This has been a blog with my opinions on politics, psychology, and pop culture using the Google Blogger platform with the address halbrown.org. As of Oct. 10, 2023 it has been renamed Hal Brown's Stressline and moved to the WordPress platform with the new address Stressline.org - Posts are sometimes serious and sometimes snarky.
As you can see from the screen grab of the BBC website above the presumed Putin Prigozhin assassination bumped the GOP debate and Trump's legal troubles off as the top story. I think this is indicatve of the international perspective of what is the most improtant news to cover.
Fox News, in contrast, relegated the story to a minor spot:
The New York Times prioritized the debate story online...
... but dropped it to the very bottom of the print edition front page:
Click above to enlarge image
The Washington did the same with their online and their print editions:
I undertand why local media puts American news on as the top story but I think the Russia story is equally important, an opinion reflected by the editors of the print edtion of The NY Times.
Anyway you look at it, there were two major stories last night.
The plane being shot down came with an amazing video which makes it a compelling story for television.
Click above to view with real life commentary
The caught on video amazing assassination - although one is foolish to be amazed by it - came before the debate and was referred to when Nikki Haley accused Ramaswarmy of "choosing a murderer" for saying supporting Ukraine is not a "priority for the United States."
From the debate:
“Look what Putin did today, he killed Prigozhin,” Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former governor said Wednesday night during the first Republican party presidential candidate for the 2024 election after being asked how she would respond to the war in Ukraine if she were elected.
She continued, “When I was at the U.N., the Russian ambassador suddenly died. This guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.” Reference.
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley landed perhaps the biggest blow against Ramaswamy during a heated exchange over aid to Ukraine. Ramaswamy argued that U.S. support for Ukraine against Russian aggression should be used for defending the U.S. border instead.
“You are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country. ... You would make America less safe. You have no foreign policy experience and it shows. It shows,” Haley said, drawing an eruption of applause from the debate audience.
The broadside is the closest Haley has come to a breakout moment during the race so far. The former South Carolina governor has struggled to gain traction in early nominating states.
In terms of sheer drama a group of GOP president wannabes shouting over each other watching a plane carrying 10 people presumably including the leader of the Wagner Group and his chief deputy being blown out of the sky and crashing and burning (see more video and photos on Newsweek here) was literally a murder in Moscow (literally somewhere 30 minutes north of Moscow on its way to St. Petersburg).
Not only is this being reported as a murder in Moscow but there is also a possible mystery in Moscow because there are some questions being asked whether Prigozhin himself staged this assassination so he could disappear and live out his life in some safe haven.
If he managed to do this Putin could probably find him and get rid of him for sheer vengeance but he wouldn't be able to make it public. Although the psychopath would like to look Prigozhin in the eyes telling him that vot chto sluchilos', kogda ty trakhalsya Putinym as he shot or poisoned him he'd have to settle for a live video.
Either way it's a win for Putin. He shows that anyone who dares staging a coup against him is signing their own death warrant and will be subject to a public execution. In fact, this is what it was called on MSNBC's Morning Joe just after I typed these words. They added that it seems more than a coincidence that someone was their to take a video of it as if it was staged for television.
The candidates merely metaphorically murdered, or attempted to murder each other. There was, or might have been, a real murder which demonstrates why President Biden's firm support of Ukraine is vital to democracy.
Ironically, while none of the GOP candidates in the debate won the night it is fair to say that both Biden (thanks to Putin) and Putin himself, albeit in very different ways, can claim to have come out victorious.
Addendum:
I am hearing comments on MSNBC saying that the timing of the crash might be relevant in that it came exactly two months after Prigozhin moved his troops towards the Kremlin. I would suggest that while Putin wanted to "celebrate" the two month anniversary he also might have wanted to provide must-see American counter programming to the GOP debate. If Trump thought his own Tucker interview would be good counter-programming, Putin certainly outdid him.
Afternoon update:
As far as news: on The Washington Post website the Russia story is on the top of the page, the pending Trump arrest second, and the debate third:
A lot was made of the time Biden fell off his bicycle. However I don't think anybody pointed out how fit he was in the first place to even be riding a bike which he could fall off from.
Trump's main form of exercise seem to be walking from his golf cart to hit a golf ball.
You can listen to "Let It Be" be clicking either images above.
Here's an article from Raw Story about Rockstar, Dolly Parton's new album which include numbers not only with Sir Paul, Ringo, Peter Frampton, and Mick Fleetwood on Let It Be, but also Elton John, Sting, Lizzo, Pink, Debbie Harry, Steve Perry, Steven Tyler, Stevie Nicks, Pat Benatar, Joan Jett, John Fogerty, Miley Cyrus and Ann and Nancy Wilson on other songs.
Aside from what promises to be an instant classic album this Dolly Parton collaboration is a celebration of geriatic musicians. All except Miley Cyrus (30) and Lizzo (35) are 70 (Pat Benatar) or older.
Reading about this led me to take the lazy route to writing a blog for today and republishing with a few revisions my May 30 piece about ageism and how it relates to politics.
Biden and Trump's candidacy and ageism
WaPo column "3 reasons we’re stuck with Trump and Biden" led me to write about ageism in America and say humbly that at almost 80 if it was between me and Trump I'm more cognitively capable of being president.
This is the opinion column that jumped out at me when I looked at The Washington Post online on May 30, 2023:
The question I pose is whether this column by McArdle and the polls she cites reflect ageism. I will turn 80 in January. I live in a senior community where while I know many residents who succumb to dementia or demonstrate cognitive decline in their early seventies, I also know many who are cognitively sharp well into their nineties.
In an April NBC poll, nearly two-thirds of voters said they did not think Trump should run for president again — and more than two-thirds said the same thing about Biden, in large part because they think he’s too old. How did a once-great nation end up facing an election between two very old, very unpopular White dudes?
I can sketch out the proximate causes. On the Republican side, just as in 2016, a massive primary field is splitting the votes of the moderates, giving Trump plenty of room to consolidate his ultra-MAGA minority. Democrats, meanwhile, have no good options as long as the vice presidency is occupied by the hapless Kamala D. Harris, whose impolitic blurtings, inability to hold staff and tendency to choke under pressure make her an even less appealing candidate than her boss. Every Democratic operative I’ve asked blanched at the thought of running her — and also agreed that for reasons of coalition management, she cannot be pushed aside.
Aside from using the word "stuck" which in context is a pejorative, I found this paragraph problematic:
Yet that only describes the problem; it does not explain why we seem stuck with two broadly disliked candidates, one already in his 80s and the other turning 78 before Election Day 2024. Nor does it explain America’s broader problem of political gerontocracy, as embodied by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who seems too cognitively impaired to fully carry out her duties or to realize she ought to retire.
Biden is only disliked by the GOP. He may be disliked as a candidate by Democrats because of his age but he is not personally disliked the way Trump is. To include both Trump and Biden with Feinstein as emblematic of what is wrong with having seniors in political power, which McArdle calls a political gerontocracy, is patently unfair. Feinstein is an outlier because she has a serious cognitive impairment. With the average ages of 117th Congress at 58.4 years for Representatives and 64.3 years for Senators we are stretching it to call this a political gerontocracy. Being 58 or 64 is not being old. Sure it is reasonable to say Trump and Biden are old, but of those two only one has his reality testing impaired which is a sign of cognitive impairment.
Both Trump and Biden statistically have a higher chance of dying than if they were, say, in their fifties or sixties, but because as far as we know neither has a life threatening medical condition both could live into their nineties and, while risk of dementia increases as one ages, many elders never develop the disease.
A poll of Democrats should include a question asking whether assuming Biden will live with no impairments until he is in his nineties would you favor him as a candidate.
Calling Trump and Biden "relics of an era when America was more stratified by race and gender but less polarized by income, education, ideology or party" McArdle's concluding paragraphs shift focus from a critique of Trump and Biden's age to the way they speak:
Perhaps more importantly, they also talk like it. For both the Wharton transfer student and the guy who graduated near the bottom of his law school class, lower-middlebrow is their native language. In the mouths of the younger products of the high-intensity meritocratic rat race, this register of the American dialect sounds foreign — and given that only about one-third of U.S. adults have a college diploma, this matters a lot. In fact, it is in many ways the most compelling of the three explanations. It is also the most depressing, not so much for what it says about Biden and Trump, but for what it says about younger politicians: They don’t think like non-college voters — and therefore can’t communicate so well with them.
It’s very risky to be so dependent on people who are well into their golden years, who will not be with us forever. And what will American politics look like when the front-row kids who can’t speak lower-middlebrow are the only ones left in the room?
Trump, who despite his lack of exercise and poor diet, seems to have the DNA to be a super-ager. I suggest that to say either Biden or Trump is unfit to be president soley because of their age is ageism.
My impression is that when the 50 year old McArdle writes "golden years" she isn't really being complementary. Perhaps I react this way because I will be 80 in January and although to function well I generally need a 45 minute mid-afternoon nap I am both cognitively and physically unimpaired and if the choice was between myself and Donald Trump in all humility can say that political positions aside I would be more capable of carrying out the responsibilities of being president.
Recent blog stories:
Will Trump's Tucker Show be a Big Whoop or a Whopping Wowza?
