TRUMP JANUARY 6TH TRIAL START DATE POSTPONED - 2.2.24
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The start date of the Trump election subversion trial in Washington has been postponed. It will not start as originally planned on March 4th.

From the impeccable Scott McFarlane of CBS, not a surprise, not unexpected, not the end of the world, still not what you want to hear. I quote him, amid the wait for an appeals court ruling on Trump's claim of presidential immunity and other potential delays, the Washington, D.C. federal court no longer lists USA v. Donald Trump criminal trial on its calendar for March 4, 2024.

The reality of the Trump stall working cannot be stopped. You can only hope to contain it, as somebody once said. There is nothing official on this, only the fact that the trial date has dropped off the calendar, and Judge Chutkin has said she no longer anticipates that she will be overseeing a trial in March.

The Washington Post finally jumped on the story last night, interpreting this more encouragingly that while the stall is in progress in D.C., this may be allowing Judge Juan Merchan to begin the Stormy Daniels payoff trial here in New York sometime next month. But all this is still just the reading of tea leaves.

from the equally impeccable Norm Ornstein on whatever happened to that ruling on Trump's presidential immunity stall, and remembering that Karen Henderson was elevated to the judiciary by Reagan and to the three-judge appeals court by George W. Bush, the only one not named by Biden, quote,

There is only one plausible explanation for why the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit has delayed its ruling on a slam-dunk case involving presidential immunity. Karen LeCraft Henderson is emulating Eileen Cannon, delaying to help Donald Trump. But...

That there will be a D.C. trial on the charges brought against defendant J. Trump by Jack Smith is still a virtual certainty because the pundits can be wrong and the reporters can be wrong and the podcasters can be wrong, but...

The bureaucracy is never wrong. The federal government and the District of Columbia are also, per the sources of the Washington Post, busily planning how to secure the Fretiman Courthouse for the Trump trial by closing all the streets around the courthouse, by closing and/or controlling sidewalk access for blocks, and by ringing the entire area with metal fencing, as they did the Capitol.

after Trump began his attempted coup three years ago. So you see, Trump isn't lying. He does get things built.

Meanwhile, down the street, Marjorie Taylor Greene is the worst person ever to serve in the United States House of Representatives. This historical evidence is overwhelming that the founding fathers intended impeachment to be used to deal with the commission of indictable crimes and the abuse of power. Indictable crimes.

I'm going to skip the Lauren Boebert jokes and the Nancy Mace jokes and the Marge is thinking of her Hunter Biden photo album jokes because there are three important things here that have kind of gotten lost behind the sheer infuriating numbness of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resembles and seems to have the awareness of the Moai statues on Easter Island.

The first important thing is this. In October 2020, Greene blew up at people she called grammar police and spelling Nazis. She put an apostrophe after the I in Nazis and wrote, quote, dyslexia runs in my family. It's probably why we are so creative, hardworking and successful.

Of note, she never says she has been diagnosed with it, there are no further references to it, and it is terrifying to contemplate that she thinks she might be creative, or hardworking, or successful. Still, we must give her the benefit of the doubt that she may have dyslexia and deserves empathy.

or did deserve empathy until she said this. I mean, this is like, it's so stupid simple. It's not even funny. It's stupid simple. But we have retards. I'm sorry. I know that's an offensive word. And I'm not trying to talk down on people with Down syndrome. But that's what these people are. These people are so stupid and ignorant. They cannot put something common sense in place.

And that's not dyslexia, ma'am. That's being dickheaded. The second important thing lost behind all this: Her boundless stupidity needs to be recognized not just as an insult to her and to us,

but as a microcosm of why we are in the peril we are in today. And I'll circle back to this. First, the third one, I say none of this without empathy. Indict and indicted and indictable and indictment are words that to this day, I spell out phonetically.

on my scripts, because if I am reading them off a teleprompter or even on this podcast, especially if I'm reading them cold, especially if I'm reading fast, there remains a chance or at least there remains a fear that I'll pronounce it just like it's spelled, like she did. So I spell indict I-N-D-I-G-H-T.

In fact, at NBC, I reprogrammed my computer to spell correct indict with a C, to indict with a GH. I guess that would have to be called spell incorrect. Because phonetic spelling is not just an invaluable tool for public speakers. It's a really good thing to do. It helps with names and names of places and words that don't match the way they're spelled.

So is pre-reading something aloud or silently before you say it in Congress. These are the seat belts of reading aloud. Your self-protection, especially if she has dyslexia or any other processing complication. And Marge Green did not wear her seat belt.

You cross out the word or you write the correct pronunciation above it or near it in red. It's great for names. It's great for words like that. There's no shame in it. It's a life hack. There is shame in solemnly reading something you think buttresses your phony baloney impeachment of the director of Homeland Security while your party is stopping and

a bipartisan deal on the border with your reading glasses perched arrogantly halfway down your nose and looking as unused as those of Homer Simpson, your index finger moving haltingly across the page while you insist that the founding fathers support your case as a means of indictment. And that's the point.

There are a thousand turns this nation has taken that has led us to the precipice in front of us, the one that the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of this world don't even see, and which dozens and dozens of her colleagues have already walked over to their metaphorical doom, either because they did not see the cliff's edge, or they believe the warnings about it were just crooked fakes and liberal hoaxes and bad science and rigged scams.

But the worst ones have been in our educational system because the blunt fact is that in most of it now, we do not use all the tools we used to use to save one-time, at-risk, fourth-grade readers who will instead be celebrating their 50th birthdays this spring in Congress by still tracing the words they are trying to read aloud with their finger and mispronouncing some of them rather than just writing in the correct pronunciation like the rest of us do.

We used to have remedial reading courses, and after-school courses, and summer courses, and tutors, and if everything else failed, we used to leave students back to repeat a school year, or two, or three.

And if none of that worked or all of it seemed cruel or to be punishing a student who was really trying but was really challenged in some processing way, we used to tell the parents about this without fear that they would then sue the school district or sue the teacher or shoot somebody. And for a long time, those suffering with processing issues were, if not grateful, at least receptive, and they would avail themselves of the help rather than almost boast about a

problem and daring the rest of us to do or say anything about it. I have no idea about Marjorie Taylor Greene's upbringing. Maybe she has dyslexia. Maybe she is lying about it. I have changed my mind on Witches Like Her only about 200 times since I started to write this script. The very thought of her upbringing sends shudders down my spine. I'm inferring, and I'm inferring backwards.

Until 2016, her personal biography is almost blank, except for references to CrossFit. Then 2017, correspondent for American Truth Seekers, a conspiracy news website. 2018, correspondent for Law Enforcement Today, a pro-police conspiracy and fake news website. 2019, Family America Project Facebook page moderator.

where other members made death threats against Democrats. 2020 ran for Congress, first in the Georgia 7th, switching a few weeks later to the Georgia 6th, finally to the Georgia 14th. The rest of it since then, she's accused every group in America except her own family and CrossFit trainers of communism and conspiracy and cutting to the chase. Yesterday on the House floor, she said, "...indictable."

You really don't have to be smarter than Marge Green to know that uneducated or educationally challenged people support Trump in vast numbers and that they believe conspiracy theories and in QAnon and in guns and in ignoring warning signs and in their own invincibility.

Talking about precipices, Congressman Rich McCormick was reported to the House Sergeant at Arms this week because during a tour of the Capitol Dome, he saw the sign reading, no person permitted above this platform under any circumstances. So he immediately went above the platform.

He got up onto a safety railing and straddled it and did pull-ups on it and pretended to fall or slide over and off it. And the railing was 200 feet above the Capitol floor. Representative McCormick represents the 6th District of Georgia. And he is a member of the Republican Party. And two months ago, he was accused by another representative of...

violent assault, namely grabbing them by the shoulders and shaking them. And the alleged victim was Marjorie Taylor Greene. And it's just a damn shame she didn't get Congressman McCormick arrested so we could have found out if he were indeed indictable. I have focused on Greene because, well, she sucks, but also because she does indeed represent the true national crisis of our times.

Nobody ever said stupidity bordering on imbecility was mutually exclusive to success, not even in the House. After all, even the Founding Fathers, who may or may not have wondered if they should order a new spelling of the word indict, were able somehow to rationalize slavery. But Greene is sadly not alone. I submit the last two days of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,

For a self-admitted recovering addict with a plethora of other problems, he sure seems to deny everything everybody has ever accused him of doing. An unidentified woman posted a rather unremarkable skin photo of herself on TikTok sometime in 2022, side shot into a mirror, very high shorts, not really exposing, but certainly not covering a prominent posterior.

And there in the comments dated September 16th, 2022 is WOW in capital letters with two face emojis with three hearts on them each. And the name on the account is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with a verification symbol. Yesterday, Kennedy offered an amazing reply to this to quote it in full.

Do people really think I was TikToking in 2022? The TikTok comment in question was made in 2022, long before I ever had a TikTok account. This comment now appears on my account because the account was previously owned by one of the campaign's young social media manager.

When I announced my run for the presidency in April of 2023, the team wanted it broadcasted on every social media platform, including TikTok. However, TikTok does not allow live streaming for accounts that have less than 1,000 followers. The social media manager decided to transfer his account, which had around 1,500 followers, to me in order to stream my announcement on TikTok, unquote. Phew.

One almost wants to applaud my ex-friend Bob, even if he's lying, just for the sheer labyrinthine intricacy of this excuse. Maybe it is true. The problem that does not seem to have occurred to him, through the wrapping of stupidity that has strangled what was once his intelligence, is, if you are putting your name—

Or more importantly, if you are putting your presidential campaign's name on somebody else's old used social media account does not logic demand that you or somebody you trust must go back through all the likes and the comments and the reposts by that account to make sure that, you know, your presidential campaign account has not just endorsed Tyler Idol's backside.

As the philosopher's Belle Biv DeVos once said, "Never trust a big butt and a smile." Also never trust Congressman Dean Phillips.

As we continue our review of The Stupid It Burns, Wednesday night, the Washington Press Club Foundation conducted its annual congressional dinner, and as in the first 77 of them, there were a lot of would-be stand-ups among the representatives, but unlike most of those 77, there was some really funny, really mean, and really true jokes this year.

Minnesota Democratic Congresswoman Tina Smith skipped out, did not attend due to a case of flu, but instead sent in a one-minute video. "I would feel terrible if I showed up and everybody got sick," she told the crowd at the dinner via tape. "The only way it would have worked is if everybody had agreed to get up and leave the room when I started talking. You know, kind of like a Dean Phillips rally."

Wait, there's more. Representative Smith then added, Poor Dean. He took a real beating in New Hampshire, but he's staying on the ballot for South Carolina because you can't spell Dean Phillips with only one L. Throw the towel! Throw the towel! Throw the damn towel! Now, if you're Dean Phillips, what do you do after that? A lot of people would answer, ignore it. Acceptable.

But I disagree. You're in the middle of a bid for a presidential nomination. It's not much of a bid and you're not going to get it. But the spotlight is on you and you may have five seconds to actually make people aware of what you are trying to do. Surprise them. Say you laughed your ass off. Say you appreciate people remembering you.

Say thanks to Tina Smith because she just doubled the reach of your advertising. Those are the smart answers. This, this is not a smart answer.

Quote, Representative Phillips extends his thanks to his friends in Congress for their kind words and encouragement. It takes real courage on their part to sit back and reject democracy in favor of a coronation that will hand our country back over to Donald Trump. He looks forward to seeing them on Capitol Hill this upcoming week for votes and welcomes them to join him for a coffee to share their thoughts with him personally. Once again,

The joke from the British TV series The Young Ones from the 1980s applies. Dean, give up on the self-crucifixion. You can never hammer in the last nail yourself. I know I've tried. Dean took a real beating in New Hampshire, but he's staying on the ballot for South Carolina because you can't spell Dean Phillips with only one L. Holy cow!

And finally, on this topic of stupidity, we turn back to the Raja of Ridiculous, the Ministerio of Moronity, the incredible, the unforgettable Dementia J. Trump. He made a clean mistake.

He made the mistake of taking questions from that group of autoworkers he had brought together in hopes of countering the UAW endorsement of Joe Biden. He made the mistake of taking a question from somebody who asked him about the penalties from his trials, the $83 million to E. Jean Carroll and whatever, $200 million, $370 million is assessed against him in the New York business fraud case. And Trump's stupidity is so powerful that

that he believes his own delusions. Penalties? There are no penalties. They have been overturned in the court of Donald J. Trump appeal. I don't understand what? What penalties?

I didn't do anything wrong. I mean, that's been proven as far as I'm concerned. And actually, we won in the Court of Appeals. You probably saw that. That case has been largely won in the Court of Appeals. That was a political case coordinated with the White House by the attorney general, I assume is what you're talking about. And we won that case largely in the Court of Appeals. That's a ridiculous case. That case is a ridiculous case. We're appealing it. It is ridiculous.

She didn't know anything about me. She didn't know when it happened. There was nothing. People are looking at that case. It's a disgrace. We're appealing that case. We had a very hostile judge. We're appealing that case. It's a ridiculous case. Trump's mistake was to take those questions from outside his warm encasing bubble of stupidity. It was Newsmax's mistake to take those questions live. I believe they are still trying to clean up what he just said there.

And to try to not mention that he's so indicted. One more thing, why is Trump treating his trials like campaign ads and campaign events? Because it turns out he can't afford campaign ads and campaign events. The fiscal reporting is out and so is his supply of cash. Two Trump PACs spent $29 million in legal fees and legal consulting and

Just in the second half of last year, $47 million for the whole year just from Save America PAC. His leadership PAC has $5 million left. Total expenditures and income, 2023 funds raised, just under $200 million. 2023 funds spent, just over $210 million.

As Dickens' Mr. McCarver said, annual income, $200 million, annual expenditure, $199 million. Result, happiness. Annual income, $200 million, annual expenditures, $201 million. Result, misery. Just for the record, in this episode of this podcast, I have quoted Dickens and Belle Biv DeVoe.

Also of interest here, a top conservative pollster has the unbeatable formula for Trump to again seize power in November. All this pollster says he has to do is to get all of those voters who are African-American and have three arms. You heard me. That's next. This is Countdown.

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Bye.

This is Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Still ahead on Countdown, Fridays with Thurber and the best known thing James Thurber ever wrote, ever. So well known that they made it into a movie just 11 years ago.

First time for the Daily Roundup of the miscreants, morons, and Dunning-Kruger effect specimens who constitute today's worst, worst persons, persons in the world, world, world. The bronze, worse, California Republican senatorial candidate Steve Garvey, who expected to be catapulted into office based on his baseball career, which ended, checks notes inside Baseball Encyclopedia, dusts off Baseball Encyclopedia, 36 seasons ago.

Garvey was profiled by his hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, which used to treat him like a human god even after he left the Dodgers to go play for San Diego in 1983. Well, the Times is no longer treating him like a human god. As the piece was summarized by one analyst, the Times, in a brutal report...

added that quote, "Garvey has had no relationship with two of his children despite their efforts and that he cut off a third child without explanation 15 years ago. Though the MLB legend calls himself a devoted family man, he has struggled with debt, been repeatedly sued, faced a bitter divorce, and got two women pregnant before quickly marrying a third woman, his current wife, in a scandal that briefly made him a national punchline in 1989."

All of which is true. On the other hand, his other 178 kids adore him. Also, there's no mention of the Marvin Hamlisch sign I told you about from the 1981 World Series, right after his first wife, a TV host in Los Angeles, left him and started to have a relationship with Marvin Hamlisch, the composer, the somewhat nerdy composer,

A few fans before the first game of the World Series at Yankee Stadium that year between Garvey's Dodgers and the Yankees unfurled from the upper deck as large a banner as I have ever seen at a sporting event, and it read simply, Steve? Marvin Hamlisch? The runners-up, Worser, good old Moms for Liberty. You remember their stars, Florida GOP chief Chris Ziegler.

No longer the head of the GOP. The husband of Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, who liked to have friends join them for evenings. One of the evenings. All right.

when I say evenings, I mean three ways, led to a rape allegation against Christian Ziegler and his resignation as head of the GOP. Now, Bridget Ziegler's outfit, the Florida Moms for Liberty branch, has gone beyond its previous book banning fascism and to the next level. Indian River, Florida's Moms for Liberty chief, Jennifer Pippin, got very upset at the famed Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen book,

because there it was in the library and on the cover Sendak had drawn a naked five-year-old boy dreaming that he has to bake a cake. Pippin had a novel response to this and a few other novels with naked figures on or in them like, oh, the drawn visible butt of a goblin inside Unicorns Are the Worst.

She did not call for these books to be banned. Instead, she had volunteers take the books, take those illustrations and draw pants on them or bikinis or overalls. You wouldn't want your kids looking at a naked drawing of a purple goblin.

Meanwhile, back at the Ziegler's house, Florida investigators have discovered the yin and yang of this and of the universe. Indeed, a list of women apparently made by Christian Ziegler under the heading. Well, the heading is a four letter verb beginning with F.

But our winners, Echelon Insights and pollster Patrick Ruffini, the right-wing polling outlet that tries to include an ad for the GOP in every poll result and to promote the GOP in every press release and news story, it's not the worst in terms of bias. It's not the worst pollster either. It's just kind of sloppy.

How sloppy? Well, there's a tweet on Ruffini's account that reads, Republican victory in 2024 depends on their being able to do this. And beneath that, two pictures showing two African-American men wearing the red MAGA dunce cap, standing on two different porches, apparently registering two older African-American men to vote or to volunteer or given the new headlines to loan Trump money. I don't know, something.

The guys in the MAGA hats have clipboards, but what's on the clipboards, what's written on the clipboards, you can't tell. And the reason you can't tell is that if you zoom in on what's on the caps and the shirts, the two apparent black Trumpists are wearing, the lettering on the shirts and the caps and everything else, it doesn't actually spell anything. It's gibberish. One shirt seems to read, "Groat a-gone,"

G-R-O-A-T, like the former baseball player. A-G-G-O-N, Grotagon. Lettering on the side of one of the caps seems to spell...

Gnarfran. G-U-N-A-R-F-R-A-N. Gnarfran. Of course, few who saw this pollster's tweet noticed any of that literal nonsense because of the pictures. The picture on the right, particularly, in which the African-American voter is reaching for the clipboard with his right hand, and he seems to be holding some kind of Trump key ring or something in his left hand, but he's holding his other left hand by his side.

The guy in the picture has three hands and three arms. Yeah, the photo is AI. Bad AI. And not only did Ruffini post it and apparently never notice it and keep it posted, but as he got fricasseed by the internet, he added his own reply, quote, the response to this has gotten out of hand.

Patrick Ruffini and Echelon Insights, if they really wanted to be self-deprecating and make the thing kind of a win, their reply should have been, the response to this is Grim Frick Bing Ong Gnorfran. Today's Worst Persons of the World!

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To the number one story on the countdown, it's the weekend, so it is Fridays with Thurber, and next week I will resume the harrowing tales of my youth, and not so youth, with things I promise not to tell. Anniversaries scheduled for next week include, and this is literally true, the story of the day my great-grandfather Zelinsky suggested that an acquaintance of his name his new company General Motors. It's true, we didn't get a dime out of it, but now...

perfection. James Thurber's best known work, best loved work, and maybe just best work has been made into two different films, neither of which is really satisfactory, but each gives you just a glimpse of what your imagination is doing as you hear or read his words. It is a universal. It is the story of everybody who's ever lived, who has ever daydreamed. It is the secret life of Walter Mitty.

By James Thurber. We're going through! The commander's voice was like thin ice breaking. He wore his full dress uniform with the heavily braided white cap pulled down rakishly over one cold gray eye. We can't make it, sir. It's spoiling for a hurricane if you ask me. I'm not asking you, Lieutenant Berg, said the commander. Throw on the power lights. Rever up to 8500. We're going through!

The pounding of the cylinders increased. "Tapocata, pocata, pocata, pocata, pocata!" The commander stared at the ice forming on the pilot window. He walked over and twisted a row of complicated dials. "Switch on number eight auxiliary!" he shouted. "Switch on number eight auxiliary!" repeated Lieutenant Berg. "Full strength in number three turret!"

shouted the commander. Full strength and number three turret! The crew, bending to their various tasks in the huge, hurtling, eight-engined Navy hydroplane, looked at each other and grinned. The old man will get us through, they said to one another. The old man ain't afraid of hell. Not so fast. You're driving too fast, said Mrs. Middy. What are you driving so fast for? Hmm? said Walter Middy.

He looked at his wife in the seat beside him with shocked astonishment. She seemed grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in a crowd. "'You're up to 55,' she said. "'You know I don't like to go more than 40. You're up to 55.' Walter Mitty drove on toward Waterbury in silence, the roaring of the SN-202 through the worst storm in twenty years of Navy flying, fading in the remote, intimate airways of his mind."

"'You're tensed up again,' said Mrs. Middy. "'It's one of your days. I wish you'd let Dr. Renshaw luck you over.' Walter Middy stopped the car in front of the building where his wife went to have her hair done. "'Remember to get those overshoes while I'm having my hair done,' she said. "'I don't need overshoes,' said Middy. She put her mirror back into her bag. "'We've been all through that,' she said, getting out of the car. "'You're not a young man any longer.'

He raced the engine a little. "Why don't you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?" Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven onto a red light, he took them off again. "Pick it up, brother," snapped a cop as the light changed, and Mitty hastily pulled on his gloves and lurched ahead.

He drove around the streets aimlessly for a time, and then he drove past the hospital on his way to the parking lot.

"'It's the millionaire banker, Wellington Macmillan,' said the pretty nurse. "'Yes?' said Walter Mitty, removing his gloves slowly. "'Who has the case?' "'Dr. Renshaw and Dr. Renbo. But there are two specialists here, Dr. Remington from New York and Mr. Pritchard Mitford from London. He flew over.' The door opened down a long, cool corridor, and Dr. Renshaw came out. He looked distraught and haggard.

"Hello, Mitty," he said. "We're having the devil's own time with McMillan, the millionaire banker and close personal friend of Roosevelt. Obstriosis of the ductal tract. Tertiary. Wish you'd take a look at him." "Glad to," said Mitty. In the operating room, there were whispered introductions. "Dr. Remington, Dr. Mitty. Mr. Pritchard-Mitford, Dr. Mitty. I've read your book on streptothoracosis," said Pritchard-Mitford, shaking hands. "Brilliant performance, sir."

Thank you, said Walter Mitty. Didn't know you were in the States, Mitty, grumbled Remington. Coles to Newcastle, bringing Mitford and me up here for a tertiary. You are very kind, said Mitty. A huge, complicated machine connected to the operating table with many tubes and wires began at this moment to go pocket-a-pocket-a-pocket-a. The new anesthetizer is giving way, shouted an intern.

There is no one in the East who knows how to fix it. Quiet, man, said Middy in a low, cool voice. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocket-a-pocket-a-queep, pocket-a-pocket-a-queep. He began fingering delicately a roll of glistening dials. Give me a fountain pen, he snapped.

Someone handed him a fountain pen. He pulled a faulty piston out of the machine and inserted the pen in its place. That will hold for ten minutes, he said. Get on with the operation. A nurse hurried over and whispered to Renshaw, and Middy saw the man turn pale. Coriopsis has set in, said Renshaw nervously. If you would take over, Middy?

Middy looked at him and at the craven figure of Benbow, who drank, and at the grave, uncertain faces of the two great specialists. "'If you wish,' he said. They slipped a white gown on him. He adjusted a mask and drew on thin gloves. Nurses handed him shiny. "'Back it up, Mac. Look out for that Buick.'

Walter Mitty jammed on the brakes. "Wrong lane, Mac," said the parking lot attendant, looking at Mitty closely. "Gee, yeah," muttered Mitty. He began cautiously to back out of the lane marked "exit only." "Leave her sit there," said the attendant. "I'll put her away." Mitty got out of the car. "Hey, uh, better leave the key." "Oh," said Mitty, handing the man the ignition key.

The attendant vaulted into the car, backed it up with insolent skill, and put it where it belonged. "'They're so damn cocky,' thought Walter Mitty, walking along Main Street. "'They think they know everything.' Once he had tried to take his chains off outside New Milford, and he got them wound around the axles. The man had to come out in a wrecking car and unwind them, a young, grinning garage man.'

Since then, Mrs. Middy always made him drive to a garage to have the chains taken off. The next time, he thought, I'll wear my right arm in a sling. They won't grin at me then. I have my right arm in a sling, and they'll see I couldn't possibly take the chains off myself. He kicked at the slush on the sidewalk. Overshoes, he said to himself, and he began looking for a shoe store.

When he came out into the street again with the overshoes and a box under his arm, Walter Mitty began to wonder what the other thing was his wife had told him to get. She had told him twice before they set out from their house for Waterbury. In a way, he hated these weekly trips to town. He was always getting something wrong. Kleenex, he thought, squibs, razor blades, no, toothpaste, toothbrush, bicarbonate, carborundum, initiative, referendum. He gave it up.

But she would remember it. Where's the what's-its-name? She would ask. Don't tell me you forgot the what's-its-name. A newsboy went by shouting something about the Waterbury trial. Perhaps this will refresh your memory. The district attorney suddenly thrust a heavy automatic at the quiet figure on the witness stand. Have you ever seen this before? Walter Mitty took the gun and examined it expertly.

"This is my Webley Vickers 50.80," he said calmly. An excited buzz ran around the courtroom. The judge rapped for order. "You are a crack shot with any sort of firearms, I believe?" said the district attorney insinuatingly. "Objection!" shouted Mitty's attorney. "We have shown that the defendant could not have fired the shot. We have shown that he wore his right arm in a sling on the night of the 14th of July.

Walter Mitty raised his hand briefly and the bickering attorneys were stilled. With any known make of gun, he said evenly, I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at 300 feet with my left hand.

Pandemonium broke out in the courtroom. A woman's scream rose above the bedlam and suddenly a lovely dark-haired girl was in Walter Mitty's arms. The district attorney struck at her savagely. Without rising from his chair, Mitty let the man have it on the point of the chin. You miserable cur! Puppy biscuit.

said Walter Mitty. He stopped walking and the buildings of Waterbury rose up out of the misty courtroom and surrounded him again. A woman who was passing laughed. He said puppy biscuit, she said to her companion. That man said puppy biscuit to himself. Walter Mitty hurried on. He went into an A&P, not the first one he came to, but a smaller one farther up the street. I want some biscuit for small young dogs, he said to the clerk. Any special brand, sir?

"'The greatest pistol shot in the world.' Thought a moment. "'It says, Puppies Bark for it on the box,' said Walter Mitty. "'His wife would be through with the hairdressers in fifteen minutes,' Mitty saw in looking at his watch. "'Unless they had trouble drying it. Sometimes they had trouble drying it. "'She didn't like to get to the hotel first. She would want him to be there, waiting for her, as usual.'

He found a big leather chair in the lobby facing a window, and he put the overshoes and the puppy biscuit on the floor beside it. He picked up an old copy of Liberty and sank down into the chair. Can Germany conquer the world through the air? Walter Mitty looked at the pictures of bombing planes and of ruined streets.

"'The cannonadin has got the wind up in young Raleigh, sir,' said the sergeant. Captain Middy looked at him through tousled hair. "'Get him to bed,' he said wearily. "'With the others. I'll fly alone.' "'But you can't, sir,' said the sergeant anxiously. "'It takes two men to handle that bomber, and the archies are pounding hell out of the air. Von Rickman's circus is between here and Solier.' "'Somebody's got to get that ammunition dump,' said Middy. "'I'm going over. Spot of brandy.'

He poured a drink for the sergeant and one for himself. War thundered and whined around the dugout and battered at the door. There was a rending of wood, and splinters flew through the room. "Bet of a near thing," said Captain Mitty carelessly. "The box barrage is closing in," said the sergeant. "We only live once, sergeant," said Mitty with his faint fleeting smile.

Or do we? He poured another brandy and tossed it off. Never seen a man could hold his brandy like you, sir, said the sergeant. Begging your pardon, sir. Captain Middy stood up and strapped on his huge, webley Vickers automatic. It's 40 kilometers through L, sir, said the sergeant. Middy finished one last brandy. After all, he said softly, what isn't?

The pounding of the cannon increased, there was the rat-tat-tatting of the machine guns, and from somewhere came the menacing "Pocketa, pocketa, pocketa, pocketa!" of the new flame-throwers. Walter Mitty walked to the door of the dugout, humming "Au prêt de ma blonde." He turned and waved to the sergeant. "Cheerio," he said.

Something struck his shoulder. "'I've been looking all over this hotel for you,' said Mrs. Middy. "'Why do you have to hide in this old chair? How did you expect me to find you?' "'Things close in,' said Walter Middy vaguely. "'What?' Mrs. Middy said. "'Did you get the what's-its-name, the puppy biscuit? What's in that box?' "'Overshoes,' said Middy. "'Couldn't you put them on on the star?'

"I was thinking," said Walter Mitty. "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" She looked at him. "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home," she said. They went out through the revolving doors that made a faintly derisive whistling sound when you pushed them. It was two blocks to the parking lot. At the drug store on the corner, she said, "Wait here for me. I forgot something. I won't be a minute." She was more than a minute. Walter Mitty lighted a cigarette.

It began to rain, rain with sleet in it. He stood up against the wall of the drugstore, smoking. He put his shoulders back and his heels together. "'To hell with the handkerchief,' said Walter Middy scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away, then with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips—'

He faced the firing squad, erect and motionless, proud and disdainful. Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber.

I've done all the damage I can do here. Thank you for listening. Countdown musical directors Brian Ray and John Philip Chanel arranged, produced, and performed most of our music. Mr. Ray was on guitars, bass, and drums, and Mr. Chanel handled orchestration and keyboards, and it was produced by TKO Brothers. Other music, including some of the Beethoven compositions, were arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed. The sports music is the Olbermann theme from ESPN2, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN, Inc.,

Our satirical and pithy musical comments are by Nancy Faust, the best baseball stadium organist ever. Our announcer today was my friend Stevie Van Zandt, and everything else was pretty much my fault.

That's countdown for this, the 278th day until the 2024 U.S. presidential election and the 1,123rd day since Dementia J. Trump's first attempted coup against the democratically elected government of the United States. Use the 14th Amendment. Use the Insurrection Act. Use the justice system. Use the mental health system to stop him from doing it again while we still can.

The next scheduled countdown is Tuesday, though I warn you, although careful editing has concealed much of this, if you listen carefully, my voice is shot. Bulletins as the news warrants, although I may just write them out rather than try to read them aloud. Till then, I'm Keith Olbermann. Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

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