IF THERE'S NO HELL, I HOPE THEY MAKE ONE FOR TRUMP - 9.30.24

guess what, America's news media missed it. When America's news media has never been more urgently needed, it's failing, collapsing, cowardly, protecting only its own money owners and most reporters alike, America's news media in its death rattle before Trump extinguishes it, or with its own near complete lack of courage, it extinguishes itself. Trump did it again yesterday in Pennsylvania, and the goddamn news media missed it. Joe Biden became.

Donald Trump sharpened his criticism on border security in a swing state visit, playing up a political vulnerability for Kamala Harris CNN. Trump criticizes Harris's mental capacity while bashing her border policies. Former President Trump criticized Kamala Harris's mental capacity while slamming her immigration policies Saturday, a notable escalation of his insults towards the vice president. CNN didn't even mention

the disabled quote until the fourth paragraph. The usually reliable guardian Trump leans into anti immigrant rants and Harris barbes at Wisconsin rally. Trump spoke Saturday in the battleground state of Wisconsin, escalating his anti immigrant rhetoric and taking his personal insults against Kamala Harris up a rolling stone. Donald Trump railed on migrants, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris in an unhinged speech in Wisconsin on Saturday. This is from Reuters.

Trump escalates harsh rhetoric against immigrants Harris Huffington Post. Trump lists his grievances in a Wisconsin speech intended to link Harris to illegal immigration. The Hill and The New York Times meanwhile, slip further below the top of the quick said, we're not criticizing Trump. Others are criticizing Trump. The Hill gop urges Trump to tweak message with women. The New York Times Trump rebuked over demeaning insults of Harris. Wait,

it's still getting worse. Politico. Trump says Harris would turn every town into a Third World hellhole, responding to Kamala Harris's hardening border what and almost worst of all, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, published one hundred and eighty miles away from where Trump first said this in Prairie to Sheen, Wisconsin. Ironically, with all the Republican abuse of them lately, Prairie to Sheine translates as dog meadow. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Oh,

this is a local story. To them, listen to what's important. In the headline, Trump delivers a dark speech on immigration in Wisconsin's prairie to sine, Oh boy, that's almost worst of all, because worst of all, worst of all because of the context of something else it has just done that is equally intolerable. Well, CBS News. Trump levels more

personal attacks on Harris in Wisconsin rally. Former President Trump meandered Saturday through a list of grievances against Vice President Kamala Harris and other issues during an event intended to link his Democratic opponent to illegal border crossings. He said she was mentally disabled and Biden mentally impaired. These are not personal attacks. This is not some attempt to link

his Democratic opponent to illegal border crossings. I cannot say this more clearly to the political journalists of this nation. The English language is full of words. Words that actually describe what Jade Evans once aptly called Trump as the peddler of quote cultural heroine. Words that measure his deceit, words that quantify his inhumanity, words that will not get you fired, and words that will not get your cowering bosses sued. Learn these words. Use these words, because if

you don't, you will die with me. In the Trump camps. All of the bleak histories of the dictators of this world include this one same chapter. If you cannot summon courage on behalf of your nation, If you cannot summon courage on behalf of your profession, summon courage on behalf

of saving your own ass. But of course American journalism is going exactly the opposite root, and right now it is being led there to hell, coincidentally by CBS News David Bowter of the Associated Press, who I have known for more than twenty years, and who is the classic old school boring wire reporter, who was evidently alone among those covering the preparations for tomorrow's vice presidential debate, the only one who actually asked, CBS, so you're gonna fact

check any of this stuff? The headline on David Botter's ap story, CBS News says it will be up to Vance and Walls to fact check each other in deep debate, then quoting some anonymous coward spokesperson, the moderators will facilitate those opportunities during rebuttal time. The network said its own misinformation unit, CBS News confirmed will provide real time fact checking during the debate on its live blog and on social media. Oh A live blog that'll keep them from lying.

That's not just a figle. It's a fig leaf that doesn't fig When did CBS decide that its job here at a debate was to provide the microphones? The debate tomorrow night will be co moderated by Margaret Brennan from Face the Nation and Nora O'Donnell, who was soon to leave as the anchor of the CBS Evening News. I

worked with them both at NBC. I didn't know Margaret enough to address her here, but I have known Nora since we hired her away from Roll Call to be a Washington correspondent for first MSNBC and then NBC News in early nineteen ninety eight, and quite naturally, as the new reporter in the DC bureau, they stuck her on the least important newscast with the highest number of opportunities for reps, my newscast. Nora has been a professional friend

of mine for a quarter of a century. The day I returned to MSNBC in two thousand and three, she phoned me from Washington. I was just sitting my box down on my desk. She was bubbling with a list of ideas for my new show countdown for most of them, you must do a nightly fact check segment on Bill O'Reilly. I don't know exactly what is happening with Nora leaving as the anchor of the newscast that Douglas Edwards and Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather made into a legitimate journalistic institution.

I don't think they are firing her, per se. I think they are firing the job regardless. Nora has had an extraordinary career and has made an extraordinary amount of money and is still a talented and responsible journalist. And she is a kid. She is just fifty years of age. I cannot remember the last time she asked for or needed my advice, but I'm going to offer it to

her here. Nora, what you need to do tomorrow night is to utterly ignore your idiot bosses at CBS News fact Check, j Vance and Tim Walls, especially Vance, because Vance is presenting himself as a congenital liar. He's compulsive about it. He is on par with Trumper, may be worse. And Nora, you have a choice right now. You can go out as Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, where you

can go out as David Muir and Lindsay Davis. The careers of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will doubtless continue even after they ignored the rules of journalism and instead did with their idiot bosses at CNN told them to do in the first presidential debate, and they let Trump lie and lie and lie without even a correction, let alone a confrontation. But does anybody take Jake Tapper seriously

anymore after that? If any television figures are going to be remembered from this season of debates, if any are going to be rewarded for this season of debates, it will be Muhr and Davis. One of Trump's favorite floys is to lie about raiding's collapses from journalists and reporters and newspapers and networks that have thwarted him. But CNN's ratings, already declining, are now vanishing. ABC's unchanged David Mewer's newscast

is in first place, was in first place. It has twenty percent more viewers than Lesser Holtz, it has sixty six percent more than CBS's And it was CBS News and its ex president neiar Ash Kalmani who hired a scumbag. A Trumpist called Mick mulvaney in twenty twenty two to be a contributor because Calmani said this in twenty twenty

two with witnesses in the room with him. Quote, to make sure that we are getting access to both sides of the aisle, which is a priority because we know the Republicans are going to take over most likely in the midterms. A lot of the people that we're bringing in are helping us in terms of access to that side of the equation. In other words, access journalism is the worst thing you can have in this world. We're

doing this to promote our own access journalism. Nora, the last impression you're going to leave as the anchor of the CBS Evening News. And by the way, I would have sought off an arm to be the anchor of the CBS Evening News. The last impression is to follow the path of the Niraj Kalmanni's of this world, or is it to follow the path of Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow. America has a lot of holes in it.

Failing to reward journalism and bravery and ethics is not one of them, not yet anyway, look at the reputations and look at the ratings. Nourra fact check them anyway, even if they fire you during the commercial break. What is the point of being in news one of the worst professions ever invented? What is the point of being in news? What is the point of being on television

one of the other worst professions ever invented? What is the point if you can't tell the truth, if you can't serve your country in this smallest but most important of ways. And that's thirty for today, our new theme in full for the election stretch, as promised Brian Ray and John Philip Scheneiler geniuses, back to the Nightmare. I should add that in addition to on Saturday making a hilarian kind of cadence. In the middle of his speech, Trump yesterday in Erie, Pennsylvania said in the US, the

police aren't allowed to do their job. And to stop crime, he said, you need quote one really violent day, one rough hour, and I mean real rough. The word would get out and it would end immediately. Translation, he wants the cops to kill everybody for an hour. He wants literally that movie the Purge. This will be reported with headlines like Trump suggests increased staffing for a local police There is a punchline to Trump and the other issue

here the slandering of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. It comes from the DNC member David Atkins, and I quote him. Trump must be deeply embarrassed that he got eviscerated in a debate with a mentally disabled person. He got beat so bad he doesn't dare do a second one. He should probably just drop out now. Quote. I should also mention here, in the light of my excoriation of the media, that Axios, which I regularly assault here but always with cause,

got it right yesterday. Its first twelve paragraphs were, while tonally neutral and the need to make everything about the horse race was uns shakable, it was absolutely and devastatingly quietly accurate. Quoting Axios. Even for Trump, it was weird, nasty, and nonsensical when he needed to be swaying national security moms and other undecideds thirty eight days out from election day. Yes, at least do that New York Times. Other people are mad at him. We're not now briefly about the polls

and the New York Times. When Larry Sabato, who is an intelligent man, but pretty much a mainstream political guy who I think I first interviewed in nineteen ninety seven. When Larry Sabato is noting that something is broken in the New York Times poll, guess what something is broken inside the New York Times poll. The Times wrote that Trump is quote surging in the Swing States turned out to be a one point gain for Trump, not a one point marginal gain. He just went up a point.

An analytics fella named Jonathan Chavez writes Harris went from plus twenty nine among eighteen to twenty nine year old voters in Wisconsin in the New York Times August poll

to minus eighteen today, cross tab truthering. Wonderful phrase, sir, cross tab truthering is dangerous, But a forty seven point swing in a demographic group really should force you to ask some serious questions about methodology, coverage, biases, waiting decisions, etc. She was twenty nine points ahead in voters between the ages of eighteen to twenty nine in Wisconsin in August. She's now minus eighteen according to The New York Times.

Sabato added to this observation quote instead of mindlessly repeating New York Times Siena polls, because well, it's the New York Times. News organizations should be asking hard questions about them. These poles are given far more weight than they deserve. Again, exactly correct. I watch a lot of BBC news. It's not that good. It's better than all of the American news put together. However, they still have these extraordinary blind spots.

They and other international news organizations not based inside this country not only faithfully report the New York Times polls, but they do not report any other polls of the American presidential race. Moreover, the BBC treats these polls from the Times as if they are not polls, but instead some sort of preliminary votes, like there were some kind

of primaries. It's startling, it's naive beyond words. So the BBC viewers will never know about the simultaneous swing state polls from Bloomberg in which Harris is tied in Georgia, up by two in North Carolina, up by three in Arizona, Michigan, in Wisconsin, up by five in Pennsylvania, up by seven in Nevada, to say nothing of the forty seven point demo swing in voters under thirty in Wisconsin you screwed

up your poll. New York Times critics safe Time screwed up poll, and the BBC viewers will never know about the Rasmussen polling scandal. We all know everybody but some of the voters that Rasmussen is crap. Then a group called American muckrakers got emails last week from Rasmussen to Trump campaign runners Dance Gavino and Susie Wiles and an outlet called the Heartland Institute asking them to pay for poles on a specific topic and promising results They'll all like.

Even if Rasmussen polls were legitimate, just the collusion between the pollster and the supposedly nonprofit Heartland Institute confirms political activity, for which that institute should lose its tax exempt status. That's what Rasmussen is. And what on earth is the value of crap polls with fake results? What is the value of a Rasmussen p What is the value of an Atlas poll? Atlas polls that yesterday showed Trump winning

everywhere butt Nevada. What is the value of a poll that might as well show Trump getting five hundred and thirty seven electoral College votes and Harris just won from the Nebraska. Second, I hope you're sitting down. The answer is the value is because when the time comes for Trump to announce that he actually has won the election and that all the official results are lies, and that his mobs should now rise up and take over the state houses in Georgia and Arizona and Michigan and Pennsylvania.

And when he tells them to go and kill all the reporters, including the ones who did in fact check him, and when he insists they have to use any means necessary to stop President elect Kamala Harris from being sworn in. When he does these things, when not if the piece of paper he will be waving above his head during his hit Larry and Rant will be the Rasmussen and Atlas polls that prove he was ahead in all of

those states and thus the election was stolen. Oh and at this rate, also on that piece of paper will be the New York Times polls. Also of interest here, Hey, it's a full episode on a Monday. You know why

that is because it's Stevie Day. This is the anniversary exactly September thirtieth, the anniversary of the day I was adopted by a dog for the first time, and now finally, to my great relief, also for the first time, I can tell this story in full, with no pseudonyms or masked identities or details left out, because, as I think you may have heard somewhere, Stevie's mom is a Liby Newsy and this story of her and pictures is entirely wholesome,

although there are also developments in the non wholesome story that I don't think anybody with me would have noticed, and I think they may explain everything, and they center around one phrase in one article, and that one phrase is quote medical leave. I'll explain that's next. This discountdown, George Crowing, pleasure to have you here. Thank you. This is the best news show ever. I toilet to one of your producers, and I want you to know that I've seen them all and it's just for especially the

first thirty five minutes. Thank you. It's just just unparalleled. I got bad news between you and I. We got six minutes to completely strew that in the draft.

And if I can admit that, you could admit you might listen. Well, maybe I'll do that. Probably not ten percent of the time I feel like doing that, especially after this ten days that has just passed as one of them became headline news. I saw a story about Olivia on the internet in German, and for some reason, the story sounds way worse in German. But the other ninety percent of the time I swerve back and forth

between two. In one I feel sadness and regret and even responsibility and failure that I could not do more for her when we were together, along with real fear that what is now mostly a story of people behaving amorlly and stupidly and childishly could turn into something worse, and forgive the dramatic language here, but something tragic. The remaining forty five percent of the time, I just feel like neo dodging bullets in the matrix. Pew pew, pew

didn't get me this time. Regardless, there is a commitment here to promulgating political news, especially if it's stuff people haven't noticed. And so postscripts to the news Dateline New York. Of all the coverage of the newsy Robert F. Kennedy Junior saga, there are four important points that I think are missing. The New York Post reports one of the two of them in this equation. Maybe both were impressed

with his quote stamina during Facebook sex. Excuse me, but stamina during Facebook sex is just being skilled jerk off, isn't it? Am I missing something else here? I mean, we are honoring this now. Is there a Louis C. K Award for this or something? Man? The Kennedy family has to be proud of this guy. John F. Kennedy said, ask not what your country can do for you, Ask what you can do for your country. Robert F. Kennedy Senior said, some men see things as they are and

ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not? Robert F. Kennedy Junior said, what wait, I'll move the camera. How's this for a profile? Encourage stamina while playing with you yourself. No, Bob, you didn't waste your life. More seriously, one forecast, I know Olivia, she taped this, that's next you wait, and then two developments that kind of went by in the blur of the stupidity of

the thing. Even Lachlan Cartwright, who wrote the piece for Vanity Fair, seems to have missed the meaning of what he wrote here. He did a timeline of what befell my ex when all this was revealed to her employers at New York Magazine, quoting it on Thursday, The magazine's response shifted several times. One response would have seen her request medical leave, and there would have been no statement

or disclosures medical leave. I've seen almost nobody note this seemingly random detail, and Cartwright never even circled back to it a medical leave for Olivia Newsy. Some comments I have seen have begun with the assumption that her employers were making up an excuse to cover up the scandal. Medical leave, Yeah, that's the ticket. I can understand this thinking.

When the Brian Williams exaggeration scandal broke, I contacted my friends in the hierarchy of NBC news, and I said, look, there is one surefire way you can save this and him and yourselves. Get him drunk, fill up his office with empty bottles of booze, bring in photographers from the tabloids, and then send them to rehab. When he comes back, they'll give him an e fing parade. Because you're not

really lying. He clearly needs rehab, just not the traditional kind of rehab, because there clearly is something wrong with him. I don't think the reference to the medical leave idea

was as random as it seems. I have some more personal, firsthand information on this, which I will keep to myself because, believe it or not, for reasons that may become apparent to you shortly, I think Olivia a kind of rehab too, and off stage, I don't know why I'm bothering, but I'm still trying to assist that if I can in some way, and my own reasons for doing so were amplified because, believe it or not, I knew something had gone horribly wrong with her two weeks and two days ago,

nearly a week before the story broke. I didn't know what, and I certainly could never ever have guessed that Kennedy was involved, but her ex fiance edits the Politico Playbook newsletter, and I'm sure he doesn't like me anymore than I don't like him. But every Saturday he posts half a dozen long reads that he recommends to his recipients, and usually I just skim past them. But the first one, two saturdays ago that I would have been the fourteenth jumped

off the screen of my phone at me. Ryan Liza had linked to an article in Noema magazine. Noema, the award winning magazine exploring the transformations sweeping our world. Year old. He had linked to this article in Nuema called living in a Lucid Dream. Claire L. Evans writes of her own experience in this The subheadline was recent research on lucid dreams suggests that consciousness exists along the spectrum between sleep and waking, between hallucination and revelation, between dream worlds

and reality. Oh worse yet. The story was published July twenty first, Newsy's now ex fiance posted at September fourteenth. I could easily be wrong, but the first thing I thought when I saw this was he found that article because he google searched sleep walking or lucid dreaming or fugue state, and when I saw this, I shuddered. Five days later, new Zy Kennedy scandal. Suddenly he's an ex fiance. The rest you know, followed a week after that by

this passing reference to medical leave. Anyway, I think the link and the medical leave idea are bookends to the first part of a very sad story, which brings me to a happy story about this woman, to the story of Stevie. Even the FaceTime references made me more sad than disgusted or bemused. Olivia and I used to FaceTime, especially when traveling on a story. She was a diligent

and sincere communicator. To her credit, she usually asked all the right girlfriend ye questions, and to her even greater credit, she'd then say, okay, enough of this. Put Stevie on. Stevie was our dog, our beloved dog, our beloved first dog, who we got twelve years ago today, who sits near by me as I tell you this story, with the masking efforts and pseudonyms removed from this story for the first time, which is why when I was asked if I really had dated and lived with her, I said

I had, and it was surprisingly wholesome because it was. Because, as you will hear, still, after all this crap, the thing that the name Olivia Newzy inspires in me is gratitude, because Olivia is Stevie's mom. Today, I have three dogs.

Two months ago it was four. Then my older rescue, MiNet, the guy who came to me in a dementia like trance, and within months, with good food and getting his teeth pulled, he was leaping over the white stripes in the crosswalk like an Olympian, just for the hell of it, forty or fifty times per walk. Minee got to his seventeenth birthday on a Monday. He took a walk on a Thursday, he stopped eating on a Friday, and he gently and peacefully died in my arms on Sunday, as if he

were saying, I made it. I'm going home now. Thanks. But Ted, my first rescue, is still going strong at six and a half. Ted is a handsome devil in the beneficiary of heart surgery when he was about eight months old. He is my son as certainly as if he had just two legs and was in kindergarten. He flirts with girls in the park, human girls. He plays ball. He sees a soccer ball, he wants to play with soccer balls twice his size. Ted also owns the world.

Just ask him. Rose is ten now, a beautiful, austere, classic girl, a little tough to know. If she could speak, she would be the one in your family who addresses you as father, as in, oh father, you're being so sentimental. And then there is Stevie, twelve years old and tougher than all of you put together. Has been through cancer and surgery and immune disease and immobility. She couldn't walk three bad knees once a week. We now walk over to rehab, never afraid of a human being and benefiting

of a high pain threshold, so nothing bothered her. We go to rehab. She goes on an underwater treadmill. Then they blow dry her hair and give her a massage. It's a spa. She always thought it was a spa. Stevie beautiful, sometimes belligerent, always for twelve years, indispensable, and as late as three pm Eastern time on September thirtieth, twenty twelve, not one word of what I have told you would have made any sense whatsoever to me. I had never had a dog allergies mine and my mother's

and travel and work. And then Olivia Newsy looked at me and said, I need a puppy fix. Her family dog was dying. She didn't say it, her folks wouldn't say it. The dog, a Jack Russell Terrier named Casey, did her best to be the only truthful one in the bunch. She was moving purposely and unsteadily with every step, and looking out at her world with a seeming mixture of acceptance and sadness and regret that the one time she really needed these bipeds to speak for her on

her behalf, they just couldn't or wouldn't do it. I just need, Olivia told me, for dogs, not to mean sadness, just for a couple of minutes, just for a while. Can we go to that pet shop on Les? I mumbled that well, we could go, of course, but that I had resisted the dog entreaties of the eleven girlfriends before her, and I would successfully resist hers as well. I had always loved dogs, but I was allergic, and more importantly, my doctors had all said that hypoallergenic dogs

were a crap shoot. And Olivia said, I do not want a dog. I am not trying to convince you to get me a dog or us a dog. I just want to hold a puppy for a little while and have you there with me. She paused, as she always did when she felt both hopeless and angry at being at the mercy of feelings, and she lapsed into her version of the shrug emoji. As sappy as all this sounds, and it did sound sappy, Olivia was not sentimental.

We used to look at each other in stark shock that she, the prematurely cynical girl and me, the everlastingly cynical old guy, had proved the maxim about the cynics just being the disappointed romantics of this world. And then we'd giggle, and then I'd insult her or she'd insult me, and the next thing he knew, we were insulting some politician. This was different. Casey was dying and Olivia didn't know

how to deal with it. But to her credit, she recognized she needed some self care, and she needed my support as she got that self care. So we left for the pet shop in mid afternoon, and I told her my true fear was that my native but dormant shared affinity with dogs would all of a moment spring fully grown from my soul, and I would blurt, I'll take all of them. I mean, even then, what kind of life could I offer a dog? I was on television.

Thus I was always in a television student, thus never home for play or walks, or just the prevention of canine loneliness. Olivia lived with me nearly all the time, but was out of town half the time too on stories. I was clueless as to every aspect of the dog thing. I had littered the continent with dead house plants. I no longer thought myself ever capable of pulling my own ego out of my backside sufficiently to take care of fish. I had literally not had a pet of any kind

since nineteen sixty seven. I had come to terms with living in a wistful, hazy world in which I might inadvertently have a dog pal for a few minutes, but almost never indoors, and never without the pang of knowing that the hello itself contained the start of the goodbye. And I was allergic. I was allergic to the obvious, big, furry, friendly dogs. There was an incident on a plane when I didn't know there was a dog on board, in fact, sitting right behind me, and we almost landed the plane

on an emergency basis because I'd stopped breathing. I was allergic. I might be allergic even to the ones that were built as non allergic. I could be in the same room with a dog for an hour, often longer, without incident, but to hold or touch them within half an hour I would start to feel my throat swelling and closing. And if I disobeyed this immutable cannon, the buried tears of permanent exclusion from dog world might be replaced by the far worse ones of separation and loss. Coming back

to the present day, literally it's two weekends ago. I had to send back a rescue dog because I was allergic to her. We didn't know she was a mix, and I was allergic to whatever the mix was. She was here two hours. She's fine, The rescue is fine,

she will be fine. I'm helping with her recovery. I am still processing my guilt if that had happened to me at any point in the past, especially in twenty twelve, to reject, worse, to betray the love of a dog, to send it back, what happened then anyway, I went with her, and as Olivia and I approached the shop, there was, as there almost always is, a small crowd kind of undulating around it. The narrow sidewalks of Lexington Avenue make these human clots easier to form, even late

on the first Sunday of autumn. There is also an obstacle course there of grates and cellar doors and bikes chained to poles, and parking meters and canopies for diners and restaurants and mattress showrooms and other places that aren't quite seedy but also are not your first choice. The uptown edges of the grime and noise that constitute the ma of the fifty ninth Street Bridge lend the place

a congested feel even when it's otherwise quiet. We are also three blocks up from the trying just a little too hard merchandising of Bloomingdale's. There are unwashed delivery trucks double park three hundred and sixty five days a year there and then totally out of place, amid the prosaic trappings of a big city at its most men there they are bouncing off each other, tearing infinitely at other tiny heads and tails and paws doing a seeming pantomime

of dismemberment. Their yips and the crunch of the shredded cavorting paper are just audible through the glass and over the din of the street. They create an oasis of cute. And just in case you can't tell what they are, there was this big Neon sign above their street front window that read puppies. Don't make me go in, I pleaded. She reassured me. We'd go in. She'd hold the dog. All I'd had to do was take a picture a minute. Tops. You don't understand, I reached for her hand. What I'm

trying to say is I've always wanted a dog. I could never have one. Just as the door to the shop opened, she grabbed my arm. Olivia pulled forcefully, swore at me and muttered, you'll survive. Man up. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact.

Don't make eye contact. My inner dialogue as we moved towards puppies and passed puppies, and the appearance of a small staircase to a training loft confirmed we were now going under puppies and in the deepest recesses of the shop.

There was a wall of puppies to our right, three cages high, six across, all a yellowish beige behind a reddish brown for Micah countertop, and then a structural beam, and then three cages high and two cages across, and then a corner with a small visiting pen built into the countertop, and then in front of me the Hollywood squares of puppies, three high, three across, nine puppies, all of them staring at me and screaming at me and

making eye contact. A salesman introduced himself as Jeffrey. Jeffrey asked Olivia if there was any dog she wanted him to bring to her. Let me see them all tease, she said the girl. In that moment, two things struck me. Firstly, this was my cue to get my phone out and prepared to take the photo of her with the puppy. Secondly, the dog, whom the salesman was now temporarily liberating from the surprisingly spare cage, was the only living soul inside the pet shop besides me, who was not making any

damn noise at all. Every other dog was perfecting its adolescent bark. The cats were making a bewildering variety of noises, And was that actually a Norwegian blue parrot squawk? I just heard remarkable bird, the Norwegian blue. Isn't it beautiful plumage? But this Maltese said nothing. She looked like her torso would easily fit in one of my hands. And if she was three pounds, a quarter of that was hair

and half of that was curled. And presumably somebody had to come by every day to turn what sat atop her head into a mohawk up top and a mullet in the back. She was in a cage with another dog, her brother. Her cage mate brother seemed a little bigger, but his eyes were clearly smaller than hers. Their color was immediately visible, even if you still had forlorn hopes of avoiding eye contact. His eyes shone, her eyes were illuminated. He tried to get past her into the sailsman's arms.

She simply lifted up her head towards him. It actually crossed my mind that she looked like she was about to say, Hi, Jeffrey, how are you today? He put her gently down in that playpen at the right corner of the counter. Olivia asked if she could pick her up, and nodded to me to get the camera ready. Honestly, Jeffrey confided, this is the sweetest dog we've had here in months. I mean, I say that every day to almost everybody about almost every dog, but this time I'm

actually not lying. Olivia cradled the little Maltese in her arms, with the dog's head facing to my right. I tapped the camera on the phone. My hand was actually shaking, and as I centered up Olivia and the puppy in the frame, the Maltese suddenly wiggled upright, placed her front paws on Olivia's shirt near her neck, and just as I snapped the image of the dog, reached up and

kissed my girlfriend on the lips. To this day, on occasion, I am completely incapable of remembering anything that happened in my life before that exact moment. Olivia made the appropriate sounds of human approval. Jeffrey began discussing how little grooming the Maltese breed needed and the great price he could give us, And even as my head spun, it seemed silly to me that he was calculating the tax on

something that was obviously timelessly and eternally priceless. Olivia said something about how we needed a minute outside to discuss it, and handed the puppy back to Jeffrey. The dog looked at us sweetly separately in turn, and if she had said nice to meet you, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised. Then, as the pup went back into the

cage with her brother, something extraordinary happened. The little girl was reaching her head up towards the spout of the cage's water bottle with the same graceful movement she just made to bestow the kiss on Olivia, when her brother abruptly body slammed her out of the way, and her tiny frame bounced off the side of the cage. Then, to my shock and confusion, I heard a deep, threatening growl, a vengeful, a reverberating throughout the pet shop. My shock

was because the growl was coming from me. The next sounds were from Olivia. My god, what's wrong with you? I didn't know it at the time, but as we turned to fight our way back to the street to have this conversation that we weren't going to have because we were leaving, I evidently half skidded into a display full of chew toys and bones. I couldn't see, but I didn't recognize my own tears until they hit the edges of my lips. Yes, somehow I managed to say

it again, this time in despair. I always wanted a dog, but I could never have one. I'm sorry. Olivia finally figured out what had happened. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm an asshole. Newsy was now helping me to hold myself upright, steering me towards the door to the street. I didn't listen to you. I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole. You told me, and I didn't believe you. I'm sorry, I'm

so sorry. The stories came pouring out, all jumbled, one on top of the other, Tiny, the Saint Bernard who only wanted to embrace me, and the mcconnons Mutt next door. Boots used to sit on my lap, and Tiny didn't make me sneezy, only scared me. And the mcconnons had three boys and a mother who baked cookies by the car load. Lot and Boots never left their side, and I was always at their house. And if I was allergic, how was it that I never once had a problem

with Boots? How in the hell did that work? Huh? And what about Vladimir, that stray cat that my sister found. I used to live in the garage and behave like a dog and like to be carried around like a baby. How allergic was I? And that beautiful, beautiful little Maltese reached up and kissed you on the mouth. And the one time I took my dad's movie camera to the mcconnon's house, half of the film I made was of Boots. And what if I went back and got the allergy

shots again? It was my mother who said she was really allergic, so I must be allergic, And what's the use? The little Maltese was perfect, and the next person who sees HER's going to snap her up in an instant. And I asked them just to let me try a little dog who wouldn't shed. And the only thing my mother would let me have were lizards. And I could take a zertech every day. And I'm so sorry, Tiny I didn't realize and I never said goodbye to Boots.

And the Maltese is gone. She's gone, she's gone. She's my dog. I know it. I could feel it. She's my dog and she's gone. What happened next Beggar's fiction. And if Olivia's later life could beggar fiction, and it could involve RFK Junior, why shouldn't this part of her life from more than a decade ag go involve Rudy Giuliani, Rudy Effing Juliani and his part of the story of

Stevie Day and what happened to Stevie next? This is countdown back to the number one story on the countdown and the day I fell in love with a dog for the first time and my girlfriend, the former girlfriend, Olivia Uzi, and I left her in the pet shop and went home. We were walking up Park Avenue me mid meltdown, somehow nearing the armory on Park Avenue, one block west and four blocks north of that pet shop.

To her credit, Olivia had kept me from throwing myself into traffic or dissolving into a puddle on East sixty second Street. The overwhelming sensation was not one of having left the tiny puppy in the shop, but of having left a part of myself in that shop that was my dog. I had never been more certain of anything in my life. And what was worse was she was obviously going to be taken snapped up by somebody else even before I could get back there. Who could resist her?

I certainly hadn't. My chaotic stream of consciousness monologue paused only when I had no choice but to shut up and gasp for breath, and the comments with which Olivia tried to soothe me in these interstices were self abnegating and solemn. She had talked me off the limb of my certainty that the dog had already been sold, and was now steering me back towards sanity. I had to,

she said. Later, you were having a breakdown. She said, we should go home, and if I wanted to talk seriously about the practicalities of owning a dog, we could do that and still get the puppy the next morning, even if it meant delaying her scheduled departure next morning for DC. Don't worry, I'm sure she's still there. They were getting ready to close. Didn't you notice that she'll be there in the morning. For the first time, I exhaled,

and then immediately went right back into a full panic. Wait, she's still in there, She's I sniffled anew, and the tears resumed. She's in that cage with that brother of hers in the basement somewhere. Before Olivia could try to answer that, and I swear this is true, Rudy Giuliani spilled down the stairs from the Park Avenue armory. A cop suddenly appeared from a different nowhere and put out an arm and firmly asked us to stop walking, and

Juliani scuttled rodent like into his waiting car. A wife was with him. I did not and do not know which number. The driver was already closing the door behind them when I shouted at Rudy, how come my dog has to spend the night in a cage while that asshat is allowed to roam around this city without a leash on Later that evening, recalling my remark, Olivia said that was the first moment she thought we might just get home safe and sound after all, and I would

not have to be institutionalized. Didn't take more than ten minutes to get back to my apartment from there, and we walked it in silence. I had long since saturated my handkerchief and some tissues Olivia had had in her pockets I was breathing deeply and restoratively now, and the sniffle frequency was reduced to once or twice per block. My mind, though wasted with dogs, I had known Boots, Tiny, Vladimir the cat, who was not a dog but might

as well have been. Even Olivia's little Casey, dying out in her parents' home in Jersey and unaware of the seismic events which she had set in motion that day. Other dogs, to all the dogs in all of the stories of James Thurber that I had read on television every night, I had smiled along with his poetic, loving descriptions of them, but never confessed that I loved them as he must have. There was Samantha, whom my late friend Bruce Hagen used to bring everywhere, including our college

radio station newsroom. Samantha was big enough to have had license plates. The first really big dog who didn't frighten me. There was my great aunt's Yorki or maybe Morky, whose gas was so potent that the Christmas just before I turned nine, my great uncle said he was convinced the dog had been a German terror weapon at Chateau Terrra, and he and I had bonded because I, just before

I was nine, already knew what Chateau Terry was. There was Nellie McNally, the only dog that any of my sometimes out of town girlfriends ever had actually put on the phone with me. In my mind, they all stood before me, all lined up, all quiet, all smiling, smugly, with the kindest type of I told you so. Look on their gorgeous faces, and dozens more behind them, vague shapes and sizes, dogs who had belonged to neighbors or co workers past, who are just chance encounters on the

streets of any of a dozen cities decades earlier. There were moments in which a glimpse this scene in my

head and I saw all the dogs who'd ever lived. No, I'm sorry, Olivia said, I shouldn't have been that selfish, But now I was disagreeing with her, and as I unlocked our apartment door, I began to tell her of the dogs I had just been communing with, and what had suddenly become necessary, urgent, inevitable, and perfect, but about which I needed as much to tell as I could from her in as short a period as possible, And she tried, well, you just take the dog wherever you can.

My parents have been saying this a lot lately. Now they regret not doing more things with Casey, not adventures, not just to the park or outside. Just take her with you, just go out into the yard, or just hold her while you watch TV. You just let the

dog in. We went through topic after topic, cleaning, training, poop handling, walks, food, puppy sitters, moving books off ground level shelves, discipline, and most importantly, a backup plan in case this epiphany was false and I was still allergic, or terrified, or incompetent at it, or all three. Olivia was again extraordinarily helpful. I don't think it'll take much to convince my parents to take her. I mean, after Casey recovers, I can take her to DC tomorrow in

the car. I'll bring her back next weekend. So in the interim, you can get the apartment ready, and you can get you ready, and you don't have to go in at the deep end. You have some time to prepare. I interrupted Olivia with a kiss. Let's go get her before they close. I don't want to wait. I'm still terrified somebody else will realize how extraordinary she is. Unexpectedly. I had a sudden moment of doubt. This isn't just me having a breakdown, right, I mean, Olivia, she is extraordinary,

isn't she? You know dogs? Olivia stopped being and now for the first time, looked at me like I had just gone crazy, even though I had gone crazy several moments before. She said, obviously, that kiss, that kiss that the dog gave me, that was a real kiss. The Pet's Shop had stayed open, partly because Olivia, again to her eternal credit, phoned them as we hit the street outside the apartment building, and partly because they said they knew you were coming back. Jeffrey said, you just see

it sometimes. Also, you seemed well, kind of emotional. Olivia again helpfully mentioned that, in fact, I had had a breakdown. They had all the paraphernalia ready for me, little aqua colored bed, a series of attached gates that could be used as a pen or a barrier, gates which I still have. I got them out of the closet a week ago. There was a small pink blanket of training pads and the plastic holder for the pads. There was

enough dry food to last a month. There was some horrific wet food that looked like a discarded early design for liverwurst. There was a few chew toys in a bag, a bright pink harness and a leash as light as a ribbon, a black carrying bag, and paperwork with the puppies family tree, which, to my astonishment, stretched back beyond her birth three months earlier, through the six preceding generations,

all the way back to six entire years earlier. The stuff they sold me could have included a moped and a stock portfolio to guarantee her college education, and a Maltese sized typewriter with a twenty year supply of replacement ribbons, and I would have also bought them. A nice lady named Ellie tried to train me to be a dog owner in about ninety four seconds and handed me a voucher for a vet and a check list of stuff to do. I signed a credit card bill. I think

I used my own name. I absolved myself of the guilt of not getting a sheltered dog because I was allergic and kind of had to go to the shop and go the root of the bread dog, and vowed that I would do something for a shelter dog someday. Plus, I was not looking for a dog, I'd actually fallen

in love it for at sight. And lastly, because no matter the obvious and often tragic flaws in that system of breeding, there was no argument with the fact that those who came from a pet shop had as much of a right to a happy life as any other dog. At that moment, they produced her from the back room behind the block of cages where we had first seen her. Curls had been fluffed up and her hair freshly brushed.

It would be lovely to say that the little Maltese made eye contact from across the shop floor, or was aware of our presence, or yipped happily seeing me again,

and it would be completely untrue. The little Maltese calmly scanned the room and only occasionally glanced up at the manager who carried her, and didn't look at us once until she was, without ceremony or comment, handed over to me, whereupon she immediately twisted out of my trembling hands, stuck her front paws up on my chest as she had Olivia's, and reached up to give me a kiss on the lips, and another, and a third, and my sunglasses conveniently hid

the tears that welled up again. I managed to ask if they all did that, and no, came the answer from that original salesman, Jeffrey. Honestly, sweetest puff we've had here in months, loves people. I'm sad to see her go. I marveled at how light she was, and yet how articulated and strong her body was. Her eyes were far more beautiful than I had realized, oversized even for a puppy, almost no white visible, the reflection off the deep brown

irises almost iridescent. And more astonishingly, this little soul who was about one two hundred and twelfth my age and one eighty seventh my weight, and who had a great great great great grandmother born in two thousand and six, as opposed to my great great great great grandmother, who was born in seventeen sixty seven. She was meeting and

holding my gaze with her own. Whatever I was seeing in her eyes, whatever the inner being I was actually processing, she seemed to be doing her equivalent vetting of me. I kissed her, and was by now not surprised when she kissed me again. The little tongue poked out a fraction of an inch, just enough so any one of

us dumb, unsubtle bipeds could tell she meant it. And then she, from her upright pose, settled back into my arms, her head in the crook of my right elbow, in an attitude I would soon discover she would repeat every time I ever picked her up, right through to about an hour ago. I guess it was an hour, hour and a half, maybe two hours before suddenly it dawned on me what her name was. She was Stevie. It was the haircut. She had, the haircut of Stevie Nicks. Stevie.

Olivia did not like it at all, not at first. Within a week she was saying, I was wrong again, you got that exactly right. She is a effing Stevie, all right. Olivia's dog, Casey, who started all this, died within the month, and soon Olivia and I were back in that same pet shop, Olivia solemnly telling me we were going to get her folks a new dog. Make the decision for her, thus taking the guilt away from them. In point of fact, Olivia could not make up her

mind which of two dogs to get her folks. That's when I was hit by a bolt of inspiration, as unexpected as the day Stevie rescued me. I said, wait, if we get one dog, that dog will always be Casey's replacement. That doesn't sound fun. But if we get them both, your folks won't feel guilty at all. I asked, Jeffrey, you got a price on the two of them. Jeffrey looked at me like I was insane. Olivia looked at me like I was insane. I said, look, I haven't

figured this out completely, but this just makes sense. Two dogs as a team. Neither of them will be a replacement. Together, there'll be successors. Just work with me on this. Olivia left the next day for her folks house with Holly the albino chihuah and Milo the Maltese. And it was genius of her she named the dogs in advance, so that when she brought them in to meet her grief stricken folks, they weren't just dogs. I'd like you to

meet Holly and Milo. They were individuals. If you're ever in this situation where you want to give somebody a dog and you don't know if they want them, or you don't know if they're going to take them, name the dog in advance. Well, it didn't work. Olivia texted me that her mother would not even look at them. I don't want Holly and Milo, I want Casey, she said, she was seated in a darkened room holding the dead dog's picture. I said, all right, give it half an hour.

Keep the car there. Worst thing happens here, you and I we suddenly have three dogs. I like dogs, Stevie likes dogs. You like dogs. Our far worse outcomes here. Give it half an hour. Twenty minutes later, I get another text from Olivia. It's a photo with the caption, my god, it worked. The picture is of mister and missus Noosey rolling on the floor laughing with Holly and Milo twenty minutes. Twenty minutes from suicidal despair to rolling on the floor with puppies. The solution to the problems

of dogs is more dogs. Olivia's parents are long gone. I like them both, and they liked me. I'd love to know what happened to the dogs. I do know Milo was a cousin of Stevie's. More importantly, I do know Holly and Milo and Olivia's parents made each other happy, and after that, her parents treated me like gold and every Christmas we would all gather at their house with all the dogs, dogs plural. Olivia and I went and

got Rose, Stevie's sister. A year later, and after Olviya and I broke up, I happened to run into at a pet shop. Of course, the woman who leads the American Maltese Association rescue group. Of course I did. I was walking Stevie and Rose. A year later, Ted, my rescue with the bad Heart, arrived and he had surgery and he's fine. Mishu, my other rescue with the bad Heart, was here for just a couple of months. He had a very happy life. He just didn't have a very

long one. Minee got here just before his fifteenth birthday left, as I said, just after his seventeenth. He and Mishu are now commemorated with tattoos. They are with me always. It's a crowd. Who's that old man with those tiny dogs? But then again, I wasted the first fifty three years of my goddamned life living without a so I have to make up for our lost time as many dogs as I can fill into the rest of my life. I'm gonna Menai's roster spot will be filled again. There

will be a dog in need soon enough. All the stuff you see for me about dogs on Twitter, all the dog videos, all the fundraising requests, all of this came from one event. As Anatole France wrote, until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened. Twelve years ago today, when it became official, I was

born again in dogs and Stevie adopted me. So as you shake your head about the headline Olivia Newsy story, or laugh or cry or like me all of the above, Holy crap, please remember this Olivia Newsy story as well. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Now I can go back and play with the dogs. We are now back to five episodes a week, posting nightly just after midnight Eastern. Once again, there is a Monday countdown. You're listening to it now.

Please send this podcast to somebody who doesn't listen but should. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shaneil, the musical directors, have Countdown Arrange produced and performed most of our music. Mister Shanelle had liled orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. He's the guy who likes to update the themes. He's really into it. Thank you, Brian. The music was produced by Tko Brothers Our Satirical on fifty.

Musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, 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 late friend George Carlin. Everything else was pretty much my fault. I have a signed picture from George in which he is holding a dog that's countdown for today, five weeks and one day until

the twenty twenty four presidential election. They three hundred and sixty fourth day since convicted felon drooling. Jay Trump's the first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the election, use the mental health system, use presidential immunity if we have to, to keep him from doing it again while we still can. And as a reminder, he and that idiot JV Vance don't like dogs. F them both. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletins

as the news requires. Till then, I'm Keith Alremman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Ulreman is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.