mixed_biscuits

_________________________
it's a mixture. it's heading in the direction of 'building local capacity' as we would call it. that's definitely the case for healthcare. feeding children who might otherwise die ('severe acute malnutrition') is a mix. you need the systems and people in place to do it en masse. and you need to do it well. it's pretty serious obviously, it's life or death for pretty large numbers of children depending on how well you do it. that's the know how bit. you also need the specific food as well, which falls into the stuff category. all of it requires money though and without the money it's likely already stopped happening in some places.
What this sounds like is another Democrat protection racket, whereby they create crucial dependencies that leave people in the lurch if they're withdrawn. Self-perpetuating grifts. This setup doesn't like it was configured in such a way that it could be easily replicated by Africans themselves. This failure to build resilience and independence means that the USAID fallout impacts are on USAID as much as anyone else, no matter what the number-crunching wonks might come up with.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I think it's reasonable to infer that the cost of scrapping USAID will be calculated more carefully and verified more rigorously than any of the 'savings' announced by DOGE in cutting it.
The US taxpayer has so far shelled out the better part of $20M for Trump to play golf since he was sworn in again all of seven weeks ago. Apparently he racked up over $150M in his first term.


But yeah, efficiency! It's very important, everyone agrees.
 

shakahislop

Well-known member
What this sounds like is another Democrat protection racket, whereby they create crucial dependencies that leave people in the lurch if they're withdrawn. Self-perpetuating grifts. This setup doesn't like it was configured in such a way that it could be easily replicated by Africans themselves. This failure to build resilience and independence means that the USAID fallout impacts are on USAID as much as anyone else, no matter what the number-crunching wonks might come up with.
it's a weird way to characterise it. It's not democrat really. the big increases in aid came under George W, particularly PEPFAR (the massive hiv/aids fund). it's been bipartisan essentially since the 60s. the fallout does impact USAID obviously but the biggest impacts are on poor people in poor countries. that's already happening. it's one sided just to look at it focusing on how it impacts westerners. you need to include people receiving the benefits of aid into your analysis as well.

on the idea of dependence and resilience : it's true. especially the more radical left-wing of the aid world has been making this criticism for a long time. this is a failure. the sudden stop to almost all us aid is not going to solve that problem.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
Funnily enough, early feb while in LA I did a walk from Point Vicente, right down in the south west corner, to San Pedro, which is not too far from Long Beach and at one point during, I received the call of nature. A quick look on Google maps showed a golf course nearby and as I zoomed in I was genuinely shocked to see the name of the course. It was the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles. Fuck me. The as of just a couple weeks earlier, new President of the United States' own fkn course! How rare! Not every day etc..

Screenshot-20250309-213654-Maps.png


Had no idea he had one in CA, but hey. The call is the call. 5min later, after a steep climb up the coastal stairways, I was greeted with this:

IMG-20250204-131934867-HDR-AE.jpg


Well shit. Can't think of many places better to drop the kids off than that, right? Sauntered in with ease. There were staff around but nobody batted an eyelid.

IMG-20250204-130619572-HDR-AE.jpg


That'll do nicely. Found my way to the bogs. A gentlemanly nod to the old fella just leaving them, and I chose my stall and got to work.

Thanks to me being low budget during the US trip, and not particularly dedicated to healthy eating, I can say that I'm very glad that this was, even by my own standards at that time, an exceptionally nasty, oily, gangrenous deposit that felt absolutely appropriate to the moment. Not that I'm under any illusion that this was in any way going to have any effects on anyone, let alone Jabba himself, but symbolically it felt pretty good. And btw, just as I was releasing it I thought to myself "this one is for biccies"

p.s. the toilet paper was surprisingly cheap.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Once you were on the course you should have definitely taken the opportunity to use one of the holes... or whatever, found some way to create a hazard on one of the greens.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
They're also dropping investigations into corruption involving foreign agents etc and basically changing the law so that US companies are allowed to pay bribes etc and you no longer have to declare if you're working for Russia or whatever - the thing that sent so many of the previous Trump administration to jail.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I think it's been pretty well planned. It seens like they have put much more thought into removing enemies/inserting loyalists than they have into, say, how to improve the economy or how to stop the war in Ukraine.
 

luka

Well-known member
the plan for ukraine seems to be let putin win. thats a pretty coherent plan even if some people might doubt the wisdom of it.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Lately yeah. I'm not saying it's not coherent I'm just saying compared to how long they spent identifying enemies to remove from posts and inconvenient laws to strike off, they only spent ten minutes coming up with it.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
the plan for ukraine seems to be let putin win. thats a pretty coherent plan even if some people might doubt the wisdom of it.
The weird thing about this is Trump seems to want credit for a peace plan. I don't see how these two tally.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I think he thinks that if he withdraws aid and info from Ukraine and Russia smash their army and conquer the country then it will be peace and it will be credited to him.
 
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