US Election November 5th

[Delaney]

They are entitled to their views and may even be right.

Nonetheless Trump is bonkers, morally bankrupt, a bully, racist, xenophobic, a self obsessed egotist etc. Whether so unpleasant personality should be denied the presidency is debatable.

Personally I would be inclined to vote for someone who would likely govern with far greater humanity, and sacrifice some possible economic benefit.

Did you get all your ‘buzz words’ out Terry?

Trump has many failures and egregious personality traits but be generally gets the big calls right.
He is a walking contradiction.
I’m happy to overlook the noise and focus on the signal.

Lot’s of black, hispanics and asian voters love Trump. He’s more popular with them than any previous republican. So you can call him a racist and such but it’s all hot air.

 

[Delaney]

We’ve had this discussion before and clearly we see the world differently.

You’d like to leave Ukraine to whatever Putin wants to do with it and I believe in the not too distant future that would lead to even worse bloodshed and a bigger threat to world security.

I agree that the facts speak for themselves - if you look back at the previous discussion you’ll see the rationale for my view and that it’s been arrived at by a bit more effort than just watching 5 minutes of the BBC!

I’ve come to my conclusion based on the facts, that is why I think the way I do. I’m not interested in emotion because I’m a realist.

I feel deeply sorry for Ukraine, as I feel deeply sorry for countries orbiting the US who will never be allowed an economy that would in any way interfere with the US. This is the sad reality of all satelite countries around super powers.
If you think that in this case we should go to war with Russia to stop them exerting control over a satellite state, in their area of influence (which would be rank hypocrisy as a motivation), then let us be honest about it.
Let’s not pretend it’s about freedom and western values and standing up for the Ukrainian’s because we have no idea what they want. We only get to hear from them, what the west wants us to hear and any counter factual, will be dismissed as Russian propaganda. Which is how
propaganda works.

Before Nato got a hard on for Ukraine (likely for it’s fertile land, resources and ability to weaken Russian defences), 1 million more Ukrainians were alive, families in tact and they had homes. Sure the liberal elite in Ukraine wanted to join the EU and Nato, sure they hated Russia but as sad as it is, that doesn’t matter. There were people in Cuba who hated the US and wanted to align with Russia; do you think the US cared about that? I mean come on!

The Russian’s are not going to stop becuase they will not let Nato put missiles on their border and have access to Russia through Ukraine.
Russia has been invaded 3 x through Ukraine, it is where they are most vulnerable. That is why they are not going to let it fall into NATO hands and they will do whatever it takes to stop that and they can.
This is the cold hard truth.

So how many more Europeans do you want to die? Because that is all that is going to happen.
We are not going to give Putin a bloody nose, we are not going to ‘show him’, we are just going to cheer on the death and misery of millions of europeans for no useful outcome.

These are the facts. Everything else is just noise.

 

[Blackswanwood]

I’ve come to my conclusion based on the facts, that is why I think the way I do. I’m not interested in emotion because I’m a realist.

I feel deeply sorry for Ukraine, as I feel deeply sorry for countries orbiting the US who will never be allowed an economy that would in any way interfere with the US. This is the sad reality of all satelite countries around super powers.
If you think that in this case we should go to war with Russia to stop them exerting control over a satellite state, in their area of influence (which would be rank hypocrisy as a motivation), then let us be honest about it.
Let’s not pretend it’s about freedom and western values and standing up for the Ukrainian’s because we have no idea what they want. We only get to hear from them, what the west wants us to hear and any counter factual, will be dismissed as Russian propaganda. Which is how
propaganda works.

Before Nato got a hard on for Ukraine (likely for it’s fertile land, resources and ability to weaken Russian defences), 1 million more Ukrainians were alive, families in tact and they had homes. Sure the liberal elite in Ukraine wanted to join the EU and Nato, sure they hated Russia but as sad as it is, that doesn’t matter. There were people in Cuba who hated the US and wanted to align with Russia; do you think the US cared about that? I mean come on!

The Russian’s are not going to stop becuase they will not let Nato put missiles on their border and have access to Russia through Ukraine.
Russia has been invaded 3 x through Ukraine, it is where they are most vulnerable. That is why they are not going to let it fall into NATO hands and they will do whatever it takes to stop that and they can.
This is the cold hard truth.

So how many more Europeans do you want to die? Because that is all that is going to happen.
We are not going to give Putin a bloody nose, we are not going to ‘show him’, we are just going to cheer on the death and misery of millions of europeans for no useful outcome.

These are the facts. Everything else is just noise.

We’ve discussed all this before. My views are unchanged since then so I won’t repeat them.

It’s worth noting though that just because Jeffrey Sachs said it on YouTube doesn’t necessarily make it “the facts”.

Let’s just agree to differ.