SERIES 3 EPISODE 6: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: There's no other word for it.
Collapsed.
Trump's poll numbers have collapsed.
Poll numbers collapse all the time – relatively speaking; measured across the arc of American political history. If they had had them in 1864, ABE LINCOLN’S poll numbers would have collapsed. But I do not think that any other presidential candidate’s poll numbers have collapsed, this late, this fast, after this much of a twin honeymoon of a convention and a failed assassination attempt.
Ipsos Polling: Harris by FIVE, 42-37, last surveys taken Wednesday. In the July 23rd Ipsos poll it was Harris by three, 37-34. Ipsos Repeat Polling (same respondents as last poll) of the Big Seven Swing States: Harris by TWO, 50 to 48… that’s Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The LAST Ipsos poll of the SAME voters in these states, also concluded July 23rd it was Trump by THREE.
MARQUETTE LAW SCHOOL also released its national results very early Thursday Morning and among likely voters it’s Harris 50 Trump 42 – Harris by EIGHT. Everybody has their own criteria for “likely voters” so if you drop to just registered voters it’s still Harris by SIX. Most intriguing: among independent voters where Marquette has her head by 60 to 40. TWENTY points among Independents.
What we are seeing as of THIS moment is exactly why this unprecedented move: changing horses not mid-stream but mid-tightrope was attempted. To get these results. And nobody, NOBODY, expected them this fast. NOBODY. Which leads me into the second thing I mentioned previously and I mentioned it on Wednesday July 24th and before I mentioned it I took a deep breath and asked myself do you really want to mention this already but I did and I repeat it: I have been thinking since no later than (hours after President Biden dropped out) that there will come a point, this year, this election, maybe this MONTH, where we will all be saying “Can you believe we came THIS CLOSE to not making Vice President Harris the nominee?” I’m not building the Joe Saved Democracy Again statues quite yet. But I am beginning to think of maybe what they kinda could LOOK like.
AND IS ANYBODY GOING TO DO OR WRITE ANYTHING about Trump's Health Crisis?
His “news conference” was, objectively, twice as bad, FOUR times as bad, as the President’s performance at the debate. Throughout, it bordered on – and often crossed the line INTO – fugue state.
And this got no headlines.
Trump always SOUNDS like he doesn’t know where he was. This time he also LOOKED like he didn’t know where he was. Can’t convey that on a podcast: when a question came from the right side of the room he looked frightened as if he had just discovered there WAS a right side of the room. He looked lost. More shockingly, perhaps, he looked pale.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, Axios, ABC, NBC and CBS had NO front page stories about the demented nature of his performance yesterday. Within an hour of its conclusion. Each hid behind his vague commitment to debates. Axios, incredibly, LED with “Vice President Harris still hasn’t given an interview or taken questions from voters since she became a presidential candidate…”
B-Block (24:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: A former mediocre football player named Marcellus Wiley claims Democrats are trying to bribe celebrities like him to support them (like him?) Trump makes up a story about Biden trying to seize back the nomination; his social media whore Dan Scavino posts 'I hear Biden is trying to seize back the nomination.' Elon Musk posts a fake London newspaper headline claiming there are going to be internment camps for conservatives (I WISH). Dear UK: what is the point of HAVING a Tower of London if you're not gonna use it?
C-Block (34:50) FRIDAYS WITH THURBER: The most amount of action in the smallest amount of space in any Thurber story. His impeccable tale of one hour of confusion in his childhood home: "The Night The Bed Fell."
Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio. Trump's pull numbers have collapsed. There is no other word for it collapsed. Let me caveat this. Biden's poll numbers had collapsed. Bill Clinton's poll numbers had collapsed, Harry Truman's poll numbers had collapsed. Whole numbers collapsed all the damn time, relatively speaking, measured across the arc of American political history. If they had had them in eighteen sixty four, Abe Lincoln's poll numbers would have collapsed. But I do not think that any other presidential candidate's poll numbers have collapsed this late, this fast, after this much of a twin honeymoon of a convention and a failed assassination attempt. IPSOS polling released yesterday Harris by five forty two thirty seven. Last surveys taken Wednesday. In the July twenty third IPSOS poll, it had been Harris by three thirty seven thirty four. IPSOS also did repeat polling in the Big seven Swing states Harris by two fifty to forty eight fifty to forty eight. Those states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The last IPSOS poll of the same voters in these states also concluded July twenty third, it had been Trump by three. Trump has lost five points in the swing states in fifteen days, and not generically in the Swing states, these are the same respondents as in the previous polls changing their minds. Almost as important is where the surge for Kamala Harris is coming from. In the IPSOS polling two weeks ago, Robert F. Kennedy Junior was in their poll at ten percent nationally. He is now at four percent. If Trump's poll numbers have collapsed, Kennedy's have vanished without a trace. What is amazing about the swing state numbers, though, is that Trump has lost five points in fifteen days, even though the key issues in the swing states would still seem to benefit him. Fifty two percent of swing state voters told IPSOS that inflation and costs were one of the top issues for them. Thirty two percent set immigration, seventeen percent set housing costs. And it's still Harris. But it appears that the biggest issue for them in the Swing states and outside of them is Trump. The swing state voters still prefer him on the economy, but only by seven points. Now still on immigration, but only by thirteen. These numbers have collapsed. In June, these same Swing state voters favored Trump by twelve points on the economy, so he's lost five points there, twenty points on immigration. He's lost seven points on immigration. The Vice president also now crushes Trump on character issues. Who's more intelligent Harris by eight? Who cares more about people like them? Harris by four? Who's less lazy? Harris by four? Who's less weird? They polled on the word weird Harris by sixteen? And who in the Swing States is more moral? Harris by eighteen? And I can't repeat this enough. The voters just polled in the Swing States by IPSOS are the same individuals that ipso's polled in June and July. The margin of error, and by all rules of polling, her two point lead in the Swing States is a statistical tie. The margin of error, though, drops precipitously if you are actually asking the same people how their opinions have changed and how their opinions have changed. Rather remarkably, this is not even the best new polling news for Kamala Harris Marquette Law School released its national results very early Thursday morning for some reason, and among likely voters it's Harris fifty, Trump forty two, Harris by eight. Now, everybody has their own criteria for likely voters, so if you go back to just registered voters. In the Marquette poll, it's still Harris by six. The eight point margin looked like a wacky outlier until that IPSOS poll came out at five most intriguing among independent voters, Marquette has her ahead by sixty to forty twenty points among independents eighteen. When you include Kennedy and the others, and the day, it can lead to varying degrees of are you crapping me about how fast Harris has built a dominant lead over Trump in the key areas, with all trends working in her direction. But there is now near unanimity among polsters that Kennedy is in more trouble than bear meat in his fridge. Among independents, Harris fifty six, Trump thirty eight, Kennedy five, Kennedy five, Stein, I, Cornell West, and Oliver just watching scratch zero. Also, I didn't know who Oliver was. I had to go look. I was hoping it was John Oliver. No, it's Chase Chase Oliver of the Libertarian Party. He could be Oliver damn Chase for all I care wouldn't make much difference. What matters here is Kennedy's support. Half of it, maybe more was clearly from people who simply would not vote for Trump but for whatever reason would not vote for Joe Biden either, but now will vote for virtually everything Joe Biden stands for. One more note here from this Marquette Law poll, a couple of others have found Kamala Harris is at or near a slim net positive unfavorable versus unfavorable. Marquette, is your opinion of Kamala Harris favorable or unfavorable? Nationally? It's favorable by four points fifty one forty seven. She's above water by four points. Trump is seven points underwater, which would be superb for him if there still wasn't that post convention bump. Jd Vance. He is fourteen points under the couch cushions. And one more recheck of another opinionator, Nate Silver poll of polls changed it slightly. Kamala Harris forty six point four, Trump forty four point three. And the real value of this one is it gives you a blurry picture of the impact since she anointed Tim Walls on Monday, and the impact is that her support is up in five days, seven tenths of a point. Again, this could stop right now. This could be as good as it gets. And now I will repeat two things I have mentioned previously. One I mentioned seven minutes in about ten seconds ago, Bill Clinton's poll numbers once collapsed, then George hw Bush's poll numbers collapsed, then Ross Pro's poll numbers collapsed. This was all in one election. So if as Biden's departure three weeks ago this Sunday, it wasn't last year, it was three weeks ago this Sunday, If that and Harris's assent confirms something this startlingly good can happen this fast, remain vigilant that something that startlingly bad could also happen this fast. On the other hand, what we are seeing as of this moment is exactly why this unprecedented move was attempted, changing horses not midstream but mid tight rope to maybe, in our wildest dreams, get these results. And in those wildest dreams, nobody expected the misfast nobody, which leads me into the second thing I mentioned previously, and I mentioned it on Wednesday, July twenty fourth, And before I mentioned it, I took a deep breath and asked myself, do you really want to mention this already? But I did, and I'll repeat it. I have been thinking since no later than hours after President Biden dropped out, that there will come a point this year, this election, maybe this month, where we will all be saying, can you believe we came this close to not making Vice President Harris the nominee. I am not building the Joe Saved Democracy Again statues quite yet, but I am beginning to think maybe what they kind of could look like. Is anybody going to do anything about Trump's health crisis? Never mind his poll crisis, his health crisis, his quote news conference unquote was objectively twice as bad, four times as bad, forty times as bad as the President's performance at the debate. Throughout it bordered on and often crossed the line into fugue state. And this got almost no headlines. Is the New York Times opinion section now going to print six pieces at a time on how he must drop out his CNN going to swerve out of enabling the latest swift voting of a Democrat and his MSNBC's useless airy Melber going to stop platforming Stephen Miller to instead parade mental health experts to offer a dozen competing theories about which thing is wrong with Trump's brain? Are they going to just come close to how they addressed Joe Biden's exhaustion? Get to one tenth of it? The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Axios, ABC, NBC, and CBS had no front page stories about the demented nature of his performance yesterday. Within an hour of its conclusion, each hid behind Trump's vague commitment to now do debates. Axios incredibly was leading an hour after the Trump event with quote Vice President Harris still hasn't given an interview or taken questions from voters since she became a presidential candidate. Shut up once again. If Axios is still wondering why I had to fire a tenth of its employees Wednesday, there's your problem right there. You suck to its credit to my amazement, CNN wrote a story about Trump's fugue state, and remarkably, it correctly described his performance, not as a news conference, but as a quote speech. I assume whoever was responsible for this has been beaten severely already. Exactly right CNN. Trump always sounds like he doesn't know where he was. This time he also looked like he didn't know where he was. I can't convey that. On a podcast when a question came from the right side of the room, he looked frightened, as if he had just discovered that there was a right side of the room. He looked lost. Several times. It appeared his eyes were no longer level. More shockingly, perhaps than anything else, he also looked pale. Can't convey that. I can convey the sounds part. I will not be labor all the crazy sounds he made, just a few, starting with what you or I would know would be the last thing to refer to just now, in light of the jd vance couch jokes.
President She of China and I were very good friends. We met right here right in that except we had a beautiful sofa there as opposed to what we have right now. A lot of my people, a lot of the Mega as they call him, but the bass, and I think the bass is I think the Bassis seventy five percent of the country, far beyond the Republican Party. Kamala hars Sava is Jamaican American and she went to a historically black college. How is she only recently deciding to be black? Well, you'll have to ask her to that question, because she's the one that said it. I didn't say it, so you'll have to ask her. But you'll have to ask her about that. But to me it doesn't matter. But to her from her standpoint, I think it's very disrespectful to both. Really, whether it's Indian or Black, I think it's very disrespectful. If you look at Martin Luther King when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours, same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not we had more. And they said he had a million people, but I had twenty five thousand people. But when you look at the exact same picture and everything's the same, because it was the fountains, the whole thing, all the way back from Lincoln to Washington, and you look at it and you look at the picture of his crowd, my preyer, we actually had more people. Millions of people were allowed to come into our country from prisons, from jails, from mental institutions, insane asylums. Even in Sana said that's ah, it's a mental institution on steroids.
That asylum stuff underscores a point I've made previously. He does not understand that there is political asylum and then there are mental asylums, which grows increasingly ironic considering he may soon be in need of either or both. But the crowd size thing, that's perhaps way more revealing. It is not only a clear view of the desperation of his obsession with largest, most powerful, biggest, it's not only a clear view of his insatiable need to be right even when he is utterly wrong. But it's seven and a half years old. He has been arguing that he had the largest crowd in the history of I don't know, history of humanity, everything since the Sermon on the Mount. He's been arguing this since his inauguration. He has never been right. He has never stopped demanding that we change our minds and apologize to him, even though he has never been right, because he has to be right or he dies to be fair. Trump has somehow managed not to fall off his mental health crisis tightrope since at least the year twenty fifteen, maybe more like since at least the year nineteen fifty five. This point at which you expect him to start to say something than go glassy eyed and collapse at the podium may not be a warning of imminent disaster, but rather just some kind of horrible stasis. But even if this is as bad as it gets, it's still a crisis. It is beyond his evil, beyond his amorality, beyond his greed, beyond his anti democracy, beyond his racism. It alone is disqualifying. He is sick. Everything else is just detail. If Joe Biden could not run for a second term because he was merely having trouble expressing himself robustly enough in public, Donald Trump cannot run for a second term because he is simply unstable. A couple of other notes here, the one eighties he makes are still startling. It is still shocking to read week after week of his assaults on and even lawsuits against ABC and particularly George Stephanoppolos, and then suddenly hear him announce as if he had always felt this way, that he would do a presidential debate on ABC as scheduled on September tenth, as if they first asked him about it as he fell out of bed an hour before the news conference speech began. It is still shocking to hear a reporter ask him a question and Trump answer not that question, but answer something the reporter had mentioned tangentially in his or her preface. You got to ask simple questions that are not open to interpretation. It is still shocking to see CNN claim Trump's performance accomplished his goals, and they said this put Vice President Harris on the defensive. Crazy man puts vice president on defensive. It is still shocking to see news organization after news organization insist that a pivot is coming, or that a pivot has been demanded by Trump's handlers, or even that a pivot is still possible from a crazy man. I mean, the Washington Post did it as recently as Wednesday night. And it is still shocking to realize that nearly all of the other eight billion, two hundred million of us on this planet live on one plane of existence more or less in which we have some rudimentary understanding of how things work. At least a couple of the things directly affecting us in our jobs and our lives. But that Trump, after trying to force Joe Biden out of this race more or less NonStop since twenty nineteen, is now quoted as complaining in a phone call to an ally, It's unfair that I beat him, and now I have to beat her too. And anybody who has been following American politics at a rate of once a week or more for the last decade knows in their bones that Trump truly believes the country owes him some sort of unanimous decision to cancel this election and award him the presidency forever because he believes he beat Biden, and that the only thing keeping him from saying this out loud in so many words, is that his animal instinct tells him to wait to try to end the democracy until after he sees his power, not before. Once again, I ask, is anybody going to do anything about Donald Trump's health crisis? Also of interest here, Elon Musk posts a fake headline saying the British Labor Party is establishing internment camps for right wingers. I mean, I wish, but totally wrong, and no consequences for him, no acknowledgment, except there is a move growing inside the British Parliament to summon Musk to testify to them about what the hell he thinks he's doing. I will suggest a much better solution. It boils down to three words. Tower of London. That's next. This discountdown. This is countdown, with Keith old Wooman still ahead of us on this initiative countdown. To my knowledge, nobody has ever dramatized and turned into a play or film the Thurber story. That would make for the craziest, most mad cap adaptation. The Night the Bedfell might make for only a short film, but it could easily be merged with a couple of other stories from his life and hard times into a superb play. There is a lot of action in a confined space. Theurber, and a rare injection of ego into his storytelling, asserts in the story it makes a better recitation, and then comes back and laughs at himself for reciting it too often. But it does make a better recitation. So coming up on Fridays with Thurber once more, I will recite The Night the Bed Fell first. There are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscrants, morons and dunning Kruger effects specimens who constitute two days worse persons in the world, the bronze worse. Marcellus Wiley. Marcellus Wiley is a one time Pro Bowl defensive end that has meant literally he played ten years. He went to the Pro Bowl once and then he checks notes. He was on ESPN and Fox Sports. Apparently. Oh he worked with Jason Whitlock. Oh, that explains this. Wiley, who now does YouTube videos, shared a text message he claims he received, which he says claims offered him twenty thousand dollars plus accommodations if he would attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this month, and he then proceeded to use this tech as some kind of proof that Democrats are buying off celebrities. Immediately quoting him, I said, oh, that's why, Megan, this stallion was out there toorking with Kamala Harris and them. Wiley said, wait a minute, y'all paying me like PEPSI this ain't no soda. He was the captain of the Columbia football team. I just wanted to point that out. IVY League on IVY League violence right here. This is for people's political votes. This is to influence their lives to some degree. What they sent me this? Nah, So the Democrats are bribing celebrities, So why would they contact Marcellus Wiley twenty thousand dollars? Oh my god, we'll have to cancel all the advertising you spent twenty thousand dollars on Marcella's Wiley. Okay, here's spend another twenty thousand dollars to see if you can find out who the hell Marcellus Wiley is. Runner up Dan Scavino, Oh, we all know him. He thinks he's famous as opposed to infamous. He's like the social media guru for Trump and senior advisor to Trump. And he put this out on Twitter because he was never banned from Twitter. I don't think Hearing Biden wants back in the race after finally caps finally taking some time to realize what his quote friends unquote did to him leading up to his dropout letter posted via x on a Sunday afternoon, Hearing Biden wants back in the race. Where did he hear that? Well, if you've been paying attention, you'll remember that I'm noticed here that Trump had said it, Trump posted it. That's how how totally deranged. Trump's campaign has become since Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris took his place as the Democratic presidential nominee. That's how desperate they are. They have developed. Trump personally developed his own fanfic that Biden is going to force his way back in. He's going to storm the convention and somehow get all the delegates back and then lose to Trump because that's what Trump decided is going to happen. And Trump is three years old now, and he gets his way all the time. And this is how desperate they are. Trump makes something up and one of his lackeys, this Scavino clown, then says, hearing Biden wants back in the race, well, you heard it because the psychopath you work for made it up. I heard voices in my head tell me that. Yeah, that's what you're dealing with here. This is how desperate the Trump campaign is. Kill them and eat them. But our winner, speaking of strung out and lunatic Elon Musk, All right, this is a little complicated, but bear with me here. Somebody put out a faked headline from the London conservative fascist newspaper The Telegraph and put this out with no indication that it was satire or par or anything else. The headline read Keir Starmer, that's the new labor Prime Minister of Britain, Keir Starmer considering building emergency detainment camps on the Falkland Islands. The camps would be used to detain prisoners. Again, this is not true. This is a very cleverly faked headline, supposedly screenshot it off the Telegraph newspaper. The camps would be used to detain prisoners from the ongoing riots, as the British British prison system is already at capacity. The head of a fascist group in England Britain first, Ashley Simon, that's Ashley ashl Ea God sent this out and put a caption on top of it. We're all being deported to the Falklands. If you don't remember the Falklands. Britain had a nice little war in nineteen eighty two in which Margaret Thatcher was able to then claim that Britain had some kind of relevancy in international relations even though it didn't. And Musk put this thing out and it was seen by a million people in fifteen minutes before somebody told Musk that it was a fake or parody or something, and he was violating all of his own rules, and he added detainment cups in quotes as if they're planning mass executions or something. Because Musk has lost his goddamned mind if he ever had any control of it. The massive amounts of ozempic and other drugs have clearly turned him into a raging lunatic. In addition to this, he of course keeps calling for some would say advocating for civil war in the UK. He's mentioned it at least five times since last November, and Politico Europe reports that Musk may be summoned by British MPs over X's role in the race riots that have rocked the UK, in which online the Conservatives have stirred up complaints insistences that immigrants killed three young girls in Britain when it had nothing to do with immigrants, and they have gone to immigrant camps and immigrant reception areas and tried to kill the immigrants. That's how bad it's gotten. That's what happens when you let the right wing run rampant, rather than I don't know, emergency detainment camp somewhere. Can we borrow the Falkland Islands. I mean, you can send Farage there. Can we send you know, what's that that kid's name, Ben Shapiro, Send him there. Labor MPs are telling Politico Europe that they would press the billionaire X owner and other tech executives to answer questions about the role of social media platforms amid mounting unrest in the UK. Here's the thing. I like the idea of summoning him in front of Parliament because they do a pretty good job of not like our system of actually taking malefactors like Elon Musk and asking them pointed questions and then quoting what they'd said previously and threatening them with being charged with lying under oath. But here's a much simpler solution in England. I think they should move to the the tertiary stage of what to do with people like Elon Musk. You guys, you have still a Tower of London. I mean, we all know worldwide. It's one of the most famous things about England, about Europe. In the United States, it's one of the most famous things not about the United States. The Tower of London. We all know the Tower of London from something from a movie from Shakespeare from Richard's stories. You have a Tower of London. What is the point of having had a Tower of London for at least what eight hundred years? What is the point of having a Tower of London if you can't stick people like Elon Musk in it? And then when people say where is he? You say, he's in the Tower of London, and somebody gets it writ and says produce them and you go, oh, I'm sorry, we lost him like those princes in fourteen eighty three with the paperwork was rerouted to whale or somewhere, so we don't know where he is. Sorry. I mean this has worked for the British literally since fourteen eighty three, probably well before that. You got a problem, you got a guy's out of control, Send him to the tower and then lose his paperwork. Check back when we next excavate some of the mounds of dirt that we have for some unknown reason, on various floors of the Tower of London. Check back with us next time we go on a survey of the dirt five hundred years from now. Hey, look at this, it's a it's a skeleton with a nozepic needle. Sticking out of it. This must have been that Elon MUCKs guy. Elon just say he finally overdosed musk two days worst part sending in the world. James Thurber was a brilliant writer, and in his spare time, it was an equally brilliant, almost avant garde artist in the same body. His simple drawings to pick the most complex of emotions and comedic situations. His dogs are immortal. And then there were his captions. Well, I can't do anything with his drawings in a podcast, so I'll just read and I will read you now in this episode, what is probably his most famous story from my life in hard times, The Night the bed fell James Thurber. I suppose that the high water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio was the night the bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six times. And it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark like a dog to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still, it did take place It happened then that my father had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion strongly because she said the old wooden bed up there was unsafe. It was wobbly, and the heavy headboard would crash down on father's head in case the bed fell and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten, he closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow, twisting stairs. We later heard Amina's creakings as he crawled into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in the attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared some days before. On those occasions, he was usually gone six or eight days, and returned growling and out of temper with the news that the Federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads, and that the Army of the Potomac didn't have any more chance than a fiddler's bitch. We had visiting us at the time, a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beale, who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he were not awakened every hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room, and I told him that I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the first night, which I had suspected he would, by holding his breath after my regular breathing had convinced him I was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him. This seemed to allay his feet years a little, but he took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at the head of his bed in case I didn't arouse him until he was almost gone. He said he would sniff the camphor. A powerful reviver, Briggs was not the only member of his family who had his crotchets. Old aunt Melissa Belle, who could whistle like a man with two fingers in her mouth, suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die on South High Street because she had been born on South High Street and married on South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Schauf, who never went to bed at night without the fear that a burglar was going to get in and blow chloroform under her door through a tube. To avert this calamity, for she was in greater dread of anesthetics than of losing her household goods. She always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading this is all I have. Please take it and do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have. Aunt Gracie Chauff also had a burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars had been getting into her house every night for forty years. The fact that she never missed anything was to her no proof. To the contrary, she always claimed that she scared them off before they could take anything by throwing shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed, she piled where she could get at them handily, all the shoes there were about her house. Five minutes after she had turned off the light, she would sit up in bed and say hark. Her husband, who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long ago as nineteen o three, would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case, he would not respond to her tugging and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly, and he a shoe down the hall in one direction, and its mate down the hall in the other direction. Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a couple of pear. But I am straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the night that the bed fell on father. By midnight we were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs, just under father's attic bedroom, where my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually marching through Georgia or onward Christian soldiers, briggs Beale and myself were in a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier Wrecks slept in the hall. My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs which were made wide enough to sleep on comfortably only by putting up flat with the middle section the two sides, which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop leaf table. When these sides are up, it is perilous to roll too far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of one with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is precisely what happened about two o'clock in the morning. It was my mother who, in recalling the scene later first referred to it as the night the bedfellow on your father, always a deep sleeper and slow to arouse, I had lied to Briggs. I was at first unconscious of what had happened when the iron coot rolled me onto the floor and toppled over on me. It left me still warmly bundled up and unhurt, for the bed rested above me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up, only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized the big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed, let's go to your poor father. It was this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling, that awakened Herman in the same room with her, he thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical. You're all right, mama, he shouted, trying to calm her. They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds. Let's go to your poor father, and you're all right. That woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of what was going on in a vague way, but did not yet realize that I was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs, awakening in the midst of loud shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating and that we were all trying to bring him out. With a low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at the head of his bed, and instead of sniffing it, he poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor. Ugh ah choked Briggs like a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward the open window, but he came up against one that was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass, and I could hear it crash and tinkle on the alleyway below. He was at this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me foggy with sleep. I now suspected, in my turn, that the whole uproar was being made in a frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must be an unheard of and perilous situation. Get me out of this, I bawled, Get me out. I think I had the nightmarish belief that I was entombed in a mine. O g go, gasp Briggs floundering in his camphor. By this time, my mother, still shouting, pursued by Hermann, still shouting, was trying to open the door to the attic in order to go up and get my father's body out of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and would not yield. Her frantic pulls on it only added to the general banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up, the one shouting questions, the other barking. Father, farthest away and soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been awakened by the battering on the attic door. He decided that the house was on fire. Oh come, okay, he wailed in a slow, sleepy voice. It took him many minutes to regain full consciousness. My mother, still believing he was caught under the bed, detected in his I'm coming, the mournful resigned note of one who was preparing to meet his maker. He's dying, she shouted. I'm all right, Briggs yelled to reassure her, all right. He still believed that it was his own closeness to death that was worrying Mother. I found at last the light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who never did like Briggs, jumped for him, assuming that he was the culprit in whatever was going on, and Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. We could hear Father crawling out of the bed upstairs. Roy pulled the attic door open with a mighty jerk, and Father came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable, but safe and sound. My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex began to howl. What in the name of God is going on here? Asked father. The situation was finally put together like a giant gigsaw puzzle. Father caught a cold from prowling around in his bare feet, but there were no other bad results. I'm glad, said mother, who all always looked on the bright side of things, that your grandfather wasn't here. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Send this podcast to somebody who does not listen. We're in the home stretch here, Let's go. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil the musical directors, have countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle handled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers. Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust by name. The sports music is the Olberman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davison appears courtesy of ESPN. Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today is my friend Jonathans from Breaking Bad. Everything else pretty much my fault. So that's countdown for this the eighty ninth day until the twenty twenty four presidential election. They three hundred and tenth day since convicted feldon dementia, Jay Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the September eighteenth sentencing hearing. Use the mental health system. You've got it. President Biden used presidential immunity to stop him from doing it again while we still can. And anti Semitic, anti immigration, insane Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday, Monday night. More accurately bulletins as the news requires until the next one. I'm Keith Oulrimman. 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.