Countdown With Keith Olbermann, S2E134: Trump Appears To Have “Fluent Aphasia”

Episode 134 has been uploaded.

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A-Block

• Trump appears to be suffering from a condition called “Fluent Aphasia.”
• Victims can verbalize intricate long sentences, and appear to be answering questions or making coherent observations. But frequently all they have is the structure and the cadence of coherence; the rhythm of speech. They do not fully understand what they are hearing, cannot convey what they are trying to through speech, and are almost invariably the victims of strokes or head injuries. All attempts to explain “Fluent Aphasia” (or by its formal name, “Wernicke’s Aphasia”) use the phrase “word salad.”

My personal choice is “Markov Chains.” When you look at the phrase level, the phrase might make sense, but overall, things wander. A (relatively) simple program can be written which picks up these 2- or 3-word units, picks a random word to start things with, and then looks for a way to continue the sentence.

Here’s an example of the output, where the source text is the Declaration of Independence.

Head of the Laws for their exercise; the Right of peace, Standing Armies  
without our frontiers, the population of Nature’s God entitle them, a  
multitude of human events, it is their substance. 
 
Civil power. 
 
Representation in many cases, of Lands. 
 
Charters, abolishing the tenure of their just powers of the most barbarous  
ages, sexes and altering fundamentally the People to which impel them  
shall seem most wholesome and to pass others to pass others to encourage  
their substance.

Back to Keith.

• And after a three-day series of speeches in which, on literally dozens of occasions, he said things that SOUNDED like sentences but were not, the evidence is mounting and the problem is accelerating: the Trump word salad is “Fluent Aphasia” and on top of all of Trump’s other mental and ethical problems, it is disqualifying.
• He cannot be President. His brain literally does not work correctly,
• MEANWHILE: “Course I’m respectable,” says John Huston as Noah Cross in Chinatown to Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes in Chinatown. “I’m OLD. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable, if they LAST long enough.” And then there’s what happens when you’re all three of those things — as the Supreme Court and its justices are all three of those things: Politicians pretending to be justices, working in an ugly building, and as Trump relied upon and was proved correct — they’re all whores.
• “Because the Constitution makes Congress rather than the states responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal office holders and candidates, we reverse,” reads the Court’s decision to not enforce the 14th Amendment denying insurrectionists the right to become President or hold other offices. 9-nothing. Except it DOESN’T do that. Section 3, as conservative scholar after conservative scholar has repeatedly stated, is SELF-enforcing. It is automatic. If you engaged in insurrection, you’re out. If you think you’re being ill-treated, Section 3 provides you an override mechanism: you can get the House AND the Senate to each CLEAR you, each by a two-thirds vote. Period. The Constitution says NOTHING about an enforcement responsibility.
• The Court betrayed democracy yesterday — again: this time by going faster to help Trump. On Presidential immunity, it’s going SLOWER to help Trump. Its members, including Jackson and Kagan and Sotomayor, who before folding, stood up just long enough to wave BYE BYE to representative government, overruled one of the easiest parts of the Constitution to understand for the benefit of one corrupt politician. Individually and as an entity they have proved themselves inept at basic reading comprehension. They have proved themselves to be corrupt and illegitimate. Its usefulness and relevance is at an end, and whatever replaces it, the immediate need is obvious: The Supreme Court must be dissolved.
• The funny part, of course, is that these idiots have inadvertently given the current sitting President (a Mr. Biden, I believe) a kind of qualified, specific immunity from prosecution in case HE wants to illegally overturn an election.

B-Block

• POSTSCRIPTS TO THE NEWS: Another reporter claims Trump is about to pivot and Trump promptly makes her look like an idiot. Trump’s new vaccine promise: I’m here to kill your kids. Trump shortens his National Abortion Ban plan. Jack Smith says no, the DOJ 60-Day Secret Unwritten Rule does NOT apply to cases already filed against Trump. And farewell to my old friend Chris Mortensen go ESPN.
• THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: Jesse Watters says Biden “licking ice cream” is unmanly and implies he has Alzheimer’s. That’s before they found the post from five years ago of Watters … licking ice cream.

“I’m Watters and this is my world.” Evidently, there’s no stigma against hypocrisy in his world.

• Darrell Leon McClanahan III, the would-be Republican nominee for Governor of Missouri,

Whenever I see “III” or “IV” after someone’s name, I wonder about what kind of family isn’t creative enough to think up a new name for their kid (usually son).

I’ve also wondered whether I should append “I” to my name.

• is suing because, he claims, he was only an HONORARY member of the KKK,

You mean the Republican party has standards?

• and Kristin Welker allegedly wins after allegedly graduating from Harvard and allegedly being a White House correspondent and saying Trump “allegedly” tried to overturn the election.

C-Block

• THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: My oldest enemy — the one I thought was killed off in the ’80s — turns out to be alive and well. My half century battle against “The Auto Train” and its stopped-up toilets of 1972.

Good morning, good afternoon, good night, and good luck!