US 2024 Presidential Election

[Gergar12]

Could driving a bunch of heavy SUVs over the reflecting pool have somehow damaged it?

Trump may have damaged Reflecting Pool by having motorcade drive over it

Trump’s decision to drive his motorcade across the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool earlier this year is facing renewed scrutiny.

www.newsweek.com

Naw, it's gotta be them lefty terrorists! Lock 'em up for a hundred years!

God, I hate the stupid American obsession with SUVs and pickup trucks. Almost every pickup truck driver I see on the road acts like an obnoxious fuckwit on the roads.

 

[tstorm823]

I don't know, though I suppose i might be able to find out with some digging. Not very inclined when you've shown only derision for the work. I expect some are in Central and South America.

Where are you going with this? Going to try to argue again that if the USDA gets some money, it all just doesn't matter?

What if I told you that their facilities to actually help people with animal diseases were all in Asia and Africa?
What if I told you that FAO presence in the US is exclusively to help other countries on the opposite side of the planet?
What if I told you that their list of methods for monitoring outbreaks over here largely includes watching the news, not any actual presence?

Why would that be? Oh, because the US already has a regional program for this.

 

[Thaluikhain]

God, I hate the stupid American obsession with SUVs and pickup trucks. Almost every pickup truck driver I see on the road acts like an obnoxious fuckwit on the roads.

If you have an SUV, you don't need to obey the same road rules as peasants in normal cars, it's written somewhere.

 

[Gergar12]

If you have an SUV, you don't need to obey the same road rules as peasants in normal cars, it's written somewhere.

The sad thing is I have to use a SUV because Columbus Ohio's roads are insane in the winter, but my SUV is closer to the size of a sedan than to a Pickup Truck or even a larger ABC agency SUV, the better solution is to force car companies to have all cars use winter wheels in my state/winter-heavy states, possibly force more AWD cars. But Pickup trucks for office-workers are overkill, SUVs like what police use are also overkill. Also we do need more buses, and like light rail. The 23 road in my city should have light rail near it. But people are afraid of people murdering people in buses since like the same 100-500 people in every city keep recommitting crimes, and private prisons in the US are torture houses that create more crimes.

If your afraid of someone wanting to kill you just sit somewhere else far away from people, also we need to have a norm of not being near people in public transit unless it's crowded, when I am near people, for some reason people like to sit near me when there is more seats elsewhere sometimes, I also don't like hearing many people's conversations.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Agreed, though I'm not sure what you mean about murders, are people worried about violence on public transport more than elsewhere?

Though, where I live, someone got mugged at a train station and their family blamed the new train line for giving transport options to people from suburbs they didn't like, IIRC.

 

[Silvanus]

What if I told you that their facilities to actually help people with animal diseases were all in Asia and Africa?
What if I told you that FAO presence in the US is exclusively to help other countries on the opposite side of the planet?
What if I told you that their list of methods for monitoring outbreaks over here largely includes watching the news, not any actual presence?

Why would that be? Oh, because the US already has a regional program for this.

To begin with, I'd ask to see your sources. Because the FAO lists screwworm work in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama, and states it does much of its monitoring work through EMPRES.

Secondly, I'd comment that when you insinuated the work they did was worthless, you actually seem to have just meant it helped foreigners.

 

[tstorm823]

To begin with, I'd ask to see your sources. Because the FAO lists screwworm work in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama, and states it does much of its monitoring work through EMPRES.

It's the same source you're looking at, EMPRES-i lists a whole bunch of data from all over the world, but generates almost none of it. For most of the world, the data is from exclusively existing laboratories that FAO is just referencing data from. The only actual direct activity they have a hand in is in the VETLAB network (with the IAEA), where they've actually helped build up the diagnostic network, but only in Asia and Africa.

https://www.iaea.org/services/networks/vetlab

For all of the Americas, their activity is posting the data we already have on a map. (And also sending samples from Asia and Africa for testing, but involving us in the solution is not the conversation we're having). And maybe you say "well, they have to gather that data from the sources and format it all together, and they assuredly have more information they distribute than just what is public facing", and that is all true, and also all still happening. Their efforts to combat NWS up until 10 days ago was strictly putting together and distributing information that labs and nations already collected and verified, and they're obviously still doing that. So I ask again, what precisely do you think they stopped doing?

I'd comment that when you insinuated the work they did was worthless.

You misunderstand, I feel like I explained this already, it was the UN I insinuate is worthless, not the work. The work is being guided mostly by the US, paid for mostly by the US, and performed by local people and also experts from the US. The UN exists to take the credit for the work and badmouth its primary benefactor so that the southern hemisphere can pretend it isn't subject to an empire and Europe can pretend they're not paying into it. If FAO didn't exist, the same things would get done, just with explicitly US leadership. It'd probably get done better, tbh.

 

[Silvanus]

It's the same source you're looking at, EMPRES-i lists a whole bunch of data from all over the world, but generates almost none of it. For most of the world, the data is from exclusively existing laboratories that FAO is just referencing data from. The only actual direct activity they have a hand in is in the VETLAB network (with the IAEA), where they've actually helped build up the diagnostic network, but only in Asia and Africa.

https://www.iaea.org/services/networks/vetlab

For all of the Americas, their activity is posting the data we already have on a map. (And also sending samples from Asia and Africa for testing, but involving us in the solution is not the conversation we're having).

You say its the "same source I'm looking at"-- which is the FAO itself-- but then give a description totally at odds with what it says. It lists direct action. Lists a host of monitoring and responsive work EMPRES does beyond "watching the news". Specifies central and south America.

At this point, you've offered little but a string of derisory mischaracterisations of the work, each of which has fallen apart.

You misunderstand, I feel like I explained this already, it was the UN I insinuate is worthless, not the work [...] If FAO didn't exist, the same things would get done, just with explicitly US leadership. It'd probably get done better, tbh.

Hollow jingoism.

 

[tstorm823]

You say its the "same source I'm looking at"-- which is the FAO itself-- but then give a description totally at odds with what it says. It lists direct action. Lists a host of monitoring and responsive work EMPRES does beyond "watching the news". Specifies central and south America.

I want to argue about how your link doesn't at all say what you claim it does, but it doesn't matter, you're in a catch-22. You're trying to prove that they made meaningful direct contributions by linking pages you think claim they still are, which undoes the claim that they cancelled the program.

If I'm right, FAO's team is sitting on the other side of the world pushing out data, and that is all they ever contributed to eradicating screwworms.
If you're right about this (you aren't), then they have been involved in direct action in the area, and still are.

Either way, what precisely do you think they stopped doing?

 

[Silvanus]

I want to argue about how your link doesn't at all say what you claim it does

More to the point, there's no honest way to reconcile it with the derisory characterisation you gave of their work.

but it doesn't matter, you're in a catch-22. You're trying to prove that they made meaningful direct contributions by linking pages you think claim they still are, which undoes the claim that they cancelled the program.

If I'm right, FAO's team is sitting on the other side of the world pushing out data, and that is all they ever contributed to eradicating screwworms.
If you're right about this (you aren't), then they have been involved in direct action in the area, and still are.

Either way, what precisely do you think they stopped doing?

Its cute when you think you've found a gotcha like this. But that page was written in February 2024 or earlier.

Though, your response would be a false binary regardless. An organisation can be forced to terminate one or more of its dedicated programmes, while continuing to do work on the issue. This is common and obvious.

 

[tstorm823]

An organisation can be forced to terminate one or more of its dedicated programmes, while continuing to do work on the issue. This is common and obvious.

So what precisely do you think they stopped doing?

 

[Silvanus]

So what precisely do you think they stopped doing?

A chunk of their work in monitoring, local responsiveness, etc. You've already been provided multiple links and descriptions of the work.

This is a bit like a hospital getting its funding halved, and you demanding anyone who doesn't support the cut to explain exactly which surgeries they stopped. And then arguing that if some surgeries still went ahead, the cut can't have affected anything.

 

[tstorm823]

A chunk of their work in monitoring, local responsiveness, etc. You've already been provided multiple links and descriptions of the work.

I've shown you a source that says they don't have local presence on this continent yet. Your link describes their work broadly, across the entire planet. The descriptions of their work are stated as though they are current.

You've said I was speculating multiple times in this argument, but the truth is that you've been purely speculating from the beginning. You read that something was cut, you speculate that they genuinely stopped working, you speculate that work was the critical piece to stop screwfly spread, you speculate that nothing replaced that spend, you speculate a hundred things to imply the conclusion that DOGE caused the problem. Your speculation is wrong at every level.

 

[Silvanus]

I've shown you a source that says they don't have local presence on this continent yet.

No, you haven't. You provided a link to the work of the IAEA, a collaboration with which comprises a fraction of the FAO's work.

Your link describes their work broadly, across the entire planet. The descriptions of their work are stated as though they are current.

Indeed it does. Yet it also specifically names countries in the Americas in which it does work. Your response has been to speculate that the work in those places is small and irrelevant.

You've said I was speculating multiple times in this argument, but the truth is that you've been purely speculating from the beginning.

Everything I've said has been backed up by the statements and website of the FAO.

You've offered fuck-all except your own characterisations of their work. Most of which contradict the official statements, and have nothing but your say-so to substantiate them. And all of it dripping with the derision and chauvinism that make it so obvious why you bought into the foreigners-bad, America-fuck-yeah guff to begin with.

 

[tstorm823]

Everything I've said has been backed up by the statements and website of the FAO.

Not even a little bit. You haven't shown a thing even suggesting they were hands on involved with NWS in Central America. You haven't found any statement of what they stopped doing or even what they were doing in the first place.

You think I am just buying into a narrative that foreign aid is bad, but I've been arguing that it's continued through effective channels and that's a good thing. You are the one stuck on the idea that money spent on foreign aid can't possibly be bad or even wasteful, you're reflexively defending a program that you can't even describe. Were you a critical and curious person, at some point in looking these things up you might actually wonder how FAO was actually using the program funds.

 

[Silvanus]

Not even a little bit. You haven't shown a thing even suggesting they were hands on involved with NWS in Central America.
You haven't found any statement of what they stopped doing or even what they were doing in the first place.

I can take a horse to water, but i can't make it drink, it would seem. That you refuse to read, understand or engage with something does not mean you haven't been given it.

You think I am just buying into a narrative that foreign aid is bad, but I've been arguing that it's continued through effective channels and that's a good thing.

Your interpretation of "terminated" to mean "carrying on better than ever under great American leadership" is not credible.

 

[tstorm823]

That you refuse to read, understand or engage with something does not mean you haven't been given it.

If it said what you wanted it to, you would actually quote it. When you found the guy saying things were cancelled, you actually quoted it. When the FAO site didn't tell you what you wanted, you just gestured vaguely at it and hoped nobody would read to closely.

 

[Silvanus]

If it said what you wanted it to, you would actually quote it. When you found the guy saying things were cancelled, you actually quoted it. When the FAO site didn't tell you what you wanted, you just gestured vaguely at it and hoped nobody would read to closely.

Because the entire page is about what they do. But fine:

"FAO provides policy guidance and technical support to governments, helping countries strengthen NWS surveillance, prevention, and biosecurity measures"

"FAO provides scientific support for sterile insect technique (SIT) operations."

"FAO supports evidence-based decision-support tools, diagnostic tools, and studies on disease transmission."

"FAO operates in seven countries in Central America (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Panama), all of which have recently reported active cases of New World Screwworm. On-the-ground operations offer training for veterinary services to strengthen biosecurity and prevent further spread. Workshops in Good Emergency Management Practices (GEMP) have been conducted in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras."

"In response to outbreaks, FAO provides emergency technical assistance to strengthen surveillance, prevention, and epidemiologic capacities for New World Screwworm."

I await the inevitable quibbling over wording.

 

[tstorm823]

I await the inevitable quibbling over wording.

Because you already know the problem.

"FAO provides policy guidance and technical support to governments"
"FAO provides scientific support for sterile insect technique (SIT) operations."
"FAO provides emergency technical assistance "-
^ These things the FAO is claiming to have done, in active voice, identifying themselves as the actor. They are also all the things that can be done through telecommunications.

"On-the-ground operations offer training"
"Workshops in Good Emergency Management Practices (GEMP) have been conducted"
^ These are things the FAO has not identified themselves as the actor for, non-coincidentally they are the things that suggest being there in person.

And conveniently enough, from the specific page you pulled these from (which is not what you linked to directly, but that's a quibble), you jumped over the parts where they state directly they are working in tandem with COPEG and the IAEA, which are respectively the organization managed largely by the USDA that you insist is stupid to consider doing this job and the organization you state is unrelated to this particular work.

 

[Silvanus]

Because you already know the problem.

^ These things the FAO is claiming to have done, in active voice, identifying themselves as the actor. They are also all the things that can be done through telecommunications.

^ These are things the FAO has not identified themselves as the actor for, non-coincidentally they are the things that suggest being there in person.

These are less "problems" than they are ways for a dishonest reader to reinterpret statements to ignore their obvious intent & meaning, and insinuate whatever they already want to believe.

And conveniently enough, from the specific page you pulled these from (which is not what you linked to directly, but that's a quibble), you jumped over the parts where they state directly they are working in tandem with COPEG and the IAEA

I "jumped over" that because you specifically asked about what the FAO is doing. Organisations with which it partners are less relevant to that.

which are respectively the organization managed largely by the USDA that you insist is stupid to consider doing this job and the organization you state is unrelated to this particular work.

Another lazy strawman.