Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. This was an assassination attempt. This was meant to be the execution of as prominent a political figure as there is in this country, eleven days before this country goes to the polls. This was a political crime perpetrated by an individual differentiated from the rest of the rising fascist far right only by his behavior and only so far. This was an act of domestic terrorism designed to kill the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America and thus to derange the succession to the presidency. This was an extension of the January six coup attempt, down to the shouting of the same mindless, murderous wars Nancy threat. This was intended to be the full expression of the new mantra of a political party gone insane, transformed from mere avarice and lack of empathy into violence, brutality, authoritarianism, and fascism as acceptable political behavior. This assassination attempt was, by all accounts, intended to result in the torture of the husband of the third most powerful elected official in this country, and presumably his death, and then the death of that third most powerful official. This is America at its worst when one political entity employs stochastic terrorism as a recruiting tool, as a campaign pledge, and as an attempt to alter the government by bloodshed. And none of this, none of this is being said by our democratic leaders, and none of this is being being said by our newspapers, and none of this is being said by our television networks. And god damn it, I want it said now. I want the New York Times to call this what it was, an assassination attempt. I want meet the press and face the nation, and this week to demand of every Republican henceforth the assassin spoke the words of Maga. Do you repudiate Maga or do you stand with the assailant and Maga. I want Liz Cheney to point at Kevin McCarthy and carry gauze, filter Lake and all the others who have taken over what had been her party, and I want her to accuse them of stochastic terrorism. And I want Vice President Harris to say that David de Pappi wielded the hammer, but Donald Trump might just as well have handed it to him. And I want President Biden to stand before the cameras of this name in prime time and state what is obvious to all who are not lying, that the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi was an attack on the government of the United States of America. And it was inspired by Kevin McCarthy, and it was inspired by Lauren Bobert. That it was inspired by Marjorie Taylor Green, and it was inspired by Tucker Carlson. And it was inspired by Roger Stone, and it was inspired by Michael Flynn, and it was inspired by the Republican Party. And I want Biden to list so many other names that it becomes excruciating to listen to, and so that he shakes with rage when he gets to the inescapable and inescapably true conclusion that this carnage, this blasphemy, this maga terrorism was inspired by Donald Trump. And it stops here. And I want every prominent Democrat, from Chuck Schumer to Barack Obama to pick a Republican or a Democrat or a commentator who has stayed silent or minimized what happened, or painted it as lawlessness, or said it proved that today crime could happen to anyone anywhere. And I want them each to pick one of those Republicans or Democrats and metaphorically destroy them for their lives and their cowardice and their political hordem I want a Democrat to get in front of a microphone at a camera every day between now and the midterms and ask Kevin McCarthy why the presumptive Speaker of the House said nothing nothing about the attempted assassination of the current Speaker of the House. I want a Democrat to stand before giant printouts of the terrorists social media posts with all the links to Mike Lindell, and I want that Democrat to call Mike Lindelle a fomentor of violence and terror is him and to ask which foreign country is helping Mike Lindell undermine the peace and future of this nation. I want a Democrat to go to David axel Rod and ask him to explain how he dared to write horrendous attacks like this are the bitter fruit of an environment in which we demonize each other and justify anything. As if any Liberal would crack the list of the worst one perpetrators of political violence of the last decade. I want a Democrat to go to Steve Scalise and ask him how many times he reminded us that he had been shot by a deranged liberal, but when a deranged conservative attacked, he suddenly would not mention politics and would say only violence has no place in this country, as if Paul Pelosi had been swiped with a pen knife. I want d n C chair Jamie Harrison to go to r n C chair Rona Romney McDaniel and to ask her how she had the nerve to tweet generically about the attack and then an hour later step on a stage at Canton, Ohio and still attack Nancy Pelosi. And I want MSNBC to put a camera crew to stalk Jesse Waters from Fox, whose career began when it was his camera crew following and harassing and stalking women, reporters and civilians. And I want them outside his house twenty four hours a day, waiting for him in just the same way, and demanding he explained what he meant when he said there was no reason to treat this assailant differently than any other assailant anywhere in this country. Want this alleged perpetrator to be treated the exact same way if he had treated if he had attacked anybody else, because a lot of people get hit with hammers. And I want the privilege of calling Governor Glenn Uncan of Virginia a scumbag. He just could not stop, this soft focus fascist, just could not stop himself for one hour. He could not stop for one speech. He could not stop in front of a crowd of people whose souls, as Americans, are already lost. He could not not make a wise crack, a joke, a dismissive insult about the assassination attack. The voters are good, ready to stand up again, and said we have had enough enough of Abigail's fanburger, enough of Joe Biden, and uh listen, I want to stop for a minute. And and uh listen speaking Polo Us, his husband uh had a break in last night in their house and he was assaulted. There's no room for violence anywhere. But we're gonna send her back to be with him in California. That's what we're gonna go do. That's what we're gonna go do. And given a chance on news Max to soften, to retract, to try again, Glenn young kin scumbag instead spelled out what is already obvious as the Republican party line. This wasn't a Republican attacking Nancy Pelosi only to find her not home and deciding to tie up her husband and wait until she got home. This was a lawless criminal in a lawless city, and it was the liberals fault, and it was a break in and it just happened to be over there at the Pelosi house. Listen, there is no room for this in America, and we have to stop this, and this lawlessness has has gotten out of control. And I do, I do, sincerely hope that figure Pelosi's husband recovers fully and quickly. And that is as far as any Republican has gone, as far as any one of these filth has been willing to go thoughts and prayers over this totally coincidental attack. Many of them, perhaps most of them, don't even believe it was. That the chickens have come home to roost, said the fascist sheriff of Los Angeles County, Alex Villanueva. All of this falls upon the progressive movement that they don't prosecute anymore. Just wondering, wrote news Max host Greg Kelly. If Nancy Pelosi tried to stage her own mini January six, complete with leaving the doors and windows open for quote insurrectionists like this to Peppe Fellow, a Southerner on Twitter questioned if the whole event was staged, just like Nancy staged everything about January six. That was then retweeted by one Mary Williams Benefield, the Republican candidate for the eighty first district seat in the Georgia House, who added, maybe their daughter has a film crew shooting on this too. I want Democrats to put spot lights on these fiends and all the others every day between now and the election. I want the election to be a referendum on the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi. I want the words of Trump and the words of de Pape correlated and cross index and broadcast on loud speakers on trucks in every city in this country. I want our liberal leaders to do something, and I want to have the conversation about the President's emergency powers, the small ones like sending troops to guard the voting booths a week from Tuesday, and even the big ones. I want to have the conversation about perhaps taking the steps that the fascists hint at using every hour in every one of their speeches, because if we are going to see a national emergency, big or small, declared, I want that declared by a sane president defending freedom and not a madman trying to end it. Because right now, at this moment, this nation is under attack. The former president threatened reporters and publishers who refused to reveal sources with rape. Members of a paramilitary group showed up at penn State and beat and maced students who were protesting the platform they were inexplicably given. Armed vigilantes stalked ballot drop boxes in Arizona. The adviser to a candidate for governor Pennsylvania declared the candidates opponent isn't really Jewish. A billionaire entertainer boot liquor of the former president repeatedly attacked that faith and spewed every anti Semitic trope known to man. The reactionary power crazed billionaire adviser to Vladimir Putin bought Twitter, and now a lunatic spouting madness that matches almost word for word the campaign rhetoric of a Marjorie Taylor Green broke into the home of the Speaker of the House, with the intention of murdering her and her husband at all. This has happened just since last Saturday. Our country is in danger. We are besieged on all sides by heavily armed and heavily financed authoritarians who want power not until the next election, but forever. Who have poisoned, beyond recovery the minds of millions, and who intend to poison the minds of millions more. Who hate liberty while they are dressed as patriots, who despise the Constitution while fetishizing the founding fathers, who abhor what America stands for while they wave and desecrate our flag. Who will stop at nothing, while they boast that they will stop at nothing. That was a terrorist attack. That was an assassination attempt. That was Donald Trump by proxy. This is life and death. Friday morning, it was life and death for Paul and Nancy Pelosi. Tomorrow it will be life and death for the United States of America. This is an unscheduled weekend edition of this podcast, so forgive me. The rest of this countdown will not be fresh content. If you don't want to listen, I will not hold it against you. Friday's commentary though, about the fact that none of the Trumpists who instigated January six have yet been indicted, let alone convicted, seems more pertinent even than it was before the Pelosi attack. I'll replay that next, and then close with the usual weekend edition of Thurber. That's next. This is countdown ninety months in jail for the insurrectionist who, through Officer Michael phanone to the mob on January six, and the House committee investigating that day seeking testimony from at least six Secret Service agents and officials, with the clear implication that the erasure of all their tech from that day was no accident, and their inaction when warned of threats against Pence and Pelosi and Schumer and democracy, that in action was no accident either, And a week and a half from now it will likely be a Lane Duck committee. And we are two years from the election in which Trump and trump is um were defeated and repudiated even by a stricken democracy. And to this day, not one god damned insurrectionist politician, not one god damned stochastic terrorists, not one god damned Trump is in jail or even under indictment, and all we have is excuses and delays, when any other country in the world would have locked all these bastards up and then sorted out the legalities later. Let me begin by saying the worst thing imaginable. We need to act not as if democracy is in jeopardy in the mid terms. We need to act as if it is already lost. We need to act as if our job is not to defend democracy, but to regain it. We need to act as if without us, night will descend over this country all night forever. For you, soon for your children, who will never even read about democracy because it won't exist, and they will have closed all the libraries. We need to act as if darkness over this country means there is no country to lead the world against the burgeoning climate disaster, and therefore human life on this planet will be unsustainable and society will collapse in cataclysmic horror and bloodshed in a few short decades or less, and it will not be just suicide, but slow and horrible suicide for your kids and this planet. We need to act this way because for all, in tents and purposes, democracy is lost, and for all intents and purposes, our job is to regain it, and for all intents and purposes, without us, night will descend over this country, and for all intents and purposes, there will be no country to lead in the climate disaster and the slow and horrible suicide that is about to begin. And we need to act our way ourselves, because the two institutions upon which even the most cynical of us believe we could rely, at least in some small degree to defend the democracy on our behalf, have abandoned the fight so that they can instead defend their careers and their profits. Those two institutions would be one the political and judicial infrastructure of this country, and to the news media of this country. They have all seen the future as I have just described it, and as you know in your heart to be true. They have all seen that future. And in the one institution they have seen this gathering storm and said how do I get reelected in this environment? And in the other institution they have seen the gathering storm and said, how do we protect the profits of our news organization if this country goes wholly or just mostly fascist. History has placed today's small l liberal politicians and today's small minded news executives and reporters in as perilous at time ever for the future of freedom and the future of humanity, and they have responded with cowardice and selfishness and looking for ways to become accessories. Fear is everywhere, and not fear for the future of our nation and our freedoms and our neighbors. Fear for themselves, fear for their offices, fear for their wallets, fear for their ratings, fear for their climb up the corporate ladder. We have a week and a half left to beat these idiots, not the fascists. The fascists are amoral, murderous bastards, but they are not idiots. By idiots, I mean beat the allegedly liberal politicians and the anything but liberal media into action and not appeasement and into rage and not compromise. Quote. If you look at some of the people that we've been hiring on a contributor basis, said the co president of CBS quote news unquote, if you look at some of the people that we've been hiring on a contributor basis, being able to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over most likely in the midterms. The man who said that is name near As ken Lani. He not only said this to his staff at CBS News, but he said it understanding that those people were, yes, all reporters and GOLLI gosh, maybe one of them would record what he was saying and give that recording to the Washington Post perhaps or somebody. A lot of the people that we're bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation. Not only has this Naraj Kimlanni not been fired by CBS News, but the sleez bag he hired first, the former chief of staff to Crazy Trump, Mick Mulvaney, has also not been fired. Mick Mulvaney one of the principles in Trump's blackmailing of President Zelenski of Ukraine. Mick Mulvaney, CBS News, Washington, Ukrainian Blood on my Hands hired so CBS can get Republicans to go on face the nation and theoretically Republicans will watch CBS access to Republicans to come on to CBS News shows which Republicans will never ever watch. Near As Canlani is doing this because, as he put it, quote we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely in the midterms, and having slime like Mick Mulvaney on the staff of CBS News gives CBS at its parent company some cover for whenever Crazy Trump or the next Crazy Trump comes in with new laws restricting what places like CBS News can and cannot report. Near Ashken, Lonnie can point to Mick mulvaney CBS News Washington and say, but but some of your people work here, and maybe, just maybe Crazy Trump or the next Crazy Trump will say, Okay, you can stay in business and make your money, and your investors will be happy, and all will be well for CBS and the stockholders. And so what if the rest of the country has turned into Russia? All that money will you buy your way out of the nightmare? For a while back in April, The New York Times did an extensive take out on what it described in the headline as quote Trump allies continue legal drive to erase his loss, stoking election doubts. The word allies is in their allies, as in the Allies one World War Two. The word legal is in there, which implies that what is being done is legal. The word erase is in there, as if we were talking about backspacing over a typo or properly washing clean a blackboard. Trump allies continue legal drive to erase his loss, stoking election doubts. You know a word that was not in that New York Times headline, coup was not in that headline. Another word, insurrection is not in there. There is an apt phrase that also is not in their attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the United goddamned States. None of that is in the headline, and next to none of it was in the article. It's just, oh, you know, allies doing legal erasing by the New York Times by Maggie Haberman. Of course, because the New York Times is so afraid that it might take a side here. No, that's not right, exactly. The New York Times is so afraid that it might take the wrong side here that even it will hedge its bets on occasion, in the face of the looming shadow of fascism, and it will passively cooperate with fabricating some illegal excuse that sounds like it's a law to erase an election. Instead of saying the same fascist who try to overthrow the government. On January six, are still at it. And here are forty five constitutional experts who explained why the correct response for this is for the president to send in the military and detain these treasonous seditionists in a naval brig The Times, the Post, CBS, CNN, have I mentioned CNN and Chris licked all of them all media, They all still don't know how to cover a political story that does not fit into one of maybe two dozen templates. There's never been a political party that tried to overthrow democracy. Therefore there can never be a political party that tries to overthrow democracy. The Papers editor quit in two thousand nineteen. He was the one who insisted there was nothing unique about the current moment, that crazy Trump was just quote someone who says inflammatory statements like a one time governor of Louisiana named Edwin Edwards, fear everywhere the wrong kind. And then there are the politicians. Let me throw this in here because it is the ultimate current example of self interest married to fear. Somebody at The Economist wrote in the spring, you know it would be a great idea with the red wave facing Democrats in the midterms g Elliott Morris rights quote would be conservative and moderate Democrats in red states should shun the Democratic label and run instead as independence. Oh sneaky. Maybe three of them could stand on each other's shoulders and wear a trench coat and insist they're not three Democrats, They're just one giant independent. Quoting g Elliott again, This both saves them from being automatically cast aside by rural Republican voters and allows them to adopt some more servative social positions. I mentioned many times my heroes were the comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Golding. Bob Elliott the father of Chris Elliott, whose work you may know. There was a Bob and Ray sketch which I no by heart about the head of the National Ketchup Institute played by Ray Goulding explaining to the interviewer played by Bob Elliot about how his plans for National Ketchup Week would double sales. We will be branching out to new areas, new flavors, new meals for Ketchup. Bob answers evenly new meals for ketchup. Ray resumes not catchup as you civilians know it now, but catchup in which tomato has been replaced by chocolate flavoring. This opens the entire dessert topping field to the ketchup conglomerates. Bob Elliott takes a long pause and says, so you're holding National Ketchup Week to promote the sales of chocolate sauce. Now it is Ray who pauses. Gosh, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty stupid, and it's it's my idea. I better get back to the office before all hell breaks out. Excuse me. Democrats in Red States pretending they're not Democrats and instead running as independents because their Republican opponents would never figure that out in a million years. It's genius. It's genius, I tells you, because Texans would never figure out, say that the independent who was running for governor Mr b Ato O'Rourke was actually a Democrat. They never figure that out and turn it into another smear on o a n with which to further terrify the already cowering Democrats into submission National Ketchup Week to sell chocolate sauce and independent not Democrats. Fear fear fear, how even at this late hour can Democrats and liberals not see the obviousness of the path in front of them. The party in the White House always gets crushed in the mid terms. The economy is good, but inflation and the media make it seem disastrous. The sense of inevitability is like Lincoln in eighteen sixty four before they took Atlanta. There seems to be nothing left to lose in the mid terms, so act that way. You can't figure out how to stave off midterm disasters against Republicans who have gerrymandered the nation and honed a propaganda machine that now offers a channel of diet hate, a channel of regular hate, and a channel of extra strength hate. How about running on this wild idea. The Republicans tried to violently overthrow the government of this country last year, and having been thwarted, they are trying to quote decertify an election and remove a president, even though the Constitution says nobody can do that. And all, by the way, each Republican candidate is a fast gist or a racist, or a vigilante, or a Nazi or herschel walker or the best of them is none of these things. But they tolerate fascists racists, vigilantees, Nazis and herschel walkers in their party. You can't run as the anti fascism party even now, the anti coup party, the anti Nazi party. The if you vote Republican will be the last election we ever have party with Democracy about to go up and smoke with Republican Congressman promising to prosecute the members of the committee that looked into the last coup. If Democracy is holding, it's going out of business sale. You can't risk getting your skirts dirty here like Lincoln risk getting his skirts dirty every day of his presidency. You can't stash crazy Trump and Eastman and Mike freaking Lindel in an army stockade and accused them of sedition and fomenting violence, which, by the way, they have, or at least threaten them with an army stock Kate, I mean before just giving up and letting their minions take the house in a week and a half and paving the way for Crazy Trump's return. You don't want to try something aggressive. Maybe you can't run on. We stopped Trump from ending democracy, We stopped Trump from making himself dictator for life, and we stopped Trump from letting putent annex Ukraine where the Democrats and we kill fascists. You can't run on that. You're not even gonna try. Fear fear, fear. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. But unfortunately, to paraphrase not FDR but my late friend William Hurt in the movie Body Heat, sometimes the fear comes down so heavy I feel like I should wear a hat. So you and I have to do it ourselves. Light a fire, I'll do. The Democrats in the last week and a half, will replace the ones who survive. And god damn it, if he's not ready to indict Donald Trump by the first of next year, I'm starting with Merrick Garland. Put Trump in jail, or go to jail yourself, Garland, and light a fire under the liberal media or replace them too. And by the way, that's why I'm saying this now and you are listening to it. We'll do it ourselves. We have to just remember, be careful out there. Everybody wear a hat again. That mon terry aired first in Friday's edition of Countdown. I'll be back in a moment with James Thurber's The Dog That Bit People, something of a much needed lighter note to the number one story on the Countdown and Friday's 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 before I was ever adopted by a dog. Now, reading his dog stories and anecdotes, it's like reading about a bunch of friends, even that one surly friend for whom we must continuously make excuses The dog that bit people 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 airedale named Mugs. He gave me more trouble than all the other fifty four or five put together. Although my moment of keenest embarrassment was the time a Scotch Terrier named Genie, 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 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 end. Since a rain storm came up when we were halfway through the Bronx, I had to hold over her 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 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've got to leave on their hips if you expect the dogs to win a prize. But the airedale as I have said, was the worst of all my dogs. He really he wasn't my dog. Matter of fact, I came home from a vacation one summery to find that my brother Roy had bought him while I was away. The big, burly, choleric dog. He always acted as if he thought I wasn't one of the family. 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 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 Free Relias, 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 come into the dining room. Muggs 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, wants to see how everything was going. Everything was going fine. It made her 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 used to send a box of candy every Christmas to the people the airedale 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 did and get rid of him. I think that one or two people tried to poison Mugs. He acted poisoned once in a while. An old Major 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 Horrorscope showed he couldn't be trusted. He was saturned 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 a man, Mother said. Muggs could read him like 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. Roy my brother, never felt very well in the morning either, especially before breakfast, and once when he came downstairs and found that Muggs 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 mugs. First free leap 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, but that he didn't hold a 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 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 air dale. Mother explained. The woman said that she had never treated a dog, but she advised my mother to hold the thought that he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got the ice man, but she blamed that slip up on the ice man. If you didn't think he would bite you, he hadn't, Mother told him. He stomped out of the house in a terrible jangle of vibrations. One morning, when Mugs bit me slightly 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 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 in the living room. I managed to get up onto 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, although we whistled and shouted until old Mrs Debtwiler 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, Muggs emerged from under a davenport where he had been quietly hiding all the time and bit her again. Mother examined the bite and put arnica on it and told Mrs debt Wylder that it was only a bruise. He just bumped you, she said. But Mrs debt Wilder left our house in a nasty state of mind. Lots of people 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 Muggs bit Mrs rufus Stirred Event and again when he bit Lieutenant Governor Malloy. But Mother told him it hadn't been Muggs's fault, but the fault of the people who were bitten. When he 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 reach towards the floor, he would bite you. We 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 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 Muggs on the ground just before the battle, he would have been the first man up missionary ridge. Uncle Horatio was furious, Ray, amen, rag amen, now, he shouted, I'll feed them murmur on the floor. Roy was all for giving him a chance. But my father wouldn't hear of it. He said that Muggs had already been fed. I'll feed him again, bald Uncle Horatio. We had quite a time quieting him. In his last year. Muggs used to spend practically all his time outdoors. He didn't like to stay in the house for some reason or other. Perhaps it 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 laundry man would not come near our house. We had to haul the garbage down to the corner, take the laundry out and bring it back and meet the ice man 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 read, and so on. Mugs was afraid of only one thing, and electrical storm thunder and lightning frightened him out of his senses. I think he thought a storm had broken the day the mantelpiece spell. 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 one end. Mother would shake this big seriously when she wanted to get Mugs into the house. It 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 Muggs died, he got to seeing things. He would rise 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 came wandering into the room like Hamlet, following his father's ghost. His eyes were fixed on a spot just to the left of the fuller brushman, who stood it until Muggs was about three slow creeping paces from him. Then he shouted, Muggs wavered on passed him into the hallway, grumbling to himself, but a fuller man went on shouting. 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. Mugs 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. 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, kab Khanum. Mother was quite pleased with the simple, classic dignity of the old Latin epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening this far. If you can can help me out, please do so. Spread the word about this tell somebody about this podcast, get them to subscribe, or just listen here the credits. Most of the music, including our theme you Hear Now from Beethoven's Ninth was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. John Philip Chanelle provided all orchestration and keyboards. The guitars, bass and drums were by Brian Ray and t Ko Brothers produced it. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from the ESPN two and a Lovely Theme is written by Mitch Warren Davis and courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was Kenny Maine. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the six hundred and sixty feet day since Donald Trump's first attempt did coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can new episode Monday till then on Keith all Reman, good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith all Woman is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of I Heart Radio. This was an assassination attempt. This was meant to be the execution of as prominent a political figure as there is in this country, eleven days before this country goes to the polls. This was a political crime perpetrated by an individual differentiated from the rest of the rising fascist far right only by his behavior and only so far. This was an act of domestic terrorism designed to kill the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States of America and thus to derange the succession to the presidency. This was an extension of the January six coup attempt, down to the shouting of the same mindless, murderous wars Nancy threat. This was intended to be the full expression of the new mantra of a political party gone insane, transformed from mere avarice and lack of empathy into violence, brutality, authoritarianism, and fascism as acceptable political behavior. This assassination attempt was, by all accounts, intended to result in the torture of the husband of the third most powerful elected official in this country, and presumably his death, and then the death of that third most powerful official. This is America at its worst when one political entity employs stochastic terrorism as a recruiting tool, as a campaign pledge, and as an attempt to alter the government by bloodshed. And none of this, none of this is being said by our democratic leaders, and none of this is being being said by our newspapers, and none of this is being said by our television networks. And god damn it, I want it said now. I want the New York Times to call this what it was, an assassination attempt. I want meet the press and face the nation, and this week to demand of every Republican henceforth the assassin spoke the words of Maga. Do you repudiate Maga or do you stand with the assailant and Maga. I want Liz Cheney to point at Kevin McCarthy and carry gauze, filter Lake and all the others who have taken over what had been her party, and I want her to accuse them of stochastic terrorism. And I want Vice President Harris to say that David de Pappi wielded the hammer, but Donald Trump might just as well have handed it to him. And I want President Biden to stand before the cameras of this name in prime time and state what is obvious to all who are not lying, that the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi was an attack on the government of the United States of America. And it was inspired by Kevin McCarthy, and it was inspired by Lauren Bobert. That it was inspired by Marjorie Taylor Green, and it was inspired by Tucker Carlson. And it was inspired by Roger Stone, and it was inspired by Michael Flynn, and it was inspired by the Republican Party. And I want Biden to list so many other names that it becomes excruciating to listen to, and so that he shakes with rage when he gets to the inescapable and inescapably true conclusion that this carnage, this blasphemy, this maga terrorism was inspired by Donald Trump. And it stops here. And I want every prominent Democrat, from Chuck Schumer to Barack Obama to pick a Republican or a Democrat or a commentator who has stayed silent or minimized what happened, or painted it as lawlessness, or said it proved that today crime could happen to anyone anywhere. And I want them each to pick one of those Republicans or Democrats and metaphorically destroy them for their lives and their cowardice and their political hordem I want a Democrat to get in front of a microphone at a camera every day between now and the midterms and ask Kevin McCarthy why the presumptive Speaker of the House said nothing nothing about the attempted assassination of the current Speaker of the House. I want a Democrat to stand before giant printouts of the terrorists social media posts with all the links to Mike Lindell, and I want that Democrat to call Mike Lindelle a fomentor of violence and terror is him and to ask which foreign country is helping Mike Lindell undermine the peace and future of this nation. I want a Democrat to go to David axel Rod and ask him to explain how he dared to write horrendous attacks like this are the bitter fruit of an environment in which we demonize each other and justify anything. As if any Liberal would crack the list of the worst one perpetrators of political violence of the last decade. I want a Democrat to go to Steve Scalise and ask him how many times he reminded us that he had been shot by a deranged liberal, but when a deranged conservative attacked, he suddenly would not mention politics and would say only violence has no place in this country, as if Paul Pelosi had been swiped with a pen knife. I want d n C chair Jamie Harrison to go to r n C chair Rona Romney McDaniel and to ask her how she had the nerve to tweet generically about the attack and then an hour later step on a stage at Canton, Ohio and still attack Nancy Pelosi. And I want MSNBC to put a camera crew to stalk Jesse Waters from Fox, whose career began when it was his camera crew following and harassing and stalking women, reporters and civilians. And I want them outside his house twenty four hours a day, waiting for him in just the same way, and demanding he explained what he meant when he said there was no reason to treat this assailant differently than any other assailant anywhere in this country. Want this alleged perpetrator to be treated the exact same way if he had treated if he had attacked anybody else, because a lot of people get hit with hammers. And I want the privilege of calling Governor Glenn Uncan of Virginia a scumbag. He just could not stop, this soft focus fascist, just could not stop himself for one hour. He could not stop for one speech. He could not stop in front of a crowd of people whose souls, as Americans, are already lost. He could not not make a wise crack, a joke, a dismissive insult about the assassination attack. The voters are good, ready to stand up again, and said we have had enough enough of Abigail's fanburger, enough of Joe Biden, and uh listen, I want to stop for a minute. And and uh listen speaking Polo Us, his husband uh had a break in last night in their house and he was assaulted. There's no room for violence anywhere. But we're gonna send her back to be with him in California. That's what we're gonna go do. That's what we're gonna go do. And given a chance on news Max to soften, to retract, to try again, Glenn young kin scumbag instead spelled out what is already obvious as the Republican party line. This wasn't a Republican attacking Nancy Pelosi only to find her not home and deciding to tie up her husband and wait until she got home. This was a lawless criminal in a lawless city, and it was the liberals fault, and it was a break in and it just happened to be over there at the Pelosi house. Listen, there is no room for this in America, and we have to stop this, and this lawlessness has has gotten out of control. And I do, I do, sincerely hope that figure Pelosi's husband recovers fully and quickly. And that is as far as any Republican has gone, as far as any one of these filth has been willing to go thoughts and prayers over this totally coincidental attack. Many of them, perhaps most of them, don't even believe it was. That the chickens have come home to roost, said the fascist sheriff of Los Angeles County, Alex Villanueva. All of this falls upon the progressive movement that they don't prosecute anymore. Just wondering, wrote news Max host Greg Kelly. If Nancy Pelosi tried to stage her own mini January six, complete with leaving the doors and windows open for quote insurrectionists like this to Peppe Fellow, a Southerner on Twitter questioned if the whole event was staged, just like Nancy staged everything about January six. That was then retweeted by one Mary Williams Benefield, the Republican candidate for the eighty first district seat in the Georgia House, who added, maybe their daughter has a film crew shooting on this too. I want Democrats to put spot lights on these fiends and all the others every day between now and the election. I want the election to be a referendum on the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi. I want the words of Trump and the words of de Pape correlated and cross index and broadcast on loud speakers on trucks in every city in this country. I want our liberal leaders to do something, and I want to have the conversation about the President's emergency powers, the small ones like sending troops to guard the voting booths a week from Tuesday, and even the big ones. I want to have the conversation about perhaps taking the steps that the fascists hint at using every hour in every one of their speeches, because if we are going to see a national emergency, big or small, declared, I want that declared by a sane president defending freedom and not a madman trying to end it. Because right now, at this moment, this nation is under attack. The former president threatened reporters and publishers who refused to reveal sources with rape. Members of a paramilitary group showed up at penn State and beat and maced students who were protesting the platform they were inexplicably given. Armed vigilantes stalked ballot drop boxes in Arizona. The adviser to a candidate for governor Pennsylvania declared the candidates opponent isn't really Jewish. A billionaire entertainer boot liquor of the former president repeatedly attacked that faith and spewed every anti Semitic trope known to man. The reactionary power crazed billionaire adviser to Vladimir Putin bought Twitter, and now a lunatic spouting madness that matches almost word for word the campaign rhetoric of a Marjorie Taylor Green broke into the home of the Speaker of the House, with the intention of murdering her and her husband at all. This has happened just since last Saturday. Our country is in danger. We are besieged on all sides by heavily armed and heavily financed authoritarians who want power not until the next election, but forever. Who have poisoned, beyond recovery the minds of millions, and who intend to poison the minds of millions more. Who hate liberty while they are dressed as patriots, who despise the Constitution while fetishizing the founding fathers, who abhor what America stands for while they wave and desecrate our flag. Who will stop at nothing, while they boast that they will stop at nothing. That was a terrorist attack. That was an assassination attempt. That was Donald Trump by proxy. This is life and death. Friday morning, it was life and death for Paul and Nancy Pelosi. Tomorrow it will be life and death for the United States of America. This is an unscheduled weekend edition of this podcast, so forgive me. The rest of this countdown will not be fresh content. If you don't want to listen, I will not hold it against you. Friday's commentary though, about the fact that none of the Trumpists who instigated January six have yet been indicted, let alone convicted, seems more pertinent even than it was before the Pelosi attack. I'll replay that next, and then close with the usual weekend edition of Thurber. That's next. This is countdown ninety months in jail for the insurrectionist who, through Officer Michael phanone to the mob on January six, and the House committee investigating that day seeking testimony from at least six Secret Service agents and officials, with the clear implication that the erasure of all their tech from that day was no accident, and their inaction when warned of threats against Pence and Pelosi and Schumer and democracy, that in action was no accident either, And a week and a half from now it will likely be a Lane Duck committee. And we are two years from the election in which Trump and trump is um were defeated and repudiated even by a stricken democracy. And to this day, not one god damned insurrectionist politician, not one god damned stochastic terrorists, not one god damned Trump is in jail or even under indictment, and all we have is excuses and delays, when any other country in the world would have locked all these bastards up and then sorted out the legalities later. Let me begin by saying the worst thing imaginable. We need to act not as if democracy is in jeopardy in the mid terms. We need to act as if it is already lost. We need to act as if our job is not to defend democracy, but to regain it. We need to act as if without us, night will descend over this country all night forever. For you, soon for your children, who will never even read about democracy because it won't exist, and they will have closed all the libraries. We need to act as if darkness over this country means there is no country to lead the world against the burgeoning climate disaster, and therefore human life on this planet will be unsustainable and society will collapse in cataclysmic horror and bloodshed in a few short decades or less, and it will not be just suicide, but slow and horrible suicide for your kids and this planet. We need to act this way because for all, in tents and purposes, democracy is lost, and for all intents and purposes, our job is to regain it, and for all intents and purposes, without us, night will descend over this country, and for all intents and purposes, there will be no country to lead in the climate disaster and the slow and horrible suicide that is about to begin. And we need to act our way ourselves, because the two institutions upon which even the most cynical of us believe we could rely, at least in some small degree to defend the democracy on our behalf, have abandoned the fight so that they can instead defend their careers and their profits. Those two institutions would be one the political and judicial infrastructure of this country, and to the news media of this country. They have all seen the future as I have just described it, and as you know in your heart to be true. They have all seen that future. And in the one institution they have seen this gathering storm and said how do I get reelected in this environment? And in the other institution they have seen the gathering storm and said, how do we protect the profits of our news organization if this country goes wholly or just mostly fascist. History has placed today's small l liberal politicians and today's small minded news executives and reporters in as perilous at time ever for the future of freedom and the future of humanity, and they have responded with cowardice and selfishness and looking for ways to become accessories. Fear is everywhere, and not fear for the future of our nation and our freedoms and our neighbors. Fear for themselves, fear for their offices, fear for their wallets, fear for their ratings, fear for their climb up the corporate ladder. We have a week and a half left to beat these idiots, not the fascists. The fascists are amoral, murderous bastards, but they are not idiots. By idiots, I mean beat the allegedly liberal politicians and the anything but liberal media into action and not appeasement and into rage and not compromise. Quote. If you look at some of the people that we've been hiring on a contributor basis, said the co president of CBS quote news unquote, if you look at some of the people that we've been hiring on a contributor basis, being able to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over most likely in the midterms. The man who said that is name near As ken Lani. He not only said this to his staff at CBS News, but he said it understanding that those people were, yes, all reporters and GOLLI gosh, maybe one of them would record what he was saying and give that recording to the Washington Post perhaps or somebody. A lot of the people that we're bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation. Not only has this Naraj Kimlanni not been fired by CBS News, but the sleez bag he hired first, the former chief of staff to Crazy Trump, Mick Mulvaney, has also not been fired. Mick Mulvaney one of the principles in Trump's blackmailing of President Zelenski of Ukraine. Mick Mulvaney, CBS News, Washington, Ukrainian Blood on my Hands hired so CBS can get Republicans to go on face the nation and theoretically Republicans will watch CBS access to Republicans to come on to CBS News shows which Republicans will never ever watch. Near As Canlani is doing this because, as he put it, quote we know the Republicans are going to take over, most likely in the midterms, and having slime like Mick Mulvaney on the staff of CBS News gives CBS at its parent company some cover for whenever Crazy Trump or the next Crazy Trump comes in with new laws restricting what places like CBS News can and cannot report. Near Ashken, Lonnie can point to Mick mulvaney CBS News Washington and say, but but some of your people work here, and maybe, just maybe Crazy Trump or the next Crazy Trump will say, Okay, you can stay in business and make your money, and your investors will be happy, and all will be well for CBS and the stockholders. And so what if the rest of the country has turned into Russia? All that money will you buy your way out of the nightmare? For a while back in April, The New York Times did an extensive take out on what it described in the headline as quote Trump allies continue legal drive to erase his loss, stoking election doubts. The word allies is in their allies, as in the Allies one World War Two. The word legal is in there, which implies that what is being done is legal. The word erase is in there, as if we were talking about backspacing over a typo or properly washing clean a blackboard. Trump allies continue legal drive to erase his loss, stoking election doubts. You know a word that was not in that New York Times headline, coup was not in that headline. Another word, insurrection is not in there. There is an apt phrase that also is not in their attempt to overthrow the duly elected government of the United goddamned States. None of that is in the headline, and next to none of it was in the article. It's just, oh, you know, allies doing legal erasing by the New York Times by Maggie Haberman. Of course, because the New York Times is so afraid that it might take a side here. No, that's not right, exactly. The New York Times is so afraid that it might take the wrong side here that even it will hedge its bets on occasion, in the face of the looming shadow of fascism, and it will passively cooperate with fabricating some illegal excuse that sounds like it's a law to erase an election. Instead of saying the same fascist who try to overthrow the government. On January six, are still at it. And here are forty five constitutional experts who explained why the correct response for this is for the president to send in the military and detain these treasonous seditionists in a naval brig The Times, the Post, CBS, CNN, have I mentioned CNN and Chris licked all of them all media, They all still don't know how to cover a political story that does not fit into one of maybe two dozen templates. There's never been a political party that tried to overthrow democracy. Therefore there can never be a political party that tries to overthrow democracy. The Papers editor quit in two thousand nineteen. He was the one who insisted there was nothing unique about the current moment, that crazy Trump was just quote someone who says inflammatory statements like a one time governor of Louisiana named Edwin Edwards, fear everywhere the wrong kind. And then there are the politicians. Let me throw this in here because it is the ultimate current example of self interest married to fear. Somebody at The Economist wrote in the spring, you know it would be a great idea with the red wave facing Democrats in the midterms g Elliott Morris rights quote would be conservative and moderate Democrats in red states should shun the Democratic label and run instead as independence. Oh sneaky. Maybe three of them could stand on each other's shoulders and wear a trench coat and insist they're not three Democrats, They're just one giant independent. Quoting g Elliott again, This both saves them from being automatically cast aside by rural Republican voters and allows them to adopt some more servative social positions. I mentioned many times my heroes were the comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Golding. Bob Elliott the father of Chris Elliott, whose work you may know. There was a Bob and Ray sketch which I no by heart about the head of the National Ketchup Institute played by Ray Goulding explaining to the interviewer played by Bob Elliot about how his plans for National Ketchup Week would double sales. We will be branching out to new areas, new flavors, new meals for Ketchup. Bob answers evenly new meals for ketchup. Ray resumes not catchup as you civilians know it now, but catchup in which tomato has been replaced by chocolate flavoring. This opens the entire dessert topping field to the ketchup conglomerates. Bob Elliott takes a long pause and says, so you're holding National Ketchup Week to promote the sales of chocolate sauce. Now it is Ray who pauses. Gosh, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty stupid, and it's it's my idea. I better get back to the office before all hell breaks out. Excuse me. Democrats in Red States pretending they're not Democrats and instead running as independents because their Republican opponents would never figure that out in a million years. It's genius. It's genius, I tells you, because Texans would never figure out, say that the independent who was running for governor Mr b Ato O'Rourke was actually a Democrat. They never figure that out and turn it into another smear on o a n with which to further terrify the already cowering Democrats into submission National Ketchup Week to sell chocolate sauce and independent not Democrats. Fear fear fear, how even at this late hour can Democrats and liberals not see the obviousness of the path in front of them. The party in the White House always gets crushed in the mid terms. The economy is good, but inflation and the media make it seem disastrous. The sense of inevitability is like Lincoln in eighteen sixty four before they took Atlanta. There seems to be nothing left to lose in the mid terms, so act that way. You can't figure out how to stave off midterm disasters against Republicans who have gerrymandered the nation and honed a propaganda machine that now offers a channel of diet hate, a channel of regular hate, and a channel of extra strength hate. How about running on this wild idea. The Republicans tried to violently overthrow the government of this country last year, and having been thwarted, they are trying to quote decertify an election and remove a president, even though the Constitution says nobody can do that. And all, by the way, each Republican candidate is a fast gist or a racist, or a vigilante, or a Nazi or herschel walker or the best of them is none of these things. But they tolerate fascists racists, vigilantees, Nazis and herschel walkers in their party. You can't run as the anti fascism party even now, the anti coup party, the anti Nazi party. The if you vote Republican will be the last election we ever have party with Democracy about to go up and smoke with Republican Congressman promising to prosecute the members of the committee that looked into the last coup. If Democracy is holding, it's going out of business sale. You can't risk getting your skirts dirty here like Lincoln risk getting his skirts dirty every day of his presidency. You can't stash crazy Trump and Eastman and Mike freaking Lindel in an army stockade and accused them of sedition and fomenting violence, which, by the way, they have, or at least threaten them with an army stock Kate, I mean before just giving up and letting their minions take the house in a week and a half and paving the way for Crazy Trump's return. You don't want to try something aggressive. Maybe you can't run on. We stopped Trump from ending democracy, We stopped Trump from making himself dictator for life, and we stopped Trump from letting putent annex Ukraine where the Democrats and we kill fascists. You can't run on that. You're not even gonna try. Fear fear, fear. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. But unfortunately, to paraphrase not FDR but my late friend William Hurt in the movie Body Heat, sometimes the fear comes down so heavy I feel like I should wear a hat. So you and I have to do it ourselves. Light a fire, I'll do. The Democrats in the last week and a half, will replace the ones who survive. And god damn it, if he's not ready to indict Donald Trump by the first of next year, I'm starting with Merrick Garland. Put Trump in jail, or go to jail yourself, Garland, and light a fire under the liberal media or replace them too. And by the way, that's why I'm saying this now and you are listening to it. We'll do it ourselves. We have to just remember, be careful out there. Everybody wear a hat again. That mon terry aired first in Friday's edition of Countdown. I'll be back in a moment with James Thurber's The Dog That Bit People, something of a much needed lighter note to the number one story on the Countdown and Friday's 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 before I was ever adopted by a dog. Now, reading his dog stories and anecdotes, it's like reading about a bunch of friends, even that one surly friend for whom we must continuously make excuses The dog that bit people 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 airedale named Mugs. He gave me more trouble than all the other fifty four or five put together. Although my moment of keenest embarrassment was the time a Scotch Terrier named Genie, 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 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 end. Since a rain storm came up when we were halfway through the Bronx, I had to hold over her 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 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've got to leave on their hips if you expect the dogs to win a prize. But the airedale as I have said, was the worst of all my dogs. He really he wasn't my dog. Matter of fact, I came home from a vacation one summery to find that my brother Roy had bought him while I was away. The big, burly, choleric dog. He always acted as if he thought I wasn't one of the family. 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 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 Free Relias, 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 come into the dining room. Muggs 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, wants to see how everything was going. Everything was going fine. It made her 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 used to send a box of candy every Christmas to the people the airedale 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 did and get rid of him. I think that one or two people tried to poison Mugs. He acted poisoned once in a while. An old Major 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 Horrorscope showed he couldn't be trusted. He was saturned 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 a man, Mother said. Muggs could read him like 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. Roy my brother, never felt very well in the morning either, especially before breakfast, and once when he came downstairs and found that Muggs 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 mugs. First free leap 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, but that he didn't hold a 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 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 air dale. Mother explained. The woman said that she had never treated a dog, but she advised my mother to hold the thought that he did not bite and would not bite. Mother was holding the thought the very next morning when Muggs got the ice man, but she blamed that slip up on the ice man. If you didn't think he would bite you, he hadn't, Mother told him. He stomped out of the house in a terrible jangle of vibrations. One morning, when Mugs bit me slightly 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 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 in the living room. I managed to get up onto 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, although we whistled and shouted until old Mrs Debtwiler 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, Muggs emerged from under a davenport where he had been quietly hiding all the time and bit her again. Mother examined the bite and put arnica on it and told Mrs debt Wylder that it was only a bruise. He just bumped you, she said. But Mrs debt Wilder left our house in a nasty state of mind. Lots of people 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 Muggs bit Mrs rufus Stirred Event and again when he bit Lieutenant Governor Malloy. But Mother told him it hadn't been Muggs's fault, but the fault of the people who were bitten. When he 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 reach towards the floor, he would bite you. We 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 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 Muggs on the ground just before the battle, he would have been the first man up missionary ridge. Uncle Horatio was furious, Ray, amen, rag amen, now, he shouted, I'll feed them murmur on the floor. Roy was all for giving him a chance. But my father wouldn't hear of it. He said that Muggs had already been fed. I'll feed him again, bald Uncle Horatio. We had quite a time quieting him. In his last year. Muggs used to spend practically all his time outdoors. He didn't like to stay in the house for some reason or other. Perhaps it 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 laundry man would not come near our house. We had to haul the garbage down to the corner, take the laundry out and bring it back and meet the ice man 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 read, and so on. Mugs was afraid of only one thing, and electrical storm thunder and lightning frightened him out of his senses. I think he thought a storm had broken the day the mantelpiece spell. 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 one end. Mother would shake this big seriously when she wanted to get Mugs into the house. It 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 Muggs died, he got to seeing things. He would rise 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 came wandering into the room like Hamlet, following his father's ghost. His eyes were fixed on a spot just to the left of the fuller brushman, who stood it until Muggs was about three slow creeping paces from him. Then he shouted, Muggs wavered on passed him into the hallway, grumbling to himself, but a fuller man went on shouting. 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. Mugs 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. 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, kab Khanum. Mother was quite pleased with the simple, classic dignity of the old Latin epitaph The Dog that Bit People by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening this far. If you can can help me out, please do so. Spread the word about this tell somebody about this podcast, get them to subscribe, or just listen here the credits. Most of the music, including our theme you Hear Now from Beethoven's Ninth was arranged, produced, and performed by Brian Ray and John Philip Chanelle. They are the Countdown musical directors. John Philip Chanelle provided all orchestration and keyboards. The guitars, bass and drums were by Brian Ray and t Ko Brothers produced it. Other Beethoven selections have been arranged and performed by No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olderman theme from the ESPN two and a Lovely Theme is written by Mitch Warren Davis and courtesy of ESPN Inc. Musical comments by Nancy Faust. The best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was Kenny Maine. Everything else is pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the six hundred and sixty feet day since Donald Trump's first attempt did coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Arrest him now while we still can new episode Monday till then on Keith all Reman, good Morning, good afternoon, goodnight, and good luck. Countdown with Keith all Woman is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.