Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I suppose it is possible that Trump's brain has liquefied and he's canceled half his events in all his interviews, and that he is now frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris off the ballot and Joe Biden back onto the ballot. I suppose it is possible Trump is doing this because he's just been shown internal polling indicating he's going to win two weeks from Tuesday. But I have my doubts. It seems far likelier to me that his brain has liquefied and he's canceled half his events in all his interviews, and that he's now frantically demanding somebody I don't know who, maybe Jesus. He's frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris off the ballot and Joe Biden onto it because he's been shown internal pulling indicating he's going to lose two weeks from Tuesday, which means that he might avoid one of the criminal cases that would send him off to die in prison, but he ain't going to avoid both of them. And as the experts on cults and cult leaders, like Matthew Remsky wrote the other day, Trump has become one of those quote cultic leaders who exhausted ill and at the end of their cognitive rope, are reduced to a shrinking repertoire of melted talking points. Whatever way you pin these odds, Trump thinks he's winning and he's gone crazy and demanded Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen days before the election by I don't know Batman or Trump thinks he's losing and he's gone crazy and demanded Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen days before the election by I don't know grew I got a ten to one in favor of losing. Either way, we are, to paraphrase yet another movie network talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man in the White House, and a lot of the nation is nodding along with blank approval, just like Faye Dunaway one oh seven pm yesterday, Kamala should be investigated and forced off the campaign and Joe Biden allowed to take back his rightful place. He got fourteen million primary votes, she got none. This whole sordid and fraudulent event is a threat to democracy. Now, to be fair, I edited this post out of order to read the second half first. But this is why he thinks Kamala Harris should be forced off the campaign by I don't know, by Taylor Swift. This is the first half of that post. Sixty Minutes should be immediately taken off the air election interference. CBA should lose its license. This is the biggest scandal in broadcast history. Look, it wouldn't be the biggest scandal in my broadcast history, sir, Mind you that was merely Trump's follow up. Seconds earlier, he had posted why won't sixty Minutes release the fraudulent tapes of Lion Kamala's interview with them? Could it be because Noe couldn't all right, I don't read the rest of it anyway. Could it be because it was a complete and total disaster, or that they quote created unquote many additional new answers for her, not just the one where she was so embarrassingly caught. In normal times, what happened on sixty Minutes deceptively doctoring her answers would be the end of anyone's campaign. Name it happening once Now, he couldn't Kamala is slow, incoherent, and is in no way qualified to be president of the United States. Every Republican accusation is a confession. Release the tapes for the good of America. We can do it the nice way or the hard way. Unquote, we can do it the nice way or the hard way. What is this? The Ican TEENA Turner review? You know, every now and then I think you might like to hear something from us nice and easy. But there's just one thing, you see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy. We always do it nice and rough, working for the man every night and day. So a television network news operation idiotically edits a clip, this time with a presidential candidate. So the presidential candidate has to drop out. So Harris has to drop out. And of course, since Fox edited out the part where Trump talks about the enemy within during an interview with Harris, Trump also has to drop out. So two tuesdays from now, it's the presidential election Tim Walls versus JB. Vance. By the way, this just jin Harris campaign has not issued a formal complaint to the God of Television about a deceptive editing in the Brettbear interview of the Vice president because she's not nuts. It is possible somebody showed Trump the other thing that Fox made news with at six pm on Wednesday night. It's bizarre poll showing him ahead in the popular vote by two but down in the swing states by six, and thus on pace to get more votes for a change and still lose the electoral college. That kind of melts my mind. And I'm not even running for president. What's interesting is that the polling pros reacted to that poll plus two Trump nationally minus six Trump in the swings with less than spit takes or discussed. The Washington Post, Aaron Blake suggests that the electoral college bias may not have swung to what it would have to be here Harris plus eight, but that it also may no longer be anybody plus anything. Blake notes that when a Post colleague wrote his piece in early August, he noted that Trump was running just one point better in what appeared to be the tipping point state, Michigan than he was nationally, So that was a one point electoral college bias in Trump's favor, or at least at that point. The tipping point state is not set in stone. When the New York Times ran its own numbers. Last month, the pro Trump electoral college bias was just zero point seven points. Today, it looks like it might be even less of a Trump advantage, if it is one at all. It's not at all clear what the tipping point state might be, since all the swing states are so close, but right now the Washington Post polling average shows it's either Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Winning all three would deliver the two hundred and seventy electoral votes Harris needs, and she leads by about two points in each of them. That's virtually the same as her two point edge in national polls. So it's looking like electoral college bias could be more or less a wash quote well, not having a two or three point finger on the good old electoral college scale. That could also have freshly added to Trump's deranged syndrome, especially since Morning Consult Now reports its polling shows neither of them ahead in any of the battleground states outside the margin of error. Therefore, Kamala Harris must be forced off the campaign by Icontina Turner. It occurs to me that I have not circled back yet to the other thing. Of note I mentioned earlier, Trump keeps bailing out on things. Trump was supposed to speak at an NRA Guns Don't Kill people, People with guns kill people rally at Savannah, Georgia next Tuesday. Then evidently he canceled, claiming a scheduling conflict, and so the NRA canceled the entire show. But he's also canceled another interview technically postponed. Doesn't look like it's ever going to happen. Suddenly dropped out of a CNBC interview, as Joe Kernan's two pay revealed live on the air the other day, But now Brian Stelter says Trump was to do a separate interview next Monday with the former CNN business reporter Christine Romans for Adult NBC. This is per Brian Stelter, who wrote, I learned of another planned Trump interview that was suddenly scrapped. NBC News thought it had secured to sit down with Trump to discuss the economy and other matters. According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, the interview was expected to take place in Philadelphia on Monday, and correspondent Christine Romans was set to be the interviewer. I'm told, but then it was called off by the Trump team. The interview was quote postponed, one of the sources said, and NBC is in discussions to reschedule it. Well, take a number just TV. That's NBC canceled, CNBC canceled, sixty minutes, canceled, an town hall probably canceled, and of course the second debate against the vice president, presumably because he has to spend that time those days meeting with whoever is going to force Harris out of the campaign, and I believe that's Liam and Noel Gallagher, by thea by On top of everything suggesting something out of public sight that has gone desperately wrong inside the Trump campaign, his health or its health or both. He has also gone into reruns. Here are two reruns. Here is Trump back to the She's not allowed to be two different races, when I had convinced myself she was only one, followed by Trump with an unfortunate slip in which, days after Vance insisted the January sixth insurrectionists were knuckleheads who had nothing to do with Trump. Trump refers to those January sixth insurrectionists as.

Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. I suppose it is possible that Trump's brain has liquefied and he's canceled half his events in all his interviews, and that he is now frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris off the ballot and Joe Biden back onto the ballot. I suppose it is possible Trump is doing this because he's just been shown internal polling indicating he's going to win two weeks from Tuesday. But I have my doubts. It seems far likelier to me that his brain has liquefied and he's canceled half his events in all his interviews, and that he's now frantically demanding somebody I don't know who, maybe Jesus. He's frantically demanding somebody force Kamala Harris off the ballot and Joe Biden onto it because he's been shown internal pulling indicating he's going to lose two weeks from Tuesday, which means that he might avoid one of the criminal cases that would send him off to die in prison, but he ain't going to avoid both of them. And as the experts on cults and cult leaders, like Matthew Remsky wrote the other day, Trump has become one of those quote cultic leaders who exhausted ill and at the end of their cognitive rope, are reduced to a shrinking repertoire of melted talking points. Whatever way you pin these odds, Trump thinks he's winning and he's gone crazy and demanded Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen days before the election by I don't know Batman or Trump thinks he's losing and he's gone crazy and demanded Kamala Harris be forced off the campaign nineteen days before the election by I don't know grew I got a ten to one in favor of losing. Either way, we are, to paraphrase yet another movie network talking about putting a manifestly irresponsible man in the White House, and a lot of the nation is nodding along with blank approval, just like Faye Dunaway one oh seven pm yesterday, Kamala should be investigated and forced off the campaign and Joe Biden allowed to take back his rightful place. He got fourteen million primary votes, she got none. This whole sordid and fraudulent event is a threat to democracy. Now, to be fair, I edited this post out of order to read the second half first. But this is why he thinks Kamala Harris should be forced off the campaign by I don't know, by Taylor Swift. This is the first half of that post. Sixty Minutes should be immediately taken off the air election interference. CBA should lose its license. This is the biggest scandal in broadcast history. Look, it wouldn't be the biggest scandal in my broadcast history, sir, Mind you that was merely Trump's follow up. Seconds earlier, he had posted why won't sixty Minutes release the fraudulent tapes of Lion Kamala's interview with them? Could it be because Noe couldn't all right, I don't read the rest of it anyway. Could it be because it was a complete and total disaster, or that they quote created unquote many additional new answers for her, not just the one where she was so embarrassingly caught. In normal times, what happened on sixty Minutes deceptively doctoring her answers would be the end of anyone's campaign. Name it happening once Now, he couldn't Kamala is slow, incoherent, and is in no way qualified to be president of the United States. Every Republican accusation is a confession. Release the tapes for the good of America. We can do it the nice way or the hard way. Unquote, we can do it the nice way or the hard way. What is this? The Ican TEENA Turner review? You know, every now and then I think you might like to hear something from us nice and easy. But there's just one thing, you see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy. We always do it nice and rough, working for the man every night and day. So a television network news operation idiotically edits a clip, this time with a presidential candidate. So the presidential candidate has to drop out. So Harris has to drop out. And of course, since Fox edited out the part where Trump talks about the enemy within during an interview with Harris, Trump also has to drop out. So two tuesdays from now, it's the presidential election Tim Walls versus JB. Vance. By the way, this just jin Harris campaign has not issued a formal complaint to the God of Television about a deceptive editing in the Brettbear interview of the Vice president because she's not nuts. It is possible somebody showed Trump the other thing that Fox made news with at six pm on Wednesday night. It's bizarre poll showing him ahead in the popular vote by two but down in the swing states by six, and thus on pace to get more votes for a change and still lose the electoral college. That kind of melts my mind. And I'm not even running for president. What's interesting is that the polling pros reacted to that poll plus two Trump nationally minus six Trump in the swings with less than spit takes or discussed. The Washington Post, Aaron Blake suggests that the electoral college bias may not have swung to what it would have to be here Harris plus eight, but that it also may no longer be anybody plus anything. Blake notes that when a Post colleague wrote his piece in early August, he noted that Trump was running just one point better in what appeared to be the tipping point state, Michigan than he was nationally, So that was a one point electoral college bias in Trump's favor, or at least at that point. The tipping point state is not set in stone. When the New York Times ran its own numbers. Last month, the pro Trump electoral college bias was just zero point seven points. Today, it looks like it might be even less of a Trump advantage, if it is one at all. It's not at all clear what the tipping point state might be, since all the swing states are so close, but right now the Washington Post polling average shows it's either Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Winning all three would deliver the two hundred and seventy electoral votes Harris needs, and she leads by about two points in each of them. That's virtually the same as her two point edge in national polls. So it's looking like electoral college bias could be more or less a wash quote well, not having a two or three point finger on the good old electoral college scale. That could also have freshly added to Trump's deranged syndrome, especially since Morning Consult Now reports its polling shows neither of them ahead in any of the battleground states outside the margin of error. Therefore, Kamala Harris must be forced off the campaign by Icontina Turner. It occurs to me that I have not circled back yet to the other thing. Of note I mentioned earlier, Trump keeps bailing out on things. Trump was supposed to speak at an NRA Guns Don't Kill people, People with guns kill people rally at Savannah, Georgia next Tuesday. Then evidently he canceled, claiming a scheduling conflict, and so the NRA canceled the entire show. But he's also canceled another interview technically postponed. Doesn't look like it's ever going to happen. Suddenly dropped out of a CNBC interview, as Joe Kernan's two pay revealed live on the air the other day, But now Brian Stelter says Trump was to do a separate interview next Monday with the former CNN business reporter Christine Romans for Adult NBC. This is per Brian Stelter, who wrote, I learned of another planned Trump interview that was suddenly scrapped. NBC News thought it had secured to sit down with Trump to discuss the economy and other matters. According to three sources with knowledge of the matter, the interview was expected to take place in Philadelphia on Monday, and correspondent Christine Romans was set to be the interviewer. I'm told, but then it was called off by the Trump team. The interview was quote postponed, one of the sources said, and NBC is in discussions to reschedule it. Well, take a number just TV. That's NBC canceled, CNBC canceled, sixty minutes, canceled, an town hall probably canceled, and of course the second debate against the vice president, presumably because he has to spend that time those days meeting with whoever is going to force Harris out of the campaign, and I believe that's Liam and Noel Gallagher, by thea by On top of everything suggesting something out of public sight that has gone desperately wrong inside the Trump campaign, his health or its health or both. He has also gone into reruns. Here are two reruns. Here is Trump back to the She's not allowed to be two different races, when I had convinced myself she was only one, followed by Trump with an unfortunate slip in which, days after Vance insisted the January sixth insurrectionists were knuckleheads who had nothing to do with Trump. Trump refers to those January sixth insurrectionists as.

We they have a woman who is black, Leah would say she's Indian, but she is black, but she really a lot of people didn't know which is true.

We they have a woman who is black, Leah would say she's Indian, but she is black, but she really a lot of people didn't know which is true.

But I learned about it just a couple of months ago. You know the fact that she's black, or that she's Indian, the fact that she's black. I thought she was Indian until a couple of months. The thing's changed. I mean a lot of people because if you follow baseball, Sammy Sosa kind of you know, you sometimes have to respect people they Samish, right, So I thought maybe she was doing a Sammy Sosa the other way, Sammy Chase right.

But I learned about it just a couple of months ago. You know the fact that she's black, or that she's Indian, the fact that she's black. I thought she was Indian until a couple of months. The thing's changed. I mean a lot of people because if you follow baseball, Sammy Sosa kind of you know, you sometimes have to respect people they Samish, right, So I thought maybe she was doing a Sammy Sosa the other way, Sammy Chase right.

There were no guns down there. We didn't have guns. The others had guns, but we didn't have guns. And would I say, we these are people that walk down This was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody nobody shows.

There were no guns down there. We didn't have guns. The others had guns, but we didn't have guns. And would I say, we these are people that walk down This was a tiny percentage of the overall which nobody sees and nobody nobody shows.

But that was a day of love. We us them what ebbs the third rerun that we can do it the nice way or the hard way? Threat, that's that's a rerun. And I would be more alarmed about that, except he just referred to the January sixth ers as US, And all I know is that the last time he and they the US, to which he refers tried the hard way. They all lost anyway. And by the way, this time Joe Biden will have the tanks and the aircraft. But you have a nice day out there, Donnie Dorko. By the way, Judge Tanya Chudkin told Trump, we're doing it the hard way. She was to release the Jack Smith footnotes yesterday, and his mouthpieces put in a last minute appeal asking for it to be delayed, just to pick a random date Thursday, November after the election. He wanted more discovery. She gave him a fifty page rulely basically reading f you discover this, but giving him a little bit more information on Mike Pence's handling of classified info. When it comes out, we'll see, let's see what else. Jim Mattis, Trump's first secretary of Defense, told Bob Woodward that Mark Milly was right when Milly said Trump was the most dangerous man ever, and that Milly was right to call Trump a fascist. And there is a new book about Mitch McConnell coming out in a week before the election, in which McConnell is quoted after the twenty twenty election, but before January sixth as calling Trump stupid, as well as being ill tempered, a despicable human being, and a narcissist. Yeah. Thanks, boys, If you had said any of that while he was still in office, they would be building statues of you right now. And then the fun of the day there was the burn of the campaign Lacrosse, Wisconsin. If Kamala Harris wins, it will be because of the events of a twenty four hour span in which she went on Fox News and kicked Brettbear's ass and kicked Fox's ass and called them out and came right up to the line of looking angry without actually getting there, and then said this. In Lacrosse, Wisconsin, yesterday, Harris's rally was crashed by pro Trump supporters. There were no survivors. Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street out. Also of interest, here, a Trump attorney and spokesmodel insists there's about to be a flood of celebrity endorsements of Trump. Because it wasn't really clear what she was saying, She's kind of stupid, something about democrats are all pedophiles, or celebrities are all pedophiles or all Democrats are celebrities. I don't know. Jesus has something to do with it again, even though, of course it was the Republicans who put the big picture windows between the bathrooms and the hallways in the middle school in Pennsylvania. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman a little Yankee Stadium tribute to Larry David. Between his introduction and the voice of the Great Yankee p I announce a Bob Shepherd and the music he heard there, the bach Takata and Fugue State still ahead on this initiative countdown. Third Bird time. He never did write a novel. He did write a history of the New Yorker magazine. He did write epic short stories like The Greatest Man in the World, and at least three short stories that became movies. But then there are his miniatures, his polished gems, his ships built inside wine bottles, his fables. There is more cynicism, more criticism, more liberalism per square inch in these fables than in any other examples of his great writing. The Fables of James Thurber next on Fridays with Herber first, there are still more new idiots to talk about the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's day worst worst persons, Persons in the world b the Bronze Worse BBC News. It has canceled after three decades. A news show with the improbable name of Hard Talk, which it ran on the BBC UK News Channel and globally on BBC World News. Not my favorite show because it often fell into confrontation and every once in a while the kind of automatic contradiction heard in the fabulous Monty Python sketch. I'd like to have an argument, please, you know, good morning? What's good about it? That kind of stuff. They also ran the same episode like like six times a day any who. On the other hand, the number of times I found myself watching it anyway once a day because the topics could range from the latest from the Middle East with the president of prime minister, former military chief or an artist or writer explaining defending, chronicling their own work, or the topic whether or not the Prime Minister of Finland was gonna have to resign because there was video of her at a disco drinking and the interviewee for half an hour was the Prime Minister of Finland talking about her own evening at the disco. Panic at the disco, they got great guests, and you'd rather have a great guest challenged by an interviewer, usually Steven Sacker, than just nodded at, Oh, tell me more about how wonderful you are again. Sometimes it just fell into gainsaying for the hell of it. I'm not sure it ever once got American politics right. But now the BBC has canceled this, this little window into the world what's actually happening behind the scene in Uzbekistan. They've canceled it, I assume so so the BBC News channels can add a one hundred and seventy third different business update to its daily schedule, because the BBC News channels are quickly morphing into the BBC Business News Channels, as all news channels around the world have been doing for years. And that's exactly what news and the world needs. More glorification of money. Good evening. How much money do you have? Our next guest has more money than you do. We'll ask him how he got more money. You can sit there and see quietly as he explains. The runner up speaking of which worser. Christina Bob, the Ilse, the she Wolf of the ss of the Trump campaign, you know her. She was the Trump attorney so stupid that the other Trump attorneys got her to sign the document vowing for the completeness of the search of the classified materials Trump stole and stan marri A Lago. She signed it, not the other ones. This was while she was also on the air on one of the fascist feeds Flomax Channel or news Aryan Nation or One America, one Reich or whatever one it was she was on. She's the one with the extremely narrow head, and this paranoid, delusional, light bulb head shaped person has announced that she expects a rash of celebrities to now endorse Trump, especially after the election, because while because it turns out, Christina Bob is on top of everything else a QAnon slanderer. Let me quote her from the podcast Steak for Breakfast, hosted by I don't know, Charlie Kirk Hannibal Lecter. I don't know. I think there's one Trump Nazi who does all these podcasts, and they just change his name from show to sho to make it sound like there's three hundred and seventeen different ones quoting Bobby Christina or whatever her name is on celebrities. I also think there might be a little bit of the Diddy effect where they want to be like, I'm not a pedophile, you know, like I'm not part of that camp. So it's a little bit more socially acceptable, that is, to endorse Trump because the Left is so evil and I don't know what other word to use other than flat out demonic at this point, with the fact that they want to normalize pedophilia, madam f you, nobody wants to do that. They want to make pedophiles basically a type of protected class. Like I said, the woman is out of her mind. I don't mean that in the legal sense of the world word. I just mean, you know, protecting pedophile rights or whatever the heck they're going after all of the weird transgender stuff they're doing. And then you have these the Ditty Case, the Epstein List, Who the hell is on the Epstein List? Dramatic pause, and the music. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that it's the Democrats supporters that are protecting that Epstein List and are quite honestly protecting the ditty list. Because it's in the Biden Department of Justice that has that evidence right now. They're the ones that rated that place, so everybody knows they're a bunch of Democrats. This is a lawyer talking. I'd like to see your diploma, please, diploma from the crackerjack Box School of Law. I didn't know there was such a place. Just a reminder that when Trump or the sycophantic lizard people around him are really lying, the tell is that phrase everybody knows it means they just made something up. Everybody knows Christina Bob is actually eighty three years old. Stuff like that. On the other hand, to go on that long about this and you begin to think, once again, why is this woman? Why are they all in the Trump camp so obsessed with kids and sex? They spend half of their time talking about it, passing laws about it. What kids' bathrooms like are in schools, what kids can go into, which bathrooms. They put viewing windows in the bathrooms in a middle school in Hanover, PA, supposedly to make sure they could tell if any of the kids were vaping in there or being truants. Did you go to school today, honey, yes, what you do? I went to the bathroom for eight hours. If that was a suggestion from the Department of Education a window in a middle school kid's bathroom, Jamie Comer would be conducting a hearing on it, and this idiot Christina Bob would be the first witness. I don't know where the far rights obsession with the sex and and gender preferences of miners came up, but I look at Christina Bob and that herman munster head of hers and I think, doctor during the delivery, did you have too tight a grip on the foresips or something? But the winner the worst Chris slecked. Oh he's back, the man who ran CNN into the ground. That spent a lot of time here quoting Oliver Darcy's media newsletter status because it really is the best of a bunch, and Brian Stelter's new return to CNN newsletter, which I think he is named Management. Isn't it wonderful? It's just so kiss ass. Mister Darcy had a big scoop this week. Let me quote some of it and I'll annotate it as I go. Chris Lickt, he writes, is ready to step back into the public spotlight. I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight years old again. Nobody asked me to, and nobody's gonna let me. But I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight years old again. And Chris lick is ready to step back into the public spotlight. The x CNN chief, who was dismissed last year after a tumultuous run atop the news network, is scheduled to deliver remarks at two industry conferences following the November election. After spending more than a year exiled in the wilderness, the former CNN boss is cautiously re emerging with the aim of a playing a to be determined role restoring trust in media institutions amid the current polarized environment. Quote. I made a conscious decision not to be seen for a while and not be heard from unquote. Got to say that was a good idea by Chris Lickt, his first But given everything that is happening, both of these conferences are after the election, there's going to be a huge discussion over how things go forward, depending on who wins. During our phone conversation, Lickt appeared to be in high spirits. Okay, Olivery Darcy, I think you're close there. In that last description, what licked is saying here is if Trump wins and the news outlets that have not filated him yet, like Licht's CNN filated him every day, if they erupt in fight or flight fear, because Trump would have won, Chris Lickt is ready to lead them all in flight right away, right away. Lickt wanted to use our time to relay that he is genuinely unnerved and worried about the corrosive effects that the broken information environment is having on the country. He underscored that without a functioning media, the fabric that makes up civilization erodes, imperiling us all, and he repeatedly said he wanted to be part of the solution, whatever that may be. Quote. Everyone is still struggling to find the right answer to engage with the public in a way that can reverse the trend of people losing trust in institutions. Lickt said, I think it's an existential crisis for society, and that is not specific to any news organization. It is just mass media in general, and it's a problem that the country has to solve. It is an absolute threat to society. Mister Darcy adroitly and politely notes that Chris lick was quote no bystander to the problem he describes that is a threat to society, corrosion. That's a nice euphemism. Chris Lickt is battery acid. If he believed in a moment in journalism, he'd never would have associated himself with that manipulator Joe Scarborough, or that opportunist Stephen Colbert, or especially the clown college owning CNN, for whom the word news is just a brand name. To be fair, Oliver Darcy went after him. Lickt lived up to his reputation we're down to it. Quote. When I asked Lickt how a year later he'd used his time at CNN, or whether he had any regrets, he declined to answer. I'm not going there, Licht replied. Anybody who knows Chris Lickt knows he's going there. Licht said he has changed his news consumption habits in taking information quote much more like a normal civilian. When pressed as to what exactly that means, Licht said he definitely watches much less cable news and tries to sample a lot of different types of information from a lot of different sources. More importantly, Lick said he has spent his time out of the public eye trying to learn from an array of people he has met over scores of meals, coffees, and drinks. In fact, Lick told me he's held hundreds of meetings talking to people outside my bubble, outside my comfort zone. Okay, so not just personal trainers this time, coffees, meals, drinks, hundreds of meetings talking to people he doesn't know. Oh, I get it now, Chris Lick is now panhandling. As the British say, he's living rough quote. I am working on some interesting things, he said, nothing that I'm ready to talk about. But there's a lot of exciting things happening in this space, as you know. And so I'm just trying to figure out where i can be helpful, Chris, I'm just trying to figure out where I can be helpful. Where you ask, May I suggest Venezuela licked two days worst person Ben Now to the number one story in the countdown. And since it's the weekend, it's Fridays with Thurber. You don't see a lot of new fables anymore. These days. People aren't writing as many fables as they used to. There was ASoP around five to eighty BC, and then James Thrber around nineteen thirty nine, and that's pretty much it. Fables require animals to stand in for people. They need to be short, they need to be precise, They need to end with a moral. They should be, if not laugh out loud, funny, at least cry and thought provoking. Three years ago, it was my privilege to write the foreword to Michael J. Rosen's new volume James Thurber Collected Fables, which includes many of the fables that had not previously been published in a book. Despite my forward, I suspect you will enjoy that book anyway. Thurber published most of his fables and most of everything else in the New Yorker magazine. He collected twenty eight of them in his nineteen forty volume, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. His further Fables for Our Time, came out in nineteen fifty six and is heavily influenced by the era of McCarthyism. Many of the fables are classics, some are sleepers, all are great. Let me give you three of them to carry you through the weekend, Starting with maybe maybe the best, little misogynistic, but damned fun and certainly the best of them in terms of being known to the public. The Unicorn in the guard by James Thurber. Once upon a sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn, quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep, and woke her. There's a unicorn in the garden, he said, eating roses. She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. The unicorn is a mythical beast, she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there. He was now browsing among the tulips. Here, unicorn, said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it gravely with a high heart. Because there was a unicorn in his garden. The man went upstairs and roused his wife again. The unicorn, he said, ay to lily. His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly. You are a booby, she said, and I'm going to have you put in the booby hatch. The man, who had never liked the words booby and booby hatch, and who liked them even less on a shining morning, when there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment, we'll see about that, he said. He walked over to the door. He has a golden horn in the middle of his forehead, he told her. Then he went back to the garden to watch the unicorn, but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat down among the roses and went to sleep. As soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited, and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned the police, and she telephoned a psychiatrists. She told them to hurry to her house and bring a straight jacket. When the police and the psychiatrist arrived, they sat down in chairs and looked at her with great interest. My husband, she said, saw unicorn this morning. The police looked at the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist looked at the police. He told me it ate a lelly, she said. The psychiatrist looked at the police, and the police looked at the psychiatrist. He told me it had a golden horn in the middle of its forehead. She said, had a solemn signal from the psychiatrist. The police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally subdued her just as they got her into the straight jacket. The husband came back into the house. Did you tell your wife you saw unicorn, asked the police. Of course not, said the husband. The unicorn is a mythical beast. That's all I wanted to know, said the psychiatrist. Make her away. I'm sorry, so h what. Your wife is as crazy as a jaybud. So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived happily ever after. Moral don't count your boobies until they are hatched. The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber I promised three. Here's the second one. It's a little less joyful and silly. The rabbits who caused all the trouble by James thurber within the memory of the youngest child. There was a family of rabbits who lived near pack of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like the way the rabbits were living. The wolves were crazy about the way they themselves were living because it was the only way to live. One night, several wolves were killed in an earthquake, and this was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that rabbits pound on the ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night, one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning, and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that lettuce eaters cause lightning. The wolves threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn't behave, and the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island, but the other animals who lived at a great distance shamed them, saying, you must stay where you are and be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in all probability. So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves, and one day there was a terrible flood which dround a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that carrot nibblers with long ears caused floods. The wolves descended upon the rabbits for their own good and in prison them in a dark cave for their own protection. When nothing was heard about the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that the rabbits had been eaten, and since they had been eaten, the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits. So the wolves gave them one. They were trying to escape, said the wolves. And as you know, this is no world for escapists. Moral run, don't walk to the nearest desert island. The rabbits who caused all the trouble by James Thurber and one last one. And I have mentioned this before in other settings, but I'll mention it again. I have a tattoo that pertains to this particular one, and I have an ex girlfriend running around who has the moral to this one on her shoulders. I wonder how. She ever, explained that The Moth and the Star by James Thurber, a young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this, and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. Stars aren't the thing to hang around, she said, lamp saying the thing to hang around. You get somewhere that way, said the moth's father. You don't get anywhere chasing stars. But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening, at dusk, when the star came out, he would start flying toward it, and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home, worn out with his vain endeavor. One day, his father said to him, you haven't burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you're never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps, and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched. Big stropping muth like you without a muck on him. The moth left his father's house, but he would not fly around street lamps, and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one third light years or twenty five trillion miles away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top of the branches of an elm over there. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying night after night. When he was a very very old moth, he began to think that he really had reached the star, and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents, and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young. Tomorrow, who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow. The Moth and the Star by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. But now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Follow me for the podcast promo videos. They'll tell you when the thing is out there. Those videos up here on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram, and tickbook. I think there is a tickbook isn't there? Once again, there is a Monday countdown, and please send this podcast to somebody who does not yet know they need to listen, but they need to listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the orchestration, the keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass and the drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports theme is the Olderman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Larry David performing as Bob Sheffield. Everything else is pretty much my fault. Let's countdown for today, two weeks and four days until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one three and eighty second day since convicted felon dissociative fugue 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 to keep him from doing it again, while always I'll have a chance. The next schedule Countdown is Monday. Bulletin says the news requires until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

But that was a day of love. We us them what ebbs the third rerun that we can do it the nice way or the hard way? Threat, that's that's a rerun. And I would be more alarmed about that, except he just referred to the January sixth ers as US, And all I know is that the last time he and they the US, to which he refers tried the hard way. They all lost anyway. And by the way, this time Joe Biden will have the tanks and the aircraft. But you have a nice day out there, Donnie Dorko. By the way, Judge Tanya Chudkin told Trump, we're doing it the hard way. She was to release the Jack Smith footnotes yesterday, and his mouthpieces put in a last minute appeal asking for it to be delayed, just to pick a random date Thursday, November after the election. He wanted more discovery. She gave him a fifty page rulely basically reading f you discover this, but giving him a little bit more information on Mike Pence's handling of classified info. When it comes out, we'll see, let's see what else. Jim Mattis, Trump's first secretary of Defense, told Bob Woodward that Mark Milly was right when Milly said Trump was the most dangerous man ever, and that Milly was right to call Trump a fascist. And there is a new book about Mitch McConnell coming out in a week before the election, in which McConnell is quoted after the twenty twenty election, but before January sixth as calling Trump stupid, as well as being ill tempered, a despicable human being, and a narcissist. Yeah. Thanks, boys, If you had said any of that while he was still in office, they would be building statues of you right now. And then the fun of the day there was the burn of the campaign Lacrosse, Wisconsin. If Kamala Harris wins, it will be because of the events of a twenty four hour span in which she went on Fox News and kicked Brettbear's ass and kicked Fox's ass and called them out and came right up to the line of looking angry without actually getting there, and then said this. In Lacrosse, Wisconsin, yesterday, Harris's rally was crashed by pro Trump supporters. There were no survivors. Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally. No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street out. Also of interest, here, a Trump attorney and spokesmodel insists there's about to be a flood of celebrity endorsements of Trump. Because it wasn't really clear what she was saying, She's kind of stupid, something about democrats are all pedophiles, or celebrities are all pedophiles or all Democrats are celebrities. I don't know. Jesus has something to do with it again, even though, of course it was the Republicans who put the big picture windows between the bathrooms and the hallways in the middle school in Pennsylvania. That's next. This is countdown. This is countdown with Keith Oberman. Oberman a little Yankee Stadium tribute to Larry David. Between his introduction and the voice of the Great Yankee p I announce a Bob Shepherd and the music he heard there, the bach Takata and Fugue State still ahead on this initiative countdown. Third Bird time. He never did write a novel. He did write a history of the New Yorker magazine. He did write epic short stories like The Greatest Man in the World, and at least three short stories that became movies. But then there are his miniatures, his polished gems, his ships built inside wine bottles, his fables. There is more cynicism, more criticism, more liberalism per square inch in these fables than in any other examples of his great writing. The Fables of James Thurber next on Fridays with Herber first, there are still more new idiots to talk about the daily roundup of the miss Grants, morons and Dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute today's day worst worst persons, Persons in the world b the Bronze Worse BBC News. It has canceled after three decades. A news show with the improbable name of Hard Talk, which it ran on the BBC UK News Channel and globally on BBC World News. Not my favorite show because it often fell into confrontation and every once in a while the kind of automatic contradiction heard in the fabulous Monty Python sketch. I'd like to have an argument, please, you know, good morning? What's good about it? That kind of stuff. They also ran the same episode like like six times a day any who. On the other hand, the number of times I found myself watching it anyway once a day because the topics could range from the latest from the Middle East with the president of prime minister, former military chief or an artist or writer explaining defending, chronicling their own work, or the topic whether or not the Prime Minister of Finland was gonna have to resign because there was video of her at a disco drinking and the interviewee for half an hour was the Prime Minister of Finland talking about her own evening at the disco. Panic at the disco, they got great guests, and you'd rather have a great guest challenged by an interviewer, usually Steven Sacker, than just nodded at, Oh, tell me more about how wonderful you are again. Sometimes it just fell into gainsaying for the hell of it. I'm not sure it ever once got American politics right. But now the BBC has canceled this, this little window into the world what's actually happening behind the scene in Uzbekistan. They've canceled it, I assume so so the BBC News channels can add a one hundred and seventy third different business update to its daily schedule, because the BBC News channels are quickly morphing into the BBC Business News Channels, as all news channels around the world have been doing for years. And that's exactly what news and the world needs. More glorification of money. Good evening. How much money do you have? Our next guest has more money than you do. We'll ask him how he got more money. You can sit there and see quietly as he explains. The runner up speaking of which worser. Christina Bob, the Ilse, the she Wolf of the ss of the Trump campaign, you know her. She was the Trump attorney so stupid that the other Trump attorneys got her to sign the document vowing for the completeness of the search of the classified materials Trump stole and stan marri A Lago. She signed it, not the other ones. This was while she was also on the air on one of the fascist feeds Flomax Channel or news Aryan Nation or One America, one Reich or whatever one it was she was on. She's the one with the extremely narrow head, and this paranoid, delusional, light bulb head shaped person has announced that she expects a rash of celebrities to now endorse Trump, especially after the election, because while because it turns out, Christina Bob is on top of everything else a QAnon slanderer. Let me quote her from the podcast Steak for Breakfast, hosted by I don't know, Charlie Kirk Hannibal Lecter. I don't know. I think there's one Trump Nazi who does all these podcasts, and they just change his name from show to sho to make it sound like there's three hundred and seventeen different ones quoting Bobby Christina or whatever her name is on celebrities. I also think there might be a little bit of the Diddy effect where they want to be like, I'm not a pedophile, you know, like I'm not part of that camp. So it's a little bit more socially acceptable, that is, to endorse Trump because the Left is so evil and I don't know what other word to use other than flat out demonic at this point, with the fact that they want to normalize pedophilia, madam f you, nobody wants to do that. They want to make pedophiles basically a type of protected class. Like I said, the woman is out of her mind. I don't mean that in the legal sense of the world word. I just mean, you know, protecting pedophile rights or whatever the heck they're going after all of the weird transgender stuff they're doing. And then you have these the Ditty Case, the Epstein List, Who the hell is on the Epstein List? Dramatic pause, and the music. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that it's the Democrats supporters that are protecting that Epstein List and are quite honestly protecting the ditty list. Because it's in the Biden Department of Justice that has that evidence right now. They're the ones that rated that place, so everybody knows they're a bunch of Democrats. This is a lawyer talking. I'd like to see your diploma, please, diploma from the crackerjack Box School of Law. I didn't know there was such a place. Just a reminder that when Trump or the sycophantic lizard people around him are really lying, the tell is that phrase everybody knows it means they just made something up. Everybody knows Christina Bob is actually eighty three years old. Stuff like that. On the other hand, to go on that long about this and you begin to think, once again, why is this woman? Why are they all in the Trump camp so obsessed with kids and sex? They spend half of their time talking about it, passing laws about it. What kids' bathrooms like are in schools, what kids can go into, which bathrooms. They put viewing windows in the bathrooms in a middle school in Hanover, PA, supposedly to make sure they could tell if any of the kids were vaping in there or being truants. Did you go to school today, honey, yes, what you do? I went to the bathroom for eight hours. If that was a suggestion from the Department of Education a window in a middle school kid's bathroom, Jamie Comer would be conducting a hearing on it, and this idiot Christina Bob would be the first witness. I don't know where the far rights obsession with the sex and and gender preferences of miners came up, but I look at Christina Bob and that herman munster head of hers and I think, doctor during the delivery, did you have too tight a grip on the foresips or something? But the winner the worst Chris slecked. Oh he's back, the man who ran CNN into the ground. That spent a lot of time here quoting Oliver Darcy's media newsletter status because it really is the best of a bunch, and Brian Stelter's new return to CNN newsletter, which I think he is named Management. Isn't it wonderful? It's just so kiss ass. Mister Darcy had a big scoop this week. Let me quote some of it and I'll annotate it as I go. Chris Lickt, he writes, is ready to step back into the public spotlight. I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight years old again. Nobody asked me to, and nobody's gonna let me. But I'm ready to step back into being twenty eight years old again. And Chris lick is ready to step back into the public spotlight. The x CNN chief, who was dismissed last year after a tumultuous run atop the news network, is scheduled to deliver remarks at two industry conferences following the November election. After spending more than a year exiled in the wilderness, the former CNN boss is cautiously re emerging with the aim of a playing a to be determined role restoring trust in media institutions amid the current polarized environment. Quote. I made a conscious decision not to be seen for a while and not be heard from unquote. Got to say that was a good idea by Chris Lickt, his first But given everything that is happening, both of these conferences are after the election, there's going to be a huge discussion over how things go forward, depending on who wins. During our phone conversation, Lickt appeared to be in high spirits. Okay, Olivery Darcy, I think you're close there. In that last description, what licked is saying here is if Trump wins and the news outlets that have not filated him yet, like Licht's CNN filated him every day, if they erupt in fight or flight fear, because Trump would have won, Chris Lickt is ready to lead them all in flight right away, right away. Lickt wanted to use our time to relay that he is genuinely unnerved and worried about the corrosive effects that the broken information environment is having on the country. He underscored that without a functioning media, the fabric that makes up civilization erodes, imperiling us all, and he repeatedly said he wanted to be part of the solution, whatever that may be. Quote. Everyone is still struggling to find the right answer to engage with the public in a way that can reverse the trend of people losing trust in institutions. Lickt said, I think it's an existential crisis for society, and that is not specific to any news organization. It is just mass media in general, and it's a problem that the country has to solve. It is an absolute threat to society. Mister Darcy adroitly and politely notes that Chris lick was quote no bystander to the problem he describes that is a threat to society, corrosion. That's a nice euphemism. Chris Lickt is battery acid. If he believed in a moment in journalism, he'd never would have associated himself with that manipulator Joe Scarborough, or that opportunist Stephen Colbert, or especially the clown college owning CNN, for whom the word news is just a brand name. To be fair, Oliver Darcy went after him. Lickt lived up to his reputation we're down to it. Quote. When I asked Lickt how a year later he'd used his time at CNN, or whether he had any regrets, he declined to answer. I'm not going there, Licht replied. Anybody who knows Chris Lickt knows he's going there. Licht said he has changed his news consumption habits in taking information quote much more like a normal civilian. When pressed as to what exactly that means, Licht said he definitely watches much less cable news and tries to sample a lot of different types of information from a lot of different sources. More importantly, Lick said he has spent his time out of the public eye trying to learn from an array of people he has met over scores of meals, coffees, and drinks. In fact, Lick told me he's held hundreds of meetings talking to people outside my bubble, outside my comfort zone. Okay, so not just personal trainers this time, coffees, meals, drinks, hundreds of meetings talking to people he doesn't know. Oh, I get it now, Chris Lick is now panhandling. As the British say, he's living rough quote. I am working on some interesting things, he said, nothing that I'm ready to talk about. But there's a lot of exciting things happening in this space, as you know. And so I'm just trying to figure out where i can be helpful, Chris, I'm just trying to figure out where I can be helpful. Where you ask, May I suggest Venezuela licked two days worst person Ben Now to the number one story in the countdown. And since it's the weekend, it's Fridays with Thurber. You don't see a lot of new fables anymore. These days. People aren't writing as many fables as they used to. There was ASoP around five to eighty BC, and then James Thrber around nineteen thirty nine, and that's pretty much it. Fables require animals to stand in for people. They need to be short, they need to be precise, They need to end with a moral. They should be, if not laugh out loud, funny, at least cry and thought provoking. Three years ago, it was my privilege to write the foreword to Michael J. Rosen's new volume James Thurber Collected Fables, which includes many of the fables that had not previously been published in a book. Despite my forward, I suspect you will enjoy that book anyway. Thurber published most of his fables and most of everything else in the New Yorker magazine. He collected twenty eight of them in his nineteen forty volume, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. His further Fables for Our Time, came out in nineteen fifty six and is heavily influenced by the era of McCarthyism. Many of the fables are classics, some are sleepers, all are great. Let me give you three of them to carry you through the weekend, Starting with maybe maybe the best, little misogynistic, but damned fun and certainly the best of them in terms of being known to the public. The Unicorn in the guard by James Thurber. Once upon a sunny morning, a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn, quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep, and woke her. There's a unicorn in the garden, he said, eating roses. She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. The unicorn is a mythical beast, she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there. He was now browsing among the tulips. Here, unicorn, said the man, and he pulled up a lily and gave it to him. The unicorn ate it gravely with a high heart. Because there was a unicorn in his garden. The man went upstairs and roused his wife again. The unicorn, he said, ay to lily. His wife sat up in bed and looked at him coldly. You are a booby, she said, and I'm going to have you put in the booby hatch. The man, who had never liked the words booby and booby hatch, and who liked them even less on a shining morning, when there was a unicorn in the garden, thought for a moment, we'll see about that, he said. He walked over to the door. He has a golden horn in the middle of his forehead, he told her. Then he went back to the garden to watch the unicorn, but the unicorn had gone away. The man sat down among the roses and went to sleep. As soon as the husband had gone out of the house, the wife got up and dressed as fast as she could. She was very excited, and there was a gloat in her eye. She telephoned the police, and she telephoned a psychiatrists. She told them to hurry to her house and bring a straight jacket. When the police and the psychiatrist arrived, they sat down in chairs and looked at her with great interest. My husband, she said, saw unicorn this morning. The police looked at the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist looked at the police. He told me it ate a lelly, she said. The psychiatrist looked at the police, and the police looked at the psychiatrist. He told me it had a golden horn in the middle of its forehead. She said, had a solemn signal from the psychiatrist. The police leaped from their chairs and seized the wife. They had a hard time subduing her, for she put up a terrific struggle, but they finally subdued her just as they got her into the straight jacket. The husband came back into the house. Did you tell your wife you saw unicorn, asked the police. Of course not, said the husband. The unicorn is a mythical beast. That's all I wanted to know, said the psychiatrist. Make her away. I'm sorry, so h what. Your wife is as crazy as a jaybud. So they took her away, cursing and screaming, and shut her up in an institution. The husband lived happily ever after. Moral don't count your boobies until they are hatched. The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber I promised three. Here's the second one. It's a little less joyful and silly. The rabbits who caused all the trouble by James thurber within the memory of the youngest child. There was a family of rabbits who lived near pack of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like the way the rabbits were living. The wolves were crazy about the way they themselves were living because it was the only way to live. One night, several wolves were killed in an earthquake, and this was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that rabbits pound on the ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night, one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning, and this was also blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that lettuce eaters cause lightning. The wolves threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn't behave, and the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island, but the other animals who lived at a great distance shamed them, saying, you must stay where you are and be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in all probability. So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves, and one day there was a terrible flood which dround a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that carrot nibblers with long ears caused floods. The wolves descended upon the rabbits for their own good and in prison them in a dark cave for their own protection. When nothing was heard about the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that the rabbits had been eaten, and since they had been eaten, the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits. So the wolves gave them one. They were trying to escape, said the wolves. And as you know, this is no world for escapists. Moral run, don't walk to the nearest desert island. The rabbits who caused all the trouble by James Thurber and one last one. And I have mentioned this before in other settings, but I'll mention it again. I have a tattoo that pertains to this particular one, and I have an ex girlfriend running around who has the moral to this one on her shoulders. I wonder how. She ever, explained that The Moth and the Star by James Thurber, a young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this, and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. Stars aren't the thing to hang around, she said, lamp saying the thing to hang around. You get somewhere that way, said the moth's father. You don't get anywhere chasing stars. But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening, at dusk, when the star came out, he would start flying toward it, and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home, worn out with his vain endeavor. One day, his father said to him, you haven't burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you're never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps, and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get out of here and get yourself scorched. Big stropping muth like you without a muck on him. The moth left his father's house, but he would not fly around street lamps, and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one third light years or twenty five trillion miles away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top of the branches of an elm over there. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying night after night. When he was a very very old moth, he began to think that he really had reached the star, and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. His parents, and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they were quite young. Tomorrow, who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow. The Moth and the Star by James Thurber. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. But now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Follow me for the podcast promo videos. They'll tell you when the thing is out there. Those videos up here on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, x, Instagram, and tickbook. I think there is a tickbook isn't there? Once again, there is a Monday countdown, and please send this podcast to somebody who does not yet know they need to listen, but they need to listen. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors, have Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle handled the orchestration, the keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, the bass and the drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports theme is the Olderman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Larry David performing as Bob Sheffield. Everything else is pretty much my fault. Let's countdown for today, two weeks and four days until the twenty twenty four presidential election, the one three and eighty second day since convicted felon dissociative fugue 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 to keep him from doing it again, while always I'll have a chance. The next schedule Countdown is Monday. Bulletin says the news requires until then, I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.