EPISODE 155: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:42) SPECIAL COMMENT: "A Democratic president," writes Will Saletan (whose brother and I co-wrote a book of poems in 4th grade, "is standing up to Putin. And he's facing a Republican who would rather attack Mickey Mouse." But Ron DeSantis's ignorant, naive, isolationism is much worse. It opens the door for a full-on Republican campaign pledge (under him or Trump) to betray Ukraine as of 1/20/25. Just last night a retired American military officer went on Fox and told Carlson "The truth is coming out that this war was not started by Russia."

What happens on 1/20/25, if one of them is inaugurated as president, and moments later Putin bombs...Poland? Because that just went from farfetched scenario to tangible possibility as the Polish Security Agency discovered Russian agents installing hidden cameras along the Polish railroad lines on which Western ammunition and weapons are transported to Kiev. If Putin has already game-planned an attack on NATO, we have to wonder: Would Trump or DeSantis be so committed to the anti-Ukraine, pro-Putin stance that THEIR United States would wind up permitting or even supporting a Russian war against NATO?

It is a long, interwoven saga of DeSantis and Fox and Trump and Georgia 2020 and Marjorie Taylor Greene disclosing classified information at the Mexican border and how you won't hear this on Fox - or on CNN for that matter, where David Zaslav publicly recommitted to Chris Licht (who when we were at MSNBC together we all thought used to eat paste) in a meeting with 600 CNN Managers (CNN? 600 Managers? There's your problem right there). The New CNN's recommitment to useless, pointless, banal stenography was brilliantly characterized by Dylan Byers of Puck: "Nearly one year in, it's clear that Zaslav still believes in his vision for CNN as a nonpartisan, broadcast-style news digest, and still believes that Licht is his Captain Ahab."

Captain...AHAB?

Wait, doesn't Moby-Dick (or is it Moby-Licht) end with mass death? 

CALL ME ISHMAEL. MY BOAT SANK. THE END.

B-Block (19:18) EVERY DOG HAS ITS DAY: Shenanigan and Banshee, 14-week old shep/husky puppies in Devore, CA. (20:15) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My career at the RKO Radio Network, where my boss was Charley Steiner, and where he once tasked me with finding out when and where a secret meeting between Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner and Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn would be held. And after I gave up and went to get some pizza, I literally RAN INTO STEINBRENNER ON THE STREET YELLING OUT THE DETAILS OF THE MEETING.

C-Block (43:40) MORE THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: A little under the weather today so let me re-tell the adventures of another '80s job, which I waited 10 months to be able to start, and which lasted only half that long. Why almost nobody remembers me as "Keith Olbermann, SportsCenter 5, Boston."

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