PUTIN ABANDONS TRUMP; TRUMP DOESN'T KNOW HE'S "WEIRD" - 8.2.24

hypocrisies of our time. But I can offer in my defense. Trump started this hell for the month before the debate. It was almost the entirety of his campaign. I will free Evan Gershkovidhich, and we can speculate about what jd Vance is doing to the Trump campaign and who only now realizes Trump is a Hitlarian racist because of his attacks on Kamala Harris Wednesday. But if Vladimir Putin has just sent Evan Gershkovich home, Trump has just lost the support of his biggest supporter, Vladimir Putin.

kicked Trump in the balls again. I think it is a reasonable inference that Trump talked to Putin or intermediaries talked, because even Trump isn't stupid enough to go so far out on that limb that he was in a different forest without some agreement in advance, some deal on Gershkovich, Ukraine,

Russian election support for Trump. And clearly Putin didn't even warn Trump this was coming, didn't even bother to give Trump a chance to get out in front of this and claim he Trump had been working behind the scenes, or he Trump was hopeful, or even that he had now decided that today was the time to use his influence with Putin to get Geshkovic released immediately and not

wait till November. No, none of that happened. Whatever did happen, Trump was no longer worth enough to Putin for Putin to let Trump lie just to cover his own useless ass. He just let Trump step on that rake. He just left Trump to post impotently on social media about whether we got more prisoners than they did in this deal, like he was talking about getting thirteen burgers for five bucks at McDonald's instead of just a dozen. In fact,

whatever happened, Trump was left less angry than scared. The post is whiny and covetchy, and Trump's old man yells at cloud normal way. But he's clearly surprised by this. He's clearly confused more than usual. He's clearly in the dark. Putin made a deal, all right, He made a deal with Joe Biden. Trump can't process that. The posts that Trump made doesn't mention Gershkovich by name. It doesn't mention

Putin by name. It only references Russia once. Trump doesn't even take the only avenue left open to him to not look like a fool whom Putin played like the proverbial two dollars banjo. He doesn't simply say, I am glad Gershkovich is home. And maybe most notably of all, Trump didn't dare right, I am glad Gershkovich's home because Putin did the humane thing, or I am glad Gershkovich

is home because Putin listened to my advice. Biden's advisors are leaking play by play of the deal, right down to timing the president's phone calls to foreign leaders about it to one hour before he dropped out of the Democratic presidential race. Trump he didn't even get Putin's permission to mention Putin's name on his own social media site.

All he got was everybody else posting the name of poor Otto Warmbierre, the man Trump ransomed from Kim Jong un for two million dollars who died six days after his return, died of his injuries at Kim's hands. Trump just got royally screwed by Putin at It's terrific. Oh, and there is collateral damage. Biden is Mia. One of the dumber members of the House of Representatives posted yesterday morning,

why is no one talking about it? Now? I know the phrase one of the dumber members of the House of Representatives only narrows it down to about one hundred and thirty six or one hundred and thirty seven Republicans. But this particular moron posted what I just read to you at nine to twenty nine am Eastern, nearly two hours after Bloomberg had broken the news that the Gershkovich

deal was done. Hours later, the White House retweeted it, adding a photo of President Biden and the families of the rescued hostages in the Oval Office on the phone to their love once with the caption He's been busy. Marjorie Taylor Green is a moron, but like Trump, she has a kind of set of cockroach like survival skills. Bobert is too sludge to pay attention to the world beyond whoever is sitting next to her in the theater.

There was only one congress idiot who could have ignored news that for at least ninety minutes contained a red sign flashing look out for rakes on lawn. Look out for rakes on lawn and could basically walk up to the President and say, please make sure I step on this. And that is the one and only Congresswoman Nancy Mace, and God bless her. She is a continuing gift to the Democratic Party. That tweet that she put out asking where Biden is and how he's am she still has

it pinned to her account. The Putin thing is so bad it may have even registered with Trump. But of course for him, everything is transient, and he knows he has just landed on the winning strategy in the new Look presidential campaign, so he's doubling down on it. That new Look is of course that Kamala Harris can't be black because she's also of Indian heritage, and he's convinced.

He proved it Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists and everybody loves him because his campaigns black media director went on Fox yesterday and directly addressed the controversy. They brought up the controversy over why the NABJ didn't like Trump do the thing by zoom. Trump believes this because Trump is a moron, but he's convinced this is a winner. He posted about it at least four times yesterday, including posting the copy of the Kamala Harris birth certificate

that indicates Jamaican heritage. And everybody knows Jamaicans aren't black. They're from Jamaica in Queens in New York, near the carvel on Union Tonpike. I know how stupid that sounds, but you have to understand how stupid Trump is. I just picked that out of thin air. I don't have any evidence of this directly, but he may really think Jamaica means the part of the New York City borough

in which he was raised. I mentioned previously the theory that Trump believes other countries are emptying their mental asylums and sending their patients here because the word asylum is used all the time about immigration, and he cannot process the idea that a word has two meanings, and thus if you identify as black, you're not allowed to identify as anything else. And Jamaica is in Queen's. This is how his mind works, or more correctly, how it doesn't work.

More importantly, Trump thinks this is his led Pipe cinch winning strategy. Because the nation's top two newspapers failed again, Mother Jones headline white Man tells black journalists his black opponent is not black. True and witty. Washington Post headline, Trump's attack on Harris's racial identity moves contest into new phase. New York Times headline, Trump says Harris became a black

person only recently. Again, this is as if Trump got up and in a speech threatened to burn the Post and the Times to the ground, and the Post headline about it was Trump criticizes Post, Times, and the Times headline was Trump remarks make publishers contemplate building renovations. Now, each of these papers suddenly changed their headlines, something that has happened so often because of their pusillanimous conduct these last few years that you wonder if they have one

editor just in charge of changing headlines. But the Times was back last night with a new dilly. Trump escalates race attacks on Harris, worrying some Republicans. And again, this is the most openly racist presidential candidate since at least George Wallace, and probably if you grade against the curve of their own time, the most racist presidential candidates since at least Woodrow Wilson, or maybe even since Jefferson Davis. But go on, New York Times tell me about how

he would be president. Trying to ignite a race war in this country is worrying some Republicans because that's who should be worried, right, Republicans, They're the true victims here. Has anybody checked to make sure the Republicans are okay? After Trump? What he said, what he said about and Black,

and he asked, what you said? She's not. The happy part of this, which again is a vibe as opposed to a poll, is that yesterday, twenty four hours later, thirty six hours after Trump's KKK level performance in Chicago, they were still talking about this at length on all news radio in New York, which is basically now only about subway mugging and traffic reports. And guess what, they were not exactly defending Trump in this People were really

pissed off. I believe Trump can now pretty much kill off his campaign chances by just grabbing this third rail in his next three four five speeches. I mean, he didn't grab it, not really. Thursday night, they put up some graphics on the screens at the rally in Pennsylvania, but as the remarkably obtuced CNN commentator Scott Jennings put it in an equally remarkable moment of clarity, and it was just a moment. Trump did crap the bed today. The only question is if he's going to roll around

in it or change the sheets. Huh. Great, now we're back to the goddamned pe tape. Hey, I didn't bring it up happily for Vice President Harris and the future of democracy. We all know the answer to the Scott Jennings rhetorical question. I mean, look, he's not even dumping JD. Vance,

let alone this. She can't be African, She's Jamaican. Bit Vance was nice enough to call Harris quote a total phony who caters to whatever audience is in front of her, which is pretty funny even before you remember that JD. Vance used to be named Jimmy Hammill, and before that he was named J. D. Bowman, and before that he was named James Donald Bowman. Whoever the hell he is, he has a remarkable facility for saying the absolute worst

thing possible and never ever realizing it. In an interview with the supposedly neutral news site Notice, he insisted there is no backroom chatter about replacing him on the ticket, quoting I think that any Republican who comes out of the gate as the new VP nominee is going to get attacked, and he was confident that he has Trump's support. It's quoting again the same thing they did to Mike Pence. Yeah, JD. Let me let me just put my arm around you here, bud.

Take you over here, away from where all the reporters and cameras are, and explain to you what Trump actually did do to Mike Pence. You need a moment to start screaming. Just go out through this door so nobody sees you. Thanks, Jimmy. So Vance is a continuing gift to the Democrats, and now the gift is mutating into a different kind of gift because the Republicans want to know who has been spreading the story that they are

trying to get rid of this idiot. The answer, according to a dozen different Trump campaign staffers and allies and fellow travelers speaking anonymously to the website The Bulwark, the answer as to who is trashing JD. Vance is unanimously Kelly Ann Conway. Now Kelly and con Job insists she's not making any calls about Vance, She's getting calls about Vans. The Bulwark quotes a confidant of Junior Trump saying, Daddy is quote pissed off about it. He knows it's her.

I will repeat something I learned during the twenty sixteen campaign, and then the events of the following few years confirmed the source on everything at the beginning of the Trump administration. The source for the mainstream media, especially the television network news divisions, the source was Kelly An Conway. I have explained here before about the start of the rifts between me and my accent my much longer truly good friend,

Katie Turr. The start of that was about her inexplicable, angry defense of Kelly and Conway, to the point of selling me out a couple of times in a book. Another reporter who covered Trump on the stump and then in Washington explained to me, duh, Kelly Ann is everybody's source. The most important part of the Kellyan Conway story, though, is what she says about Trump and Vance. She says he will never dump Vance because, quote, he's loyal. He was loyal to me. He's a loyal guy. He sticks

with things. Yeah, they were all loyal to Fredo too. As to the other vice presidential candidate, we will have an answer Monday or Tuesday. Since the new ticket hits the trail, then you have no doubt heard that. Yesterday, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania canceled a weekend of fundraisers in suburban New York that were for his own campaign committee.

There was also a meeting among Harris's team and Shapiro on Wednesday, possibly by zoom and possibly meaning no more than that they've now met with every name you heard, Pierro, Mark Kelly, Tim Walls, and of course JD. Vance, justin

Casey loses the vice presidential nomination he already has. And lastly, if you are having trouble fathoming the impact of that one really ordinary word past, which nearly all of us assessing Trump drove years or decades ago, or in my case, in a previous century, if you're wondering why weird bothers them, so, here's the one weird trick that explains everything about weird. Trump does not know he's weird. Well, they're the weird ones.

until last week. There's a North Dakota happily for him. Anyway. Trump has the perfect response to this. You heard him, I'm not weird, You're weird, And history, of course tells us the one reply that always gets the guy calling you names is to yell at him to stop calling you names, and then yell at him that they're the ones who are weird. Not you. Nobody's ever called me weird, not just the just the last. I don't know seventy

five eighty million Americans who've been born. Also of interest here, Elon Musk and the Venezuelan dictator Maduro are apparently going to have a boxing match. At least that's what Musk says. And as we know, everything Musk has ever said turned out to be true. No, I'm sorry, I read that wrong. Everything Musk has ever said turned out to be false. That's next. This is countdown. This is count down with Keith Olberman Stella ahead of us on this ediative countdown.

Since I started reading Thurber to an audience that would have been in twenty ten, it was my late father's idea. We wound up doing a live show and an audio book. I thought he was nuts. Anyway, I have frequently been asked since twenty ten if Thurber wrote a novel, No, I think are truly great humorists pretty much uniformly did not write novels. Ring Lardner did not. Mankin, though not a humorist per se, certainly traded in laughs. He didn't.

But at least Thurber came close a book of short stories, hyperbolic recollections of his youth, mostly in Columbus, Ohio, including two of his longer, greater short stories, including his signature work, The Night the Bed Fell. The book was called My Life and Hard Times, and I have the third best story from it to read to you this week, and it's pretty damn good, all about the timeless travails of somebody trying to get through college. University days coming up first,

there are still more new idiots to talk about. The daily roundup of the miscreants, morons and Dunning Kruegriffet specimens who constitute two days worst persons in the world. The brons artie moreno owner of your Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga. This statement was released yesterday by Mike Trout, the superstar the Angels, once compared to Mickey Mantle and once considered pretty much unanimously as the best baseball player

of the century. Since my initial surgery on May third to repair my meniscus, my rehabilitation proved longer and more difficult than anticipated. After months of hard work, I was devastated yesterday when an MRI showed a tear in my meniscus that will require surgery again, ending my hopes of returning this season. I will do everything I can to come back even stronger. I'll continue to help my team and teammates from the dugout as we press forward into

the second half of the season. Thank you for your support. Mike Trout reached the majors with the Los Angeles Angels in twenty eleven. Since then, his team has made the postseason once. He has played in three playoff games in his life. Twenty fourteen, his Angels were swept by the Kansas City Royals, three games during which Trout went one for twelve. His team led Game three one to nothing after the top of the first inning, then Kansas City

scored three in the bottom of the first inning. Otherwise, he has never been in a playoff game in which his team was ahead, let alone a game in which he contributed in some way. Perhaps still a man with a chance to be the greatest player of his time has never played in the playoffs. Mike turns thirty three next Wednesday, and you wonder if perhaps this is one of those Twilight Zone episodes where you ask the genie in the bottle to make you the greatest player of

all time and he does. And then make sure that your team around you never ever competes for anything. The Angels just sold off their stars again against the August first trading deadline. This is like I forget six, seven, eight years in a row. They've done that a couple of years ago. This Artie Moreno, who owns the Angels and has never invested in them properly. He said he was going to sell the team. Then he changed his mind. So he's part of this twilight Zone episode two only

he may be the evil genie in the bottle. Sell the team or sell Mike Trout to a major league team. Mister Moreno the runner up worser. Amy Walter of Cook Political Report. We'll start with a tweet from Garrett Hag of NBC News, thinking of the Trump supporter I interviewed in downtown Harrisburg, who, when I asked what Trump needed to do to win this election, answered simply button his lip.

Amy Walter retweeted this, and she is the publisher and editor in chief of Cook Political Report, which is not only taken seriously, but is taken seriously as a kind of nonpartisan or at least bipartisan political assess those people who don't understand the implications of what they're covering, but deliberately take the implications of what they're covering out of

their equation to be as neutral as possible. And this is what she responded to Garrett Hake of NBC News with if this election is about policy like inflation slash immigration, Trump wins. If it is about Trump, well there's the opening for Harris. This appears not to be a parody account.

This is Amy Walter's opinion, and being publisher and editor in chief of something like the Cook Political Report, you would have to hope it was a considered opinion that the election is policy inflation, immigration, meaning Trump would win. If it's about Trump, that would mean Harris would win. Amy Walter, we'd like to welcome you to the United

States of America. I don't know where you've been working, perhaps it was a different planet, but here we know that there are no issues for Trump, or policies for Trump, or real interest in things like inflation or immigration. There is only for Trump. Trump and the thought that you go into an office someome where every day and decide how your website will analyze and forecast the upcoming elections at the Cook Political Report is astonishing. It's like discovering

the school bus driver is sightless. It's just astonishing. Policy, Trump, inflation, immigration, if it's about Trump. In the world of Trump, everything is about Trump. Good God. I wonder what the original language was for. This can't have been in American English. The woman could never have been here before. But our winners. Once again that pair you've loved to hate for many decades, Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and Elon Musk, who is president

of the country in his own mind. The headline a screen shot was tweeted out Venezuelan President Maduro challenges Elon Musk to fight on national television, and all we see here is a picture of Maduro, the thug dictator who just stole the election in Venezuela, and the closed captioning over his face as he sits in front of a microphone, reading you went off the rails. Obviously that was addressed

to Musk, but here's Musk's response to this. I accept yes, Elon, training on a diet of ozembic and pharmaceuticals, is going to fight Nicholas Maduro on national television. Now, obviously this has various implications for the business world if Musk gets killed in the ring, and for the political world, and in fact for much of geopolitics, if say Maduro was

to get killed in the ring. But I'd like to raise third possibility that a lot of people don't know about, because it has happened at least what four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times before in the history of boxing, which is what essentially Maduro has challenged him to fight. I assume maybe it's UFC, but this sounds more like a boxing match. Maybe there's a cage. Maybe they could just get in the cage that the UFC fighters get into and just

stay there, both of them. I'd just like to point out, though, that at least nine times in history the following has happened. The best example probably dates to April twenty third of nineteen ten here in the wonderful city, fun city itself, New York, Gotham, a summer festival in the beautiful spring of nineteen ten at the Brooklyn Beach Athletic Club. Young Dutch a fighter faced Young Bets, another fighter. Everybody simply took the name of a more famous fighter and put

Young in front of it. In those days. Young Dutch and Young Bets fought at the Brooklyn Beach ac on April twenty third, nineteen ten, and as they came out from their corners, they simultaneously threw punches and simultaneously hit each other on their respective jaws, and they both were knocked out, carried to their corners helpless, and the referee counted them both out a simultaneous knockout in which neither

of them won. Young Dutch and Young Bets have much to teach Young Musk and Young Maduro about how to have a fight live on national television. Nicholas Maduro and Elon Musk dictators of their own tiny little worlds. Jess keep thinking about Young Dutch and Young Bets two days, worst persons in the clank world. The closest thing James Thurber ever wrote to a novel was the story of his childhood, somewhat exaggerated, or, according to his family, almost

completely exaggerated. It was called My Life and hard Times. In it are stories like the night the bed fell and such as that. But my favorite, perhaps of all of his stories from his supposed youth, is called University Days. There's a lot of Well you'll hear, there's a lot of stuff in University Days, and so I present it to you for the first time on Fridays with Thurber University Days by James Thurpert. I've passed all the other courses that I took at my university, but I could

never pass botany. This was because all botany students had to spend several hours a week in a laboratory looking through a microscope at plant cells, and I could never see through a microscope. I never once saw a cell through a microscope. This used to enrage my instructor. He would wander around the laboratory, pleased with the progress all the students were making and drawing the involved and so I am told interesting structure of flower cells. Until he

came to me. I would just be standing there. I can't see anything, I would say. He would begin patiently enough explaining how anybody can see through a microscope, but he would always end up in a fury, claiming that I could too see through a microscope, but just pretended that I couldn't takes away from the beauty of flowers anyway. I used to tell him, we are not concerned with the beauty in this course, he would say, we are concerned solely with what I may call the mechanics of flowers. Well,

i'd say, I can't see anything. Try it just once again, he'd say, And I would put my eye to the microscope and see nothing at all, except now and again, a nebulous milky substance, a phenomenon of maladjustment. You were supposed to see a vivid, restless clockwork of sharply defined plant cells. I see what looks like a lot of milk. I would tell him. This, he claimed was the result of my not having adjusted the microscope properly. So he would readjust it for me, or rather for himself, and

I would look again and see milk. I finally took a deferred pass, as they called it, and waited a year and tried again. You had to pass one of the biological sciences or you couldn't graduate. The professor had come back from vacation brown as a berry, bright eyed and eager to explain cell structure again to his classes. Well, he said to me cheerily, when we met in the laboratory first hour of the semester. We're going to see

cells this time, aren't we? Yes, sir, I said, students to right of me, and to left of me, and in front of me were seeing cells. What's more, they were quietly drawing pictures of them in their notebooks. Of course, I didn't see anything. We'll try it, the professor said to me gently, with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. As God is my witness, I'll arrange this glass so that you see cells through it, or I'll

give up teaching. In twenty two years of botany I he cut off abruptly, for he was beginning to quiver all over, like Lionel Barrymore, and he genuinely wished to hold on to his temper. His scenes with me had taken a great deal out of him. As an editor's note here, if you don't recognize the name Lionel Barrymore, if you've ever seen the movie It's a Wonderful Life, mister Potter, the evil financier in the wheelchair that was played by Lionel Barrymore, who used to quiver all over.

Back to Thurber. So we tried it with every adjustment of the microscope known to man. With only one of them, did I see anything but blackness or the familiar lacteal opacity, and that time I saw, to my pleasure and amazement, a variegated constellation of flex specks and dots. These I hastily drew. The instructor, noting my activity, came back from an adjoining desk a smile, aile on his lips, his eyebrows high in hope. He looked at my cell drawing.

What's that, he demanded, with a hint of squeal in his voice. That's what I saw, I said, You didn't, You didn't, You didn't, he screamed, losing control of his temper instantly, and he bent over and squinted into the microscope. His head snapped up. That's your eye, he shouted. You fix the lens so that it reflects you've drawn your eye. Another course that I didn't like but somehow managed to

pass was Economics. I went to that class straight from the botany class, which didn't help me any in understanding either subject. I used to get them mixed up, but not as mixed up as another student in my economics class who came there direct from a physics laboratory. He was a tackle on the football team named Balensuwitz. At the time, Ohio State university had one of the best football teams in the country, and Balentsuwitz was one of

its outstanding stars. In order to be eligible to play, it was necessary for him to keep up in his studies, a very difficult matter, for while he was not dumber than an ox, he was not any smarter. Most of his professors were lenient and helped him along. None gave him more hints in answering questions or asked him simpler ones than the economics professor, a thin, timid man named Bassum.

One day, when when we were on the subject of transportation and distribution, it became Balentsowitz's turn to answer a question. Name one means of transportation, the professor said to him. No light came into the big tackle's eyes. Just any means of transportation, said the professor. Balentsuwitz sat staring at him. That is, pursued the professor, any medium, agency, or method of going from one place to another. Balentuwitz had the look of a man who is being led into a trap.

You may choose among steam, horse drawn, or electrically propelled vehicles, said the instructor. I might suggest the one which we commonly take in making long journeys across land. There was a profound silence in which everybody stirred uneasily, including Balentsuwitz and mister Bassum. Mister Bassom abruptly broke this silence in an amazing manner. Chew, Chew, chew, he said in a low voice, and turned instantly scarlet. He glanced appealingly around

the room. All of us, of course, shared mister Bassom's desire that Balentsuwitz would stay abreast of the class in economics for the Illinois game, one of the hardest and most important the season, was only a week off. Too, too, too, Some student with a deep voice moaned, and we all looked encouragingly at Balentsuwitz. Somebody else gave a fine imitation of a locomotive letting off steam. Mister Bassom himself rounded off the little shell. Ding Dong, ding dong, ding dong,

he said hopefully. Balentsowitz was staring at the floor now trying to think. His great brow furrowed, his huge hands rubbing together his face red. How did you come to college this year, mister Balentowitz asked the professor. Chuff of chuff, chuff, chuff, chuff with chuff my father sent me, said the football player. What on, asked bassm A get loans, said the tackle in a low husky voice, obviously embarrassed. No, no, said bassim. Name a means of transportation? What did you ride here

on train? Said Bealensuitz. Quite right, said the professor. Now, mister Nugent, will you tell us if I went through anguish in botany and economics for different reasons. Gymnasium work was even worse. I don't even like to think about it. They wouldn't let you play games or join in the exercises with your glasses on, and I couldn't see with mine off. I bumped into professors, horizontal bars, agricultural students swinging iron rings, not being able to see. I could

take it, but I couldn't dish it out. Also, in order to pass gymnasium, and you had to pass it to graduate, you had to learn to swim if you didn't know how. I didn't like the swimming pool. I didn't like swimming, and I didn't like the swimming instructor. And after all these years, I still don't. I never swam, but I passed my gym work anyway by having another student give my gymnasium number nine seven eight and swim

across the pool in my place. He was a quiet, amiable blonde youth number four seventy three, and he would have seen through a microscope before me if we could have gotten away with that. But we couldn't get away with that. Another thing I didn't like about gymnasium work was that they made you strip the day you registered. It is impossible for me to be happy when I am stripped and being asked a lot of questions. Still, I did better than a lanky agricultural student who was

cross examined just before I was. They asked each student what college he was in, that is, whether art, engineering, commerce, or agriculture. What college are you in? The instructor snapped at the youth in front of me, Ohio State University. He said promptly, it wasn't that agricultural student, but it was another a whole lot like him, who decided to take up journalism, possibly on the ground that when farming went to hell, he could fall back on newspaper work.

He didn't realize, of course, that that would be very much like falling back full length on a kit of Carpenter's tools. Haskins didn't seem cut out for journalism, being too embarrassed to talk to anybody and unable to use a typewriter, but the editor of the college paper assigned him to the cow barns, the sheep house, the horse pavilion,

and the animal husbandry department. Generally, this was a genuinely big beat, for took up five times as much ground and got ten times as great a legislative appropriation as the College of Liberal Arts. The agricultural student knew animals, but nevertheless, his stories were dull and colorlessly written. He took all afternoon on each of them on account of having to hunt for each letter on the typewriter. Once in a while he had to ask somebody to help

him hunt. C and L in particular, were hard letters for him to find. His editor finally got pretty much annoyed at the farmer journalists because his pieces were so uninteresting see here, Haskins. He snapped at him one day, why is it we never have anything hot from you on the horse pavilion Here we have two hundred head of horses on this campus, more than any other university in the Western Conference except Purdue, and yet you never get any real low down on them. Now shoot over

to the horse barns and dig up something lively. Haskins shambled out and came back in about an hour. He said he had something. Well tart it off, snappily, said the editor, something people will read. Sent to work, and in a couple of hours brought a sheet of typewritten paper to the desk. It was a two hundred word story about some disease that had broken out among the horses. Its opening sentence was simple but arresting. It read, who has noticed the sores on the tops of the horses

in the animal husbandry building. Ohio State was a land grant university, and therefore two years of military drill was compulsory. We drilled with old Springfield rifles and studied the tactics of the Civil War, even though the World War was going on at the time. At eleven o'clock each morning, thousands of freshmen and sophomores used to deploy over the campus,

moodily creeping up on the old chemistry building. It was good training for the kind of warfare that was waged at Shiloh, but it had no connection with what was going on in Europe. Some people used to think that there was German money behind it, but they didn't dare say that, or they would have been thrown in as German spies. It was a period of muddy thought and marked, I believe, the decline of higher education in the Middle West. As a soldier, I was never any good at all.

Most of the cadets were glumly indifferent soldiers, but I was no good at all. Once General Littlefield, who was commandant of the Cadet Corps, popped up in front of me during regimental drill and snapped, you are the main trouble with this university. I think he meant that my type was the main trouble with the university, but he may have met me individually. I was mediocre at drill, certainly,

that is until my senior year. By that time I had drilled longer than anybody else in the Western Conference, having failed at military at the end of each preceding year, so that I had to do it all over again. I was the only seniors still in uniform. The uniform, which when new had it made me look like an interurban railway conductor. Now that it had become faded and too tight, made me look like Bert Williams in his Bellboy Act. This had a definitely bad effect on my morale.

Even so, I had become, by sheer practice little short of wonderful at squad maneuvers. One day, General Littlefield picked our company out of the whole regiment, tried to get it mixed up by putting it through one movement after another as fast as we could execute them. Squad's right, squad's left, squad's on right into line, squad's right, about

squad's left, front into line, et cetera. In about three minutes, one hundred and nine men were marching in one direction, and I was marching away from them at an angle of forty degrees, all alone. Company halt, shouted General Littlefield, that man is the only man who has it right. I was made a corporal for my achievement. The next day, General Littlefield summoned me to his office. He was swatting flies when I came in. I was silent, and he

was silent too. For a long time. I don't think he remembered me or why he had sent for me, But he didn't want to admit that. He swatted some more flies, keeping his eyes on them. Narrowly before he let go with the swatter. But not up your coat, he snapped. Looking back on it. Now I can see that he meant me, although he was looking at a fly. But I just stood there. Another fly came to rest on a paper in front of the General and began

rubbing its hind legs together. The General lifted the swatter cautiously. I moved restlessly, and the fly flew away. You startle them, barked General Littlefield, looking at me severely. I said I was sorry. That won't help the situation, snapped the General with cold military logic. I didn't see what I could do, except offered to chase some more flies toward his desk, but I didn't say anything. He stared out the window at the far away figures of co ed's crossing the

campus towards the library. Finally he told me I could go, so I went. He either didn't know which cadet I was, or else he forgot what he wanted to see me about. It may have been that he wished to apologize for having called me the main trouble with the university, or maybe he had decided to compliment me on my brilliant drilling of the day before, and then at the last minute decided not to. I don't know, I don't think about it much anymore. What was the last time you

heard of anybody having spirits of camphor their room at night? Eh? I have some camphor over here, and I got a big box of Frankenson's and a few leeches. I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Brian Ray and John Phillip Shanelle, the musical directors of Countdown, arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mister Chanelle was the one handling orchestration and keyboards. Mister Ray was on guitar, bass and drums, and it was produced by Tko Brothers.

Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by the best baseball stadium organist ever, Nancy Faust. The sports music is the Olderman theme from ESPN two. It was written by Mitch Warren Davis Curtesy of ESPN Inc. Other music was arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. My announcer today was my friend Kenny Maine. The Thurber, of course, was by Thurber, James Thurber, and everything else was pretty

much as usual my fault. That's countdown for this the ninety sixth day until the two thousand and twenty four presidential election, the three d and third 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, mister president. Use presidential immunity to stop him from doing it again.

While waste doll can and also anti semitic, anti immigration Republicans, please stop shooting at Trump. The next scheduled countdown and yes we are in year three of this series, that'll be Tuesday bulletins as always as the news requires until the next one. I'm Keith Olderman. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck. Countdown with Keith Olderman is

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