Countdown with Keith Olderman is a production of iHeartRadio Break the cover up of the Ice murder of Renee Good.

Investigate anyway on the state and county levels, Indict and arrest the Ice shooter, Jonathan Ross and the Trump militia members who were with him as accessories.

Impeach Homeland Security Chief Christy Nome, ICE Director Todd lyons and borders our Tom Homan Representative Angie Craig says, now the Gnome impeachment will proceed, and if Gnome or any other ICE or DHS official continues to stonewall local investigators seeking justice for the murdered woman, indict and arrest them for aubs instruction of justice, although this may be unnecessary since Nome, an idiot and Vice President JV Vance, another idiot, are the ones who docks Ross as the shooter in the first place, and while the leaders of his gestapo are vowing never to cooperate with a Hennepin County or State of Minnesota investigation.

It was of course the shooter himself, Ross, who could not help himself from leaking the video he took with his phone of his crime because he is so deranged and murderous.

He thinks it will get him public support, and the Cretans like Vance knowme, Lions and home and think the video does anything besides proving he was at no risk.

And then he deliberately stepped in front of her car, and while juggling the murder weapon in one hand and his effing phone in the other, he shot her because he wanted to shoot her, and because she was not afraid of him, and because she was nice to him.

Show your okay, we don't change our plates every morning, just so you know it'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later.

That's fine.

You have citizen for.

You want to come at us, you want to come at us, I say, go get yourself some lunch, big boy.

Go ahead.

And then they celebrated, as we all heard.

And then two days later, other Ice scum threatened other Minnesotans because they have clearly been told they are there to threaten, to terrorize, and too if they can get away with it, kill for Trump.

Shame on, you have y'all not learned from the past couple of days.

Have you not learned?

Learned?

What?

What's our lesson here?

What do you want us to learn?

There is no indication that these diseased, sadistic vultures of our society, Trump Vance, Gnome homann Lions will stop, will even stop escalating this until the rest of us force them to, until we break ice.

Since the tragedy unfolded Wednesday, they have hidden like the terrified video game villains they are now.

They are hiding behind this empty, corrupt demand that we all need to improve the tone.

And when they say we, they mean you, and when they say tone, they mean any criticism of them at all.

Tom Homan went on Fox and actually added to this bankrupt bromide new threats quote, there will be more bloodshed unless we decrease the hateful rhetoric.

Translation of this tautology, more civilians will be shot unless innocent Americans stop saying such mean things about the fact trigger happy PTSD addled criminals threatening and slaughtering Americans exercising their constitutional rights to protest peacefully.

Decrease the hateful rhetoric.

Holman, you fake tough guy, rube idiot.

You know a good way to decrease the hateful rhetoric.

Baldy, stop shooting mothers of five year old boys in the face for no reason.

In broad daylight, the acting Ice chief this Lions may be even worse.

He is daring Minnesota to enforce its laws.

Quote.

My message to the sheriff is, try and arrest my folks.

Let's see what happens.

Unquote, mister Lyons, shove it up your ass.

Shove it up your ass.

You want to play the let's see what happens game.

Governor Wallas has already activated the National Guard, and Minnesota's citizens have shown the kind of restraint never exceeded in American history.

Get the indictments.

Get one for Nome and one for Lions, and one for Home, and one for Ross, and one for all the government issued Nazis who were on Portland Avenue that terrible day, and have the Sheriff's officers serve them, with the Minnesota National Guard standing behind them, weapons drawn.

And then, mister Lyons, let's see what happens.

We know what will happen.

Your excuses for men will flee.

This, however, is a reminder that the battle here has to be the state, the state of Minnesota.

In this case, this is the Trump dictatorship, the Trump dictatorship that has now lost any remaining moral authority.

To continue to rule this country.

The state of Minnesota, or the state of Illinois or the state of California must act, especially since ICE has already gone rogue, gone extra legal across the Rubicon past, which Ice will not obey the law, and ICE will not stop targeting innocent Americans, and ICE and its Trump masters will not back the blue.

They are the criminals, and with the states this high and the tinder box this dry, the state and not the citizens must act here.

The state must act against the ICE murderers.

The state must act against the ICE terrorists.

The state must act against the ICE superstructure that is now covering up this and other ICE crimes.

Gnome, a virus with botox, secretly signed an order denying access to ICE facilities for members of Congress, even though this order overrides federal law.

Three Minnesota representatives tried to see an ICE terror prison without knowing of Nome's criminal act, and they were confronted, according to one of them, by about twenty five menacing armed officers.

It is possible with the courts rigged and the propaganda machine on full blast, and Trump literally facing the dictator's choice of staying in power or dying in prison.

It is possible that these forces of evil will delay the prosecution of Jonathan Ross and Nome and the others.

The state and the county, though, are prepared for this exact scenario.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison reminds us there are no statutes of limitation on these crimes.

Mister raw Us, Misnome, mister Homan, the Lord's judgment cometh, and right soon you will go to prison.

And there is, for ones behind the scenes, some doubt inside the Trump evil factory.

An anonymous Trump administration member to Politico, quote, I don't know how we recover from this.

This is highly problematic and not a good look and not something our government should be remotely engaged in.

For a Trump isst this is about as emotional a mea culpa as it can get.

Meanwhile, despite Dvance's claims there is no absolute immunity for these creatures, there is no immunity at all for premeditated murder under any circumstances, and so there must be in the interim wrongful death suits, civil rights loss suits.

Mister Ross must spend every remaining day he is free talking to lawyers and Gnome as well and Home and every functionary in this corrupt, sadistic, murderous gang.

There is one more government action to be taken now.

The House voted Thursday to keep this government funded past January thirtieth, when the continuing Resolution expires.

Now the Senate must act, and frankly, the Senate must shut the goddamn government down period.

Shut it down.

Not a dime until Trump is hamstrung on Venezuela and Greenland and Iran and his dreams of invading the Nobel Prize Committee headquarters, and more importantly at the moment, not a dime until Ice is neutered.

We need border control, We need immigration enforcement.

We do not need paramilitary, unvetted, blood lusting monsters murdering people then swearing at them and keeping doctors from attending to them as they bleed to death.

You want the money Republicans trade, give us Noome Homan, Ross, Ice the others, and the worst, by the way we will do to them is to stop their funding and prosecute them.

But Democratic senators have to stop what they can stop, and any Democratic Senator who fails in their duty now has to be removed from office as quickly as the electoral and recall processes allowed to quote Theodore Roosevelt, we are met at Armagaddon, and we battle for the Lord Schumer.

I don't care, do it, Fetterman.

I'm sorry for all your problems.

I don't care.

This is nut cutting time.

So far you have been on the wrong side of this.

History will not judge you well if it bothers to judge you at all.

And incidentally, the public right now, even before this happened in Minnesota, is behind stopping Ice from pole.

Analyst Elliott Moore quote, ICE's approval rating has collapsed since Trump took office, from plus sixteen according to the Yugov Economist polling last February, to minus fourteen as of November.

In a flash poll Morris Writes conducted on Wednesday, ICE's job approval came in at thirty nine percent approved fifty two percent disapprove, for a score of minus thirteen.

That's before the last week has played out.

And of course, there are other, more anecdotal, more visceral ways of measuring public sentiment.

The public address announcer of basketball's Minnesota Timberwolves is Jeddiede Jones.

We're setting by the tragedy that occurred yesterday in our Minneapolis community in the loss of Renee and Nicole good.

Our thoughts are with her family and everyone affected, and our hearts are with our community as we hope for healing in Unixy and during this challenging time, Please join us in a moment of silence.

Thank you.

And more stunning even than that, there is this the retiring Episcopalian Bishop of New Hampshire, Bob Hirschfeld, with one of the most chilling and sadly one of the most real sound bites of the entire breadth and length of Trump's assault on democracy and American freedom the other night, before a packed protest in the pouring rain.

I have told the.

Clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness, and I've asked them to get their affairs in order to make sure they have their wills written, because.

It may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us, with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.

I hope the Bishop is wrong.

I still think this can be resolved with nothing approaching any of that.

On the other hand, a peaceable, thirty six year old Minnesota mother in her own neighborhood, near her own local school, in what she thought was a democracy with laws and a constitution that protected her instead of protecting masked gunmen in broad daylight, A woman who barely rose to the minimum standards of protesting renee Good.

She thought this could be resolved that way too.

So what is wrong with Gnome Vance, Trump, Holman Ellis Ross?

These thugs in masks who think they are somehow crusaders, or at minimum think they are somehow not terrorists.

It may be the guns.

I don't mean the obvious part.

I mean the obvious part is for decades, with the intensity of this seemingly doubling every minute, large swats of this nation have believed that shooting people is okay.

It's nine to eleven.

The police in the military have been trained that everybody else should be assumed to be a threat, possibly a terrorist, until proven otherwise.

And the deliberate twisting of the Second Amendment to keep the weapons industry cash rich is obvious.

But that's not what I mean.

I mean something even more elemental than that.

When I say it may be the guns, I mean literally the gun, the physical fact of the gun, handling a gun, shooting a gun.

For the second time in the last three years, a study has hit indicating that the simple act of firing a modern gun, a weapon of police and war, does violent damage to the shooter to their brain.

You shoot, you get concussed, or very nearly so.

You shoot a hundred times, you get concussed one hundred times, or very nearly so.

From the New York Times, quoting the most recent research, Shooting indoors poses another hazard that has been almost entirely overlooked, concussive blast waves that can damage the brain.

Reporters measured the blasts of several popular civilian guns at an indoor range using the same sensors that the military uses.

The data showed that some large caliber civilian rifles delivered a blast wave that exceeds what the military says is safe for the brain, and firing smaller caliber guns repeatedly could quickly add up to potentially harmful exposure.

The data also showed that indoor shooting ranges designed to make shooting safe inadvertently make blast exposure worse, doubling and sometimes tripling the amplitude of the blast.

The potential for harm, The Times continued from blast waves gets almost no attention from the shooting public, even though people can experience concussion like symptoms after a day at the range, said Jeff Balcourt, who is an acoustic consultant for the National Shooting Sports Foundation and a designer of indoor ranges for Balco Defense Company, Quoting him, it's one of those unspoken things.

You don't realize that after a whole day of shooting you have that ringing in your ears and that headache.

Ending my reading from the Times, now, imagine that being done as you're living.

And this is not new.

In November twenty twenty three, the New York Times found those sane things happening to service members using the military research that they referred to in the more recent piece, evidence compiled by the military that just firing the modern weapons of war can destroy the brains of those who fired them, just at a distance, at no practical risk.

In Syria, I'll quote the Times again, all through their unit Alpha Battery, first Battalion, eleventh Marine Troops came home feeling cursed, and the same thing was happening in other marine and Army artillery units.

Hallucinations, visions, sounds, victims appearing as ghosts.

An investigation by The New York Times found that many of the troops sent to bombard the Islamic State in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen returned to the United States plagued by nightmares, panic attacks, depression, and in a few cases, hallucinations.

Once reliable marines turned unpredictable and strange.

Some are now homeless.

A striking number eventually died by suicide or tried to.

The Times went on to detail the training with guns that these personnel had been through, quoting again, a small number of troops had to fire tens of thousands of high explosive shells, far more arounds per crew member, experts say than any American artillery battery had fired at least since the Vietnam War.

The cannon blasts were strong enough to hurl a one hundred pound round fifteen miles, and each unleashed a shock wave that shot through the crew member's bodies, vibrating bone, punching lungs and hearts, and whipping at cruise missile speeds through the most delicate organ of all, the brain.

More than a year after Marines started experiencing problems.

The Times concluded the Marine Corps leadership tried to piece together what was happening by ordering a study of one of the hardest hit units, Fox Battery, second Battalion, tenth Marines.

The research was limited to reviewing the troop's medical records.

No marines were examined or interviewed.

Even so, the report, published in twenty nineteen made a startling finding.

The gun crews were being hurt by their own weapons.

End quote.

So what happened in Minneapolis?

We saw it on video?

Why did it happen?

What went wrong with the people who fired those guns?

And in every other such event in civilian and in public life in the last umpteen years?

Why did it happen?

We may have been seeing that too, without even realizing it.

Some other updates from other subjects.

Trump's government is still in violation of the law Trump signed ensuring release of the Epstein files by Well nearly a month ago.

The Trump's Stein cover up is alive and well.

Representative Thomas Massey in his story in Politico, Quoting Politico in late December, Massy raised the possibility of bringing inherent contempt charges against Pam Bondy over the heavily redacted release.

Massey said, the biggest story is that the Justice Department is now quoting him trying to say that internal deliberations are off limits for the release, whereas the bill specifically says that they must be released, these specific decisions about whether to indict or not.

I'm not sure how that gets litigated, if that'll end up in a court somewhere.

The lever that I have is contempt, and eventually we will try to invoke that because it only involves one chamber quote.

Amazingly enough, Tom Massey's prospects for reelection are a vital concern to liberals, and incidentally it looks good for him.

I guess I'm happy on Jack Smith, Jim Jordan said Friday, quote He's coming in.

Jack Smith will testify in public before a House committee.

Jordan, who on top of everything else, is an effing moron, completely misreads the room.

Smith wants to testify in public, has been pleading for it.

It is his way of getting his findings out.

It is his way of getting his evidence out in public, and he is completely misread Smith's performance in the closed door testimony.

Quoting Jim Jordan.

Again, one of the key takeaways in the transcript is, we said, did you have any evidence that President Trump was responsible for the violence that took place at the Capitol.

He had no evidence of that whatsoever.

Well, of course, that's the exact opposite of what he said, you, moron.

What he didn't do was produce the evidence for you.

You didn't ask him to produce the evidence.

You asked him if he had it, and he said he did on his own stupidity.

Jim Jordan is betting Trump's continued ability to not face any calls for resignation from Republicans for impeachment by Republicans, because they are about to get an exquisite taste of what those around Richard Nixon got in nineteen seventy four.

My god, if I stay with this guy, I'm losing the midterms.

The Nobel Prize update, I'll just read its statement on this amazing and amazingly stupid idea that the winner of the Peace Prize would somehow give it to Trump and then Trump would in exchange, install her as the new dictator of Venezuela.

And I'll precede this quote by mentioning that recently at an auction.

I bought the Peabody Award that Larry King got in I believe nineteen ninety two.

Larry was a friend of mine, and I did not like the idea of his award going to somebody who he did not like or who did not know him.

This does not mean I won a Peabody Award.

It means I happen to have his for safe keeping.

It's sort of what the Nobel Peace Prize people are saying.

Quote.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee and the Norwegian Nobel Institute receive a number of requests for comments regarding the permanence of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate status.

The facts are clear and well established.

Once a Nobel Prize is announced, it cannot be revoked, share or transferred to others.

The decision is final and stands for all time, for all time.

Now, if they wanted to have a little fun, they should have added the Nobel Peace Prize is also not returnable for store credit.

And one more thing before a second segment on Minnesota and particularly somebody's reaction to Minnesota.

You heard Trump and how he wants to He wants to slide down one of those ropes from the helicopter like the Seal Team six guys do because he's because because his brain is dissolving, and every once in a while he thinks he's twenty six.

More correctly, he thinks he's twenty six and that he could have done that when he was twenty six.

These are great people, These are really people.

Even coming down those ropes, you know, they're coming down ropes off the helicopter.

And they run.

I was thinking to myself, I wonder if I could do that.

I can have to give it a try sometime.

I have only one comment on this bungee dream of Donald John Trump.

Please everybody tell him that's a great idea.

Also interest here, incredibly enough, there is at least one public figure pretending to be a Democrat taking himself seriously as a presidential candidate, even if nobody else is defending the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, defending shooting this woman on the streets of Minneapolis.

That public figure is Stephen A.

Smith.

And I'm sorry on behalf of a lot of the people who built ESPN and even the late comers like me.

ESPN now has to fire him.

Fire Stephen A.

Smith.

Now, I guess I should have said spoiler alert regarding worse persons, but hey, that's next.

This is Countdown.

This is Countdown with Keith Oberman still ahead on this all new edition of Countdown.

I don't know about you, but after this last week I need some thurber Mondays with thurber coming up.

But first, believe it or not, there are still more new idiots to talk about.

The roundup of the mis grants, Morons, Undunning, Kruger, Effets Specimen who constitute today's other worst persons in the world, the brons worse.

I am indebted to Derek Guy of put this on a fashion site.

He has noted the shall we say contradictory tweets of the four Maga shall we say whares about Venezuela, Will Chamberlain cat turd, Matt Walsh Blog of Matt Walshblog's Blob blog, and Laura Loomer cat tird.

First, shall we name one US inspired regime change that hasn't ended in absolute disaster?

He wrote.

Now, he writes, Venezuela is now more free than New York City.

Will Chamberlain, the owner of the world's largest forehead.

The Republican Party is no longer the Party of regime change and endless wars.

If you want to be its standard bearer, that as a non negotiable position.

That's what he wrote.

Now he has written, I can think a few better uses of my tax dollars than black bagging the head of a foreign narco trafficking organization that enriches itself by addicting and poisoning my fellow Americans.

Well, of course, other than finding a cure for a five or six head.

Loy'll do.

Mary, I'm America first.

I don't support regime change.

I went on Bannon's war room to talk about Chinese aggression in Venezuela and why we need to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign as Lamarst organization.

That's what she wrote.

Now she's written.

Maduro has arrived at the DEA office in Manhattan.

He was transported into an armoried motorcade after being transported in a blindfold by a helicopter and then by playing to New York after his compound in Caracus was raided by US Special for Proud to be an American today, USA and Matt Walsh, we've spent the last twenty five years bringing quote freedom and quote democracy to countries around the globe, while our own country has been systematically invaded and now our largest cities are run by foreigners and communists.

If you want to know why I'm so a vowedly non interventionist, this is why.

That's what he used to write.

Now they've told him to write this.

This is a war for oil.

First of all, the war lasted like ninety minutes.

Second, going to war to secure vital resources for your own people is totally legitimate.

Why should we allowed some third world communist shithole to control trillions of dollars worth of oil?

A vowedly non interventionist, except when's people who are paying you tell you to be a vowidly pro interventionist.

Wharesah runner up worse here?

The Financial Times it has run a story which seems like a slice of life of our times.

Headline influencers and only fans models dominate us.

Extraordinary artist visas work permits increasingly being awarded on basis of online reach, favoring content creators.

The story is full of data about how these h one b exceptional immigrant visas are being granted to social media influencers and others with high follower accounts.

But there is not one word in the article about only fans.

I mean the words only and fans do not appear in the article, only in the headline.

It's like only fans headline.

We want names financial Times.

I mean, it's a logical conclusion from what's been written here, But where's the evidence?

I mean, Milania, No, but went the worst.

ESPN's Stephen A.

Smith for years, including five years in the preceding decade where I had to work alongside him.

He was more important to them than I was.

When I went back to ESPN in twenty thirteen and then again in twenty eighteen.

I get it.

People always laugh at the shouting guy in the clown suit four years, including when I had to pretend he had some knowledge about sports or information about sports that reflected an intellect and an access better than that of a gas station hot dog.

For years, including when I had to pretend that his on air style was more bearable than the screech of the train's breaking as they stopped in a New York City subway station.

And for a year as he has run a one man campaign to try to force a ground swell to get himself taken seriously as a presidential possibility.

No possibility is the wrong word to get himself taken as anything besides one of the dumbestas in the extremely dumb history of extremely dumb American politics.

And while doing this, he has tried to pretend he didn't want the job and he didn't have anything to do with the campaign.

For years I have been mildly critical of Stephen A.

Smith.

That ends.

He has now defended the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, the murder of an American mother picking up her kid at school, because because Stephen thinks that may make him president, without realizing apparently that the only people that that barbaric in human point of view can appeal to are the same people who think Stephen A.

Smith is a DEI higher and he should not be on ESPN or television.

And these same people that he's trying to appeal to want Disney burn to the ground.

As it is.

It's the Tony de Koppel story, only involving somebody who actually has viewers.

You are appealing to the people who want to see your career end.

But that's his problem now with this rubicon that he's passed rubicon Google it, Steve, I speak on behalf of a lot of us who helped establish that place ESPN, including those who, unlike me, actually did build it.

They were actually there on day one or year one or year five or year ten.

They didn't just come in on the second wave of growth like I did in the nineties.

We're talking about the originals, but all of us originals and second wave old timers have discussed this, and I'm sorry even I believe that there's never been any room for overlapping partisan politics and sports coverage on ESPN.

And I never did it there, and I vowed to never do it there, and I never did it there, not once, well not when I worked for them.

And now they are letting him go on a satellite radio show and not only constantly talk politics, and he knows less somehow about politics than he knows about sports.

So he's in negative numbers on politics and spout fascism and spout murdering American civilians for the sake of Trump's war against people of color and the murdering of American citizens on the street by the Trump Gestapo.

They let him go on a satellite radio show and spout fascism Steven A.

Smith is urinating on the ESPN brand because who knows, maybe he actually believes this.

It'd be the first time Steven Asmith is actually believed in anything other than his own paycheck.

But hey, you know, could happen.

Everybody has a loyalty somewhere, especially if there's money attached to it.

But to Jimmy Pittaro, the president of ESPN, and to Bob Eiger, the head of Disney, who I have known since nineteen seventy freaking nine, you have to stop this.

You have to stop him.

Stephen A.

Smith is destroying what we Jimmy, Bob and the real inventors of ESPN, what we have spent parts of our lives trying to build.

It is still one of the great brand names in America.

But if Steven A.

Smith will not drop the political show, you have to drop him.

Bob, Jimmy, you have to fire him.

You have to fire Stephen A.

Smith right now because he is on a path that ends with him destroying ESPN irrevocably.

And if you don't think this is wrong somehow, just think about the money.

Stephen A.

Smith, And I'm sorry, I have to go there now and henceforth, Stephen a Shit, today's worst person in the world, Sit back and relax, if relax is the right word for it.

For the greatest man in the World by James Thurber.

Looking back on it now from the vantage point of nineteen forty one can only marvel that it had not happened.

Long before it did.

The United States of America had been ever since Kitty Hawk blindly constructing the elaborate petard, by which, sooner or later it must be hoist.

It was inevitable that someday there would come, roaring out of the skies a national hero of insufficient intelligence, background and character, successfully to endure the mounting orgies of glory prepared for aviators who stayed up for a long time or flew a great distance.

Both Lindbergh and Byrd, fortunately for national decorum and international amity, had been gentlemen, So had our other famous aviators.

They wore their laurels, gracefully, withstood the awful weather of publicity, married excellent women, usually fine family, and quietly retired to private life and the enjoyment of their varying fortunes.

No untoward incidents on a worldwide scale marred the perfection of their conduct on the perilous heights of Fame.

The exception to the rule was, however, bound to occur, and it did in July nineteen thirty seven, when Jack Pal Smirch erstwhile mechanics helper in a small garage in Westfield, Iowa, flew a second hand single motored BREASTHABN Dragonfly three monoplane all the way around the world without stopping.

Never before in the history of aviation had such a flight as Smirches even been dreamed of.

No one had even taken seriously the weird floating auxiliary gas tanks invention of the mad New Hampshire professor of astronomy, doctor Charles Lewis Gresham, upon which Smirch placed full reliance.

When the garage worker, a slightly built, surly unprepossessing young man of twenty two, appeared at Roosevelt Field early in July nineteen thirty seven, slowly chewing a great quid of scrap tobacco, and announced nobody ain't seen no flying yet.

The newspapers touched briefly and satirically upon his projected twenty five thousand mile flight.

Aeronautical and automotive experts dismissed the idea, curtly implying that it was a hoax, the publicity stunt.

The rusty, battered second hand plane wouldn't go, the Gresham auxiliary tanks wouldn't work.

It was simply a cheap joke smirch.

However, after calling on a girl in Brooklyn who worked in the flap folding department of a large paper box factory, a girl whom he later described as his sweet Pittuti, climbed nonchalantly into his ridiculous plane at dawn the memorable seventh of July nineteen thirty seven, spit a curve of tobacco juice into the still air, and took off, carrying with him only a gallon of bootleg gin and six pounds of salami.

When the garage boy thundered out over the ocean, the papers were forced to record in all seriousness that a mad, unknown young man his name was variously misspelled, had actually set out upon a preposterous attempt to span the world in a rickety one engine contraption, trusting to the long distance refueling device of a crazy schoolmaster.

When, nine days later, without having stopped once, the tiny plane appeared above San Francisco Bay, headed for New York, spluttering and choking, to be sure, but still magnificently and miraculously aloft the headlines which long since had crowded everything else off the front page.

Even the shooting of the Governor of Illinois by the Valetti Gang swelled to unprecedented size, and the news stories began to run to twenty five and thirty columns.

It was noticeable, however, that the accounts of the epoch making flight touched rather lightly upon the aviator himself.

This was not because the facts about the hero as a man were too meager, but because they were too complete.

Reporters who had been rushed out to Iowa when Smirch's plane was first sighted over the lidge little French coast town of Serlee Lemaire to dig up the story of the great man's life had promptly discovered that the story of his life could not be printed.

His mother, a sullen short order cook and a shack restaurant on the edge of a tourist's camping ground near Westfield, met all inquiries as to her son with an angry and the hell with him.

A hoppy drowns.

His father appeared to be in jail somewhere for stealing spotlights and lap robes from tourists automobiles.

His young brother, a weak minded lad, had but recently escaped from the Preston, Iowa Reformatory, and was already wanted in several Western towns for the theft of money order blanks from post offices.

These alarming discoveries were still piling up at the very time that pal Smirch, the greatest hero of the twentieth century, lear eyed dead for sleep, half starved, was piloting his crazy junk heap high above the region in which the lamentable story of his private life was being unearthed, headed for New York and a greater glory than any man of his time had ever known.

The necessity for printing some account in the papers of the young man's career and personality had led to a remarkable predicament.

It was, of course, impossible to reveal the facts, for a tremendous popular feeling in favor of the young hero had sprung up like a grass fire when he was halfway across Europe on his flight around the globe.

He was therefore described as a modest, chap taciturn blonde, popular with his friends, popular with girls.

The only available snapshot of Smirch, taken at the wheel of a phony automobile in a cheap photo studio at an amusement park, was touched up so that the little vulgarian looked quite handsome.

His twisted leer was smoothed into a pleasant smile.

The truth was in this way kept from the youth's ecstatic compatriots.

They did not dream that the Smirch family was despised and feared by its neighbors in the obscure Iowa town, nor that the hero himself, because of numerous unsavory exploits, had come to be regarded in Westfield as a nuisance and a menace.

Pal's Smirch had, the reporters discovered, once knife the principle of his high school, not mortally, to be sure, but he had knifed him, and on another occasion, surprised in the act of an stealing altar cloth from a church, he had bashed the sexton over the head with a pot of Easter lilies.

For each of these offenses he had served a sentence in the reformatory inwardly.

The authorities, both in New York and in Washington, prayed that an understanding providence might, however awful, such a thing seemed, bring disaster to the rusty, battered plane and its illustrious pilot, whose unheard of flight had aroused the civilized world to Hosanna's hysterical praise.

The authorities were convinced that the character of the renowned aviator was such that the limelight of adulation was bound to reveal him to all the world as a congenital hooligan, mentally and morally unequipped to cope with his own prodigious fame.

I trust, said the Secretary of State, at one of the many secret cabinet meetings called to consider the national dilemma.

I trust that his mother's prayer will be answered, by which he referred to missus Emma's smirch's wish that her son might be drowned.

It was, however, too late, for that Spurch had leaped the Atlantic and then the Pacific as if they were mill ponds.

At three minutes after two o'clock on the afternoon of July seventeenth, nineteen thirty seven, the garage boy brought his idiotic plane into Roosevelt Field for a perfect three point landing.

It had, of course been out of the question, and to arrange a modest little reception for the greatest flier in the history of the world.

He was received at Roosevelt Field with such elaborate and pretentious ceremonies as rocked the world.

Fortunately, however, the warren and spent hero promptly swooned, had to be removed bodily from his plane, and was spirited from the field without having opened his mouth once.

Thus he did not jeopardize the dignity of his first reception, a reception illumined by the presence of the Secretaries of War and the Navy, Mayor Michael J.

Moriarty of New York, the Premier of Canada, Governors Fannomine Groves, mcpheeley and Critchfield, and a brilliant array of European diplomats.

Smirch did not, in fact come too in time to take part in the gigantic hullabaloo arranged at City Hall for the next day.

He was rushed to a secluded nursing home and confined in bed.

It was nine days before he was able to get up, or to be more exact, before he was permitted to it up.

Meanwhile, the greatest minds in the country in solemn assembly, had arranged a secret conference of city, state and government officials, which Smirch was to attend for the purpose of being instructed in the ethics and behavior of heroism.

On the day that the little mechanic was finally allowed to get up in dress and for the first time in two weeks, took a great chew of tomacco, he was permitted to receive the newspaper men this by way of testing him out.

Smirch did not wait for questions.

Use guys, he said, and the Times Man winced.

Use guys can tell the cock eyed world that I put it over on Lindberg.

See yeah, man, an assid I'm two frogs.

The two frogs.

It was a reference to a pair of gallant French flyers who, in attempting to flight only halfway around the world, had two weeks before unhappily been lost at sea.

The Times Man was bold enough at this point to sketch out for Smirch the accepted formula for interviews in cases of this kind.

He explained that there should be no arrogant statements belittling the achievements of other heroes, particularly heroes of foreign nations.

Ah the hell with that, said Smirch.

I did it.

See I did it, and I'm talking about it, and he did talk about it.

None of this extraordinary interview was, of course printed.

On the contrary, the newspapers, already under the discipline direction of a secret directorate created for the occasion and composed of statesmen and editors, gave out to a panting and restless world that Jackie, as he had been arbitrarily nicknamed, would consent to say only that he was very happy and that anyone could have done what he did.

My achievement has been I fear slightly exaggerated.

The Times Man's article had him protest with a modest smile.

These newspapers stories were kept from the hero, a restriction which did not serve to abate the rising malevolence of his temper.

The situation was indeed extremely grave for Palell.

Smirch was, as he kept insisting, raring to go.

He could not much longer be kept from a nation clamorous to lionize him.

It was the most desperate crisis the United States of America had faced since the sinking of the Lusitania.

On the afternoon of the twenty seventh of July, Smirch was spirited away to a conference room in which were gathered mayors, governors, government officials, behaviorist, psychologists, and editors.

He gave them each a limp moist paw, and a brief, unlovely grin hi, he said.

When Smirch was seated, the Mayor of New York arose, and, with obvious pessimism, attempted to explain what he must say and how he must act when presented to the world, ending his talk with a high tribute to the hero's courage and integrity.

The mayor was followed by Governor Fannman of New York, who, after a touching declaration of faith, introduced Cameron Spottiswood, second Secretary of the American Embassy in Paris, the gentleman selected to coach Smirch in the amenities of public ceremonies.

Sitting in a chair with a soiled yellow tie in his hand and his shirt open at the throat, unshaved, smoking a rolled cigarette, Jack Smirch listened with a leer on his lips.

I get you, I get you, he cut in nastily.

You want me to act like a softie?

Huh?

You want me to act like that bemny memty baby face lind big huh, Well nuts to that.

See.

Everyone took in his breath sharply.

It was a sigh and a hiss.

Mister Lindbergh began.

A United States senator purple with rage, and mister bird Smirch, who was paring his nails with a jackknife, cut in again.

Boyd, he exclaimed, Oh, for God's sake, that big somebody shut off the blasphemies with a sharp word.

A newcomer had entered the word the room.

Everyone stood up, except Smirch, who was still busy with his nails, and he did not even glance up.

Mister Smirch, said someone sternly.

The President of the United States.

It had been thought that the presence of the Chief Executive might have a chastening effect on the young hero, and the former had been, thanks to the remarkable cooperation of the press, secretly brought to the obscure conference room.

A great painful silence fell.

Smirch looked up, waved a hand at the president.

How you coming, he asked, and began rolling a fresh cigarette.

The silence deepened.

Someone coughed in a strained way.

Jesus hot, ain't it, said smirch.

He loosened two more shirt buttons, revealing a hairy chest and the tattooed word sadie enclosed in a stenciled heart.

The great and important men in the room, faced by the most serious crisis in American history, exchanged worried frowns.

Nobody seemed to know how to proceed.

Come on, come on, said smirch.

Let's get the hell out of here.

Why do I start cutting in on the parties?

Eh?

And when is there gonna be this in it?

He rubbed a thumb and forefinger together meaningly.

Money, exclaimed a state senator shocked Pale.

Yeah money, said pal, flipping his cigarette out of the window.

And big money.

He began rolling a fresh cigarette.

Big money, he repeated, Frowning over the rice paper.

He tilted back in his chair and leered at each gentleman separately.

The leer of an animal that knows its power, the leer of a leopard loose in a bird and dog shop.

Ah, for God's sake, let's get someplace where it's cool.

He said, I've been cooped up plenty for three weeks.

Smirch stood up and walked over to an open window, where he stood staring down into the street nine floors below.

The faint shouting of newsboys floated up to him.

He made out his name, hot Dog, he cried, grinning ecstatic.

He leaned out over the sill.

You tell of babies, he shouted down, Hot Diggity Dog.

In the tense little knot of men standing behind him, a quick, mad impulse flared up.

An unspoken word of appeal of command seemed to ring through the room.

It was deadly silent.

Charles K.

L Brand, secretary to the Mayor of New York City, happened to be standing nearest Smirch.

He looked inquiringly at the President of the United States.

The President, pale grim, nodded shortly.

Brand, a tall, powerfully built man wants to tackle at Rutgers University, stepped forward, seized the greatest man in the world by his left shoulder and the seat of his pants, and pushed him out the window.

My god, he's falling out the window, cried a quick witted editor.

Get me out of here, cried the President.

Several men sprang to his side, and he was hurriedly escorted out of a door toward a side entrance of the building.

The editor of the Associated Press took charge, being used to such things crisply, He ordered certain men to leave, others to stay quickly.

He outlined a story which all the papers were to agree on, sent two men to the street to handle that end of the tragedy, commanded a senator to sob and two congressmen to go to pieces nervously.

In a word, he skillfully set the stage for the gigantic task that was to follow, the task of breaking to a grief stricken world the sad story of the untimely accidental death of its most illustrious and spectacular figure.

The funeral was, as you know, the most elaborate, the finest, the solemnest, and the saddest ever held in the United States of America.

The monument in Arlington Cemetery, with its clean white shaft of marble and the simple device of a tiny plane carved on its base, is a place for pilgrims in deep reverence to visit.

The nations of the world paid lofty tributes to little Jackie Smirch America's greatest hero.

At a given hour, there were two minutes of silence throughout the nation.

Even the inhabitants of the small, bewildered town of Westfield, Iowa observed this touching ceremony.

Agents of the Department of Justice sow to that one of them was especially assigned to stand grimly in the doorway of a little shack restaurant on the edge of the tourists camping ground just outside the town.

There, under his stern scrutiny, missus Emma Smirch bowed her head over two Hamburger steaks sizzling on her grill.

Bowed her head and turned away so that the secret serviceman could not see the twisted, strangely familiar leer on her lips.

I've done all the damage I can do here.

Thank you for listening.

Most of our Countdown music was arranged, produced and performed by Brian Ray on the guitars, the bass and the drums, and John Philip and Ale handling orchestration and keyboards.

They are our musical directors of Countdown.

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 Old Woman theme from ESPN two, written by Mitch Warren Davis, courtesy of ESPN, Inc.

Yeah, I've Got a Fire Steve Andasonon Other music arranged and performed Sorry Steven Aship.

Other music arranged and performed by the group No Horns Allowed.

My anouncer today is my friend Tony Kornheiser.

This program was produced by Ted.

Everything else was as always my fault.

That's countdown for today, Day three hundred and fifty eight of America held hostage again, just one one hundred and five days until the scheduled end of his lame duck and lame brained term unless he is removed sooner by Maga, Jeffrey Epstein and Affordability and Marble armrests in Venezuela and his ice Gestapo murdering American mothers as they pick up their kids from school.

The next scheduled countdown is Thursday Bulletins as the news merits until the next one.

I'm Keith Olberman.

Good Morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck.

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