September 27, 2024 • 51 mins
SERIES 3 EPISODE 37: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: I am only reading tea leaves here but Trump's panicked post yesterday about how HE did everything right on January 6th but the "deep state" let him down, followed by his afternoon lie about how Nancy Pelosi ignored his offers of troops MAY imply that he's gotten some sense of the evidentiary brief Jack Smith filed to Judge Chutkan before yesterday's deadline.
I'm guessing that Smith is going to try to start by proving that long before January 6th Trump knew damn well that he had lost the election and thus no act he took to get a recount or challenge it was an "official act" and thus immune but simply a personal one for which he'll have to face charges.
Smith's filing remains under seal.
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH: So New York Mayor Eric Adams allegedly sold himself to Turkey's dictator for only about $17,000 a year? Adams is a messianic idiot and his "I'm not resigning" press conference began with him being shouted down by a critic with a bullhorn, and his defense seems to have been damaged by his niece telling everybody to stop criticizing the Mayor because Jesus put him there.
AND LIKE I SAID: They published the "Iran Trump Hack" yesterday and it wasn't a big deal but the newspapers all made a big show over martyring themselves for supposed journalistic principles when in fact they weren't even sacrificing one good story.
ALSO: Brian Ray has done a new version of the theme! We'll premiere it Monday but there's a quick tease here, just for you.
B-Block (28:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: NYC Mayor doubleheader! Adams indicted, Giuliani disbarred. Media management suck up Dylan Byers accuses me of "rushing" to reveal something I actually stayed quiet about for more than a decade. And Clay Higgins managed to both try to walk back his racist, stochastic terror comments about Haitians AND double down on them at the same time!
C-Block (35:13) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: Muggs isn't the sweetest dog Thurber ever wrote about. But he may be the most memorable: "The Dog That Bit People."
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
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. We
have complied with the court's ordered four fifty three Eastern
(00:27):
dayline time yesterday, and thanks for stopping by. We hope
you enjoyed Jack Smith Day. The nearly two hundred pages
worth of evidence in the revised case of the United
States of America Versus Disorderly Jay Trump submitted before the
five pm deadline and under seal evidently not unsealed last
(00:48):
night by Judge Tanya Chutkin, and no indication as to
when it will be unsealed or when parts of it
will be unsealed. On the other hand, Trump, as always
confesses more than he convinces whenever he's scared. Early yesterday morning,
he posted some weird even for him that I think
gives us in broad strokes at least what he has
(01:11):
heard about where Smith is going henceforth. The answer, I
think is this Smith is still going virtually everywhere he
was going before the Supreme Court immunity decision. Smith may
have found some way around that Supreme Court ruling. I mean,
listen to the newest of Trump's three hundred and thirty
(01:34):
seven different explanations for what happened on January sixth, quoting
shocking breaking news as exposed by John Solomon and blah
blah blah blah and the great work of Congressman Barry
Loudermilk and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. The Deep
State chose to disregard my direct authorization of at least
(01:56):
ten thousand National Guard troops to ensure that Washington, DC
was safe and secure on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
These Deep State subversives disobeyed the President's directives, which would
have prevented any unrest that day. January sixth, as it
is known, would never have taken place. So to Barry
(02:22):
louder Milk, your friendly Capitol Hill tour guide is too
inscrutable even for me to try to figure out. But
Trump has brought back his most frequently used lie about
January sixth, which is that he offered troops but Nancy
Pelosi turned them down. And though he left Nancy Pelosi
out of that post, I just read, he did bring
(02:43):
her up yesterday in the afternoon in remarks he made
around the corner from me, here there goes the neighborhood again.
In Trump's reptile brain. He must be working some kind
of Everything I did that day was official, and everybody
who responded to it was official. But they betrayed me,
(03:04):
and they trade the official chain of command, and therefore
I am immune from prosecution for everything. That's what I'm
seeing here, and that would dubtail neatly into something one
of Trump's todys said on CNBC yesterday, Joe Kernan, the
guy with the worst two pay on the network. It's
so bad. It looks like he bought one two pay
(03:25):
and thought it looked good, so much so that he
bought a second one and put it on top of
the first one, and he wears them both at the
same time. Listen to this and see if it doesn't
line up with the idea that the whole day was
somebody else's fault. Quoting Joe Kernan in the heat of
that moment, at that point, I think he really did
believe that it the election had been stolen. At that point,
(03:47):
I don't know if he believes it anymore. Well, Joe,
that's all right. Then, in the heat of the moment,
when I smashed through the giant, forty foot wide plate
glass window in the front of J. C. Pennies. I
really did believe that that was my washer dryer combo
in there. So Trump may be saying everything I did
(04:09):
on January sixth and before was official, and all the
charges against me must be dismissed. And why would he
do that? He might do that because Smith may have
found some way to say, no, guess what, none of
it is official. And again I'm way out on a
limb here. But the means to that end none of
(04:32):
this is official. He is immune from none of it.
The means to that end could be to start your
case by proving that long before the insurrection started it
on January sixth, and long before the Christmas time meetings,
and long before the frivolous lawsuits started in November and December,
Trump knew damned well he had lost, and that none
(04:56):
of his actions were as president, that all of his
actions were as private citizen and politician. And if Smith
can prove that the Supreme Court's corrupt ruling on presidential
immunity means nothing, we'll see briefly some new polls national
(05:28):
all likely voters yesterday, Harris fifty Trump forty six, Big village.
That's four points Harris fifty three Trump forty seven. Outward
Intelligence polling, that's six points Harris fifty two to Trump
forty five. Echelon Insights that's seven points. One non swing
(05:49):
state poll Maryland, where it's sixty three point thirty one Harris,
and it's two Democrats for every Republican. This is mentioned
only because it's a Washington Post poll and it includes
the Senate run with the popular Republican former Governor Larry
Hogan to their hopes of taking the Senate back, and
he's trailing the Democrat Angela also Brooks fifty one to
(06:11):
forty so that's also Brooks by eleven over also ran. Meanwhile,
in the most shocking development in the history of the
governance of the City of New York since at least Wednesday,
Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on charges of acting
(06:34):
as a foreign agent for the government of the Turkish
dictator Erdwan, of getting the new Turkish embassy here opened
before fire inspections had been completed, and for basically ending
his career for something like one hundred and forty thousand
dollars over eight years, mostly in flight upgrades and Kushier
hotel rooms. So like seventeen thousand dollars a year, plus
(06:59):
foreign contributions to his campaign for mayor that were illegally
washed through fake don't owns, and which in turn entitled
him to matching public funds for his campaign, maybe as
much as ten million dollars. He didn't get ten million
dollars his campaign did. Don't blame me, I voted for
the garbage commissioner. Lady Adam says he is not resigning.
(07:23):
But if you would like your I'm not resigning news
conference to get off to the worst possible start, you
do what he did. You go out and stand in
front of the mayor's official residence, Gracie Mansion. And that's
when you discover that your opponents have brought a bullhorn,
and the bullhorn is louder than your own portable public
address system. Can you hear me? Now? This is serious stuff.
(08:25):
All evidence to the contrary. I mean it is small scale.
Clarence Thomas here and frankly, if Adams were smart, he
would announce he's joining the Republican Party by Monday. Harlan
Crow and Leonard Leo would have built a statue to him.
And given that, symbolically Adams had to fight his way
onto the street through the crowds of people fired from
(08:45):
or quitting his administration over the last month. It is
hard to believe he can remain in office. I mean,
he's barely in office now as it is. But the
rest of this, this is freaking hilarious. This is the
best comedy material in New York this week, as this
is the dumbest mayor of New York in my lifetime.
(09:08):
This has to be the dumbest indictment of any politician
in my lifetime. The Turks allegedly decided that this guy
Adams was exactly the right New York City politician to
invest in back when he was Borough president of Brooklyn.
I'm quoting from the indictment. During their meeting, Adams and
(09:29):
the promoter solicited campaign contributions from Businessman three, who, as
a Turkish national, could not lawfully contribute to any US campaign.
During the meeting, Businessman three agreed to contribute fifty thousand
dollars or more to the twenty twenty one campaign, believing
that Adams might one day be the president of the
(09:51):
United States and hoping to gain influence with Adams. This
is like going into a fantasy Baseball draft with the
first pick overall and saying, you know who I want?
I want the backup catcher on the Chicago White Sox.
He's gonna break all the records. They've already lost one
hundred and twenty games. Right wait, it gets worse. Quote.
(10:14):
The Adams staffer also agreed to speak with FBI agents
and falsely denied the criminal conduct of herself and Adams,
among others. At one point during her voluntary interview, the
Adams staffer excused herself to a bathroom and while there
deleted the encrypted messaging applications she had used to communicate
(10:35):
with Adams, the promoter, the Turkish official, the airline manager,
and others. Unquote and oh we are far from done. Quote.
On November six, twenty twenty three, FBI agents executed a
search warrant for the electronic devices used by Eric Adams.
(10:56):
Although Adams was carrying several electronic devices, including two cell phones,
he was not carrying his personal cell phone, which is
the device he used to communicate about the conduct described
in this indictment. When Adams produced his personal cell phone
the next day in response to a subpoena, it was
locked such that the device required a password to open.
Adams claimed that after he learned about the investigations into
(11:19):
his conduct, he changed the password on November fifth, twenty
twenty four, and increase the complexity of his password from
four digits to six. Obviously there's a typo in there.
It's November fifth, twenty twenty three. But get that part again.
He increased the complexity of his passwords from four ward
digits to six. Adams had done this, he claimed to
(11:41):
prevent members of his staff from inadvertently or intentionally deleting
the contents of his phone, because, according to Adams, he
wished to preserve the contents of his phone due to
the investigation. But Adams further claimed he had forgotten the
password he had just said, and thus was unable to
provide the FBI with a password that would unlock the phone.
(12:10):
You see that meme of the guy tapping his head
to show how smart he is, don't you? Right now?
The Adams premise here of courses, that he is Mayor
of New York City not because he was elected, but
because God has put him there. I wish I were exaggerating.
I am not. Some of his past quotes quote I
thank God I'm the mayor right now. And the famous
(12:32):
nonsense elliptical statement quote, there is no way God created
me for this moment. If he did not believe this
was my moment, you could read that sentence backwards and
it would make just as much sense. None. And this
Messiah complex is not limited to his dishonor his niece
who says she's an actress or a dancer or a
(12:53):
singer or something. Danielle Adams Elias is just as nuts
as he is.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Young of an ax. I'm my uncle, Sorrial. I don't
know how you feel. I don't care how you feel
about whatever decisions he had to make that you would
never understand. I don't care how you feel about anything, honestly,
because nobody asked you. Like when God created his story,
(13:23):
he didn't ask Sally Sue on the other line, if
he can do it. That was what was chosen for
this man because he was the man for the job. So,
like I say every time, if you have a problem,
taking up with Jesus, because we don't care, and that
man will continue to do what the Lord told him
to do. So y'all gonna relax on my uncle, because
(13:45):
you could never stay in your purpose and relax. Take
a seat.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I think even the mayor would recognize his niece Danielle here,
ain't helping please asks for help any who. It's not
like anybody could have seen this coming, given that Adams
won a ranked choice Democratic I'm Mary defeating the aforementioned
sanitation commissioner and mayo Wiley. Adams has always had some
(14:14):
curious support from some even more curious characters. Tucker Carlson,
Remember Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson once asked, can Eric Adams
save New York from itself? January twenty twenty two, The
Wall Street Journal printed is Mansion Adams the future of
the Democratic Party Wonderland. Joe Biden may have become more progressive,
(14:36):
but Joe Manchin and Eric Adams appear to believe the
Democratic Party's future lies elsewhere. Yeah, evidently in Turkey. Am
I right? Brett Stevens New York Times July twentieth, twenty
twenty one, opinion, Eric Adams is going to save New
York and the best January three, twenty twenty two. Nate Silver,
(14:59):
It's probably foolish, all right. You should have just deleted
it at that point if you start something with. It's
probably foolish. It's probably foolish. It's probably foolish. Nate wrote
to think an NYC. Mayer will successfully translate into being
a national political figure. But I still think Eric Adams
(15:20):
would be in my top five for who will be
the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden. He's going
to be good at getting media attention, you bet your
ass is. And he has a chance of carving out
a niche that's different from what other Democrats are offering.
(15:41):
I didn't know he was from Turkey. That's a niche. Okay,
That's a potentially powerful combination given how primaries are conducted nowadays. Also,
the competition isn't great. Twenty twenty two, Nate goes on
to specifically insist that Eric Adams was a better bet
to succeed Joe Biden than was Kamala Harris, who had
(16:04):
already been vice president for a year. And if you
think this is over the support Democrats who are actually
corrupt Republicans campaign, guess who wrote the lead story yesterday
analyzing the charges against Adams for the amazingly fictional fascist
(16:26):
Murdoch propaganda rag. Here The New York Post. It was
written by Jonathan Effing Turley and his lead and his
conclusion there may be less here than meets the eye.
I'm telling you. I'm telling you he's going to try
to stay on as mayor as a Republican. You watch. Yeah,
(16:57):
I know the odds are long, and I just quoted
Nate Silver and you should never make a prediction after
Nate Silver has just proved you should never make predictions
like that. But I am. I'm on a one game
winning streak. I did mention Wednesday. I think that all
the sturm undrong by the New York Times, by the
Washington Post, by Politico, even by Judd Legum of Popular
Information over whether or not to publish the internal Trump
(17:18):
campaign documents allegedly hacked by Iran and offered around the
news business by someone calling themselves Robert, that that was
all academic. That soon or late, Robert's rules of order
would lead Robert to connect with some kind of independent
journalists who would look at it to make sure they
weren't jeopardizing themselves legally and then say, ef it here
(17:38):
it is. I Actually, silly, old guy me thought this
wouldn't happen till next month. Instead, it happened yesterday. Kenklippenstein,
formerly of The Intercept, published it. Ken Klippenstein put it
online yesterday, got suspended by Elon Musk for his trouble
because Elon Musk is soft as church music. And it's
two hundred and seventy one pages about jd Vance. It's
(18:02):
the jd Vance file. And while, as Klippeteine notes, it
does give you a kind of checklist for what the
Trump campaign likes best about JV, and what it likes
least about JV, and what it's kind of mad about JV,
there is nothing compelling in there. Doesn't even identify his
brand a choice and eyeliner. Clippenstein then goes to the
(18:24):
heart of the matter to quote his post. If the
document had been hacked by some anonymous like hacker group,
the news media would be all over it. I'm just
not a believer of the news media as an arm
of the government doing its work combating foreign influence, nor
should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.
The gatekeeper and government parts are debatable. Those actions can
(18:47):
on occasion be defended. But he nails the whole other thing.
The Times, the Post, and the others looked at this
and they said, this is boring as crap it, My god,
look at the opportunity we can put on a performative
dance here portraying ourselves as martyrs to the cause of
responsible journalism, and it doesn't even cost us a good story.
(19:10):
There's one cautionary aside, though, Liz Mayor m Ai r
the kind of all over the map political operative who's
probably not only the only person who have worked on
the campaigns of both Rishi Sunak and Carly Fiorina, but
very probably the only person on the planet to know
who both Rishi Sunak and Carly Fiorina are. She has
(19:31):
read the whole thing. I'm sorry, my god, did you
think I had read the whole thing? Two hundred and
seventy one pages about J. D. Vance? How many lives
you think I got here? Anyway, she read it, and
Liz Mayer says what matters is what's not in it,
quoting her, There is more damaging stuff to be found
(19:51):
on Vance. I guess the Trump team missed it, and
so have Dems. I have no interest in tearing Vance down.
I disagree with him profoundly on many issues, but we
have too much in common in our bios and backgrounds,
so I'll leave it alone. Well, there's one politico placing
country at a party, my ass, So there's more to
look for. The message of this unpublishable, now published not
(20:15):
that interesting JD Vance compendium is they left the good
stuff out and it's still out there. Not to worry, though,
traditional media is still burying one story at least a
far more import than that, and with far more evident
help from the government. In the burial, The independent site
Notice writes, quote, lawmakers are still waiting on the Pentagon
(20:39):
for more details about what happened between Donald Trump's campaign
and Arlington National Cemetery's staff during last month's memorial service
for soldiers who died during the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Pentagon
appears to be hoping the lawmakers just forget about it.
Department of Defense officials informally told at least one congressional
office to let the issue fade into the background. A
(21:00):
Congressional aid told Notice. The aide said the Pentagon offices
on both sides of the aisle to move on from
the incident. When reach for comment, the Department of Defense
referred Notice to the Department of the Army. Note that
as in aside its statements like that last one, the
Department of Defense referred you to the Department of the Army.
(21:23):
It's statements like that one that led Joseph Heller to
dream up the notion of catch twenty two to resume
quoting from the notice report. The altercation prompted Congressional Democrats
to request a copy of the incident report outlining what
had happened. The official report hasn't yet been released, but
their quiet appeal to at least one lawmaker's office regarding
(21:46):
the request for the full incident report shows the challenges
the Department of Defense faces in the current political landscape. Unquote.
So apparently there is some illusion that if they just
shut up about it, this and the prospect of anybody
who's ever been in the mill terry getting involved in
the election in any way, shape or form, like you know,
(22:12):
uh Iraq Army disinformation specialist JD. Whatever his name was, vance,
that all this will just vanish no military involvement. In
an unrelated story, Kamala Harris has just been endorsed in
a New York Times up ed by the guy who
was killing al Qaeda leaders in Iraq for George Bush
(22:32):
twenty years ago and mocking President Obama and Vice President
Biden fifteen years ago, General Stan McCrystal. Thank god they
are keeping that wall up between the warriors and real patriotism.
Also of interest here, you have to hand it to
(22:53):
white trash Congressman Clay Higgins. While he was trying to
claim he only meant Haitian gang members, not the Haitians
in Ohio, Well he was doing that, he was simultaneously
telling CNN, no, he meant every word. He'd posted about
Haitians and voodoo and get out by January twentieth, and
he'd posted again. Now here is a tease. We will
(23:18):
be premiering on Monday, a new revised version of the
Countdown theme music specially recast for the election home stretch Monday.
But I can now offer you a tease. This is next.
(23:41):
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
(24:17):
ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. I don't
know about you, but I need a break from this crap. Adams,
holy crap, I'm gonna take one. I'm telling you, just
become a Republican. You'll either be on the Supreme Court,
or you'll be the presidential nominee by next week. We'll
take a break Friday's with Thurber. One of Thurber's dog stories.
It's not the sweetest of his dog stories, but it's
(24:39):
easily the funniest of his dog stories. And it's a
Thurber dog story. Next. Okay, break time over. There are
still more new idiots to talk about. A rollicking edition
of the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worst persons in
the world. And sometimes this is satirical. Sometimes this is
directed at me. Sometimes this is poking fun at friends
(25:00):
or colleagues. No, not this time. I mean every word
of this. These are three of the scumbaggiest people in
the world. As John Clees once set on Faulty Towers.
This is total ass worse the bronze former New York
Mayor Rudy ass Giuliani for once, though I'll give him this.
The timing work to Rudy's benefit. This happened to him
(25:24):
on the day the current mayor gets indicted for selling
his soul for like an upgrade from business class aisle
to business class window on a flight to Turkey the Schmndrick. Meanwhile,
in Washington Rudy, who after nine to eleven thought we
should cancel the election and just let him stay on
as mayor because so what if that was what the
(25:45):
terrorists would have wanted? He was wooty. Woody has just
been disbawd, no longer allowed to practice law in the
District of Columbia, which is especially sad because clearly Rudy
needed way more practice. I will say this, between Rudy's
dispartment and the indictment of Adams, only needed one more
event to make this the biggest week for scumbag New
(26:09):
York mayors in the proud history of my hometown. Like,
maybe somebody could have done something about Jimmy bo James Walker,
who was forced out of office in nineteen thirty two
after a series of scandals, including his own chosen cops
arresting ordinary women on the streets of New York City
and charging them with prostitution, literally charging them with street
(26:31):
walking because they were literally walking on the streets and
holding them unless they paid off the cops with cash
or other considerations. Mayor Walker was allowed to flee to
Europe with his mistress. But he came back six or
seven years later and naturally became a disc jockey on
(26:52):
WHN radio. Hi, I'm your corrupt mayor on WHN New York.
Walker is buried in suburban Hawthorne, New York. Maybe somebody
should have gone up yesterday and danced on his grave
or something, just to finish off the hat trick. The
runner up worser, Dylan Buyers of Puck Puck is another
one of those subscription outlets in which the emphasis is
(27:14):
on pretending that doing press releases for corporations and executives
and the powerful that that constitutes some kind of quote news.
I've mentioned Dylan Buyers before when, in twenty twenty one,
I concluded the last round of a decade's worth of
dancing with MSNBC about going back to do a show there,
(27:35):
Buyers contacted me and told me that all I had
told him, and all I had said in public about
my negotiations with the then head of Comcast, Jeff Schell,
all of it was not true because a spokesman from
NBC had told him it was not true. I asked him, naturally,
which spokesman, and he said he couldn't tell me. He
said the spokesman had agreed to be referenced in a story,
(27:55):
but never by name. I asked him what the spokesman
had said specifically. He said he couldn't tell me that either.
That was part of the deal with them too. I
then sent him screenshots of all of my email correspondence
with Jeff Shell and NBC News figure head, says Arcande,
to confirm that what I had been saying was true
and what the spokesman had not really been saying was
(28:16):
not true. And Byers reacted with shock, like you told
him he was adopted. I mean, he was genuinely surprised
that NBC PR people had lied to him, like what
was the first time it happened in world historily, I
mean repeatedly lied to him. In fact, each thing the
anonymous spokesman had told him wasn't just wrong, it was
(28:36):
a lie. In his follow up story, Buyers still somehow
managed to carry some of NBC's waters for it by
saying that I should have known that Jeff Shell was
lying to me. That's not quite the flex you think
it is. In any event, Byers has now moved on
to the Oliviya newsy RFK junior story and is surprisingly
enough carrying water for RFK Junior. He's one of these
(29:00):
morons propagating the idea that RFK is going to get
Newsy prosecuted or arrested or sued because she sent him
photos of herself that he wanted and he never bothered
to tell her bosses to ask her to stop. But
he's RFK and the other one's Dylan Byer, so Dylan
Byers must serve him. Dylan Byers wrote up the story
(29:22):
for Puck on Wednesday night, and since I regularly swipe
at him on Twitter and here for doing crap like this,
he decided to throw me into his update and said
I had rushed. Was the word rushed to remind everybody
that Olivia and I had lived together and that I
should grow up. I rushed. I never revealed the relationship
(29:43):
publicly from the time it started until Monday afternoon of
this week, when the New York Post found out and
asked me. And thus I followed the age old truth
about how to deal with reporters barging in on your
personal life. If you can blow up their scoop, report
what they're going to report before they can report it,
it isn't much but at all, always ruins their day. Yeah,
(30:06):
I rushed, Dylan. I kept it private, as it would
have stayed private for well over a decade. I rushed.
I mean, I don't run fast, but I can rush
faster than ten years worth idiot. I'd urge you to
grow up too, but in fact I like dealing with
you as you are a child. It's much easier to
send you to bed without your supper this way. Oh
(30:28):
and I might add. A couple of years ago, a
prominent reporter got a terrible fatal diagnosis about an awful disease,
and within weeks, Dylan Byers had written an article in
which he gratuitously threw the reporter's name into the story
that had nothing to do with him, and insulted him
just to drive by shot at a dying man for
no reason and with no explanation. There are a lot
(30:51):
of bad media reporters. This Buyer's guy is the worst,
but ultimately he's still only a media reporter. So if
somebody else showed us up Monday claiming to be Dylan
Byer's and it's a different guy, nobody will know the difference.
A media reporter cannot even win the worst person's competition
because the winner the worst is white trash Congressman Clay Higgins, R.
(31:17):
Louisiana and the R standful rathist. You will recall, Higgins
came this close to dropping the N word Wednesday on
the Haitian Bridge Group, which sued in Ohio to get
local prosecutors to charge Trump Advance for attempting to get
the legal Haitian migrants in Ohio, you know killed. Higgins
(31:39):
responded with something that even for this David Duke supporting
the clans to liberal for him, ghost bus hallucinating, insurrectionist asshole,
Even for him, this was astonishing. He screenshoted that news
story and again the story was about a legal motion
in an American local court by Americans, and Higgins added
(32:00):
on his congressional account, while these Haitians are our wild
eating pets voodoo spelled vudu, by the way, nastiest country
in the Western Hemisphere. Cults slapstick gangsters, but damned if
they don't feel all sophisticated. Now he's so close to
the N word filing charges against our president, and VP
(32:21):
Trump's not President Vance is not VP Clay Higgins has
probably stoned all these dougs. Better get their mind rat
and to ask out of our countra. Before January twentieth,
he said in that patois of Louisiana. Patua is a
nice word where you got shit in your mouth. The
speaker and chief buffoon of the House, Mike Johnson, also
(32:44):
of Louisiana, then zaid Higgins had prayed on what he
had written, realized it was in error, and deleted the
post as a gentleman would. Yesterday this excrem at, Higgins
tried to walk it back, claiming he was talking about
Haitian gangs in Ohio, even though there aren't any Haitian
gangs in Ohio and he didn't refer to gangs, and
(33:07):
the filers of the lawsuit who he threatened with expulsion
and targeted for stochastic violence are members of a community
support group, not a gang. You never want to intentionally
hurt someone's feelings. I wish I could do the John
Candy Louisiana accent from the JFK movie. You never want
to intentionally hurt someone's feelings. And that post was intended
(33:28):
for Haitian gangs, you understand, or the one from Kevin
Bacon when he's asking, never mind, you never want to
intentionally hurt someone's feelings. And that post was intended for
Haitian gangs, you understand, not for I mean Haiti as
a country, not at all. And the unintended impact that
was expressed very sincerely from one of my colleagues, very
(33:48):
graciously that touched me as a gentleman. Well you're not
a gentleman, so what the hell you're talking about. It's
bad enough that this Higgins, who has behaved in public
life as a disgraced fired cop, as a white supremacist,
as an insurrectionist, as a guy with the only known
IQ that's in negative numbers, who apparently heard the movie
titled Ghostbusters once and drew from it this concept of
(34:12):
ghost busses on January sixth, and still has never even
bothered to explain what he thinks ghost busses are. This
guy who acts like he is the child of an
alligator that mate it with a barrel of rotten fish.
It's bad enough that he is pretending he said something
far less destructive than he did on that deleted tweet.
But it turns out that Higgins almost simultaneously doubled down
(34:35):
on the original racist tweet about the Haitians. CNN asked
him for a comment, and he replied about his remarks
about the Haitians quote, it's all true. I can put
up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to.
I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I'll say
what I want. It's not a big deal to me.
It's like something stuck to the bottom of my boot.
(34:56):
Just scrape it off and move on with my life. Unquote. Hey,
I wouldn't scrape too hard there, Higgins sounds like what
that something stuck to the bottom of your boot is?
Is all that's left of your meager, insufficient, worthless soul.
Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana White Trash, Today's worst person
(35:18):
in the world to the number one story on the
Countdown on Fridays with Thurber. And it's amazing to me
in retrospect, how I read all of his wonderful, realistic,
not goopy writing about dogs and enjoyed it thoroughly, years
(35:42):
before I was ever adopted by a dog. Now, reading
his dog stories and anecdotes is like reading about a
bunch of friends, even that one surly friend for whom
we must continuously make excuses. The dog that bit people
(36:05):
by James Thurber. Probably no one man should have as
many dogs in this life as I have had, but
there was more pleasure than distress in them for me,
except in the case of an Airdale named Mugs. He
gave me more trouble than all the other fifty four
(36:25):
or five put together. Although my moment of keenest embarrassment
was the time a Scotch Terrier named Jeanie, who had
just had six puppies in the clothes closet of a
fourth floor apartment in New York, had the unexpected seventh
and last at the corner of Eleventh Street and Fifth
Avenue during a walk she had insisted on taking. Then
(36:47):
two there was the prize winning French poodle, a giant,
big black poodle, none of your little, untroublesome white miniatures,
who got sick riding in the rumble seat of a
car with me on her way to the Greenwich Dog Show.
She had a red rubber bib tucked around her throat,
and since a rain storm came up when we were
halfway through the Bronx, I had to hold over her
(37:10):
a small green umbrella, really more of a parasol. The
rain beat down fearfully, and suddenly the driver of the
car drove into a big garage filled with mechanics. It
happened so quickly that I forgot to put the umbrella down,
and I will always remember with sickening distress the look
of incredulity mixed with hatred that came over the face
(37:33):
of the particular hardened garage man that came over to
see what we wanted when he took a look at
me and the poodle. All garage men and people of
that intolerant stripe hate poodles with their curious haircuts, especially
the pom poms that you got to leave on their
hips if you expect the dogs to win a prize.
(37:56):
But the Airdale, as I have said, was the worst
of all my dogs. He really wasn't my dog. Matter
of fact, I came home from vacation one summer to
find that my brother Roy had bought him while I
was away, a big, burly, choleric dog. He always acted
as if he thought I wasn't one of the family.
(38:17):
There was a slight advantage in being one of the family,
for he didn't bite the family as often as a
bit strangers. Still, in the years that we had him,
he bit everybody but mother, and he made a pass
at her once but missed. It was during the month
when we suddenly had mice, and Mugs refused to do
anything about them. Nobody ever had mice exactly like the
(38:40):
mice we had that month. They acted like pet mice,
almost like mice somebody had trained. They were so friendly
that one night, when Mother entertained at dinner the freer Realiras,
a club she and my father had belonged to for
twenty years, she put down a lot of little dishes
with food in them on the pantry floor so that
the mice would be satisfied with that and would not
(39:02):
come into the dining room. Mugs stayed out in the
pantry with the mice lying on the floor, growling to himself,
not at the mice, but about all the people in
the next room that he would have liked to get at.
Mother slipped out into the pantry once to see how
everything was going. Everything was going fine. It made her
(39:24):
so mad to see Mugs lying there oblivious of the mice.
They came running up to her that she slapped him,
and he slashed at her, but didn't make it. He
was sorry immediately. Mother said he was always sorry, she
said after he bit someone. But we could not understand
how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry. Mother
(39:48):
used to send a box of candy every Christmas to
the people the Airdale bit. The list finally contained forty
or more names. Nobody could understand why we did not
get rid of the dog. I didn't understand it very
well myself, but we didn't get rid of him. I
think that one or two people tried to poison Mugs.
He acted poisoned once in a while, and old Major
(40:12):
Moberly fired at him once with his service revolver near
the Seneca Hotel and he's Broad Street. But Muggs lived
to almost eleven years old, and even when he could
hardly get around. He bit a congressman who had called
to see my father on business. My mother had never
liked the congressman. She said the signs of his horoscope
(40:33):
showed he couldn't be trusted. He was Saturn with the
moon and Virgo. But she sent him a box of
candy that Christmas. Anyway, he sent it right back, probably
because he suspected it was trick candy. Mother persuaded herself
that it was all for the best that the dog
had bitten him, even though father lost an important business
association because of it. I wouldn't be associated with such
(40:56):
a man. Mother said, Mugs could read him lack a book.
We used to take turns feeding Mugs to be on
his good side, but that didn't always work. He was
never in a very good humor even after a meal.
Nobody knew exactly what was the matter with him, but
whatever it was, it made him irascible, especially in the mornings.
(41:18):
Roy my brother, never felt very well in the morning either,
especially before breakfast, And once when he came downstairs and
found that Mugs had moodily chewed up the morning paper,
he hit him in the face with a grapefruit and
then jumped up on the dining room table, scattering dishes
and silverware and spilling the coffee. Muggs first free leap
(41:41):
carried him all the way across the table and into
a brass fire screen in front of the gas grate,
but he was back on his feet in a moment,
and in the end he got Roy and gave him
a pretty vicious bite in the leg. Then he was
all over it. He never bid anyone more than once
at a time. Mother always mentioned that as an argument
in his favor. She said he had a quick temper,
(42:03):
but that he didn't hold grudge. She was forever defending him.
I think she liked him because he wasn't well. He's
not strong, she would say pityingly, but that was inaccurate.
He may not have been well, but he was terribly strong.
One time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to
(42:26):
call on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in
Columbus on the subject of harmonious vibrations. She wanted to
find out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations
into a dog. He's a large, tan colored Airdale, Mother explained.
The woman said that she had never treated a dog,
but she advised my mother to hold the thought that
(42:48):
he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was
holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got
the iceman. But she blamed that slip up on the iceman.
If you didn't think he would bite you, he wouldn't.
Mother told himmped out of the house in a terrible
jangle of vibrations. One morning when Mugs bit me slightly
(43:12):
more or less in passing. I reached down and grabbed
his short, stumpy tail and hoisted him into the air.
It was a foolhardy thing to do, and the last
time I saw my mother, about six months ago, she
said she didn't know what possessed me. I don't either,
except that I was pretty mad. As long as I
held the dog off the floor by his tail, he
(43:33):
couldn't get at me. But he twisted and jerked so
snarling all the time that I realized I couldn't hold
him that way very long, and I carried him into
the kitchen and flung him onto the floor and shut
the door on him just as he crashed against it.
But I forgot about the backstairs. Muggs went up the
backstairs and down the front stairs and had me cornered
(43:56):
in the living room. I managed to get up out
of the mantelpiece above the fireplace, but it gave way
and came down with a tremendous crash, throwing a large
marble clock, several vases, and myself heavily to the floor.
Muggs was so alarmed by the racket that when I
picked myself up, he had disappeared. We couldn't find him anywhere,
(44:19):
although we whistled and shouted until old Missus Dettweiler called
after dinner that night. Muggs had bitten her once in
the leg, and she came into the living room only
after we assured her that Muggs had run away. She
had just seated herself when with great growling and scratching
of claws, Mugs emerged from under a davenport where he
(44:42):
had been quietly hiding all the time and bit her again.
Mother examined the bite and put arnica on it and
told Missus Dttweiler that it was only a bruise. He
just bumped you, she said. But Missus Dettwiler left our
house in a nasty state of mind. Lots of people
(45:03):
reported our airdale to the police, but my father held
a municipal office at the time and was on friendly
terms with the police. Even so, the cops had been
out a couple of times, once when Mugs bit Missus
rufus Sturt event and again when he bit Lieutenant Governor Molloy,
But Mother told him it hadn't been Muggs's fault, but
the fault of the people who were bitten. When he
(45:25):
starts for them, they scream, she explained, and that excites him.
The cops suggested that it might be a good idea
to tie the dog up, but mother said that it
mortified him to be tied up and that he wouldn't
eat when he was tied up. Mugs at his meals
was an unusual site because of the fact that if
you reached toward the floor, he would bite you. We
(45:49):
usually put his food plate on top of an old
kitchen table with a bench alongside the table. Muggs would
stand on the bench and eat. I remember that my
mother's uncle Horatio, who boasted that he was the third
man up Missionary Ridge, was flutteringly indignant when he found
out that we fed the dog on a table because
(46:10):
we were afraid to put his plate on the floor.
He said he wasn't afraid of any dog that ever lived,
and that he would put the dog's plate on the
floor if we would give it to him. Roy said
that if Uncle Horatio had fed Mugs on the ground
just before the battle, he would have been the first
man up Missionary Ridge. Uncle Horatio was furious. Ray, amen,
(46:32):
bray amen, Now, he shouted, I'll feed them on the floor.
Roy was all forgiving him a chance, but my father
wouldn't hear of it. He said that Mugs had already
been fed. I'll feed them again, bawled Uncle Horatio. We
had quite a time quieting him. In his last year.
(46:54):
Muggs used to spend practically all of his time outdoors.
He didn't like to stay in the house for some
reason or other. Perhaps it held too many unpleasant memories
for him. Anyway, it was hard to get him to
come in, and as a result, the garbage man, the iceman,
and the laundryman would not come near our house. We
had to haul the garbage down to the corner, take
(47:15):
the laundry out, and bring it back and meet the
iceman a block from home. After this had gone on
for some time, we hit on an ingenious arrangement for
getting the dog in the house so that we could
lock him up while the gas meter was red and
so on. Mugs was afraid of only one thing, an
(47:37):
electrical storm. Thunder and lightning frightened him out of his senses.
I think he thought a storm had broken the day
the mantelpiece fell. He would rush into the house and
hide under a bed or in a clothes closet, So
we fixed up a thunder machine out of a long,
narrow piece of sheet iron with a wooden handle on
(47:58):
one end. Mother would shake this vigorously when she wanted
to get Mugs into the house. Made an excellent imitation
of thunder. But I suppose it was the most roundabout
system for running a household that was ever devised. It
took a lot out of mother. A few months before
Mugs died, he got to seeing things. He would rise
(48:21):
slowly from the floor, growling low and stalk, stiff legged
and menacing toward nothing at all. Sometimes the thing would
be just a little to the right or left of
a visitor. Once a fuller brush salesman got hysterics, Muggs
(48:42):
came wandering into the room like Hamlet, following his father's ghosts.
His eyes were fixed on a spot just to the
left of the fuller brush man, who stood it until
Muggs was about three slow creeping paces from him. Then
he shouted, Mugs wavered on past him into the hallway,
grumbling to himself, but the fuller man went on shouting.
(49:03):
I think Mother had to throw a pan of cold
water on him before he stopped. That was the way
she used to stop us boys when we got into fights.
Muggs died quite suddenly one night. Mother wanted to bury
him in the family lot under a marble stone with
some such inscription as flights of angels sing thee to
thy rest, but we persuaded her it was against the law.
(49:27):
In the end we just put up a smooth board
above his grave along a lonely road. On the board
I wrote with an indelible pencil, cave Kanum. Mother was
quite pleased with the simple, classic dignity of the old
Latin epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber.
(50:03):
I've done all the damage I can here. Thank you
for listening, mugs. We are now back to five episodes
a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Once again
there is a Monday Countdown. Please send this podcast to
somebody who doesn't listen but should, And a little preview
of course about Monday, Monday Steedy day, you know what
that means. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schhaneil the music
(50:25):
Jeal directors of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray
was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced
by Tko Brothers and again their premiere of our revised
theme is also in Monday special edition. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
(50:47):
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Old Woman theme
from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend Larry David.
Everything else was pretty much my fault. The that's countdown
for today, five weeks and four days until the twenty
twenty four presidential election and the three hundred and sixty
(51:11):
first day since convicted felon drooling Jay Trump's first attempted
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the election, use the mental health system, use presidential
immunity if we have to, to keep him from doing
it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
(51:31):
is Monday bulletins as the news requires. Until then, I'm
Keith Oulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(51:53):
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. We
have complied with the court's ordered four fifty three Eastern
(00:27):
dayline time yesterday, and thanks for stopping by. We hope
you enjoyed Jack Smith Day. The nearly two hundred pages
worth of evidence in the revised case of the United
States of America Versus Disorderly Jay Trump submitted before the
five pm deadline and under seal evidently not unsealed last
(00:48):
night by Judge Tanya Chutkin, and no indication as to
when it will be unsealed or when parts of it
will be unsealed. On the other hand, Trump, as always
confesses more than he convinces whenever he's scared. Early yesterday morning,
he posted some weird even for him that I think
gives us in broad strokes at least what he has
(01:11):
heard about where Smith is going henceforth. The answer, I
think is this Smith is still going virtually everywhere he
was going before the Supreme Court immunity decision. Smith may
have found some way around that Supreme Court ruling. I mean,
listen to the newest of Trump's three hundred and thirty
(01:34):
seven different explanations for what happened on January sixth, quoting
shocking breaking news as exposed by John Solomon and blah
blah blah blah and the great work of Congressman Barry
Loudermilk and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. The Deep
State chose to disregard my direct authorization of at least
(01:56):
ten thousand National Guard troops to ensure that Washington, DC
was safe and secure on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
These Deep State subversives disobeyed the President's directives, which would
have prevented any unrest that day. January sixth, as it
is known, would never have taken place. So to Barry
(02:22):
louder Milk, your friendly Capitol Hill tour guide is too
inscrutable even for me to try to figure out. But
Trump has brought back his most frequently used lie about
January sixth, which is that he offered troops but Nancy
Pelosi turned them down. And though he left Nancy Pelosi
out of that post, I just read, he did bring
(02:43):
her up yesterday in the afternoon in remarks he made
around the corner from me, here there goes the neighborhood again.
In Trump's reptile brain. He must be working some kind
of Everything I did that day was official, and everybody
who responded to it was official. But they betrayed me,
(03:04):
and they trade the official chain of command, and therefore
I am immune from prosecution for everything. That's what I'm
seeing here, and that would dubtail neatly into something one
of Trump's todys said on CNBC yesterday, Joe Kernan, the
guy with the worst two pay on the network. It's
so bad. It looks like he bought one two pay
(03:25):
and thought it looked good, so much so that he
bought a second one and put it on top of
the first one, and he wears them both at the
same time. Listen to this and see if it doesn't
line up with the idea that the whole day was
somebody else's fault. Quoting Joe Kernan in the heat of
that moment, at that point, I think he really did
believe that it the election had been stolen. At that point,
(03:47):
I don't know if he believes it anymore. Well, Joe,
that's all right. Then, in the heat of the moment,
when I smashed through the giant, forty foot wide plate
glass window in the front of J. C. Pennies. I
really did believe that that was my washer dryer combo
in there. So Trump may be saying everything I did
(04:09):
on January sixth and before was official, and all the
charges against me must be dismissed. And why would he
do that? He might do that because Smith may have
found some way to say, no, guess what, none of
it is official. And again I'm way out on a
limb here. But the means to that end none of
(04:32):
this is official. He is immune from none of it.
The means to that end could be to start your
case by proving that long before the insurrection started it
on January sixth, and long before the Christmas time meetings,
and long before the frivolous lawsuits started in November and December,
Trump knew damned well he had lost, and that none
(04:56):
of his actions were as president, that all of his
actions were as private citizen and politician. And if Smith
can prove that the Supreme Court's corrupt ruling on presidential
immunity means nothing, we'll see briefly some new polls national
(05:28):
all likely voters yesterday, Harris fifty Trump forty six, Big village.
That's four points Harris fifty three Trump forty seven. Outward
Intelligence polling, that's six points Harris fifty two to Trump
forty five. Echelon Insights that's seven points. One non swing
(05:49):
state poll Maryland, where it's sixty three point thirty one Harris,
and it's two Democrats for every Republican. This is mentioned
only because it's a Washington Post poll and it includes
the Senate run with the popular Republican former Governor Larry
Hogan to their hopes of taking the Senate back, and
he's trailing the Democrat Angela also Brooks fifty one to
(06:11):
forty so that's also Brooks by eleven over also ran. Meanwhile,
in the most shocking development in the history of the
governance of the City of New York since at least Wednesday,
Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on charges of acting
(06:34):
as a foreign agent for the government of the Turkish
dictator Erdwan, of getting the new Turkish embassy here opened
before fire inspections had been completed, and for basically ending
his career for something like one hundred and forty thousand
dollars over eight years, mostly in flight upgrades and Kushier
hotel rooms. So like seventeen thousand dollars a year, plus
(06:59):
foreign contributions to his campaign for mayor that were illegally
washed through fake don't owns, and which in turn entitled
him to matching public funds for his campaign, maybe as
much as ten million dollars. He didn't get ten million
dollars his campaign did. Don't blame me, I voted for
the garbage commissioner. Lady Adam says he is not resigning.
(07:23):
But if you would like your I'm not resigning news
conference to get off to the worst possible start, you
do what he did. You go out and stand in
front of the mayor's official residence, Gracie Mansion. And that's
when you discover that your opponents have brought a bullhorn,
and the bullhorn is louder than your own portable public
address system. Can you hear me? Now? This is serious stuff.
(08:25):
All evidence to the contrary. I mean it is small scale.
Clarence Thomas here and frankly, if Adams were smart, he
would announce he's joining the Republican Party by Monday. Harlan
Crow and Leonard Leo would have built a statue to him.
And given that, symbolically Adams had to fight his way
onto the street through the crowds of people fired from
(08:45):
or quitting his administration over the last month. It is
hard to believe he can remain in office. I mean,
he's barely in office now as it is. But the
rest of this, this is freaking hilarious. This is the
best comedy material in New York this week, as this
is the dumbest mayor of New York in my lifetime.
(09:08):
This has to be the dumbest indictment of any politician
in my lifetime. The Turks allegedly decided that this guy
Adams was exactly the right New York City politician to
invest in back when he was Borough president of Brooklyn.
I'm quoting from the indictment. During their meeting, Adams and
(09:29):
the promoter solicited campaign contributions from Businessman three, who, as
a Turkish national, could not lawfully contribute to any US campaign.
During the meeting, Businessman three agreed to contribute fifty thousand
dollars or more to the twenty twenty one campaign, believing
that Adams might one day be the president of the
(09:51):
United States and hoping to gain influence with Adams. This
is like going into a fantasy Baseball draft with the
first pick overall and saying, you know who I want?
I want the backup catcher on the Chicago White Sox.
He's gonna break all the records. They've already lost one
hundred and twenty games. Right wait, it gets worse. Quote.
(10:14):
The Adams staffer also agreed to speak with FBI agents
and falsely denied the criminal conduct of herself and Adams,
among others. At one point during her voluntary interview, the
Adams staffer excused herself to a bathroom and while there
deleted the encrypted messaging applications she had used to communicate
(10:35):
with Adams, the promoter, the Turkish official, the airline manager,
and others. Unquote and oh we are far from done. Quote.
On November six, twenty twenty three, FBI agents executed a
search warrant for the electronic devices used by Eric Adams.
(10:56):
Although Adams was carrying several electronic devices, including two cell phones,
he was not carrying his personal cell phone, which is
the device he used to communicate about the conduct described
in this indictment. When Adams produced his personal cell phone
the next day in response to a subpoena, it was
locked such that the device required a password to open.
Adams claimed that after he learned about the investigations into
(11:19):
his conduct, he changed the password on November fifth, twenty
twenty four, and increase the complexity of his password from
four digits to six. Obviously there's a typo in there.
It's November fifth, twenty twenty three. But get that part again.
He increased the complexity of his passwords from four ward
digits to six. Adams had done this, he claimed to
(11:41):
prevent members of his staff from inadvertently or intentionally deleting
the contents of his phone, because, according to Adams, he
wished to preserve the contents of his phone due to
the investigation. But Adams further claimed he had forgotten the
password he had just said, and thus was unable to
provide the FBI with a password that would unlock the phone.
(12:10):
You see that meme of the guy tapping his head
to show how smart he is, don't you? Right now?
The Adams premise here of courses, that he is Mayor
of New York City not because he was elected, but
because God has put him there. I wish I were exaggerating.
I am not. Some of his past quotes quote I
thank God I'm the mayor right now. And the famous
(12:32):
nonsense elliptical statement quote, there is no way God created
me for this moment. If he did not believe this
was my moment, you could read that sentence backwards and
it would make just as much sense. None. And this
Messiah complex is not limited to his dishonor his niece
who says she's an actress or a dancer or a
(12:53):
singer or something. Danielle Adams Elias is just as nuts
as he is.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Young of an ax. I'm my uncle, Sorrial. I don't
know how you feel. I don't care how you feel
about whatever decisions he had to make that you would
never understand. I don't care how you feel about anything, honestly,
because nobody asked you. Like when God created his story,
(13:23):
he didn't ask Sally Sue on the other line, if
he can do it. That was what was chosen for
this man because he was the man for the job. So,
like I say every time, if you have a problem,
taking up with Jesus, because we don't care, and that
man will continue to do what the Lord told him
to do. So y'all gonna relax on my uncle, because
(13:45):
you could never stay in your purpose and relax. Take
a seat.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
I think even the mayor would recognize his niece Danielle here,
ain't helping please asks for help any who. It's not
like anybody could have seen this coming, given that Adams
won a ranked choice Democratic I'm Mary defeating the aforementioned
sanitation commissioner and mayo Wiley. Adams has always had some
(14:14):
curious support from some even more curious characters. Tucker Carlson,
Remember Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson once asked, can Eric Adams
save New York from itself? January twenty twenty two, The
Wall Street Journal printed is Mansion Adams the future of
the Democratic Party Wonderland. Joe Biden may have become more progressive,
(14:36):
but Joe Manchin and Eric Adams appear to believe the
Democratic Party's future lies elsewhere. Yeah, evidently in Turkey. Am
I right? Brett Stevens New York Times July twentieth, twenty
twenty one, opinion, Eric Adams is going to save New
York and the best January three, twenty twenty two. Nate Silver,
(14:59):
It's probably foolish, all right. You should have just deleted
it at that point if you start something with. It's
probably foolish. It's probably foolish. It's probably foolish. Nate wrote
to think an NYC. Mayer will successfully translate into being
a national political figure. But I still think Eric Adams
(15:20):
would be in my top five for who will be
the next Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden. He's going
to be good at getting media attention, you bet your
ass is. And he has a chance of carving out
a niche that's different from what other Democrats are offering.
(15:41):
I didn't know he was from Turkey. That's a niche. Okay,
That's a potentially powerful combination given how primaries are conducted nowadays. Also,
the competition isn't great. Twenty twenty two, Nate goes on
to specifically insist that Eric Adams was a better bet
to succeed Joe Biden than was Kamala Harris, who had
(16:04):
already been vice president for a year. And if you
think this is over the support Democrats who are actually
corrupt Republicans campaign, guess who wrote the lead story yesterday
analyzing the charges against Adams for the amazingly fictional fascist
(16:26):
Murdoch propaganda rag. Here The New York Post. It was
written by Jonathan Effing Turley and his lead and his
conclusion there may be less here than meets the eye.
I'm telling you. I'm telling you he's going to try
to stay on as mayor as a Republican. You watch. Yeah,
(16:57):
I know the odds are long, and I just quoted
Nate Silver and you should never make a prediction after
Nate Silver has just proved you should never make predictions
like that. But I am. I'm on a one game
winning streak. I did mention Wednesday. I think that all
the sturm undrong by the New York Times, by the
Washington Post, by Politico, even by Judd Legum of Popular
Information over whether or not to publish the internal Trump
(17:18):
campaign documents allegedly hacked by Iran and offered around the
news business by someone calling themselves Robert, that that was
all academic. That soon or late, Robert's rules of order
would lead Robert to connect with some kind of independent
journalists who would look at it to make sure they
weren't jeopardizing themselves legally and then say, ef it here
(17:38):
it is. I Actually, silly, old guy me thought this
wouldn't happen till next month. Instead, it happened yesterday. Kenklippenstein,
formerly of The Intercept, published it. Ken Klippenstein put it
online yesterday, got suspended by Elon Musk for his trouble
because Elon Musk is soft as church music. And it's
two hundred and seventy one pages about jd Vance. It's
(18:02):
the jd Vance file. And while, as Klippeteine notes, it
does give you a kind of checklist for what the
Trump campaign likes best about JV, and what it likes
least about JV, and what it's kind of mad about JV,
there is nothing compelling in there. Doesn't even identify his
brand a choice and eyeliner. Clippenstein then goes to the
(18:24):
heart of the matter to quote his post. If the
document had been hacked by some anonymous like hacker group,
the news media would be all over it. I'm just
not a believer of the news media as an arm
of the government doing its work combating foreign influence, nor
should it be a gatekeeper of what the public should know.
The gatekeeper and government parts are debatable. Those actions can
(18:47):
on occasion be defended. But he nails the whole other thing.
The Times, the Post, and the others looked at this
and they said, this is boring as crap it, My god,
look at the opportunity we can put on a performative
dance here portraying ourselves as martyrs to the cause of
responsible journalism, and it doesn't even cost us a good story.
(19:10):
There's one cautionary aside, though, Liz Mayor m Ai r
the kind of all over the map political operative who's
probably not only the only person who have worked on
the campaigns of both Rishi Sunak and Carly Fiorina, but
very probably the only person on the planet to know
who both Rishi Sunak and Carly Fiorina are. She has
(19:31):
read the whole thing. I'm sorry, my god, did you
think I had read the whole thing? Two hundred and
seventy one pages about J. D. Vance? How many lives
you think I got here? Anyway, she read it, and
Liz Mayer says what matters is what's not in it,
quoting her, There is more damaging stuff to be found
(19:51):
on Vance. I guess the Trump team missed it, and
so have Dems. I have no interest in tearing Vance down.
I disagree with him profoundly on many issues, but we
have too much in common in our bios and backgrounds,
so I'll leave it alone. Well, there's one politico placing
country at a party, my ass, So there's more to
look for. The message of this unpublishable, now published not
(20:15):
that interesting JD Vance compendium is they left the good
stuff out and it's still out there. Not to worry, though,
traditional media is still burying one story at least a
far more import than that, and with far more evident
help from the government. In the burial, The independent site
Notice writes, quote, lawmakers are still waiting on the Pentagon
(20:39):
for more details about what happened between Donald Trump's campaign
and Arlington National Cemetery's staff during last month's memorial service
for soldiers who died during the Afghanistan withdrawal. The Pentagon
appears to be hoping the lawmakers just forget about it.
Department of Defense officials informally told at least one congressional
office to let the issue fade into the background. A
(21:00):
Congressional aid told Notice. The aide said the Pentagon offices
on both sides of the aisle to move on from
the incident. When reach for comment, the Department of Defense
referred Notice to the Department of the Army. Note that
as in aside its statements like that last one, the
Department of Defense referred you to the Department of the Army.
(21:23):
It's statements like that one that led Joseph Heller to
dream up the notion of catch twenty two to resume
quoting from the notice report. The altercation prompted Congressional Democrats
to request a copy of the incident report outlining what
had happened. The official report hasn't yet been released, but
their quiet appeal to at least one lawmaker's office regarding
(21:46):
the request for the full incident report shows the challenges
the Department of Defense faces in the current political landscape. Unquote.
So apparently there is some illusion that if they just
shut up about it, this and the prospect of anybody
who's ever been in the mill terry getting involved in
the election in any way, shape or form, like you know,
(22:12):
uh Iraq Army disinformation specialist JD. Whatever his name was, vance,
that all this will just vanish no military involvement. In
an unrelated story, Kamala Harris has just been endorsed in
a New York Times up ed by the guy who
was killing al Qaeda leaders in Iraq for George Bush
(22:32):
twenty years ago and mocking President Obama and Vice President
Biden fifteen years ago, General Stan McCrystal. Thank god they
are keeping that wall up between the warriors and real patriotism.
Also of interest here, you have to hand it to
(22:53):
white trash Congressman Clay Higgins. While he was trying to
claim he only meant Haitian gang members, not the Haitians
in Ohio, Well he was doing that, he was simultaneously
telling CNN, no, he meant every word. He'd posted about
Haitians and voodoo and get out by January twentieth, and
he'd posted again. Now here is a tease. We will
(23:18):
be premiering on Monday, a new revised version of the
Countdown theme music specially recast for the election home stretch Monday.
But I can now offer you a tease. This is next.
(23:41):
This is Countdown. This is Countdown with Keith Olberman still
(24:17):
ahead of us on this edition of Countdown. I don't
know about you, but I need a break from this crap. Adams,
holy crap, I'm gonna take one. I'm telling you, just
become a Republican. You'll either be on the Supreme Court,
or you'll be the presidential nominee by next week. We'll
take a break Friday's with Thurber. One of Thurber's dog stories.
It's not the sweetest of his dog stories, but it's
(24:39):
easily the funniest of his dog stories. And it's a
Thurber dog story. Next. Okay, break time over. There are
still more new idiots to talk about. A rollicking edition
of the daily roundup of the misgrants, morons and Dunning
Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worst persons in
the world. And sometimes this is satirical. Sometimes this is
directed at me. Sometimes this is poking fun at friends
(25:00):
or colleagues. No, not this time. I mean every word
of this. These are three of the scumbaggiest people in
the world. As John Clees once set on Faulty Towers.
This is total ass worse the bronze former New York
Mayor Rudy ass Giuliani for once, though I'll give him this.
The timing work to Rudy's benefit. This happened to him
(25:24):
on the day the current mayor gets indicted for selling
his soul for like an upgrade from business class aisle
to business class window on a flight to Turkey the Schmndrick. Meanwhile,
in Washington Rudy, who after nine to eleven thought we
should cancel the election and just let him stay on
as mayor because so what if that was what the
(25:45):
terrorists would have wanted? He was wooty. Woody has just
been disbawd, no longer allowed to practice law in the
District of Columbia, which is especially sad because clearly Rudy
needed way more practice. I will say this, between Rudy's
dispartment and the indictment of Adams, only needed one more
event to make this the biggest week for scumbag New
(26:09):
York mayors in the proud history of my hometown. Like,
maybe somebody could have done something about Jimmy bo James Walker,
who was forced out of office in nineteen thirty two
after a series of scandals, including his own chosen cops
arresting ordinary women on the streets of New York City
and charging them with prostitution, literally charging them with street
(26:31):
walking because they were literally walking on the streets and
holding them unless they paid off the cops with cash
or other considerations. Mayor Walker was allowed to flee to
Europe with his mistress. But he came back six or
seven years later and naturally became a disc jockey on
(26:52):
WHN radio. Hi, I'm your corrupt mayor on WHN New York.
Walker is buried in suburban Hawthorne, New York. Maybe somebody
should have gone up yesterday and danced on his grave
or something, just to finish off the hat trick. The
runner up worser, Dylan Buyers of Puck Puck is another
one of those subscription outlets in which the emphasis is
(27:14):
on pretending that doing press releases for corporations and executives
and the powerful that that constitutes some kind of quote news.
I've mentioned Dylan Buyers before when, in twenty twenty one,
I concluded the last round of a decade's worth of
dancing with MSNBC about going back to do a show there,
(27:35):
Buyers contacted me and told me that all I had
told him, and all I had said in public about
my negotiations with the then head of Comcast, Jeff Schell,
all of it was not true because a spokesman from
NBC had told him it was not true. I asked him, naturally,
which spokesman, and he said he couldn't tell me. He
said the spokesman had agreed to be referenced in a story,
(27:55):
but never by name. I asked him what the spokesman
had said specifically. He said he couldn't tell me that either.
That was part of the deal with them too. I
then sent him screenshots of all of my email correspondence
with Jeff Shell and NBC News figure head, says Arcande,
to confirm that what I had been saying was true
and what the spokesman had not really been saying was
(28:16):
not true. And Byers reacted with shock, like you told
him he was adopted. I mean, he was genuinely surprised
that NBC PR people had lied to him, like what
was the first time it happened in world historily, I
mean repeatedly lied to him. In fact, each thing the
anonymous spokesman had told him wasn't just wrong, it was
(28:36):
a lie. In his follow up story, Buyers still somehow
managed to carry some of NBC's waters for it by
saying that I should have known that Jeff Shell was
lying to me. That's not quite the flex you think
it is. In any event, Byers has now moved on
to the Oliviya newsy RFK junior story and is surprisingly
enough carrying water for RFK Junior. He's one of these
(29:00):
morons propagating the idea that RFK is going to get
Newsy prosecuted or arrested or sued because she sent him
photos of herself that he wanted and he never bothered
to tell her bosses to ask her to stop. But
he's RFK and the other one's Dylan Byer, so Dylan
Byers must serve him. Dylan Byers wrote up the story
(29:22):
for Puck on Wednesday night, and since I regularly swipe
at him on Twitter and here for doing crap like this,
he decided to throw me into his update and said
I had rushed. Was the word rushed to remind everybody
that Olivia and I had lived together and that I
should grow up. I rushed. I never revealed the relationship
(29:43):
publicly from the time it started until Monday afternoon of
this week, when the New York Post found out and
asked me. And thus I followed the age old truth
about how to deal with reporters barging in on your
personal life. If you can blow up their scoop, report
what they're going to report before they can report it,
it isn't much but at all, always ruins their day. Yeah,
(30:06):
I rushed, Dylan. I kept it private, as it would
have stayed private for well over a decade. I rushed.
I mean, I don't run fast, but I can rush
faster than ten years worth idiot. I'd urge you to
grow up too, but in fact I like dealing with
you as you are a child. It's much easier to
send you to bed without your supper this way. Oh
(30:28):
and I might add. A couple of years ago, a
prominent reporter got a terrible fatal diagnosis about an awful disease,
and within weeks, Dylan Byers had written an article in
which he gratuitously threw the reporter's name into the story
that had nothing to do with him, and insulted him
just to drive by shot at a dying man for
no reason and with no explanation. There are a lot
(30:51):
of bad media reporters. This Buyer's guy is the worst,
but ultimately he's still only a media reporter. So if
somebody else showed us up Monday claiming to be Dylan
Byer's and it's a different guy, nobody will know the difference.
A media reporter cannot even win the worst person's competition
because the winner the worst is white trash Congressman Clay Higgins, R.
(31:17):
Louisiana and the R standful rathist. You will recall, Higgins
came this close to dropping the N word Wednesday on
the Haitian Bridge Group, which sued in Ohio to get
local prosecutors to charge Trump Advance for attempting to get
the legal Haitian migrants in Ohio, you know killed. Higgins
(31:39):
responded with something that even for this David Duke supporting
the clans to liberal for him, ghost bus hallucinating, insurrectionist asshole,
Even for him, this was astonishing. He screenshoted that news
story and again the story was about a legal motion
in an American local court by Americans, and Higgins added
(32:00):
on his congressional account, while these Haitians are our wild
eating pets voodoo spelled vudu, by the way, nastiest country
in the Western Hemisphere. Cults slapstick gangsters, but damned if
they don't feel all sophisticated. Now he's so close to
the N word filing charges against our president, and VP
(32:21):
Trump's not President Vance is not VP Clay Higgins has
probably stoned all these dougs. Better get their mind rat
and to ask out of our countra. Before January twentieth,
he said in that patois of Louisiana. Patua is a
nice word where you got shit in your mouth. The
speaker and chief buffoon of the House, Mike Johnson, also
(32:44):
of Louisiana, then zaid Higgins had prayed on what he
had written, realized it was in error, and deleted the
post as a gentleman would. Yesterday this excrem at, Higgins
tried to walk it back, claiming he was talking about
Haitian gangs in Ohio, even though there aren't any Haitian
gangs in Ohio and he didn't refer to gangs, and
(33:07):
the filers of the lawsuit who he threatened with expulsion
and targeted for stochastic violence are members of a community
support group, not a gang. You never want to intentionally
hurt someone's feelings. I wish I could do the John
Candy Louisiana accent from the JFK movie. You never want
to intentionally hurt someone's feelings. And that post was intended
(33:28):
for Haitian gangs, you understand, or the one from Kevin
Bacon when he's asking, never mind, you never want to
intentionally hurt someone's feelings. And that post was intended for
Haitian gangs, you understand, not for I mean Haiti as
a country, not at all. And the unintended impact that
was expressed very sincerely from one of my colleagues, very
(33:48):
graciously that touched me as a gentleman. Well you're not
a gentleman, so what the hell you're talking about. It's
bad enough that this Higgins, who has behaved in public
life as a disgraced fired cop, as a white supremacist,
as an insurrectionist, as a guy with the only known
IQ that's in negative numbers, who apparently heard the movie
titled Ghostbusters once and drew from it this concept of
(34:12):
ghost busses on January sixth, and still has never even
bothered to explain what he thinks ghost busses are. This
guy who acts like he is the child of an
alligator that mate it with a barrel of rotten fish.
It's bad enough that he is pretending he said something
far less destructive than he did on that deleted tweet.
But it turns out that Higgins almost simultaneously doubled down
(34:35):
on the original racist tweet about the Haitians. CNN asked
him for a comment, and he replied about his remarks
about the Haitians quote, it's all true. I can put
up another controversial post tomorrow if you want me to.
I mean, we do have freedom of speech. I'll say
what I want. It's not a big deal to me.
It's like something stuck to the bottom of my boot.
(34:56):
Just scrape it off and move on with my life. Unquote. Hey,
I wouldn't scrape too hard there, Higgins sounds like what
that something stuck to the bottom of your boot is?
Is all that's left of your meager, insufficient, worthless soul.
Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana White Trash, Today's worst person
(35:18):
in the world to the number one story on the
Countdown on Fridays with Thurber. And it's amazing to me
in retrospect, how I read all of his wonderful, realistic,
not goopy writing about dogs and enjoyed it thoroughly, years
(35:42):
before I was ever adopted by a dog. Now, reading
his dog stories and anecdotes is like reading about a
bunch of friends, even that one surly friend for whom
we must continuously make excuses. The dog that bit people
(36:05):
by James Thurber. Probably no one man should have as
many dogs in this life as I have had, but
there was more pleasure than distress in them for me,
except in the case of an Airdale named Mugs. He
gave me more trouble than all the other fifty four
(36:25):
or five put together. Although my moment of keenest embarrassment
was the time a Scotch Terrier named Jeanie, who had
just had six puppies in the clothes closet of a
fourth floor apartment in New York, had the unexpected seventh
and last at the corner of Eleventh Street and Fifth
Avenue during a walk she had insisted on taking. Then
(36:47):
two there was the prize winning French poodle, a giant,
big black poodle, none of your little, untroublesome white miniatures,
who got sick riding in the rumble seat of a
car with me on her way to the Greenwich Dog Show.
She had a red rubber bib tucked around her throat,
and since a rain storm came up when we were
halfway through the Bronx, I had to hold over her
(37:10):
a small green umbrella, really more of a parasol. The
rain beat down fearfully, and suddenly the driver of the
car drove into a big garage filled with mechanics. It
happened so quickly that I forgot to put the umbrella down,
and I will always remember with sickening distress the look
of incredulity mixed with hatred that came over the face
(37:33):
of the particular hardened garage man that came over to
see what we wanted when he took a look at
me and the poodle. All garage men and people of
that intolerant stripe hate poodles with their curious haircuts, especially
the pom poms that you got to leave on their
hips if you expect the dogs to win a prize.
(37:56):
But the Airdale, as I have said, was the worst
of all my dogs. He really wasn't my dog. Matter
of fact, I came home from vacation one summer to
find that my brother Roy had bought him while I
was away, a big, burly, choleric dog. He always acted
as if he thought I wasn't one of the family.
(38:17):
There was a slight advantage in being one of the family,
for he didn't bite the family as often as a
bit strangers. Still, in the years that we had him,
he bit everybody but mother, and he made a pass
at her once but missed. It was during the month
when we suddenly had mice, and Mugs refused to do
anything about them. Nobody ever had mice exactly like the
(38:40):
mice we had that month. They acted like pet mice,
almost like mice somebody had trained. They were so friendly
that one night, when Mother entertained at dinner the freer Realiras,
a club she and my father had belonged to for
twenty years, she put down a lot of little dishes
with food in them on the pantry floor so that
the mice would be satisfied with that and would not
(39:02):
come into the dining room. Mugs stayed out in the
pantry with the mice lying on the floor, growling to himself,
not at the mice, but about all the people in
the next room that he would have liked to get at.
Mother slipped out into the pantry once to see how
everything was going. Everything was going fine. It made her
(39:24):
so mad to see Mugs lying there oblivious of the mice.
They came running up to her that she slapped him,
and he slashed at her, but didn't make it. He
was sorry immediately. Mother said he was always sorry, she
said after he bit someone. But we could not understand
how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry. Mother
(39:48):
used to send a box of candy every Christmas to
the people the Airdale bit. The list finally contained forty
or more names. Nobody could understand why we did not
get rid of the dog. I didn't understand it very
well myself, but we didn't get rid of him. I
think that one or two people tried to poison Mugs.
He acted poisoned once in a while, and old Major
(40:12):
Moberly fired at him once with his service revolver near
the Seneca Hotel and he's Broad Street. But Muggs lived
to almost eleven years old, and even when he could
hardly get around. He bit a congressman who had called
to see my father on business. My mother had never
liked the congressman. She said the signs of his horoscope
(40:33):
showed he couldn't be trusted. He was Saturn with the
moon and Virgo. But she sent him a box of
candy that Christmas. Anyway, he sent it right back, probably
because he suspected it was trick candy. Mother persuaded herself
that it was all for the best that the dog
had bitten him, even though father lost an important business
association because of it. I wouldn't be associated with such
(40:56):
a man. Mother said, Mugs could read him lack a book.
We used to take turns feeding Mugs to be on
his good side, but that didn't always work. He was
never in a very good humor even after a meal.
Nobody knew exactly what was the matter with him, but
whatever it was, it made him irascible, especially in the mornings.
(41:18):
Roy my brother, never felt very well in the morning either,
especially before breakfast, And once when he came downstairs and
found that Mugs had moodily chewed up the morning paper,
he hit him in the face with a grapefruit and
then jumped up on the dining room table, scattering dishes
and silverware and spilling the coffee. Muggs first free leap
(41:41):
carried him all the way across the table and into
a brass fire screen in front of the gas grate,
but he was back on his feet in a moment,
and in the end he got Roy and gave him
a pretty vicious bite in the leg. Then he was
all over it. He never bid anyone more than once
at a time. Mother always mentioned that as an argument
in his favor. She said he had a quick temper,
(42:03):
but that he didn't hold grudge. She was forever defending him.
I think she liked him because he wasn't well. He's
not strong, she would say pityingly, but that was inaccurate.
He may not have been well, but he was terribly strong.
One time my mother went to the Chittenden Hotel to
(42:26):
call on a woman mental healer who was lecturing in
Columbus on the subject of harmonious vibrations. She wanted to
find out if it was possible to get harmonious vibrations
into a dog. He's a large, tan colored Airdale, Mother explained.
The woman said that she had never treated a dog,
but she advised my mother to hold the thought that
(42:48):
he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was
holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got
the iceman. But she blamed that slip up on the iceman.
If you didn't think he would bite you, he wouldn't.
Mother told himmped out of the house in a terrible
jangle of vibrations. One morning when Mugs bit me slightly
(43:12):
more or less in passing. I reached down and grabbed
his short, stumpy tail and hoisted him into the air.
It was a foolhardy thing to do, and the last
time I saw my mother, about six months ago, she
said she didn't know what possessed me. I don't either,
except that I was pretty mad. As long as I
held the dog off the floor by his tail, he
(43:33):
couldn't get at me. But he twisted and jerked so
snarling all the time that I realized I couldn't hold
him that way very long, and I carried him into
the kitchen and flung him onto the floor and shut
the door on him just as he crashed against it.
But I forgot about the backstairs. Muggs went up the
backstairs and down the front stairs and had me cornered
(43:56):
in the living room. I managed to get up out
of the mantelpiece above the fireplace, but it gave way
and came down with a tremendous crash, throwing a large
marble clock, several vases, and myself heavily to the floor.
Muggs was so alarmed by the racket that when I
picked myself up, he had disappeared. We couldn't find him anywhere,
(44:19):
although we whistled and shouted until old Missus Dettweiler called
after dinner that night. Muggs had bitten her once in
the leg, and she came into the living room only
after we assured her that Muggs had run away. She
had just seated herself when with great growling and scratching
of claws, Mugs emerged from under a davenport where he
(44:42):
had been quietly hiding all the time and bit her again.
Mother examined the bite and put arnica on it and
told Missus Dttweiler that it was only a bruise. He
just bumped you, she said. But Missus Dettwiler left our
house in a nasty state of mind. Lots of people
(45:03):
reported our airdale to the police, but my father held
a municipal office at the time and was on friendly
terms with the police. Even so, the cops had been
out a couple of times, once when Mugs bit Missus
rufus Sturt event and again when he bit Lieutenant Governor Molloy,
But Mother told him it hadn't been Muggs's fault, but
the fault of the people who were bitten. When he
(45:25):
starts for them, they scream, she explained, and that excites him.
The cops suggested that it might be a good idea
to tie the dog up, but mother said that it
mortified him to be tied up and that he wouldn't
eat when he was tied up. Mugs at his meals
was an unusual site because of the fact that if
you reached toward the floor, he would bite you. We
(45:49):
usually put his food plate on top of an old
kitchen table with a bench alongside the table. Muggs would
stand on the bench and eat. I remember that my
mother's uncle Horatio, who boasted that he was the third
man up Missionary Ridge, was flutteringly indignant when he found
out that we fed the dog on a table because
(46:10):
we were afraid to put his plate on the floor.
He said he wasn't afraid of any dog that ever lived,
and that he would put the dog's plate on the
floor if we would give it to him. Roy said
that if Uncle Horatio had fed Mugs on the ground
just before the battle, he would have been the first
man up Missionary Ridge. Uncle Horatio was furious. Ray, amen,
(46:32):
bray amen, Now, he shouted, I'll feed them on the floor.
Roy was all forgiving him a chance, but my father
wouldn't hear of it. He said that Mugs had already
been fed. I'll feed them again, bawled Uncle Horatio. We
had quite a time quieting him. In his last year.
(46:54):
Muggs used to spend practically all of his time outdoors.
He didn't like to stay in the house for some
reason or other. Perhaps it held too many unpleasant memories
for him. Anyway, it was hard to get him to
come in, and as a result, the garbage man, the iceman,
and the laundryman would not come near our house. We
had to haul the garbage down to the corner, take
(47:15):
the laundry out, and bring it back and meet the
iceman a block from home. After this had gone on
for some time, we hit on an ingenious arrangement for
getting the dog in the house so that we could
lock him up while the gas meter was red and
so on. Mugs was afraid of only one thing, an
(47:37):
electrical storm. Thunder and lightning frightened him out of his senses.
I think he thought a storm had broken the day
the mantelpiece fell. He would rush into the house and
hide under a bed or in a clothes closet, So
we fixed up a thunder machine out of a long,
narrow piece of sheet iron with a wooden handle on
(47:58):
one end. Mother would shake this vigorously when she wanted
to get Mugs into the house. Made an excellent imitation
of thunder. But I suppose it was the most roundabout
system for running a household that was ever devised. It
took a lot out of mother. A few months before
Mugs died, he got to seeing things. He would rise
(48:21):
slowly from the floor, growling low and stalk, stiff legged
and menacing toward nothing at all. Sometimes the thing would
be just a little to the right or left of
a visitor. Once a fuller brush salesman got hysterics, Muggs
(48:42):
came wandering into the room like Hamlet, following his father's ghosts.
His eyes were fixed on a spot just to the
left of the fuller brush man, who stood it until
Muggs was about three slow creeping paces from him. Then
he shouted, Mugs wavered on past him into the hallway,
grumbling to himself, but the fuller man went on shouting.
(49:03):
I think Mother had to throw a pan of cold
water on him before he stopped. That was the way
she used to stop us boys when we got into fights.
Muggs died quite suddenly one night. Mother wanted to bury
him in the family lot under a marble stone with
some such inscription as flights of angels sing thee to
thy rest, but we persuaded her it was against the law.
(49:27):
In the end we just put up a smooth board
above his grave along a lonely road. On the board
I wrote with an indelible pencil, cave Kanum. Mother was
quite pleased with the simple, classic dignity of the old
Latin epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber.
(50:03):
I've done all the damage I can here. Thank you
for listening, mugs. We are now back to five episodes
a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Once again
there is a Monday Countdown. Please send this podcast to
somebody who doesn't listen but should, And a little preview
of course about Monday, Monday Steedy day, you know what
that means. Brian Ray and John Phillip Schhaneil the music
(50:25):
Jeal directors of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of
our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards, Mister Ray
was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced
by Tko Brothers and again their premiere of our revised
theme is also in Monday special edition. Our satirical and
pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever,
(50:47):
Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Old Woman theme
from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis courtesy of
ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group
No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend Larry David.
Everything else was pretty much my fault. The that's countdown
for today, five weeks and four days until the twenty
twenty four presidential election and the three hundred and sixty
(51:11):
first day since convicted felon drooling Jay Trump's first attempted
coup against the democratically elected government of the United States.
Use the election, use the mental health system, use presidential
immunity if we have to, to keep him from doing
it again while we still can. The next scheduled countdown
(51:31):
is Monday bulletins as the news requires. Until then, I'm
Keith Oulderman. Good morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck.
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For
(51:53):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Keith Olbermann
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com