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Presidential Election 2024
"Neither is qualified. Both deserve to lose."
Video: Prof. Jeffrey Sachs Q & A at Cambridge Union as published on Oct 30 2024
Starting at 48:06 min (automated transcript, slightly edited):
Sachs:
I will not vote for a candidate that doesn't meet the minimum threshold for being president of the United States and we have two candidates, lead candidates, that don't. And so I decided I'm not voting – period. Because I want a candidate that actually has some possibility of doing something.
Now maybe they will but not based on what they say every day.
It is a profession of love for Israel's murderous reign in the Middle East. Okay, by itself I wouldn't support that. That's enough for me because Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza and it's sickening and it's obvious and we see it every day. And if a candidate can't figure out to say something about then I can't support them. Period.
But then Kamala Harris, who would normally be my candidate because I was a lifelong Democratic Party voter. Although with great disappointment whether they won or lost. Because when they won I was disappointed with what they did. When they lost I was disappointed that my candidate lost. So I've never been happy for a while about us politics.
It's been five miserable presidents as far as I'm concerned from Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, awful all of them. They brought us to the brink of nuclear war. I can't forgive them for that kind of recklessness.
But when it comes to Ukraine Harris says we stand with Ukraine. Just everybody understand what does it mean to stand with Ukraine, like Boris Johnson stands with Ukraine. It means 2,000 Ukrainians killed or wounded severely every single day. That's not standing with Ukraine. That is standing with the destruction of Ukraine. It's exactly the opposite. And so that's a purely Orwellian idea that we're standing with Ukraine by continuing this war.
And that's what she says because she doesn't seem to have any idea other than what she's told to say or she says her ideas. And either way I can't vote for her.
And with Trump – don't even get me started.
So the answer is I don't see either of them based on what they're saying right now doing much.
But I think there's another point that is important in this. I'm not without hope for a quite different reason and that is that our politics is not determined by American presidents. Our politics is determined by the Security State apparatus. And what is happening right now is not in America's security interest and so they could change their mind.
President Putin said something actually very interesting in an interview in 2017, I think in Figaro. By the time he had three presidents as his counterparts, Bush, Obama and Trump, and he said to this French reporter in 2017.
He said: "You know I've dealt with three American presidents. Now they come into office with ideas but then men in dark suits and blue ties come to tell them how the real situation is and you never hear of those ideas again."
And this is from a very tough-minded leader who was himself KGB he understands how the American system works very well. He understands what the CIA means for American foreign policy. He understands that American foreign policy is very deeply rooted.
It's not this one wins then Obama changes everything and then Trump comes in and changes nothing like that. By the way this has been a consistent foreign policy arguably since 19 certainly since 1991 and arguably since 1945.
– end of Jeffrey Sachs quote
#170 is correct, it’s indeed “Groundhog Day” in the US. Specifically, it’s always 2016. Michael Tracey, 11/3/2024:
“People continue to interpret Trump
with the same sort of speculative wish-casting that they would’ve employed in 2016,
before he had a four-year record in power for anyone to analyze.
In 2016, this was at least somewhat defensible:
Trump hadn’t held any public office or served in the military, and had no traditional record to analyze.
He was a celebrity pundit and beauty pageant proprietor.
Therefore, the only available analytical method for projecting what he might do as president was to discern patterns or instincts.
That’s not the case anymore. For starters,
Trump escalated the war in Afghanistan, sending thousands more troops in 2017,
and dropping a record number of bombs in 2019.
Apparently according to some of Trump’s most confused supporters, we’re supposed to believe that the “military industrial complex” deplored the opportunity to manufacture large amounts of munitions for this purpose.
Trump then insinuated an intent to withdraw all remaining troops toward the end of his term,
but never did so.
Now, he has retroactively adopted the same position on Afghanistan
as his newfound nemesis Liz Cheney,
whom he once called a great “friend”
while they were carrying out joint policy initiatives during his presidency;
he also lauded her father Dick as a “tremendous supporter.”
Weirdly, back when Trump was in office, he identified scant ideological disagreement with the Cheneys.
Their relationship was ultimately severed after Liz decided to devote her life to the events of January 6, 2021, voted for Trump’s second impeachment (she defended him on the first), and subsequently got booted from the Republican Party.
Anyone pretending as though this dispute signifies any real substantive policy shift should specify what exactly they presume Trump would do as it relates to Israel and Iran that the Cheneys would find objectionable….
You don’t understand!
When Trump bombed Syria twice, tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela,
started arming Ukraine,
expanded NATO twice,
got record-busting military budgets,
dropped a record number of bombs in Afghanistan,
signed off on FISA warrantless surveillance,
imposed massive sanctions on Russia,
tore up arms control treaties,
handed over the State Department to Mike Pompeo,
stationed US troops in Taiwan,
assassinated Iran’s top general, [then bragged and laughed about it at MAGA rallies]
conducted a record number of drone strikes,
installed a Raytheon lobbyist [Mark Esper] as his Defense Secretary,
gave Israel absolutely everything it wanted,
did enormous arms deals with Saudi Arabia,
and most recently
orchestrated the passage of the $100 Billion War Funding Bill,
he was doing all that to fight the Deep State….
Trump was the first president to arm Ukraine,
and continues to brag about it to this day.
He abrogated the INF Treaty with Russia, accelerating the breakdown of any mutual arms control paradigm.
He also expanded NATO twice, including
expanding NATO infrastructure into Ukraine itself.
If you read Putin’s speeches on the eve of the Ukraine invasion,
many of the US policy grievances he cites occurred under the Trump Administration.
Trump has recently confirmed [10/22/24] that
one of the tactics he supposedly employed to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine was
to threaten Putin personally with bombing Moscow,
including Putin’s own private residence. [10/22/2024, Michael Tracey twitter, source WSJ]
After the February 2022 invasion, Trump joined the chorus of Republicans
calling for the Biden Administration to more aggressively furnish Ukraine with weaponry, and said
what he’d do is
send US nuclear submarines off the coast of Russia
to intimidate Putin into capitulation.
Of course, all of this is largely unknown to the general public and the “mainstream” media, which stay resolutely tethered to the interminable narrative that Trump is an illicit colluder with Putin. Just like when it was widely claimed that Republicans
would take control of the House in 2022 and instantly cut off “aid” to Ukraine,
only for “MAGA Mike Johnson” (Trump’s nickname) to preside over
the disbursement of the largest-ever Ukraine “aid” package.”…
11/3/24, “Why I won’t vote for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the 2024 election,“ Michael Tracey
…”I have found the persistent confusion around Trump to be the most maddening thing about this election cycle.”…
Posted by: susan mullen | Nov 5 2024 0:45 utc | 224
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