniversary of the day an extraordinary soul walked into my life. He was only here very briefly but I want you to meet and remember him and so I will again tell you the story of Mishu.
C-Block (44:00) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL, PART 2: The conclusion of the story of Mishu.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. America
is not divided over the prosecution of Donald Trump. For
(00:25):
January sixth, a new Sober Responsible poll shows it is
in favor of it by a wide margin by eight
percentage points. America is not divided over whether he broke
the law in Georgia. A new Sober Responsible poll shows
it is convinced he broke the law in Georgia by
a wide margin by twenty three percented points. America is
(00:48):
not divided over whether the twenty twenty election was stolen.
Seven in ten say it was not. And Trump is
not getting greater support from his base because of his
three and a half indictments. A new Sober Responsible poll
shows he may in fact be losing a little of it.
And the effort to paint over these obvious, statistically proven
(01:12):
realities is the latest crime of both sidesism being committed
by the American media. Both sidism is afraid of stating
any truth that requires any assessment or evaluation or analysis,
or risks accusations of liberal bias. Both sidesism is afraid
(01:33):
of any choice that is not which is bigger a
the elephant or b the mouse. Both sidesism is fearful
and lazy and self interested, and it is dangerous, and
it is in play. And even those organizations that actually
produce the evidence that this nation is convinced Trump has
(01:55):
broken the law in Georgia, in Washington, in America, and
that Jack Smith and Fannie Willis are right to prosecute him,
even those very organizations are whispering the results for fear
of blowback, or worse, because blowback is just too much
(02:15):
trouble for the executives. The Associated Press has a new
pull out on the prosecutions of Trump, and it fulfills
the organization's sacred obligation to both sides ism by positioning
its results in the headlines in the links. As quote,
(02:35):
Americans are divided along party lines over Trump's actions in
election cases, they are not in Georgia. The question was
phrased thusly, what do you think of Trump's alleged attempt
to interfere in the twenty twenty Georgia vote? Count illegal, unethical,
(02:56):
but not illegal, or nothing wrong? Fifty one percent of
Americans say it is a legal Oh, only fifty one percent.
A divided nation, but wait, the combined vote for unethical
but not illegal, and nothing was wrong. The combined total
(03:17):
in those two categories is twenty eight percent. The rest
are undecided. That is not a split. That is not
a divided nation. That's fifty one to twenty eight same
question about January sixth illegal oh, only forty seven percent
say it was illegal a minority. The combined unethical or
(03:38):
nothing wrong total is thirty nine percent. Seven in ten
Americans say the twenty twenty election was not stolen from Trump.
That is also not an indication of a divided nation.
Fifty three percent say the Justice Department was right to
indict him. Why. That's barely more than half, though, once again,
(03:58):
half of the results are left out to make this
look like it is a debate. Fifty three percent say
the federal indictments are justified, only thirty percent thirty percent
say it is not. There are undecided people in the
Associated Press poll and in every one of these stats.
(04:20):
For the numbers just to actually be close, for this
nation to actually be what the AP headline claims, but
the AP poll refutes, all of the undecideds have to
break in Trump's favor. All that is to come in
the next weeks and months of continuing indictments and continuing
(04:41):
revelations and now co conspirators flipping, and the actual testimony beginning.
All of that that is to come would have to
somehow make Trump look better. It will not. America has
made up its mind on Trump guilty, venal deserving of prosecution.
(05:02):
The only ones saying otherwise are lying, and they are
Trump and his cult and they are the lazy, cowardly,
both sizest media. And it's not even true that Trump
is getting martyrdom brownie points from his own morals Dead crowd.
(05:22):
A poll from Temple University used an unusual method of
surveying whether the indictments really have been strengthening Trump's support
within his party, as he and every one of his
cultists keep claiming. Temple does not ask if you are
now likelier to do thing A because event B happened.
(05:43):
It asks you flatly if you are going to do
thing A, and then it asks you what you would
have done if event B had never happened. It is
called the counterfactual format, and there is considerable evidence that
it produces far less partisan answers or people giving the
(06:03):
answer they think is expected of them. And what it
shows is no gain for Trump because of the indictments
among Republicans, in fact, a slight loss. We are measuring
hair breadths, but the election will surely come down two
hair breadths again, so this counts. In the Temple poll,
(06:24):
just over sixty four percent of Republicans surveyed said that
after the indictments they are still likely to vote for
Trump in the primary, But just under sixty six percent
of the same group of Republicans said they would have
been more likely to vote for him if he had
not been indicted. America has made up its mind. Even
(06:46):
some Republicans are regaining theirs. You know what, two percent.
The difference in the Temple poll two percent of just
the registered Republicans amounts to in actual votes, eight hundred thousand.
The indictments cost Trump the support of eight hundred thousand Republicans. Hell,
(07:07):
even Ted Cruz said last night he's not endorsing Trump
in the primary. He used as his excuse the fact
that he's such a target in his Senate reelection race.
He says he can't afford to alienate a signal Dessantus
voter or a single Trump voter, Because, yeah, Ted, a
bunch of disgruntled Texas Trump voters are going to vote
(07:32):
against you. Uh huh, this is where we are. Mark
Meadows gets his hearing to move his part of the
case of the Trump nineteen into federal court. It will
be on August twenty eighth, two mondays from now, but
(07:52):
Trump's lawyers will be in Washington at the same hour
because August twenty eighth is also the Judge Tanya Chutkin hearing,
at which she is expected to set the date of
the start of Trump's January sixth. That would be Tanya Chutkin,
against whom death threats are beginning to pop up. In
one a woman leaves a voicemail calling her a quote
slave and Rice Street the Fulton County jail where Meadows
(08:18):
will still have to go to show up for processing
and fingerprinting, and a mug shot by Friday, the twenty fifth,
before his hearing Atlanta, where the grand jurors who indicted
him and Trump and seventeen others have been docked by
fascists and they are now getting death threats. And again,
meadows hearing is not next Monday, the twenty first, It's
(08:40):
the following one, the twenty eighth, Next Monday is the
Great Trump News Conference, at which he will reveal the
Great Harrington Declaration, and only Donald Trump could possibly get
indicted on thirteen separate counts of in essence trying to
defraud the voters of Georgia by lying about the election,
(09:00):
and follow that up by holding a news conference at
which he will try to is gape by presenting a
one hundred page report written in part by a crazy
eyed publicist, consisting entirely of again trying to defraud the
voters of Georgia by lying about the election. Frankly, one
of his countless ex attorneys, Ty Cobb, now says there's
(09:23):
a good chance that whatever document he produces ends up
as evidence against him, because it's likely to be fiction
and solely for the purpose of contaminating the jury pool.
Eleven am Trump Bedminster Golf Course in New Jersey. See
Trump try to get himself indicted on counts fourteen, fifteen,
and sixteen. If only Evana were there to stop him,
(09:49):
Actually she is. Maybe he communicated with her by those
unsent Twitter direct message drafts. This is the theory that
will not go away now. Politico notes that buried deep
in the unset field Court documents on Jack Smith getting
access to Trump's Twitter account. Quote. One thing prosecutors appeared
(10:11):
to pursue is who currently has the keys unquote. The
court docs show that as of February, the list included
Trump's representatives to the National Archives and Records Administration NARA.
Oh hell, this is where I came in. You might
recall that this entire dance of the dueling courtrooms began
(10:34):
because Trump and his liaisons would not listen when NARA
asked for all its stuff back from Mary a Lago
when Trump withdrew his troops from Washington in January twenty
twenty one. Those narrow liaisons were Mark Meadows not anymore
and a clown car, a former White House and DOJ
(10:55):
attorney Scott Gass, Michael Purpura, Stephen Engel, John Eisenberg, and
at least two names were probably not on the list
anymore either, Pat Philbin and Pat Patsy Beloney sip Baloney.
In twenty twenty two, as he made the fateful decision
not to give NARA its stuff back, Trump added two names.
(11:16):
And this is where access to the Twitter account might
actually turn out to be something of the spy novel genre.
The two new names were the propagandist John Solomon and
popeyed Factotem Cash Patel. I keep thinking, this Trump Twitter
(11:36):
DM story is going to get only bigger and bigger,
and if it doesn't get bigger right away, it will
get bigger later because there is going to be a
big leak of something we have no idea about, and
then there's going to be a big hearing in which
Trump lawyers try to get all of it excluded. So
Trump Twitter dms, leave space on your calendar for that,
(12:00):
Oh your calendar, Thank you, Nancy Faus. That reminds me
(12:33):
it is never too early to shop for the holidays.
And let me give you a heads up at a
head start on the hottest gift for Christmas twenty twenty three. Yes,
it's this beautiful official Donald Trump twenty twenty four court
appearance calendar, featuring not just wonderful photography of Trump himself
(12:55):
it's lifelike even if he isn't, but also photography of
all the prosecutors and the courthouses, and his fellow defendants
and the uned co conspirators. So your official Donald Trump
twenty twenty four court appearance calendar does, in fact go
all the way through December twenty twenty eight sixty months.
(13:16):
What would you pay for this gorgeous full color calendar?
And when I say full color, of course, I mean
it's all that cheap roustolium gold, so beloved by the
Maestro himself. Wait before you answer, Your official Donald Trump
twenty twenty four court appearance calendar also comes complete with
the dates of the twenty twenty four campaign, so you
(13:36):
can follow along as Trump hopscotches the world from the
planned start of the federal trial in Washington on Tuesday,
January second to the Iowa caucuses on Monday, January fifteenth.
And by the way, in the spirit of good fun,
our Trump playmate for January will be Ron DeSantis, good
naturedly holding up a ball and chain. Now look ahead,
(13:59):
turn the pages over to March. Damn thing will hold still?
What an exciting time March is the GOP caucuses in
Idaho on Saturday, March second. Then there's an extra large
calendar square from Monday, March fourth for the caucuses in
North Dakota and the start of Trump's trial in Georgia
(14:19):
that Fani willis just put in for thank goodness, the
Supreme Being Trump as his own plane and can be
in two places at once, but can he be in
fifteen places the next day? Because after Monday March fourth,
comes Tuesday, March fifth, Super Tuesday, and you'll need your
official Trump twenty twenty four court appearance calendar to keep
track of the Trump primaries in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado,
(14:43):
Main Massa, tuss Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, u Ta, Vermont,
at and virgin Ya. Oh, and don't forget six more primaries,
including the Big Thriller in Florida on Tuesday, March nineteenth
and Louisiana on Saturday, March twenty third, and then back
home to fun City for Monday, March twenty fifth, and
the first day of the Stormy Day Niels hush money
(15:05):
trial in New York, New York. The town's so nice
they indicted him twice then, of course, in honor of
that case where Trump allegedly paid a woman to keep
quiet about what their sex life is like, we have
this amazing high definition photo of that woman, Millennia Trump.
But wait, there's more. The calendar page for May is
(15:27):
fun Fun Fun. Monday, May twentieth, the day judge Eileen
Cannon has selected to start the stolen documents case in Florida,
and then Tuesday May twenty, first Republican Primary Day in
Oregon and Mitch McConnell's Kentucky. And needless to say, there
is our pin up photo for May of that judge
that Trump appointed who has absolutely no business being on
(15:50):
the court, Brad Kavanaugh. Okay, you get the idea. Fannie
Willis has asked the judge to start the trial of
the Trump nineteen on March fourth. As she announced the
indictments Monday night, there was considerable doubt she could get
the thing started within her goal of six months. Hell,
(16:12):
the co defendants probably won't be done flipping on Trump
by March fourth. But for sheer crassness and borderline racism,
you have to hand it to Politico, the amoral access factory,
whose daily email playbook often leads the world in the
clankiest tone. Deaf notes its headline about whether the Fannie
Willis goal of March fourth is realistic was yesterday? Any
(16:36):
guesses be very very low in your estimations of what
they would be willing to do. Any guesses quote what
you talking about? Willis unquote, Politico did slightly redeem itself
(16:56):
from that by clarifying Trump's extra large conundrum. In Georgia,
the governor cannot pardon any buddy in Georgia. Nope, wors Yet,
nobody can pardon anybody until five years after that person
has completed his or her sentence, and that pardon would
(17:16):
have to come from the five members state Board of
Pardons and Paroles. So even in the event of a
lightning speed trial, Trump is not looking at a pardon
before late twenty twenty nine, and he will need more
than five more editions of the official Donald Trump Court
appearance calendar before he gets that pardon. As Politico writes,
one of the primary qualities the board looks for in
(17:37):
pardon applicants is someone who has taken responsibility for their
actions and has shown remorse for them unquote. Sorry Trump
being sorry you got caught don't count. Okay, time for
America's favorite new game show once again. Let's play trumple
(18:10):
thank you again, Nancy Faust, and ooh, we may have
a Trump pull winner. And remember these identities matter because
they all might still be indicted, or they might already
be cooperating. Just security has fingered Tom Fitten as Georgia
unindicted co conspirator number one. He is the guy who
(18:30):
discussed the draft of a speech claiming Trump was a
victim of voter fraud and had really won in twenty twenty.
Only the conversation with Trump was on Halloween, so four
days before the election and before anybody knew who won,
and before any votes could have been fraudulent. Reminiscent of
(18:51):
that Roger Stone video that surfaced last night, but more
meaningful than that video. Roger Stone dictating a fake elector
scheme before the election is infuriating, and it's a good
thing to show on television, but if Trump is not
in the room, it's no more meaningful than Rudy Giuliani
telling his mistress in twenty nineteen about the plan for
a phony claim of election fraud, or me telling you
(19:13):
that I thought Trump would try it four and a
half years before he actually did. Ryan Goodman at just
Security has Boris Epstein as number three, Bernie Carrick at
number five, and Phil Waldron at six, and the Washington
Post separately pursuing this agrees on those two Carrick and Waldron.
(19:34):
Goodman has false electors at nine through nineteen. I'll need names, sir,
I will need names. Goodman throws a wrench in at twenty,
where the COGNISCENTI think it's Patrick Byrne, but he thinks
it might just be Mike Flynn. After all the others
are not household names. Though, we have to give a
tip of the Trumpel Champeau to Goodman's possibilities for number
(19:58):
twenty seven to election fraud conspiracy Mavens Michael Posposewski or
Jovan Pulitzer Jovaan Pulleitzer, And you will be happy to
know that Jovan Pulleitzer is also known by his middle name.
(20:20):
He is. He is j. Hutton Pulleitzer to his friends,
of whom he has none certainly not after all. This
also of interest here. Not only has the state of
Kansas backed off its raid of the Marian Record newspaper
(20:44):
and given the paper all of its stuff back, but
the judge who signed the warrant for the corrupt police
chief to go in and trash the place has, it
turns out, a record of past DUIs, one of which
reportedly came while she was driving with a license that
had been suspended because of her first dui. So it's
(21:08):
all better. Now, Yeah, what did they do about the
publisher who died after the police raided her home? That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Time
(21:35):
now for the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and
dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world. The bronze governor Ron DeSantis. It is encouraging
to see that if you do bad things long enough,
they will catch up with you, and if you do
(21:56):
enough bad things long enough, they will consume you. The
latest jaw dropper from the Kingdom of Fascist Florida. And
I'm not saying this ranks with teaching kids that slavery
had the silver lining of promoting good blacksmithing training. But
it's bad. The Miami New Times reports it. Under a
new rule adopted last month by the Florida Board of
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Indoctrination Education, parents will have to sign permission slips to
enable teachers to call their kids by anything other than
their legal first names. Now you can see where the
transphobes and the other sikos in Florida are going with this.
If a transitioning girl wants to be called Amy, and
(22:40):
her legal name is Andrew. Teachers will have to call
her Andrew unless the parents approve in writing. But as usual,
to fulfill their little theocratic fantasies, everybody else suffers. This
also means that if Thomas wants to be called Tommy,
parents have to submit a form saying the teachers can
(23:00):
call him Tommy. What the hell do they do if
he also wants to be called Tommy some days but
tom on others because he's a kid. This amendment is
to strengthen the rights of parents and safeguard their child's
educational record, said Board of Education spokesperson Gingerbread Tea Hag.
(23:22):
Gingerbread tea Hag. That's an unusual name. To ensure the
use of the child's legal name in school. The bronze
serial Canadian victim doctor Jordan Peterson at his publisher's Penguin Books.
The paperback edition of his latest whining about how bad
White men have it in This k Kuel World, contains
(23:46):
quotes from several reviewers, One of them, James Marriott of
the Times of London, describes Peterson's book as quote a
philosophy of the meaning of life, but Marriott wrote that
Peterson's philosophy of the meaning of life was quote bonkers.
They out the bonker's part. Marriott hated Peterson's book, so
(24:09):
they simply edited out the part he hated in his
review and put it on the jacket. Also about Penguin books,
these books are not made out of penguins, and they
are not produced by penguins. So we need to look
into the name too, don't we. But the winner Laura
Weyer the eighth Judicial District Magistrate judge who authorized the
(24:31):
Gestapo style raid on the offices of the Marion County
Record newspaper, which resulted in all of its electronics being seized,
and its investigations into the drunk driving record of a
local restaurateur and the allegations against the town police chief
being thwarted, and the paper's ninety eight year old publisher
being at home when they raided her home and then
(24:52):
she had a seizure and died first. Another judge in
Kansas ruled yesterday that the warrant that Judge Vyer approved
was invalid, probably illegal, and unwarranted, and that judge ordered
everything returned immediately to the Marion County Record, except of course,
for the publisher since she's dead. Then the Wichita Eagle
(25:14):
newspaper broke news that Judge Vyr has a little problem.
She has her own history of drunk driving, and that
there seems to have been a conspiracy to cover at
least part of it up. While she was still going
by the name Laura Allen and she was the lead
prosecutor in Morris County, Kansas, she was arrested for DUI
in January twenty twelve. She made a plea deal in
(25:36):
which she was supposed to go into a diversion program,
but then she stopped communicating with her lawyer and she
refused to get an alcohol and drug evaluation, according to
the paper, so her suspended license was suspended again. And
that's when in August twenty twelve, she was driving with
a suspended license and in another judge's car in a
(25:58):
different county in Kansas, when she rammed that car into
a school building next to the school football field at
Council Grove School. The first county apparently never knew about
the second DUI in the other county, so instead of
becoming a jail prisoner, Laura Byer became a judge and
single handedly overruled the first Amendment in this country and
(26:21):
led to the death of a ninety eight year old woman. Happily,
the Kansas State Board of Investigation is now taking over
the whole thing as a criminal case, and hopefully Police
Chief Gideon Cody winds up in prison and save a
cell for Judge Laura Er that is yre as in liar,
because she truly is two days worst person in the world.
(26:56):
Now a little earlier than usual to the number one
story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell, and I wanted to
tell again the story of Meshu. I've mentioned this previously.
I never had a dog until twenty twelve. I was
allergic to dogs as a kid, and I still am
to the big fur dogs. I love them, but about
(27:19):
half an hour in a closed space with a fur
dog and I stopped breathing. Also, I was repeatedly warned
by my allergists over the decades that so called hypoallergenic
dogs weren't really a thing always and if you had
a minor reaction to the hair of a poodle or
a Westie or a Maltese, you were lucky. And if
(27:40):
you didn't and the dog had to go back. You
had heartbreak. I didn't, and I was blessed by the
opposite of heartbreak. And I rapidly realized, no dogs. I
have wasted the first fifty three years of my existence.
Then I was born again in dogs. So I've tried
(28:03):
to make up for the lack of dogs. My gal
Stevie and I. Yesterday we walked to the Animal Medical
Center here in New York for her rehab, where she
goes sometimes in an underwater treadmill to work on her
two floating kneecaps and her torn acl She couldn't walk
in April. Now we walk the forty five minutes over
to rehab. I'm not sure what she's rehabbing, but she
(28:25):
loves it. Rose, her sister, is nine. She and I
were out yesterday afternoon. She comes with me to my
physical therapists, and she is my physical therapist's therapy. I
had often looked into getting a third dog, and I
had gotten heavily involved in dog rescue work, and then
in twenty eighteen, those two streams crossed. I got a
(28:47):
call from my friend Sue Levitt. She runs the rescue
part of the American Maltese Association runs it for much
of the Northeast, and she said, we have something special
and challenging, and if you don't want to do it,
I understand. He's a three month old Maltese pop. He
has a terrible, terrible heart condition. They're not sure if
he's going to make it past ten months. Could you
(29:09):
take him? Could you take him over to his heart appointments.
We'll help pay for it, but could you just give
him a home and then we'll see what happens. I
thought about it for about five seconds. I said yes,
and soon Spaghetti was in my apartment trying to boss
around Stevie and Rose, and I knew he needed to
stay and he needed a new name. Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Getty,
(29:37):
Teddy Ted my dad's name perfect. I was so prepared
for the worst with Ted that it was July and
I didn't buy him any stuff for winter. Then I
took him to the Animal Medical Center here and the cardiologist,
Dennis Trafney said, he's got a heavy valve in his heart.
If we don't do anything, he's got five to seven
(30:01):
years wait years, but with medication that's seven to ten years.
But I can operate on him I can give him
probably a normal lifespan, and I'll thread this filament. See
I'm holding this up. I feed it in through his
jugular vein and then it goes into his heart. Then
we stop his heart electrically for like three seconds. We
push this button on the end of the filament and
(30:22):
at the other end of the filament, see the tiny
balloon and it pushes the valve open. And you just
keep doing it as long as he can stand it.
It's like knocking the rust off a hinge by just
continually opening the door again and again. And I said,
I don't see any filament, and doctor Trapney said sorry,
and he moved it in front of a black background,
and there it was. And I said, great, let's try it.
(30:46):
And then I said, why did they think he was
not going to make it past ten months when you
say that he would have had five to seven years anyway.
And the doctor said, well, if you're a vet, you
might see this condition once in your career. I operate
on it about three times a month. It went kind
(31:06):
of well. Ted just turned five. There is no other
way to describe Ted. He is a five year old
boy in a dog's body on walks Ted looks for
and flirts with all the human girls, especially if they
are sitting on blankets. He comes over, stretches out, rubs
(31:28):
up against them in a good way. Ted also barks
at all dogs bigger than him and then goes up
and tries to say hi to them. He has his enemies,
the printer, the plunger, the thunder, and most recently the
thunders relative of the rain. And there are at least
a dozen television commercials that Ted can't stand and knows
(31:50):
by the first sound he hears during them. The operation
went so well, in fact, that they were about an
hour late giving him back to me in twenty eighteen, because,
as the surgical residence said, he'd had to do all
the tests a second time because he was worried he
had screwed up the first set of tests because the
results were too good. If I could have gotten luckier
(32:14):
given the prognosis with which Ted arrived, I don't know how.
So when my friend Sue from Maltese Rescue called now
two years ago and said, I have a really, really
tough case, and I don't think there's a chance that
(32:34):
there is going to be an unexpectedly positive outcome like
we had with Ted. I listened very carefully. This was
another Maltese puppy, barely three months. The family he was
born into loved him, but there were two young kids there,
and frankly the mother thought they were too young to
watch this little dog die. His name was Mishu, it
(32:56):
was Polish for little bear, and he had tetrology of fellow.
If that sounds vaguely familiar in a human, it takes
surgery that can last twelve hours to correct. Jimmy Kimmel's
son had it. You may remember it from there. In dogs,
there have been some early experiments in surgery, very promising,
(33:19):
but almost exclusively for bigger dogs. If you've ever seen
the drawings of mc escher, where the same staircase looks
like it's going up and going down at the same time,
that is what a heart afflicted with tetrology of fallow
looks like. There are arteries going over the heart and
others that take the newly oxygenated blood out of the
(33:41):
heart in the wrong direction. In August twenty twenty one,
Mishu arrived here. It's easy to romanticize things like this,
but there was something magical about him from the first
day two years ago tomorrow. He was very, very sick.
His tongue and gums were purple. He wasn't getting enough oxygen,
(34:04):
was tiny. He was dwarfed by my other three dogs,
and yet he would start trouble with them. He would
silently charge Ted, or he'd go up and yap at Stevie,
and soon he'd get all three of them playing and fighting.
And that's all the strength he had. A minute, tops,
and he would have to sit down and watch the
chaos he had created. And he enjoyed doing that too,
(34:26):
and he loved it, and he loved them. If two
of the dogs were lying near each other, but not
next to each other, not together, Mishu would go and
lie exactly in the empty space between them, so his
head rested on one dog and his back paws on
the other. And soon they would respond to his presence
(34:46):
by arranging themselves cuddling together, with a space for him
in between. Once I was stretched out legs up on
my couch and the four of them climbed in, two
of them by my feet, two of them by my knees.
I called Mishu's name, and he turned up and looked
at me with a look of I have to say satisfaction,
(35:08):
and then the four of them almost simultaneously fell asleep.
There such a simple thing, and yet it easily remains
one of the most extraordinary and wonderful moments of my life.
And I prayed that night and not for the last time,
that if there was no miracle meant for Mishu, that
at least when he left us, it would be while
he was in my arms. And by the way, Mishu
(35:32):
was an athlete. He just was an athlete who had
no stamina. In the pen, I would keep him in
for his own safety. When I had to go out,
Mishu would get up on his hind legs and stand
or try to get out. And once he did get out,
he trotted confidently around my place. And he loved to
move and run and play, and then he'd have to stop.
(35:56):
Mishu also enjoyed food as much as any dog or
any human I have ever known. He gained nearly a
pound a month while he was with me. If you
approached him with a treat, he would literally punch the
air with one of his front legs, like an athlete
celebrating a success, and often with one front leg, and
(36:17):
then the other like they were exultant fists, and the
sheer joy of that never failed to make me smile
and laugh. Put him on his back next to you,
jab a finger at his paws, and you would be
in a boxing match with a four pound puppy who
loved to duke it out with you. You always knew
(36:39):
when the fight was over, though michhe would stop throwing
hands or pause and simply take his front paws and
grab your finger and hold it. He once did this
with me for a solid minute. I have never felt
more as if I were truly communicating with any dog.
(37:00):
He was an extraordinarily happy puppy, even then he felt
bad physically, and those were harrowing times. Mishi would be
sitting on my lap usually or walking on the floor,
just chilling with the other dogs, when he would suddenly
tense up, sometimes letting out a cry, and twice that
cry was like that of a young human boy, so
(37:22):
startling that the other dogs stopped and stared with what
could genuinely be described as a look of alarm. Most times,
the tensing was my cue to grab him and hold
him tight. That inability to get oxygen to all the
parts of his body would cause his body to contract
and writhe and if he was on any surface other
(37:43):
than the ground, it could literally propel him to the floor.
The contraction threw him around. The first time he did that,
my veterinarian was here and she said, you may have
to take him to the emergency room. She said it
was essentially what a dog does just before it faints,
and then within seconds it would stop. His body would relax,
(38:04):
and more or less by accident, I also discovered that
after one of these seizures he seemed to be soothed
if I carried him and walked him around, gently rocking
him in my arms and whistling at him or talking
to him as I walked, He and I solved a
lot of the world's problems in those little walks out
(38:27):
in the fresh air, on the balcony or just around
the house. He would often doze off, but just as
often would within minutes be ready to start playing again.
And so I had in my little flock of lovely dogs,
a sweet, wise, serene, playful puppy who liked to grasp
my fingers with his paws and loved everything about life,
(38:50):
and there was no escaping it. He was dying well,
I could not not try to find out if there
was something to be done to make his life longer,
or ease or happier. What we tried to do when
I resumed the story that began a year ago tomorrow
(39:14):
the story of Mishu next resuming now the story of
my Maltese puppy, Michu. His heart so bad that it
pumped oxygenated blood the wrong way and limited him to
brief bursts of energy, And how he never really knew
how sick he was, or that he had been dealt
such a bad, tragic hand, and how he just took
(39:37):
the life he was given and loved and was loved.
Of course, I knew what sadness this was, this special
soul trapped in a body that would betray him at
any time and fatally, so I had to at least
try to see if something could keep him here longer,
(39:57):
or at least make him feel better. We went to
see the city's top cardiologist for dogs, and there wasn't
anything to do. Although he thought keeping the cans of
a minute's worth of oxygen that you sometimes see football
players breathing from on the sidelines, he thought those might
help a little when he would have these little pre feints.
(40:21):
Soon I had dozens of those cans in a hall closet,
and I was discussing building him an oxygen tent. But
ultimately the problem wasn't his breathing. He was breathing fine,
He got all the oxygen he would normally need. It
was finding some way to get the oxygen pumped by
his fatally flawed heart, to carry the oxygen in the
(40:43):
blood around his body, and there was no way to
do that. The median age of survival for dogs suffering
from tetrology of fallow was just about two years. The
cardiologist brought up me Shue's case on a board of
international experts in canine cardiac care, and they read that unfortunately,
(41:07):
there was no chance he could survive any operation, let
alone experimental surgery for this devastating malformation. He could not
survive the anesthesia, let alone six, eight, ten, twelve hours
of surgery. Thus, the visits to the hospital turned out
to be more about letting people there who I knew,
(41:29):
meet him and hold him. And I can tell you
there was an extraordinary soothing quality to holding him. I
heard it from these people again and again, what a
special little soul, and he loved to be held. I
took him everywhere they would let me take him. He
was a regular at my weekly physical therapy for my
(41:51):
arthritic joints. My therapist adored him. She would just hold
him and tell him stories. Took him to the apple
store once that he did not like. He went for
walks with me and the other dogs, but always in
a bag draped over my shoulder. He did not have
the stamina to walk for very long, but he enjoyed
the outdoors. He enjoyed the park. He enjoyed the other dogs.
(42:13):
He enjoyed the people who would come up and say
hello to him. The inevitable finally came this time last year.
Throughout the last week, the little pre feints increased, but
Mishu's happiness did not decrease. Two days before the end,
(42:34):
I approached him with a treat and my camera phone rolling,
and sure enough he punched with the left, and he
punched with the right, and he ate the treat, and
he licked his purple lips. And when I surprised him
with a second treat, he did it all again. Sometime
a year ago, I was sound asleep. The dogs sleep
(42:55):
with me. And in my dreams somebody or something was
breathing in my ear. Well, of course it was Mishu.
He had figured out how to wake me. He had
to go to the bathroom. He knew enough to tell
(43:16):
me that he knew enough to wake me, to get
me to get him down, and he had to get
some water. On the afternoon of the twelfth of November,
a year ago, Saturday, I was holding Mishu in my
lap as I sat and looked at the peak foliage
in the park out the window. With no warning, he
(43:38):
suddenly let out that near human cry. The other dog's
frozey in place. I stood up and walked him around
the balcony again. I had to sit him down in
his pen for a second, and I was just picking
him back up when he tensed up, just like all
the other times. His body got rigid and twisted, and
(44:00):
he died. He died as I picked him back up.
The special little soul was gone. His body was getting
cold with stunning rapidity, and something inside me said, no,
not yet. I'm not ready. And I don't know why,
(44:22):
but I don't think he's ready. And with no training
and no earthly clue, what I was doing. I tried
CPR on him. You have to try, You have to try.
I had so little idea what I was doing that
after breathing air in and out of his lifeless body,
I moved my face away as if I was going
(44:43):
to spit out water before I had to remind myself,
no moron, that would be if he was drowning. I
must have done five or six breaths. When I heard
him exhale. I waited for it to stop or to
be a false alarm. It wasn't damned if this little
dog didn't somehow teach me how how to resuscitate him.
(45:08):
He was dead, and now he was back. I didn't
delude myself that this was going to last very long,
and the circumstances could not have been worse. It was
a rush hour on a Friday afternoon, and there was
a bottleneck and a bridge approach between Michu and I
and the hospital. And I had visions of being stuck
(45:30):
in traffic for half an hour or longer, and almost
nothing they could do for him if we somehow got
there in time. But you have to try, you have
to try. I loaded a bag full of those cans
of oxygen. I grabbed him. I got in the car.
The driver realized my distress and asked me what he
(45:51):
could do to help, and I said, don't run any lights,
but do not stop unless you have to. And when
you do stop, help me unwrap some of these plastic
wrapped oxygen cans. The oxygen cans are what are keeping
him alive. Normal trip twenty minutes. We made it in
eleven minutes. The streets parted for Mishu. At the animal
(46:17):
medical center, somehow I ran up the stairs. I handed
him off to the emergency room doctor, saying with an evenness,
I could not believe I was mustering. My dog is dying.
He has tetrology of fallow. She ran off with him
to an examining room, and a second doctor came out,
and I briefed her on everything, including Mishu's human like
(46:40):
cry and his unexpected resuscitation. And I told her he
had been seen by the chief cardiologist there, and she said,
doctor Fox, Doctor Fox is here, and now Mishu was
being worked on by the expert in the field. And
despite all of this good fortune, I knew, I knew
(47:01):
there was no hope. I had managed to text Sue
from the Maltese rescue who adored him, and she came
to the hospital, and three of the people from other
departments in the hospital who had met Mishu came down
to see him, not for my sake, for his. It
(47:26):
was heart bringing and heartwarming at the same time. And
when his doctor came to me and said, he is alive,
but if you take him out of the hospital, you'd
get about as far as the parking garage, and then
you'd have to bring him back because what you heard
when he cried out was a stroke. The oxygen deprivation
was finally too much for him. He had a stroke,
(47:47):
and he began to gently prepare me for the question
about letting him go, and I stopped him and I said,
I know we've all done everything we can, Mishu, especially
ready when you are. So they brought him back to me,
(48:13):
a little drip attached to his arm, and when the
toggle on the drip was thrown, the medication would end
his life. He was as warm and as soft as
ever in my arms, and yet I knew he was
no longer there. Sue held him for a while too,
(48:36):
and then everybody left me alone with him. I said,
what you would expect somebody to say in such a
circumstance about love and happiness. And then I heard myself
(49:02):
saying things about gratitude, gratitude to him for teaching me
that in the face of death, the point is to
know when to try and when to say enough, and
that he had taught me how to confront death and
crisis and urgency with evenness and practicality that I never
(49:22):
knew I had in any quantity whatsoever, And to be
able to say, I know you had a happy life, Michu,
and it seems like that, and not the fact that
you had a happy life but not a long one.
The happy life is all that mattered to you. The cardiologist,
(49:47):
doctor Fox and the tech came back into the room
at this point, and I said I was ready, and
they turned the toggle and left very quietly. And I
said to Michu, I know if there is a place
for you to go now, I am certain you will
be the first one they let in. I just hope
(50:11):
they will let me visit you there someday, and I
hope you will remember us. I said, good night's sweet
prints and flights of angels sing me to thy rest,
and he was gone again. As I had prayed when
(50:35):
he died. Mishu died in my arms, and he managed
somehow to do it twice. There are some postscripts. Mishu's
cardiologist very solemnly returned and respectfully said that of those
international experts who had reviewed his case and were deeply
(50:58):
saddened that they could not help him, only two out
of a couple of dozen had actually seen and been
able to study any small dog suffering from tetrology of fallow,
and Mishu might have one final blessing for them and
the rest of us if they could keep and study
his poor little malformed heart without hesitation. I said yes,
(51:22):
because in that instance I saw him positioning his head
on Stevie's head, and his back paws on Rose's backpaws,
so the three of them were cuddling together, and I knew,
as I had always known, this was a dog who
cared about and actually loved other dogs. So the hospital
(51:43):
wound up recalibrating some of the cameras they had that
they used to photograph the smallest teeth in the smallest dogs,
so they could get every imaginable image of Mishu's tiny
heart and maybe someday learn methods with which to fix
this nightmare in another dog, and Mishu is in the
(52:08):
veterinary textbooks. Now. As a second PostScript, Mishu's parents had
another litter late last year after he died, and their
human was kind enough to offer me either of the brothers.
Mishu would never know. Each was eerily reminiscent of him,
but healthy, completely healthy, so healthy that they were threats
(52:33):
to my other three dogs. I had each of them
live a week with us, and I would have been
fine with each other. They liked me fine, but each
of them first bit ted in the genitals, and then
Stevie in the genitals, and rose in the genitals, and
in one case me in the genitals. They were crazy,
fun but crazy. And the second one was not only
(52:56):
twice as large as other Maltese his age, he was
able to vault out of his pen like an Olympic gymnast.
So they went back and now have their own homes
where they are the only dogs in their own homes.
So the third PostScript, when Sue from Maltese Rescue reached
(53:20):
out again this past June and said, I've got another
special case, fifteen year old, perfect health but rotting teeth,
and he has dementia. His human got sick and didn't
really take care of him, and then she died, and
I don't know what to do. Who's going to adopt
a fifteen year old? I was able to raise my hand.
(53:45):
I had an open roster spot. The fifteen year old's
name is Minae. It's French for kitty. I can't imagine
what confusion that's caused him all these years. His human
had been a French teacher. He actually didn't have dementia,
or at least not very much dementia. It was those teeth.
His teeth was so bad, so rotten. Some of them
(54:07):
came out by just pulling on them with your fingers.
So we had them all taken out. And the next
day he woke up like he was seven years old,
looked around like how long have these other dogs been here?
Every day since then, he's gotten a little younger. He's
Benjamin Button and he's a living instruction. Look out for
(54:28):
your dog's teeth. Even if you think you know to
do that, do it more. The last PostScript, I got
the tattoo a month after me Shu died. His pensive,
half smiling little face looks up at me from near
(54:49):
the crook of my elbow, where he used to sit
when I would carry him around after one of those
pre feints. It is a remarkable likeness to me. It
means exactly what you would think. It means. It comforts
me lightly. It means me Shoe is always with me
(55:15):
and always will be with me. And now, as this
unwanted but not tragic anniversary approaches, Meshu will also, I hope,
always be with you. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a
(55:40):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. America
is not divided over the prosecution of Donald Trump. For
(00:25):
January sixth, a new Sober Responsible poll shows it is
in favor of it by a wide margin by eight
percentage points. America is not divided over whether he broke
the law in Georgia. A new Sober Responsible poll shows
it is convinced he broke the law in Georgia by
a wide margin by twenty three percented points. America is
(00:48):
not divided over whether the twenty twenty election was stolen.
Seven in ten say it was not. And Trump is
not getting greater support from his base because of his
three and a half indictments. A new Sober Responsible poll
shows he may in fact be losing a little of it.
And the effort to paint over these obvious, statistically proven
(01:12):
realities is the latest crime of both sidesism being committed
by the American media. Both sidism is afraid of stating
any truth that requires any assessment or evaluation or analysis,
or risks accusations of liberal bias. Both sidesism is afraid
(01:33):
of any choice that is not which is bigger a
the elephant or b the mouse. Both sidesism is fearful
and lazy and self interested, and it is dangerous, and
it is in play. And even those organizations that actually
produce the evidence that this nation is convinced Trump has
(01:55):
broken the law in Georgia, in Washington, in America, and
that Jack Smith and Fannie Willis are right to prosecute him,
even those very organizations are whispering the results for fear
of blowback, or worse, because blowback is just too much
(02:15):
trouble for the executives. The Associated Press has a new
pull out on the prosecutions of Trump, and it fulfills
the organization's sacred obligation to both sides ism by positioning
its results in the headlines in the links. As quote,
(02:35):
Americans are divided along party lines over Trump's actions in
election cases, they are not in Georgia. The question was
phrased thusly, what do you think of Trump's alleged attempt
to interfere in the twenty twenty Georgia vote? Count illegal, unethical,
(02:56):
but not illegal, or nothing wrong? Fifty one percent of
Americans say it is a legal Oh, only fifty one percent.
A divided nation, but wait, the combined vote for unethical
but not illegal, and nothing was wrong. The combined total
(03:17):
in those two categories is twenty eight percent. The rest
are undecided. That is not a split. That is not
a divided nation. That's fifty one to twenty eight same
question about January sixth illegal oh, only forty seven percent
say it was illegal a minority. The combined unethical or
(03:38):
nothing wrong total is thirty nine percent. Seven in ten
Americans say the twenty twenty election was not stolen from Trump.
That is also not an indication of a divided nation.
Fifty three percent say the Justice Department was right to
indict him. Why. That's barely more than half, though, once again,
(03:58):
half of the results are left out to make this
look like it is a debate. Fifty three percent say
the federal indictments are justified, only thirty percent thirty percent
say it is not. There are undecided people in the
Associated Press poll and in every one of these stats.
(04:20):
For the numbers just to actually be close, for this
nation to actually be what the AP headline claims, but
the AP poll refutes, all of the undecideds have to
break in Trump's favor. All that is to come in
the next weeks and months of continuing indictments and continuing
(04:41):
revelations and now co conspirators flipping, and the actual testimony beginning.
All of that that is to come would have to
somehow make Trump look better. It will not. America has
made up its mind on Trump guilty, venal deserving of prosecution.
(05:02):
The only ones saying otherwise are lying, and they are
Trump and his cult and they are the lazy, cowardly,
both sizest media. And it's not even true that Trump
is getting martyrdom brownie points from his own morals Dead crowd.
(05:22):
A poll from Temple University used an unusual method of
surveying whether the indictments really have been strengthening Trump's support
within his party, as he and every one of his
cultists keep claiming. Temple does not ask if you are
now likelier to do thing A because event B happened.
(05:43):
It asks you flatly if you are going to do
thing A, and then it asks you what you would
have done if event B had never happened. It is
called the counterfactual format, and there is considerable evidence that
it produces far less partisan answers or people giving the
(06:03):
answer they think is expected of them. And what it
shows is no gain for Trump because of the indictments
among Republicans, in fact, a slight loss. We are measuring
hair breadths, but the election will surely come down two
hair breadths again, so this counts. In the Temple poll,
(06:24):
just over sixty four percent of Republicans surveyed said that
after the indictments they are still likely to vote for
Trump in the primary, But just under sixty six percent
of the same group of Republicans said they would have
been more likely to vote for him if he had
not been indicted. America has made up its mind. Even
(06:46):
some Republicans are regaining theirs. You know what, two percent.
The difference in the Temple poll two percent of just
the registered Republicans amounts to in actual votes, eight hundred thousand.
The indictments cost Trump the support of eight hundred thousand Republicans. Hell,
(07:07):
even Ted Cruz said last night he's not endorsing Trump
in the primary. He used as his excuse the fact
that he's such a target in his Senate reelection race.
He says he can't afford to alienate a signal Dessantus
voter or a single Trump voter, Because, yeah, Ted, a
bunch of disgruntled Texas Trump voters are going to vote
(07:32):
against you. Uh huh, this is where we are. Mark
Meadows gets his hearing to move his part of the
case of the Trump nineteen into federal court. It will
be on August twenty eighth, two mondays from now, but
(07:52):
Trump's lawyers will be in Washington at the same hour
because August twenty eighth is also the Judge Tanya Chutkin hearing,
at which she is expected to set the date of
the start of Trump's January sixth. That would be Tanya Chutkin,
against whom death threats are beginning to pop up. In
one a woman leaves a voicemail calling her a quote
slave and Rice Street the Fulton County jail where Meadows
(08:18):
will still have to go to show up for processing
and fingerprinting, and a mug shot by Friday, the twenty fifth,
before his hearing Atlanta, where the grand jurors who indicted
him and Trump and seventeen others have been docked by
fascists and they are now getting death threats. And again,
meadows hearing is not next Monday, the twenty first, It's
(08:40):
the following one, the twenty eighth, Next Monday is the
Great Trump News Conference, at which he will reveal the
Great Harrington Declaration, and only Donald Trump could possibly get
indicted on thirteen separate counts of in essence trying to
defraud the voters of Georgia by lying about the election,
(09:00):
and follow that up by holding a news conference at
which he will try to is gape by presenting a
one hundred page report written in part by a crazy
eyed publicist, consisting entirely of again trying to defraud the
voters of Georgia by lying about the election. Frankly, one
of his countless ex attorneys, Ty Cobb, now says there's
(09:23):
a good chance that whatever document he produces ends up
as evidence against him, because it's likely to be fiction
and solely for the purpose of contaminating the jury pool.
Eleven am Trump Bedminster Golf Course in New Jersey. See
Trump try to get himself indicted on counts fourteen, fifteen,
and sixteen. If only Evana were there to stop him,
(09:49):
Actually she is. Maybe he communicated with her by those
unsent Twitter direct message drafts. This is the theory that
will not go away now. Politico notes that buried deep
in the unset field Court documents on Jack Smith getting
access to Trump's Twitter account. Quote. One thing prosecutors appeared
(10:11):
to pursue is who currently has the keys unquote. The
court docs show that as of February, the list included
Trump's representatives to the National Archives and Records Administration NARA.
Oh hell, this is where I came in. You might
recall that this entire dance of the dueling courtrooms began
(10:34):
because Trump and his liaisons would not listen when NARA
asked for all its stuff back from Mary a Lago
when Trump withdrew his troops from Washington in January twenty
twenty one. Those narrow liaisons were Mark Meadows not anymore
and a clown car, a former White House and DOJ
(10:55):
attorney Scott Gass, Michael Purpura, Stephen Engel, John Eisenberg, and
at least two names were probably not on the list
anymore either, Pat Philbin and Pat Patsy Beloney sip Baloney.
In twenty twenty two, as he made the fateful decision
not to give NARA its stuff back, Trump added two names.
(11:16):
And this is where access to the Twitter account might
actually turn out to be something of the spy novel genre.
The two new names were the propagandist John Solomon and
popeyed Factotem Cash Patel. I keep thinking, this Trump Twitter
(11:36):
DM story is going to get only bigger and bigger,
and if it doesn't get bigger right away, it will
get bigger later because there is going to be a
big leak of something we have no idea about, and
then there's going to be a big hearing in which
Trump lawyers try to get all of it excluded. So
Trump Twitter dms, leave space on your calendar for that,
(12:00):
Oh your calendar, Thank you, Nancy Faus. That reminds me
(12:33):
it is never too early to shop for the holidays.
And let me give you a heads up at a
head start on the hottest gift for Christmas twenty twenty three. Yes,
it's this beautiful official Donald Trump twenty twenty four court
appearance calendar, featuring not just wonderful photography of Trump himself
(12:55):
it's lifelike even if he isn't, but also photography of
all the prosecutors and the courthouses, and his fellow defendants
and the uned co conspirators. So your official Donald Trump
twenty twenty four court appearance calendar does, in fact go
all the way through December twenty twenty eight sixty months.
(13:16):
What would you pay for this gorgeous full color calendar?
And when I say full color, of course, I mean
it's all that cheap roustolium gold, so beloved by the
Maestro himself. Wait before you answer, Your official Donald Trump
twenty twenty four court appearance calendar also comes complete with
the dates of the twenty twenty four campaign, so you
(13:36):
can follow along as Trump hopscotches the world from the
planned start of the federal trial in Washington on Tuesday,
January second to the Iowa caucuses on Monday, January fifteenth.
And by the way, in the spirit of good fun,
our Trump playmate for January will be Ron DeSantis, good
naturedly holding up a ball and chain. Now look ahead,
(13:59):
turn the pages over to March. Damn thing will hold still?
What an exciting time March is the GOP caucuses in
Idaho on Saturday, March second. Then there's an extra large
calendar square from Monday, March fourth for the caucuses in
North Dakota and the start of Trump's trial in Georgia
(14:19):
that Fani willis just put in for thank goodness, the
Supreme Being Trump as his own plane and can be
in two places at once, but can he be in
fifteen places the next day? Because after Monday March fourth,
comes Tuesday, March fifth, Super Tuesday, and you'll need your
official Trump twenty twenty four court appearance calendar to keep
track of the Trump primaries in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado,
(14:43):
Main Massa, tuss Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, u Ta, Vermont,
at and virgin Ya. Oh, and don't forget six more primaries,
including the Big Thriller in Florida on Tuesday, March nineteenth
and Louisiana on Saturday, March twenty third, and then back
home to fun City for Monday, March twenty fifth, and
the first day of the Stormy Day Niels hush money
(15:05):
trial in New York, New York. The town's so nice
they indicted him twice then, of course, in honor of
that case where Trump allegedly paid a woman to keep
quiet about what their sex life is like, we have
this amazing high definition photo of that woman, Millennia Trump.
But wait, there's more. The calendar page for May is
(15:27):
fun Fun Fun. Monday, May twentieth, the day judge Eileen
Cannon has selected to start the stolen documents case in Florida,
and then Tuesday May twenty, first Republican Primary Day in
Oregon and Mitch McConnell's Kentucky. And needless to say, there
is our pin up photo for May of that judge
that Trump appointed who has absolutely no business being on
(15:50):
the court, Brad Kavanaugh. Okay, you get the idea. Fannie
Willis has asked the judge to start the trial of
the Trump nineteen on March fourth. As she announced the
indictments Monday night, there was considerable doubt she could get
the thing started within her goal of six months. Hell,
(16:12):
the co defendants probably won't be done flipping on Trump
by March fourth. But for sheer crassness and borderline racism,
you have to hand it to Politico, the amoral access factory,
whose daily email playbook often leads the world in the
clankiest tone. Deaf notes its headline about whether the Fannie
Willis goal of March fourth is realistic was yesterday? Any
(16:36):
guesses be very very low in your estimations of what
they would be willing to do. Any guesses quote what
you talking about? Willis unquote, Politico did slightly redeem itself
(16:56):
from that by clarifying Trump's extra large conundrum. In Georgia,
the governor cannot pardon any buddy in Georgia. Nope, wors Yet,
nobody can pardon anybody until five years after that person
has completed his or her sentence, and that pardon would
(17:16):
have to come from the five members state Board of
Pardons and Paroles. So even in the event of a
lightning speed trial, Trump is not looking at a pardon
before late twenty twenty nine, and he will need more
than five more editions of the official Donald Trump Court
appearance calendar before he gets that pardon. As Politico writes,
one of the primary qualities the board looks for in
(17:37):
pardon applicants is someone who has taken responsibility for their
actions and has shown remorse for them unquote. Sorry Trump
being sorry you got caught don't count. Okay, time for
America's favorite new game show once again. Let's play trumple
(18:10):
thank you again, Nancy Faust, and ooh, we may have
a Trump pull winner. And remember these identities matter because
they all might still be indicted, or they might already
be cooperating. Just security has fingered Tom Fitten as Georgia
unindicted co conspirator number one. He is the guy who
(18:30):
discussed the draft of a speech claiming Trump was a
victim of voter fraud and had really won in twenty twenty.
Only the conversation with Trump was on Halloween, so four
days before the election and before anybody knew who won,
and before any votes could have been fraudulent. Reminiscent of
(18:51):
that Roger Stone video that surfaced last night, but more
meaningful than that video. Roger Stone dictating a fake elector
scheme before the election is infuriating, and it's a good
thing to show on television, but if Trump is not
in the room, it's no more meaningful than Rudy Giuliani
telling his mistress in twenty nineteen about the plan for
a phony claim of election fraud, or me telling you
(19:13):
that I thought Trump would try it four and a
half years before he actually did. Ryan Goodman at just
Security has Boris Epstein as number three, Bernie Carrick at
number five, and Phil Waldron at six, and the Washington
Post separately pursuing this agrees on those two Carrick and Waldron.
(19:34):
Goodman has false electors at nine through nineteen. I'll need names, sir,
I will need names. Goodman throws a wrench in at twenty,
where the COGNISCENTI think it's Patrick Byrne, but he thinks
it might just be Mike Flynn. After all the others
are not household names. Though, we have to give a
tip of the Trumpel Champeau to Goodman's possibilities for number
(19:58):
twenty seven to election fraud conspiracy Mavens Michael Posposewski or
Jovan Pulitzer Jovaan Pulleitzer, And you will be happy to
know that Jovan Pulleitzer is also known by his middle name.
(20:20):
He is. He is j. Hutton Pulleitzer to his friends,
of whom he has none certainly not after all. This
also of interest here. Not only has the state of
Kansas backed off its raid of the Marian Record newspaper
(20:44):
and given the paper all of its stuff back, but
the judge who signed the warrant for the corrupt police
chief to go in and trash the place has, it
turns out, a record of past DUIs, one of which
reportedly came while she was driving with a license that
had been suspended because of her first dui. So it's
(21:08):
all better. Now, Yeah, what did they do about the
publisher who died after the police raided her home? That's next.
This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Olberman. Time
(21:35):
now for the daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and
dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's worst persons in
the world. The bronze governor Ron DeSantis. It is encouraging
to see that if you do bad things long enough,
they will catch up with you, and if you do
(21:56):
enough bad things long enough, they will consume you. The
latest jaw dropper from the Kingdom of Fascist Florida. And
I'm not saying this ranks with teaching kids that slavery
had the silver lining of promoting good blacksmithing training. But
it's bad. The Miami New Times reports it. Under a
new rule adopted last month by the Florida Board of
(22:17):
Indoctrination Education, parents will have to sign permission slips to
enable teachers to call their kids by anything other than
their legal first names. Now you can see where the
transphobes and the other sikos in Florida are going with this.
If a transitioning girl wants to be called Amy, and
(22:40):
her legal name is Andrew. Teachers will have to call
her Andrew unless the parents approve in writing. But as usual,
to fulfill their little theocratic fantasies, everybody else suffers. This
also means that if Thomas wants to be called Tommy,
parents have to submit a form saying the teachers can
(23:00):
call him Tommy. What the hell do they do if
he also wants to be called Tommy some days but
tom on others because he's a kid. This amendment is
to strengthen the rights of parents and safeguard their child's
educational record, said Board of Education spokesperson Gingerbread Tea Hag.
(23:22):
Gingerbread tea Hag. That's an unusual name. To ensure the
use of the child's legal name in school. The bronze
serial Canadian victim doctor Jordan Peterson at his publisher's Penguin Books.
The paperback edition of his latest whining about how bad
White men have it in This k Kuel World, contains
(23:46):
quotes from several reviewers, One of them, James Marriott of
the Times of London, describes Peterson's book as quote a
philosophy of the meaning of life, but Marriott wrote that
Peterson's philosophy of the meaning of life was quote bonkers.
They out the bonker's part. Marriott hated Peterson's book, so
(24:09):
they simply edited out the part he hated in his
review and put it on the jacket. Also about Penguin books,
these books are not made out of penguins, and they
are not produced by penguins. So we need to look
into the name too, don't we. But the winner Laura
Weyer the eighth Judicial District Magistrate judge who authorized the
(24:31):
Gestapo style raid on the offices of the Marion County
Record newspaper, which resulted in all of its electronics being seized,
and its investigations into the drunk driving record of a
local restaurateur and the allegations against the town police chief
being thwarted, and the paper's ninety eight year old publisher
being at home when they raided her home and then
(24:52):
she had a seizure and died first. Another judge in
Kansas ruled yesterday that the warrant that Judge Vyer approved
was invalid, probably illegal, and unwarranted, and that judge ordered
everything returned immediately to the Marion County Record, except of course,
for the publisher since she's dead. Then the Wichita Eagle
(25:14):
newspaper broke news that Judge Vyr has a little problem.
She has her own history of drunk driving, and that
there seems to have been a conspiracy to cover at
least part of it up. While she was still going
by the name Laura Allen and she was the lead
prosecutor in Morris County, Kansas, she was arrested for DUI
in January twenty twelve. She made a plea deal in
(25:36):
which she was supposed to go into a diversion program,
but then she stopped communicating with her lawyer and she
refused to get an alcohol and drug evaluation, according to
the paper, so her suspended license was suspended again. And
that's when in August twenty twelve, she was driving with
a suspended license and in another judge's car in a
(25:58):
different county in Kansas, when she rammed that car into
a school building next to the school football field at
Council Grove School. The first county apparently never knew about
the second DUI in the other county, so instead of
becoming a jail prisoner, Laura Byer became a judge and
single handedly overruled the first Amendment in this country and
(26:21):
led to the death of a ninety eight year old woman. Happily,
the Kansas State Board of Investigation is now taking over
the whole thing as a criminal case, and hopefully Police
Chief Gideon Cody winds up in prison and save a
cell for Judge Laura Er that is yre as in liar,
because she truly is two days worst person in the world.
(26:56):
Now a little earlier than usual to the number one
story on the Countdown and my favorite topic, me and
things I promised not to tell, and I wanted to
tell again the story of Meshu. I've mentioned this previously.
I never had a dog until twenty twelve. I was
allergic to dogs as a kid, and I still am
to the big fur dogs. I love them, but about
(27:19):
half an hour in a closed space with a fur
dog and I stopped breathing. Also, I was repeatedly warned
by my allergists over the decades that so called hypoallergenic
dogs weren't really a thing always and if you had
a minor reaction to the hair of a poodle or
a Westie or a Maltese, you were lucky. And if
(27:40):
you didn't and the dog had to go back. You
had heartbreak. I didn't, and I was blessed by the
opposite of heartbreak. And I rapidly realized, no dogs. I
have wasted the first fifty three years of my existence.
Then I was born again in dogs. So I've tried
(28:03):
to make up for the lack of dogs. My gal
Stevie and I. Yesterday we walked to the Animal Medical
Center here in New York for her rehab, where she
goes sometimes in an underwater treadmill to work on her
two floating kneecaps and her torn acl She couldn't walk
in April. Now we walk the forty five minutes over
to rehab. I'm not sure what she's rehabbing, but she
(28:25):
loves it. Rose, her sister, is nine. She and I
were out yesterday afternoon. She comes with me to my
physical therapists, and she is my physical therapist's therapy. I
had often looked into getting a third dog, and I
had gotten heavily involved in dog rescue work, and then
in twenty eighteen, those two streams crossed. I got a
(28:47):
call from my friend Sue Levitt. She runs the rescue
part of the American Maltese Association runs it for much
of the Northeast, and she said, we have something special
and challenging, and if you don't want to do it,
I understand. He's a three month old Maltese pop. He
has a terrible, terrible heart condition. They're not sure if
he's going to make it past ten months. Could you
(29:09):
take him? Could you take him over to his heart appointments.
We'll help pay for it, but could you just give
him a home and then we'll see what happens. I
thought about it for about five seconds. I said yes,
and soon Spaghetti was in my apartment trying to boss
around Stevie and Rose, and I knew he needed to
stay and he needed a new name. Spaghetti, Spaghetti, Getty,
(29:37):
Teddy Ted my dad's name perfect. I was so prepared
for the worst with Ted that it was July and
I didn't buy him any stuff for winter. Then I
took him to the Animal Medical Center here and the cardiologist,
Dennis Trafney said, he's got a heavy valve in his heart.
If we don't do anything, he's got five to seven
(30:01):
years wait years, but with medication that's seven to ten years.
But I can operate on him I can give him
probably a normal lifespan, and I'll thread this filament. See
I'm holding this up. I feed it in through his
jugular vein and then it goes into his heart. Then
we stop his heart electrically for like three seconds. We
push this button on the end of the filament and
(30:22):
at the other end of the filament, see the tiny
balloon and it pushes the valve open. And you just
keep doing it as long as he can stand it.
It's like knocking the rust off a hinge by just
continually opening the door again and again. And I said,
I don't see any filament, and doctor Trapney said sorry,
and he moved it in front of a black background,
and there it was. And I said, great, let's try it.
(30:46):
And then I said, why did they think he was
not going to make it past ten months when you
say that he would have had five to seven years anyway.
And the doctor said, well, if you're a vet, you
might see this condition once in your career. I operate
on it about three times a month. It went kind
(31:06):
of well. Ted just turned five. There is no other
way to describe Ted. He is a five year old
boy in a dog's body on walks Ted looks for
and flirts with all the human girls, especially if they
are sitting on blankets. He comes over, stretches out, rubs
(31:28):
up against them in a good way. Ted also barks
at all dogs bigger than him and then goes up
and tries to say hi to them. He has his enemies,
the printer, the plunger, the thunder, and most recently the
thunders relative of the rain. And there are at least
a dozen television commercials that Ted can't stand and knows
(31:50):
by the first sound he hears during them. The operation
went so well, in fact, that they were about an
hour late giving him back to me in twenty eighteen, because,
as the surgical residence said, he'd had to do all
the tests a second time because he was worried he
had screwed up the first set of tests because the
results were too good. If I could have gotten luckier
(32:14):
given the prognosis with which Ted arrived, I don't know how.
So when my friend Sue from Maltese Rescue called now
two years ago and said, I have a really, really
tough case, and I don't think there's a chance that
(32:34):
there is going to be an unexpectedly positive outcome like
we had with Ted. I listened very carefully. This was
another Maltese puppy, barely three months. The family he was
born into loved him, but there were two young kids there,
and frankly the mother thought they were too young to
watch this little dog die. His name was Mishu, it
(32:56):
was Polish for little bear, and he had tetrology of fellow.
If that sounds vaguely familiar in a human, it takes
surgery that can last twelve hours to correct. Jimmy Kimmel's
son had it. You may remember it from there. In dogs,
there have been some early experiments in surgery, very promising,
(33:19):
but almost exclusively for bigger dogs. If you've ever seen
the drawings of mc escher, where the same staircase looks
like it's going up and going down at the same time,
that is what a heart afflicted with tetrology of fallow
looks like. There are arteries going over the heart and
others that take the newly oxygenated blood out of the
(33:41):
heart in the wrong direction. In August twenty twenty one,
Mishu arrived here. It's easy to romanticize things like this,
but there was something magical about him from the first
day two years ago tomorrow. He was very, very sick.
His tongue and gums were purple. He wasn't getting enough oxygen,
(34:04):
was tiny. He was dwarfed by my other three dogs,
and yet he would start trouble with them. He would
silently charge Ted, or he'd go up and yap at Stevie,
and soon he'd get all three of them playing and fighting.
And that's all the strength he had. A minute, tops,
and he would have to sit down and watch the
chaos he had created. And he enjoyed doing that too,
(34:26):
and he loved it, and he loved them. If two
of the dogs were lying near each other, but not
next to each other, not together, Mishu would go and
lie exactly in the empty space between them, so his
head rested on one dog and his back paws on
the other. And soon they would respond to his presence
(34:46):
by arranging themselves cuddling together, with a space for him
in between. Once I was stretched out legs up on
my couch and the four of them climbed in, two
of them by my feet, two of them by my knees.
I called Mishu's name, and he turned up and looked
at me with a look of I have to say satisfaction,
(35:08):
and then the four of them almost simultaneously fell asleep.
There such a simple thing, and yet it easily remains
one of the most extraordinary and wonderful moments of my life.
And I prayed that night and not for the last time,
that if there was no miracle meant for Mishu, that
at least when he left us, it would be while
he was in my arms. And by the way, Mishu
(35:32):
was an athlete. He just was an athlete who had
no stamina. In the pen, I would keep him in
for his own safety. When I had to go out,
Mishu would get up on his hind legs and stand
or try to get out. And once he did get out,
he trotted confidently around my place. And he loved to
move and run and play, and then he'd have to stop.
(35:56):
Mishu also enjoyed food as much as any dog or
any human I have ever known. He gained nearly a
pound a month while he was with me. If you
approached him with a treat, he would literally punch the
air with one of his front legs, like an athlete
celebrating a success, and often with one front leg, and
(36:17):
then the other like they were exultant fists, and the
sheer joy of that never failed to make me smile
and laugh. Put him on his back next to you,
jab a finger at his paws, and you would be
in a boxing match with a four pound puppy who
loved to duke it out with you. You always knew
(36:39):
when the fight was over, though michhe would stop throwing
hands or pause and simply take his front paws and
grab your finger and hold it. He once did this
with me for a solid minute. I have never felt
more as if I were truly communicating with any dog.
(37:00):
He was an extraordinarily happy puppy, even then he felt
bad physically, and those were harrowing times. Mishi would be
sitting on my lap usually or walking on the floor,
just chilling with the other dogs, when he would suddenly
tense up, sometimes letting out a cry, and twice that
cry was like that of a young human boy, so
(37:22):
startling that the other dogs stopped and stared with what
could genuinely be described as a look of alarm. Most times,
the tensing was my cue to grab him and hold
him tight. That inability to get oxygen to all the
parts of his body would cause his body to contract
and writhe and if he was on any surface other
(37:43):
than the ground, it could literally propel him to the floor.
The contraction threw him around. The first time he did that,
my veterinarian was here and she said, you may have
to take him to the emergency room. She said it
was essentially what a dog does just before it faints,
and then within seconds it would stop. His body would relax,
(38:04):
and more or less by accident, I also discovered that
after one of these seizures he seemed to be soothed
if I carried him and walked him around, gently rocking
him in my arms and whistling at him or talking
to him as I walked, He and I solved a
lot of the world's problems in those little walks out
(38:27):
in the fresh air, on the balcony or just around
the house. He would often doze off, but just as
often would within minutes be ready to start playing again.
And so I had in my little flock of lovely dogs,
a sweet, wise, serene, playful puppy who liked to grasp
my fingers with his paws and loved everything about life,
(38:50):
and there was no escaping it. He was dying well,
I could not not try to find out if there
was something to be done to make his life longer,
or ease or happier. What we tried to do when
I resumed the story that began a year ago tomorrow
(39:14):
the story of Mishu next resuming now the story of
my Maltese puppy, Michu. His heart so bad that it
pumped oxygenated blood the wrong way and limited him to
brief bursts of energy, And how he never really knew
how sick he was, or that he had been dealt
such a bad, tragic hand, and how he just took
(39:37):
the life he was given and loved and was loved.
Of course, I knew what sadness this was, this special
soul trapped in a body that would betray him at
any time and fatally, so I had to at least
try to see if something could keep him here longer,
(39:57):
or at least make him feel better. We went to
see the city's top cardiologist for dogs, and there wasn't
anything to do. Although he thought keeping the cans of
a minute's worth of oxygen that you sometimes see football
players breathing from on the sidelines, he thought those might
help a little when he would have these little pre feints.
(40:21):
Soon I had dozens of those cans in a hall closet,
and I was discussing building him an oxygen tent. But
ultimately the problem wasn't his breathing. He was breathing fine,
He got all the oxygen he would normally need. It
was finding some way to get the oxygen pumped by
his fatally flawed heart, to carry the oxygen in the
(40:43):
blood around his body, and there was no way to
do that. The median age of survival for dogs suffering
from tetrology of fallow was just about two years. The
cardiologist brought up me Shue's case on a board of
international experts in canine cardiac care, and they read that unfortunately,
(41:07):
there was no chance he could survive any operation, let
alone experimental surgery for this devastating malformation. He could not
survive the anesthesia, let alone six, eight, ten, twelve hours
of surgery. Thus, the visits to the hospital turned out
to be more about letting people there who I knew,
(41:29):
meet him and hold him. And I can tell you
there was an extraordinary soothing quality to holding him. I
heard it from these people again and again, what a
special little soul, and he loved to be held. I
took him everywhere they would let me take him. He
was a regular at my weekly physical therapy for my
(41:51):
arthritic joints. My therapist adored him. She would just hold
him and tell him stories. Took him to the apple
store once that he did not like. He went for
walks with me and the other dogs, but always in
a bag draped over my shoulder. He did not have
the stamina to walk for very long, but he enjoyed
the outdoors. He enjoyed the park. He enjoyed the other dogs.
(42:13):
He enjoyed the people who would come up and say
hello to him. The inevitable finally came this time last year.
Throughout the last week, the little pre feints increased, but
Mishu's happiness did not decrease. Two days before the end,
(42:34):
I approached him with a treat and my camera phone rolling,
and sure enough he punched with the left, and he
punched with the right, and he ate the treat, and
he licked his purple lips. And when I surprised him
with a second treat, he did it all again. Sometime
a year ago, I was sound asleep. The dogs sleep
(42:55):
with me. And in my dreams somebody or something was
breathing in my ear. Well, of course it was Mishu.
He had figured out how to wake me. He had
to go to the bathroom. He knew enough to tell
(43:16):
me that he knew enough to wake me, to get
me to get him down, and he had to get
some water. On the afternoon of the twelfth of November,
a year ago, Saturday, I was holding Mishu in my
lap as I sat and looked at the peak foliage
in the park out the window. With no warning, he
(43:38):
suddenly let out that near human cry. The other dog's
frozey in place. I stood up and walked him around
the balcony again. I had to sit him down in
his pen for a second, and I was just picking
him back up when he tensed up, just like all
the other times. His body got rigid and twisted, and
(44:00):
he died. He died as I picked him back up.
The special little soul was gone. His body was getting
cold with stunning rapidity, and something inside me said, no,
not yet. I'm not ready. And I don't know why,
(44:22):
but I don't think he's ready. And with no training
and no earthly clue, what I was doing. I tried
CPR on him. You have to try, You have to try.
I had so little idea what I was doing that
after breathing air in and out of his lifeless body,
I moved my face away as if I was going
(44:43):
to spit out water before I had to remind myself,
no moron, that would be if he was drowning. I
must have done five or six breaths. When I heard
him exhale. I waited for it to stop or to
be a false alarm. It wasn't damned if this little
dog didn't somehow teach me how how to resuscitate him.
(45:08):
He was dead, and now he was back. I didn't
delude myself that this was going to last very long,
and the circumstances could not have been worse. It was
a rush hour on a Friday afternoon, and there was
a bottleneck and a bridge approach between Michu and I
and the hospital. And I had visions of being stuck
(45:30):
in traffic for half an hour or longer, and almost
nothing they could do for him if we somehow got
there in time. But you have to try, you have
to try. I loaded a bag full of those cans
of oxygen. I grabbed him. I got in the car.
The driver realized my distress and asked me what he
(45:51):
could do to help, and I said, don't run any lights,
but do not stop unless you have to. And when
you do stop, help me unwrap some of these plastic
wrapped oxygen cans. The oxygen cans are what are keeping
him alive. Normal trip twenty minutes. We made it in
eleven minutes. The streets parted for Mishu. At the animal
(46:17):
medical center, somehow I ran up the stairs. I handed
him off to the emergency room doctor, saying with an evenness,
I could not believe I was mustering. My dog is dying.
He has tetrology of fallow. She ran off with him
to an examining room, and a second doctor came out,
and I briefed her on everything, including Mishu's human like
(46:40):
cry and his unexpected resuscitation. And I told her he
had been seen by the chief cardiologist there, and she said,
doctor Fox, Doctor Fox is here, and now Mishu was
being worked on by the expert in the field. And
despite all of this good fortune, I knew, I knew
(47:01):
there was no hope. I had managed to text Sue
from the Maltese rescue who adored him, and she came
to the hospital, and three of the people from other
departments in the hospital who had met Mishu came down
to see him, not for my sake, for his. It
(47:26):
was heart bringing and heartwarming at the same time. And
when his doctor came to me and said, he is alive,
but if you take him out of the hospital, you'd
get about as far as the parking garage, and then
you'd have to bring him back because what you heard
when he cried out was a stroke. The oxygen deprivation
was finally too much for him. He had a stroke,
(47:47):
and he began to gently prepare me for the question
about letting him go, and I stopped him and I said,
I know we've all done everything we can, Mishu, especially
ready when you are. So they brought him back to me,
(48:13):
a little drip attached to his arm, and when the
toggle on the drip was thrown, the medication would end
his life. He was as warm and as soft as
ever in my arms, and yet I knew he was
no longer there. Sue held him for a while too,
(48:36):
and then everybody left me alone with him. I said,
what you would expect somebody to say in such a
circumstance about love and happiness. And then I heard myself
(49:02):
saying things about gratitude, gratitude to him for teaching me
that in the face of death, the point is to
know when to try and when to say enough, and
that he had taught me how to confront death and
crisis and urgency with evenness and practicality that I never
(49:22):
knew I had in any quantity whatsoever, And to be
able to say, I know you had a happy life, Michu,
and it seems like that, and not the fact that
you had a happy life but not a long one.
The happy life is all that mattered to you. The cardiologist,
(49:47):
doctor Fox and the tech came back into the room
at this point, and I said I was ready, and
they turned the toggle and left very quietly. And I
said to Michu, I know if there is a place
for you to go now, I am certain you will
be the first one they let in. I just hope
(50:11):
they will let me visit you there someday, and I
hope you will remember us. I said, good night's sweet
prints and flights of angels sing me to thy rest,
and he was gone again. As I had prayed when
(50:35):
he died. Mishu died in my arms, and he managed
somehow to do it twice. There are some postscripts. Mishu's
cardiologist very solemnly returned and respectfully said that of those
international experts who had reviewed his case and were deeply
(50:58):
saddened that they could not help him, only two out
of a couple of dozen had actually seen and been
able to study any small dog suffering from tetrology of fallow,
and Mishu might have one final blessing for them and
the rest of us if they could keep and study
his poor little malformed heart without hesitation. I said yes,
(51:22):
because in that instance I saw him positioning his head
on Stevie's head, and his back paws on Rose's backpaws,
so the three of them were cuddling together, and I knew,
as I had always known, this was a dog who
cared about and actually loved other dogs. So the hospital
(51:43):
wound up recalibrating some of the cameras they had that
they used to photograph the smallest teeth in the smallest dogs,
so they could get every imaginable image of Mishu's tiny
heart and maybe someday learn methods with which to fix
this nightmare in another dog, and Mishu is in the
(52:08):
veterinary textbooks. Now. As a second PostScript, Mishu's parents had
another litter late last year after he died, and their
human was kind enough to offer me either of the brothers.
Mishu would never know. Each was eerily reminiscent of him,
but healthy, completely healthy, so healthy that they were threats
(52:33):
to my other three dogs. I had each of them
live a week with us, and I would have been
fine with each other. They liked me fine, but each
of them first bit ted in the genitals, and then
Stevie in the genitals, and rose in the genitals, and
in one case me in the genitals. They were crazy,
fun but crazy. And the second one was not only
(52:56):
twice as large as other Maltese his age, he was
able to vault out of his pen like an Olympic gymnast.
So they went back and now have their own homes
where they are the only dogs in their own homes.
So the third PostScript, when Sue from Maltese Rescue reached
(53:20):
out again this past June and said, I've got another
special case, fifteen year old, perfect health but rotting teeth,
and he has dementia. His human got sick and didn't
really take care of him, and then she died, and
I don't know what to do. Who's going to adopt
a fifteen year old? I was able to raise my hand.
(53:45):
I had an open roster spot. The fifteen year old's
name is Minae. It's French for kitty. I can't imagine
what confusion that's caused him all these years. His human
had been a French teacher. He actually didn't have dementia,
or at least not very much dementia. It was those teeth.
His teeth was so bad, so rotten. Some of them
(54:07):
came out by just pulling on them with your fingers.
So we had them all taken out. And the next
day he woke up like he was seven years old,
looked around like how long have these other dogs been here?
Every day since then, he's gotten a little younger. He's
Benjamin Button and he's a living instruction. Look out for
(54:28):
your dog's teeth. Even if you think you know to
do that, do it more. The last PostScript, I got
the tattoo a month after me Shu died. His pensive,
half smiling little face looks up at me from near
(54:49):
the crook of my elbow, where he used to sit
when I would carry him around after one of those
pre feints. It is a remarkable likeness to me. It
means exactly what you would think. It means. It comforts
me lightly. It means me Shoe is always with me
(55:15):
and always will be with me. And now, as this
unwanted but not tragic anniversary approaches, Meshu will also, I hope,
always be with you. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a
(55:40):
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