KAMALA DOUBLES POLL LEAD - UP BY 4; FAVORED BY NATE SILVER - 8.6.24

next development could be expected to happen yesterday. I thought of this because Kamala Harris has chosen her running mate, or will have chosen her running mate, or as you already know, but I don't. As I record this, she has chosen her running mate earlier for you, but later for me. Because John Wydra astuteley rewriting on the fly some outdated copy that must have read until tomorrow. John

Widra was right. The next development in the veepstakes is not expected until today Walls or Shapiro, according to Reuter's the Finalists. I'll get to that. But despite the near universal contention otherwise, the vice presidency isn't the lead story and the decision may or may not make any damn difference. The Morning Consult and Decision Desk poll numbers are the lead story. She is ahead forty eight forty four. A week ago in Morning Consult she was ahead by one point.

Two weeks ago, Trump was ahead by two points. The Vice President is ahead in that poll among independents forty two to thirty seven. She's ahead among voters under the age of thirty five by forty nine to forty. Morning Consult also does what it calls a news cycle poll. Have you heard positive things or negative buzz about the candidates?

I swear they use the word buzz and after the Republican Convention, Trump was at almost fifty to fifty positive and negative stories, positive and negative buzz, And in two weeks since, he has sunk to twenty three points underwater negative buzz. In the same span, the Harris Express has retained its speed. Her favorability in this poll was at fifty percent last week. It is now virtually the same

at forty eight percent. They also did some polling on Harris versus Trump attributes Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, State by state. Trump wins who's too old in a landslide. Harris wins who's mentally fit in a landslide like forty eight to thirty five. Harris also wins life dangerous in a landslide. Harris wins cares about me based on the state from two points to ten points. She's tied him on strong leader in Michigan, is within seven points on

strong leader in three other states. And who is more Presidential? Harris wins in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It is tied in Nevada. He wins most Presidential by one point in Georgia that was before that farce. Over the weekend, he wins it by three points in North Carolina at four points in Pennsylvania. Survey USA came out yesterday with national polling done on Sunday, Harris by three. Three weeks ago, that poll was Trump by three. It's another six point swing.

CBS News put out a poll with Ugov on Sunday that had Harris ahead nationally by one. In its poll, Joe Biden never led never. This was the first CBS poll since Trump led Biden by five. CBS has them tied in the swing states. Morning consult will presumably have a new set of swing state raw numbers polls for

Bloomberg today. They put one out last Tuesday, and in that Harris led huge in Michigan, by one or two points, in Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin, was tied in Georgia, was behind by two in North Carolina, behind by four in Pennsylvania. Her net lead in all seven of the states last week was one point. So watch to see if there is a new one today or maybe tomorrow. Early Vote Action polled the state of Pennsylvania and it finds Pennsylvania tied forty eight forty eight or forty five forty five,

with Kennedy at four. And so what except Early Vote Action is the group led by that sleazy trumpist Scott Presler, the one who bills himself as the Persistence. It's tied in the Persistence poll in Pennsylvania. Persistence as in if symptoms persist longer more than four hours see your doctor

decision Desk. HQ I mentioned them earlier. They put out an average of swing state polls yesterday and at chose Harris gaining in nine out of ten battleground states and the only one she hasn't gained in is Virginia, where President Biden led by three and she leads by three per Decision Desk. She has already taken away Trump's lead in Michigan by one point, cut his seven point leads in Arizona and Georgia to three point leads, cut his nine point lead in Nevada to three points, cut his

ten point lead in North Carolina to three points. Again. I am at just about the point where the numbers will make my head explode, and I'm sitting here looking at them. I can read along with my voice. The gist of this is it's like at some singular points along a road or even a city street. We have them here along parts of Park Avenue. You can see ten or sometimes it seems like twenty intersections at a time,

and the traffic lights. You are only startled by one occurrence in such a scene, when all the lights are green, and for Vice President Harris right now, and Boyd can change in a hurry, ask the Republican nomineeh, what's his name? Again? Ask that guy? But right now for Harris, all the lights are green, all right, Two more numbers and I'll stop. There is one inside the Decision Desk averages that I love this is because I kind of made it up myself.

I did the addition here myself. Last poll in eight Swing states, Trump's total net lead was thirty seven points. That's all the individual leads added together. He wasn't leading the Swing States by thirty seven overall, but it was thirty seven. Now in eight states his lead is nine points. And it's really difficult to point at Nate Silver one week and say he's full of shit, and then quote

him the next week and go, nice work, Nate. But I'm doing this less to support the Decision desk and morning consult polls than I am to help breath the vibe. God forgive me for the first time. Nate Silver's projection is that she has the better chance of winning the electoral college fifty three percent and winning it, he says, by two hundred and eighty two votes to two hundred

and fifty five for Trump. He has her up in the polls by one and nine tenths points, largely because his average of the polls in Pennsylvania has her up by point there, and he has her up in Michigan by just under three. And Nate Silver has Kamala Harris within six points of the lead in Florida. Okay, maybe full of shit was an exaggeration on my part. I'm sorry, Nate. Now it is August sixth, and if on July sixteenth I had written all this, all the numbers would have

gone the other way. The Harris lights all would have been read, and I would have made you listen to them only in order to try to convince you that encouraging the Democrats to change candidates was the right course, just as a reminder about how fast things can change, even after a decade in which they barely seemed to

change at all and certainly never got better. They could revert back to Trump three weeks from today, then re revert to Harris three weeks after that, then re re revert back to Trump, then re re re revert back to Harris three weeks after that, which would be the twenty ninth of October, which would be fine. I haven't seen any polling suggesting one vice presidential option would help her more than any other would That will will have

helped whatever would have helped. The Associated Press put out a poll on the first of the month, and the first of this month is so long ago that the poll offered a choice of Josh Shapiro, Mark Kelly, Andy Bashier, and Roy Cooper. No Tim Walls and Cooper had withdrawn from consideration two days earlier, and he was still in

the poll. In the poll, sixty percent of Americans, fifty seven percent of Democrats did not know enough about Josh Shapiro to have an opinion about him, twenty percent liked him, twenty percent didn't like him. Seventy percent of Americans didn't know enough about Basher. Half of Americans knew enough about Mark Kelly, thirty percent liked him, twenty percent didn't. Half of them still didn't know who he was, and he's twins.

They did. The Associated Press polsters somehow cobbled together enough data to offer approval data on Governor Walls and found ninety percent of Americans didn't know enough about him. But that, of course was before he invented the word weird. All the polling of Democrats seemed unanimous. If it was their choice, the vice president would be Pete Budajeg. What trumpists and of course political media have been looking for, dreaming of

praying for, is democratic schism over anything Biden leaving the ticket. Oh, Democrats and disarrayed. Nope, we all agreed on that Harris become his successor. Out. We all agreed on that too. Who the vice president is, they'll oh, they'll beat each other at Nope. I think we're all going to agree on that the schism was over the president seeking reelection. The vice presidential choice is unlikely to leave a trail of disaffected Democrats vowing to stay home because it isn't

Tim Kaine. Again and again, Reuter said it was Waltz or Shapiro. They and Mark Kelly met with her on Sunday, and all all I will do here is again hearken back to the eighties. On the night of July sixteenth, nineteen eighty, it seemed so likely that former President Gerald Ford would agree to become Ronald Reagan's running mate that a bunch of morning newspapers around the country published the story as if it were a done deal, and a New York radio station was still going with it the

next sunrise, hours actor the negotiations had collapsed. Of the two supposed finalists, my reaction is, sure, whoever you like, Madam Vice President, just write it down somewhere slightly deeper analysis points to these questions, how is it that Tim Walls reads old and Josh Shapiro reads young when Walls is only nine years and seventy six days older than Shapiro, and by the way, Mark Kelly is two months older

than Walls. It's the hair and the glasses. Walls looks a little like Rupert Murdock because of the hair in the glasses. Solution, get them new classes, problem solved. Of course, it's deeper than that. I look at it and wonder exactly what Shapiro brings outside of being likely to help carry Pennsylvania, which is a lot. Don't underestimate that. But she might carry Pennsylvania anyway. You wonder if being Jewish still matters today, especially with the would be president's husband

being Jewish. Then you wonder if we have any idea what matters anymore? Given that the Republicans have now run three elections in a row, an anti Semitic, anti democracy, racist bastard. I will say I didn't get any pop out of Kelly, who is married to a friend of mine. Walls has already shown signs he could become as unlikely a folk hero as we have in this country and whatever percentage of the Kamala Harris reminds everybody Trump is

a crazy old man. Effect that would be given back by going with an older white man like Tim Walls is mitigated by the fact that unless she goes off the board with Buddhage Edge or somebody else, they are all older white men. Only Shapiro seems to have it more under control. I'm telling you, Tim Walls is five years younger than I am. You should be able to make sure he cleans up nice. He's already the first Democratic politician to stick a label on Trump. That has

to mean a lot. If it's not the right choice for vice president, he's got to be a secretary of Memes or something. Obviously, the identity is the key here, but to me, almost as important is where the new team is going on its opening joint tour. Starting in Philly, Wow, no brainer, Wisconsin than Detroit, and finishing in Phoenix in Vegas completely logical. But in the middle they're going to Raleigh,

North Carolina. They're going to Savannah. This buzz stuff is for real and it is spectacle And if you need any further inspiration, Yes, President Jimmy Carter who a month ago was said by his family to have just days left, has changed his mind. He has told his son he intends to hang on until at least November fifth, so he can vote for Kamala Harris for President of the

United States. Given that, I think you and I can get our sorry asses out of bed one more time a week and do something more than we are doing now. I leave that to you to figure out what the hell that is.

everybody thought that's a great idea. So we one and did that, and we thought it would be a music for whoever found it or something. The next day it was like it was on every television station. It was a front page of every paper, and I turned on the TV and there was like a mile of yellow tape and there were twenty odd cards. There were a helicopter's lying over it, and I was like, oh my god, what.

in the movie The American President, there's art. The New Yorker did not just have the story of the poor Derange changed former environmentalist finding a bear supposedly killed by a motorist, taking the body of the bear, deciding to skin it and eat it, then getting distracted because he'd already planned a day of falconing, as one does, and then after the falconing was done, going instead to a famous New York steakhouse where they do not serve bear,

And he could have done the whole joke about do you have bear here? Do you serve bear? And they could have said no, and he could have said, oh, too bad, I have one in the car. So he still had the dead bear in his car, and he had to dump the bear somewhere, I guess before the car started to smell. So he drove to Central Park and dumped it there, But he put an old bicycle he just happened to have in his car on top of it to make it look like the bear had

been killed by a cyclist. Well, not only did the New Yorker have all that, but it also had a photo of Bobby Kennedy Junior with his hand in the poor dead infant's mouth, pretending the bear was biting him. And reports from twenty fourteen have surface that the poor bear cub had stab and slash wounds. And oh, by the way, the photo of the cub and Bobby Kennedy. In the photo, Bobby Kennedy's fly is unzipped. I'll repeat that. In the photo, Bobby Kennedy's fly is unzipped. Sometimes you

eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you. I met Bob Kennedy once and I talked to him several times and he called me his hero, which was really flattering in two thousand and four, now not so much. We met on the field before a New York Mets game in twenty eleven and he hugged me, and there's a photo and I have to say, I know he's older than me, but boy, the last thirteen years have treated me better than I thought. Don't handle so many

dead bears, Bob, all right? So the hero part was from actor the two thousand and four election, when I did a couple of reports on MSNBC questioning what the hell happened to the John Kerry vote in Ohio because

none of the numbers seemed to make any sense. On election night, officials in Warren County, which is southern Ohio, like Newton Falls, Warren, Ohio, locked down the county administration building and threw all the reporters there from monitoring the vote count and announced that there was a terrorist threat that on a scale of one to ten was a ten, claiming the information came from an FBA agent. The FBI

denied that then and denies it now. But they said there was a terrorism threat and everybody had to get out and they would just count the votes. Well, nobody was watching. Now. This made no sense whatsoever, because Warren County was Ohio Territory through and through. People in that part of Ohio speak with Southern accents. I knew one of them in college, and he said he was from Ohio, and I had never heard of anybody in Ohio who wasn't from Cleveland. And boy did he surprise. He told

lot this. I swear to goodness. So Warren County should have gone very heavily for George Bush in two thousand and four, and it did. And in two thousand only twenty eight percent of voters there had gone for Gore, and then in two thousand and four twenty eight percent went for Kerry. Well, why would there be a suppression.

There's no evidence of suppression. The numbers look right. Twenty eight percent in twenty twenty eight percent two thousand and four, except that in two thousand al Gore stopped running TV commercials in Ohio many weeks before election day, and he had Ralph Nader going against him. In addition to Bush, Kerry competed in Ohio to the last, knowing that it would probably decide the election, and it did. There was

no Nator or strong third party candidate. And yet, even despite all his additional efforts in Ohio, John Kerry got the same percentage of votes that al Gore had. And I said, how come? And the phone call came in the next day, you are my hero? And it was Bob Kennedy Junior. And imagine this, I mean understand, I was nine years old when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated the day my sister was born. There really is that kind of visceral family tie to

that name. And he's telling me I'm his hero because I raised that question. Well, I soon found out that Bob seemed a little driven by conspiracy theories even twenty years ago. But given what happened to his father and his uncle and the subsequent you know, fifty years of daily new conspiracy theories about either or both of them. I kind of let him off the hook about the

subject of conspiracy theories. Well, I made a huge mistake, because, as RFK Junior is discovering right now, the conspiracy theories eventually come around and catch you. He's caught. He is now caught. He is now caught between a bear and New York City. And a picture of himself with a bear and with his fly unzipped, caught between a bear and New York Cidy, New York.

fair against Trump? Probably better than he was faring last week. In any event, you have to vote today or early tomorrow. For the Polympics, and having watched them, I'd have to say, there's some very impressive, you know, three legged agility dogs, and there's some cats that can jump like seventeen feet straight up in the air. I'm very impressed by them. Menasior winner. But besides that, there are two different Supreme

Court justices on the three person worst person's list. And honestly, has anybody ever seen Clarence Thomas reading anything or listening to the lawyers at the Supreme Court, Because from what we know of him publicly, all he has done for the last twenty years is accept all expenses paid travel and vacations from Harlan Crowe. There's more of them. That's next. This is Countdown.

I promise not to tell next. First, there's still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the mis grants, morons and Dunning Krueger effects specimens who constitute today's wor bisons in the world. The morons worse Neil Gorsich of the Supreme Court. Gorsichis on the Biden ethics and term limits plan. Mister Gorsch, I hate to call him Justice, It would be meant ironically. Justice Gorsich says, I'm not going to get into what is now a

political issue during a presidential election year. I don't think that would be helpful. And then he gets into a political issue during a presidential election year. He adds, quote, I just say, be careful, hey, Justice, which one of you perjured yourself in front of the Senate about Roe v. Wade gorsicic Biden should be careful. No, you should be careful.

Remember how Chief Justice Roger B. Tawney ended up when everybody decided they weren't going to listen to him anymore in a boarding house by himself, counting his fingers and toes Worser. This is the Supreme Court edition of the program The Silver goes to Justice Clarence Thomas. Now you think he would have met his quota of graft and corruption and bribetaking. But no, no, no, he hasn't. From The New York Times, Thomas failed to publicly disclose additional

private travel. Has anybody ever seen him at the Supreme Court. I mean when Laura Ingram and I went out on our one actual date that was not a hostage drama where she took me hostage. That was the one in New York. The one actual date we went on was in Washington, and she took me to the Supreme Court and had me sit in Justice Thomas's chair at the Supreme Court, at the main room, at the main courting room,

at the Supremeist of the Supreme Court portions. She had me sit there so I can say I put my ass in Clarence Thomas's seat and did nothing for this country exactly as he would have done. Well, the point of my mentioning it now is he wasn't there. Then has anybody ever at we've seen him at the Supreme Court. It seems to be all he does is drive around the world in an RV and get carried places by people paying for him. And he doesn't seem to think

there's anything wrong with this. Billions of dollars worth of free travel, all right, billions maybe an exaggeration, but The Times reports he failed to publicly disclose private travel provided by the wealthy conservative donor Harlan Crow. Again what does he do for a living? Well, I move, I'm involved in logistics. What kind of logistics I move? Clarence Thomas around the country. A top Democratic senator has said this in a letter filed yesterday Customs and Border Protection Records.

Customs and Border, I mean when he had to go through customs in his graft. Are you going to declare anything? Yes, I take a bribe here, I'm taking a bribe. Customs and Border Protection Records revealed that the Justice and his wife, Virginia, took a round trip between Hawaii and New Zealand in November twenty ten on mister Crow's private jet. I'm guessing that's not a short hop. That's not going from one Hawaiian island to the other. And what's the difference it's

to a foreign country on a private dime. You're declaring me think, oh, I'm corrupt as f According to Wyden's letters, Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat of Oregon, one of my favorite senators, writing to mister Crow's lawyer demanding that he supply more information about the financial relationship between the two men. You know what's worse than this? In Republican circles, the thing that may actually undo Clarence Thomas. It's not the graft. They admire the graft. They all think they're going to

get a cut of the graft. Their goal is to be that way. There's studies done of conservatives who believe that their financial situation will someday be everything they've ever wanted. Conservatives worth ten thousand dollars are convinced they're going to become multi millionaires. That's what the Trump appeal is. They've done study after study after study indicating this is literally true. This is the way they think all going to win the lottery. They're convinced of this. They admire this. Look

at what this self made man has done. He has managed himself into a position of being the most bribed man in America, more than more than an usher at a ballpark fifty years ago when you could pay him fifty cents and get a better seat. You know what's going to do him in with the Republicans though not this. They're gonna build a statue to him and you know, out of gold. What's going to undo him is when they all realize that Clarence's wife never had any children.

So that means, according to the Republicans. They should be set adrift on a loose iceberg somewhere. Do I have that right? Jd Vance if that is your real name? But our winner, the worst e lawn Musk, the whiney little b word immigrant son of a You may have heard that he responded to violent protests in England stoked by the right wing and falsely blamed on immigrants, of which Elon Musk is one. In this country and in several others. He has written in response to this, civil

war is inevitable. Now, apart from the fact that he owns a website and he is seemingly encouraging civil war in the United Kingdom, it turns out that last November Elon Musk responded to another one of these money idiots on Twitter zero Hedge by answering something that he posted on November first of last year, civil war is brewing. On the thirteenth of last November to Radio Genoa, Europe appears to be headed for civil war. On October twentieth,

he wrote Europe is sted for civil war? Something else like that on October fourteenth last year, let's see civil war is brewing? November one, if corrupt trends continue, he wrote to Douglas K. Murray on the tenth of October last year, civil war in Europe is inevitable, among other things. Elon seems to be wrong a lot on this one topic. But that's not gonna stop him. He's gonna keep writing that civil war is inevitable, even though it clearly is not.

It's almost We have what five examples, six examples here? God knows how many more we all have lives to live on like this pasty idiot. Well he has to worry about is if he gets his ozempic in on time. How many times has he claimed this as if he wanted civil wars, if there were money in civil war? Well it probably is, Elon. How has he not o deed yet? Musk civil war? My ass two days worst person and the world. The phone rang in my office at Channel five in La I am a viewer. I

took a deep breath. You never knew where a call that started like that was going to end up. I just wanted you to know. I was out golfing at Riviera at the Riviera Club this afternoon, and Bruce McNall, the owner of the Kings, well he just walked through the locker room saying, hey, guys, if you want to buy your season Kings tickets, do it now. I just traded for Wayne Gretzky. The price is going to go

up next week. To be polite to the viewer, I asked a few questions, but frankly, the story was pretty stupid. This was the second week of August nineteen eighty eight, and there was a lot of talk that the Edmonton Oilers were going to trade Wayne Gretzky, the most famous player in hockey, and there was nearly as much talk that that trade would send him to use in La. But the owner of the Kings just telling passers by at random in a golf clubhouse that he had just

made the trade. I was suspicious that I was being pranked. Fifteen minutes later, my phone rang again. Hi, I'm a big fan of yours and I watch every night. Here we go again. I was just having lunch with a friend of mine out here at the golf course in bel Air, and like an hour later, freaking Bruce McNall shows up in the dining room and asks for everybody's attention, and he says he's just completed the deal for Wayne Gretzky,

and now I was beginning to get actually worried. I was a lame duck as the sports director of Channel five in Los Angeles, and for months there had been rumors that I was moving down the street to Channel two in Los Angeles. There had been these rumors mostly because I was moving down the street to Channel two. The deal had been done months earlier. We were going to announce it that week. In fact, as these two guys called in, I had actually been busily packing up

my Channel five office. My thought now was that the sportscaster at the local NBC station, who had a bit of a substance problem and a nasty temper and a real dislike for the fact that I was nearly as popular as he was, was setting me up. I had once managed to mislead him into thinking we were about to break a story about a big LA football trade.

There was no breaking story because there was no trade, and he had actually mentioned it on the air, having clearly stolen it from me because I was the one who had made it up. And oh was he furious at me for all I knew he wanted to embarrass me. Three weeks before I moved into direct competition with him

at five, six, and eleven. This August eighth, nineteen eighty eight was in fact my first day back after I had burned all my Channel five vacation time, and for all I knew, this guy at NBC had been having his staffers call me for a week with made up sightings of McNall confirming a Gretzky trade that frankly, I never believed was going to happen. I mean not to get two side tracked here. But one day my phone rang and it was a kid who said, Hi, mister Oelberman.

I'm sorry, but I'm a final as to be an intern here Channel four for Fred Rogan, and mister Rogan says I can have the spot, but only if I call you up right now and say I'm sorry. If I call you up and I tell you to go f yourself, the kid did not say f To his credit, he used his real name, Bill Weir. He later became a sportscaster for the third Network station in LA, then a correspondent for ABC and now CNN, and I have not let a year go by since without reminding him

of his f yourself internship phone call. He said, life paid him back by making him work with the guy for several months. Anyway, back to Gretzky night. Two supposed listeners have called to say that Bruce McNall, the owner of the La Kings, is apparently trapesing through golf locker rooms and dining rooms at country clubs to tell them he has completed a trade for the babe Ruth of hockey, Wayne Gretzky. And they're calling me because they like me.

I'm suspicious. And now the phone rings again. This guy was playing golf at the La country Club. Same story. McNall, buy your Kams tickets. Now, I just got Kretzky. The next caller had been it yet a fourth club, I think Wilshire or something. If this was a prankett was a big one, and bluntly I had begun to admire it. Finally came a fifth call. You don't know me, but I watch you every night. I stumbled onto a story. I think you want to run tonight. I said, which

golf course were you at? And he said, excuse me. I was in my office all day and so was my missus. She's on the phone with me. She works for Bruce McNall. The Kings. This time, I grabbed a pencil, Honey, why don't you take it from here? And she did. She worked in the finance office and she had, literally, she said, just made out a check for fifteen million dollars to the owner of the Edmonton Oilers, Peter Pocklington.

She said, and the note memo where you write what it's for, I was told to put in Wayne Gretzky. She also had seen the trade contract identified the players the Kings were going to give up with the fifteen million to get Gretzky. They were Jimmy Carson and Martin Zellnah. There were also draft choices, but she didn't know or

didn't remember the specifics of which ones. Now, breathless, I asked her if I could call her back through the switchboard of the LA Forum where the Kings and McNall's offices were, just to confirm she was who she said she was. She said, I could, I did, she was. I believe. In fact, she turned out to be the only person on the McNall financial team that did not get charged with something. So now I went in to talk to my news director and to the producer of

our newscast. We were not on until ten PM. It was now about seven. They were very excited, and they said that given that I had exact details from a King's source, plus the four witnesses to the owner of the team shooting off his big bazoo at every golf course he could reach that we should run it, and that we should run it as the lead news story right at the start of the newscast that night, which

we did. The Kings would not confirm it, obviously, but as soon as I got off the air with my sports cast the second time I reported this story, a reporter from the Associated Press was on the phone asking me to read him my script, which he then quoted word for word and put out on their sports wire. It was on the back page of the New York Post. The next day. My friends called me from New York to say, hey, your sports cast is on the back page of the New York Post along with this big

picture of Wayne Gretzky. The leak caused the Kings to move up the announcement of the deal from their original plan, which was Thursday the eleventh, to the next night, Tuesday the ninth, A King's vice president told me at the press conference that the Oilers were enraged because they had wanted to hold off until the eleventh, because the deadline for their season ticket holders to get their deposits back

were Wednesday the tenth. The Kings were nice enough to let me of all the TV guys interview Gretzky first Live, and I congratulated Wayne on the move, and he actually congratulated me on the scoop, and I said I didn't do anything but answer the phone, and he thought about it for a second and said pretty much the same for me, and we've been friendly ever since. But the laziest scoop of all time did eventually come back with

a sting for me and some payback. A year later, we all submitted our best stories for consideration for the local Emmy for Best TV Sports Reporting for the calendar year nineteen eighty eight. I submitted Surprise, Surprise, the Gretzky scoop.

The Emmys were always judged by a committee of television types from a different city, so he didn't have that home La Bias and the guy from NBC, who I had first thought was pranking me about the Gretzky story, had somehow found out that the Emmys for nineteen eighty eight would be judged in nineteen eighty nine in Ohio.

In Columbus, Ohio, I think, so he managed to get an interview with Morgana the Kissing Bandit, who was this scantily clad, buxome woman you may remember, who in the old days of innocence, used to bribe her way onto Major League Baseball fields, then bounce out onto the plate or the mound, and she'd go and kiss stars like

George Brent and Nolan Ryan during games. Morgana MORGANA. Roberts lived near Columbus, Ohio, so sure enough, at the Emmys the next year, my exclusive report of the trade of Hockey's greatest player, Wayne Gretzky was one of the finalists for the Los Angeles Best TV Sports Reporting Emmy. But in the ceremony, and it was at some old Landmark hotel in Pasadena, they showed clips of all the pieces that were finalists and then announced that the winner was

Fred Rogan KNBC. For being chased by Morgana the Kissing Bandit, my agent stood up and bowed my girlfriend, punched me in the arm and said let's get out of here and go drinking. We left every time I've seen Wayne Gretzky since that day, and they let me do the first TV interview with him live on LA Television, and then they all laughed about how the oilers got stuck with all those returned season ticket deposits because I broke

the story prematurely. Every time I've seen Wayne since then, he's given me kind of a dead fish look, like I screwed up some plans. But interestingly, missus Wayne the Great Janet Jones just looked at me and went smiled prettily and went thanks like that. It was really sweet. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillips Chanel, musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced and performed most of our music.

Mister Chanelle handled the orchestration in keyboards, Mister Ray was on the guitars, bass and drums. It was produced by Tko Brothers, and they can correctly and truthfully say they had nothing to do with my singing. Our satirical and pithy musical comments, however, are by the best baseball stadium or agaist ever, Nancy Faust, who has stepped into the world of composition for the first time. She was the one who suggested that song. So thank you, Nancy and Dress.

Address all of your letters of complaint to Nancy care of care of me. I guess the sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN Inc. We haven't played the sports music in so long. Hold on a second. You know what I should do right now? I have control here. I should just play the sports music so that you remember what on earth the sports music sounds like. See if I could still find it here on the control panel.

It's got to be here, somewhere, oh here. It is pretty good.

so I can just keep talking about this. How about we restrike the music for the uh for the outo we call it the the outro music there it is, as it was saying, other music arranged and performed by the group No horns allowed. They have been so pleased by their association with this pro that they broke up as a crew. My announcer today was my friend Larry David doing his impression Bob Sheppard, the late announcer at

Yankee Stadium. Everything else was pretty much my fault. This is my actual Bob Sheppard impression from fifty years ago, when an outfielder named Bernie Carbo played for the Boston Red Sox and Bob Shepard did two seasons announcing at Shay Stadium, the home of the Mets, the temporary home of the New York Yankees, and leading off for the Red Sox number one Bernie Cobble number one. My announcer today was my friend Larry David, and everything else is

pretty much my fault. That's countdown for this the ninety second day until the twenty twenty four presidential election. They three hundred and seventh day since convicted felon Donald 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, well you still can. And also anti Semitic, anti immigration, nut job Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown is tomorrow. Bulletin says the news requires till then. I'm Keith Overman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. One last air it out.