In Running to Stand Still, Bono sang that you should “cry without weeping. Talk without speaking.” He can add “condemn without counting.” Recently, the U2 frontman declared that 300,000 have died as a result of USAID funding cuts. The source for this widely cited figure is an example of how some facts are simply too good to check in the media.
Bono said “This will f— you off” and explained that tens of thousands of tons of food are “rotting” in warehouses from Djibouti to Houston because of recent USAID cuts, adding “What is that? That’s not America, is it?”
“They’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” he said, acknowledging that while some aid groups do good work, the USAID system has been riddled with corruption.
It turns out that the 300,000 figure comes from a speculative model put out by Brooke Nichols, a mathematical health modeler at Boston University.
I was critical of how these cuts were handled initially. It does appear that some important programs were interrupted and, while later restarted, the interruptions created dire and potentially deadly conditions for some of the most desperate recipients of U.S. aid.
However, it is the figure of 300,000 that shows how such calculations go viral in this political environment.
Nichols insists that this was never an actual count but a projection. It is the parameters of the projections in The Washington Post that are so striking. Nichols admitted that
“The biggest uncertainties in all of these estimates are: 1) the extent to which countries and organizations have pivoted to mitigate this disaster (likely highly variable). And 2) which programs are actually still funded with funding actually flowing — and which aren’t.”
In other words, it depends on whether the programs were actually discontinued and whether local officials stepped forward to continue them. Those seem like some pretty significant “ifs” and raise the question of why project over a quarter of a million deaths on such assumptions. It seems akin to projected hundreds of thousand of deaths from air accidents if every FAA system under Trump is suddenly turned off.
What is the value of a projections with such sweeping “likely highly variable” assumptions?
I still like Bono’s music. It is his math that leaves me with the feeling that “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
Wasn’t Bono a popular singer what, like 40 years ago?
Yep, but that was 197 or 80. Nothing since then
Dustoff
As usual you post ZERO proof.
Just an opinion
#9. Here are some of the planet saving USAID cuts:
https://www.highergov.com/news/list-of-terminated-usaid-contracts-and-grants-6265029/
Most listings use abbreviated and vague language referring to administrative improvements within managerial organizations. Think Jon Taffer, Bar Rescue. While a vast number of these grants were to pursue gendermandering, green climate money laundering schemes, and forced Marxist equity outcomes on some poor unsuspecting countries.
There may be a few, as it’s hard to tell from the vague descriptions, that might have actually accomplished something, but since there was little to no oversight on any of this procedure of shoveling tax payer money out the back end of a flyover, with layer upon layer of middle-men sapping off the funds as the money crossed the desktops, little if any can be established as actually arriving at it’s specified delivery point.
If any of it did actually get to the people it was intended to go to, and actually had some positive outcome(s), would not there be a tidal wave of data, pictures, stories, and clamor (from those who were supposed to receive it), not those who were shoveling it out, and likely receiving a healthy “big guy”, donation in return? Hmmm.
No, most of what is listed as being cut is bureaucratic mumbo jumbo purposely vague, and emitting a deafening silence as to the word “food”, anywhere in any of the lists to be found?
And now of course we see big crocodile tears from all those who gave absolutely nothing of their money to assist those they drum up compassion for, but demand our tax money instead, and all despite the citizens in this country who are in desperately need of such aid, providing of course, they do not have a “Trump” sign in their yard.
Oye the shame…
Do not presume that because some govenrment programs is named appealingly that it actually does good.
Charity is extremely hard, which is why govenrments suck at it, It requires far more than money.
*. The existing infrastructure for charities within foreign nations interfaced with existing medical facilities and food distribution should have a traceable footprint but apparently not.
Some are working on boiler plate infrastructure forms for use by those asking for aid. The aid must be traceable and audited. The fraud is huge domestic and foreign.
OK boy & girls.
Quiz question of the day. What two famous US colleges supported Germany in the 1930.
Harvard & Yale. Not much has changed since then.
As usual you have posted ZERO proof.
Just an opinion.
Well Bono, get out your checkbook
BINGO
“I was critical of how these cuts were handled initially. Some important programs were interrupted and, while later restarted, the interruptions created dire and potentially deadly conditions for some of the most desperate recipients of U.S. aid.”
Change always brings disruption, where some are better off, and others are worse off. That is the nature of change, which Professor Turley should recognize. It is an ongoing process, so other changes are invariably made to correct the downside. Professor Turley potentially makes a second mistake. He is looking only at the known and forgetting the existence of the unknown, which rids us of the status quo that, in the long run, leads to destruction.
‘NBC Nightly News’ anchor Lester Holt signs off in final broadcast after a decade: ‘The honor of a lifetime’
“NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt called his decade-long tenure helming the network’s evening broadcast the “honor of a lifetime” as he bade farewell during his final newscast Friday night.
“As an anchor, it has been an honor to lead this program and an honor to be welcomed into your homes,” the 66-year-old newsman said as he signed off from the 30 Rock studio one last time.
“I’m so grateful for your trust.”
By: Anna Young ~ May 30, 2025
https://nypost.com/2025/05/30/media/lester-holt-signs-off-as-nbc-nightly-news-anchor-after-a-decade/
And not One of You Noticed!
Long Live Tucker and Megyn
Lester? who?
Meanwhile…
Wherever musk goes rot and decay follows. Reminds me of the corpse that was infested with bugs in “Men In Black”, the first movie.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/musk-doge-institute-of-peace-rats_n_683b69b4e4b06a21c073c45f
NEW: Josh Hawley says Secret Service whistleblower assigned to Biden told him “Biden used to get lost in his closet in the mornings in the White House”🚨
“The guy, literally stumbling around in the White House residence, couldn’t find his way out of his own closet.”… pic.twitter.com/GFSG1ei0Ai
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) May 31, 2025
CNN spends five years lying about Joe Biden’s dementia, gets caught, and then instead of apologizing, pretends to break the story that Biden has brain damage. This, says Glenn Greenwald, is why every honest person on earth hates corporate media.
(0:00) Introduction
(1:20) CNN… pic.twitter.com/43JVV0ABoH
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) May 30, 2025
That made no sense.. Try again baby
Musk does more good for the world in a day in a signel one of his ventures that you will do in a lifetime.
Why do you exist ? Why do you take up space in the universe ? When you are gone who will notice ? What of any value will be left behind. Musk is not perfect,
he is just someone very good at persuing his own self interests and that results in better life for all of us.
How have you done a tiny fraction of the good in the world that he has ? Or any good at all ?
*. John Say, you ask a good question. It speaks of fate.
Just makin’ shit up again are we?
LOL huff & puff. Now there is a web site from truth………. NOT!!!
Poor baby you got fooled again
Prof. Turley
With very few exceptions projections of doom and gloom – whether on the right or the left do not materialize.
Matlthus was wrong.
Los Almost and the Imperial College were way off on Covid.
There is no evidence that Obama Care saved any lives or that cutting it would cost any lives.
There is excellent reason to beleive that even well intentioned aid – such as food aid may do more harm than good.
It is not 1960. No one anywhere in the world is starving because their country is unable to feed them. There is no country in the world that needs to import food to prevent starvation.
Everywhere that there is food shortages the problem is political. It is political and military groups using food as a weapon.
Foriegn food aid does NOT improve that, and it may instead make it worse.
It places those involved in delivering food in the position of wither being at war with or collaborating with those who are using the food as a weapon. Take away the food aide and you take away the weapon.
To a huge extent we fixate on Aide to Africa.
Since the end of “colonization”. the west – primarily the US has delivered over $1T in aid – both private and public – all to no observable benefit. There is no country in Africa that is even vaguely close to democratic. All are far worse governed than in the colonial era.
Charity is hard, it usually makes things worse.
* . Doing the same thing for 50 years and no improvement shown has charity as just a source of income. There must be a return shown by a government that farming practices are improved or disease prevention improved.
(Bono) “… adding “What is that? That’s not America, is it?” ”
And neither is He. Who is he to criticize America, a America that made him Rich and Famous.
DeFund U2 Now!
Bono has always been a dubious bonehead, a larger than life performance character.
early in the rise to fame, u2 was to perform at Las Vegas.
the aircraft door opens and reporters rush with their microphones and on cue the quote from bono:
” I can feel the psychic fall out”.
he’s a cheap con man. great music, but at its core, it reaches for protest
BUT STILL BOOKS LAS VEGAS.
the legacy of US musicianship will always be forked by the sheer hypocrisy of how it developed its own fortune. flying private executive jets, ala Al gore and Kerry style.
unimpressive dope head.
Bono must have been taught math by the teacher of the boy in the picture at the beginning of Prof. Turley’s article.
114 x 2 does NOT equal 119.
I meant 54×2 does not equal 119.
Bono’s “declaration”, as Professor Turley described it, is better characterized as “unleashed ferocious opposition” We see it in America daily.
Heather MacDonald recently spoke at the New Criterion Edmund Burke Award gala where she addressed our current civilization. If readers of the forum tire of the vapid comments by trolls and the attention seeking anonymice, readers might find the following truncated speech by Heather MacDonald intellectually stimulating and refreshing. The speech was also video recorded and is available at the following link via VIMEO.
The clash within civilizations
by Heather Mac Donald
On the West & the “hermeneutics of suspicion.”
For the transfer of presidential power in January 2025 was not just an ordinary replacement of one administration with another, or one set of policy preferences with another. Instead, a worldview is being uprooted before our eyes, one that had seemed unshakably entrenched across mainstream society. This challenge to orthodoxy has unleashed ferocious opposition. Every daily assault on the political and cultural status quo triggers a furious counterassault.
The twentieth-century French philosopher Paul Ricoeur called this adversarial stance towards our cultural legacy the “hermeneutics of suspicion.” The Metropolitan Museum’s current director, Max Hollein, has equated the museum with “what is defined as white supremacy,” as The New Criterion’s James Panero reported in the December 2020 issue, and has pledged to “bring race to the forefront of our discussion of five thousand years of art.”
The hermeneutics of suspicion applies only to the West, of course. The wall text for the Metropolitan Museum’s warrior plaque from the West African court of Benin says nothing about that city-state’s lucrative trade in slaves or its ruthless territorial conquests. Court paintings from China are not deconstructed as a fig leaf for imperial expansion.
This oppositional stance has leapt from the academy and our cultural institutions to the world at large. Self-critique has been a signal trait of Western thought—and an admirable one. But in the last half century it has become reflexive, based on ignorance rather than on the desire for enlightenment.
https://newcriterion.com/article/the-clash-within-civilizations/
Estovir,
That was a great read. Thank you for posting that. I am bookmarking it.
De nada amigo!
Our vegetable garden is busting with fresh veggies. The mushroom compost a neighbor provided worked amazingly And our electrified fence seems to have worked in keeping out the critters. 🔌 No cats for us!
If it’s true that 300,000 people have already died (in a 90 day period) b/c of our USAID cuts, they must have been kept millions alive over the 30 years or so. Why have we not gotten credit for this? and, if Bono believes what he is saying, why has he not used his money to help replace the costs?
Bono is Ireland’s embarrassment. Bruce is America’s.
Pe Kha Lau
Peter Donde
Achol Deng
These are just a few that are dead because of USAID cuts. The names are not hard to find. Our cruelty will be remembered long.
The real cruelty is not taking care of America first. Get our house in order before we can help others. That is just common sense.
It is not governments job to engage in charity – not in Africa,. not in the US.
If you are inspired to give to others – Please do so. I would encourage that.
Charity is hard. Private charities have a horible track record.
Govenrment is 100 times worse.
Baby Trump, show us a picture of your cancelled check that you sent to save these people. Or better yet, Bono’s check since he has 700 million.
Listing names is not evidence.
You claim this is not hard to find. But that is false.
Pe Kha Lau was 71 in poor health in a country where the life expectancy is 67.
She was dying and she subsequently died. In the long run that happens to everyone.
Throughout the world in the past century three things have dramatically increased life expectancy. Antiseptices, antibiotics, and IV fluids even as little as saline.
These three things are responsible for 95% of the global increase in life exectancy.
The entirety of all medical care beyond that has little or no effect on life expectancy.
Western and particularly US medicare care is the best and most expensive in the world.
But 99% of that cost has nothing to do with saving lives. It does have a great deal to do with living as luxuriously for what time you might have left.
Peter Donde was born with aides in a $hithole country Sudan has a low Aids rate, but a very high infant mortality rate.
Regardless those of you on the left seem to be under the delusion that the US is obligated to provide expensive Aids treatment to the entire world, and that if we do so that will produce beneficial outcomes.
According to the CDC the mortaility rate for infants with Aids is approximately 12%/yr. It is slightly lower for those receiving antivirals. But even there more than half die but Peter Donde’s age.
Achol Den is just another Sudanese child who died of Aids – after she lost her medical ID card.
There are claims this is because of cuts to USAID but those claims are made up.
People died for exactly the same reasons these people died before the USAID cuts.
Sudan and Burma are both war zones. As I have said repeatedly – no one in the world dies because of the inabiltiy of a country to feed them. All starvation today is political – it is the consequence of political games and war, and warlords.
Aide progams are just a weapon in those wars, Aide – medical, food, other is routinely disrupted by those seeking money or power in war torn regions. As I noted trillions of dollars in Aide to africa have not changed anything – arguably they have made things worse.
Bill Gates spent over a Billion dollars to fight malaria and mosquito and TseTse fly born diseases in Africa – and mode things worse.
We have had the means to control mosquito’s and mosquito and TseTse fly born illness for a century – DDT. After we eliminated Malaria and all widespread mosquito born illness in the west – the death rate from Malaria constructing the Erie canal in northern Pennsylvania, New York and Canada 200 years ago was enormous, today there is almost nowhere in the US where you can get malaria. Most of the claims regarding DDT have been debunked – There are more eagles and raptors today than ever, and even in the midst of widespread DDT use populations were growing. But even if they had been true the ACTUAL measurable benefits were enormous. But it is not 1950, Rachel Carlsons silent spring never came, it never came close. For more than a decade we have had the ability to wipe off the face of the earth the TseTse fly, the Anopholese mosquito – each and every species of mosquito that transmitts dangerous or deadly diseases.
600,000 people die of Malaria every year, 95% of those in Africa.
That is despite the fact that we KNOW how to eliminate Malaria, but the left refuses to allow that. And we KNOW how to treat Malaria.
You wish to claim that 3 people died in ways that people die all the time – before cuts and after. Meanwhile 150 people die in africa every day of a disease that has been eradicated in most of the rest of the world, and that is treatable. This happens because you refuse to allow the eradication of the disease in africa, and it happens despite all the aide you poor in.
Nice reporting John… The left never learns
Dustoff
But he posted ZERO proof for his claims.
Just his opinion.
You must be a real sucker to believe opinions.
A simple search proves John Say to be correct with facts.
You must be a real sucker to post dumb comments that are easily refuted.
#9. That’s what down South is called; “Ain’t got a dog in the fight.”
Bono has a mouth, but no backbone. He spits, nothing comes out. If ole Bonhead gave a few of his millions to help feed the poor that he’s so worried about, then perhaps he would have some standing. As it is, he simply uses his so-called fame to prop up a hollow ivory pedestal of counterfeit compassion. I’m sure the starving will appreciate eating his words for him…
Exclusive: Former USAID executive disputes reported impact of foreign aid cuts
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/exclusive-former-usaid-executive-disputes-reported-impact-foreign-aid
All this stuff is made up. All the malthusian nonsense of the left is made up.
If you want to help Africa, figure out how to end the wars and warlords, end the massive graft, and bring about the free markets that have exploded standard of living and reduced poverty throughout the rest of the world.
We know what actually works – and it is not charity.
Bonohead.
We’ve been used and abused for so long by governments all over as well as our own politicians we should change the nations name to:
“The United States of Patsies”.
Know what you need? A jar of peanut butter and some time alone with the family dog.
Too cute.
“The United States of Patsies”
““The United States of PARASITES AND Patsies” – FIFY
I am a numerical analyst and I can certify that the USAID cuts have saved 543,221.5 persons. So with the 300,000 who perished, 243,221.5 have benefited. Net benefit!!!
Hallelujah!
It’s Commie-fornia, meaning it’s fine to poison young kids’ minds with Marxist claptrap.
Yesterday in the same state a young man won the women’s state track and field championship, depriving young women of what they worked hard for their whole lives. That kind of misogyny is also now all the rage with American commies. They make life worse wherever they are. Best to move as far from them as possible.
Who cares about kids? They’re stupid and I hate them, as well as their parents. They ruin my meals all the time. Kids should be sent to Alcatraz in a “Lord of the Flies” situation. Anyone who makes me miserable should experience misery themselves.
Why are “they” ruining “your” meals all the time?
I don’t know about youse guys, but I get all my beauty tips from Bono and the like…
Man with 700 million says what?
As a poster above stated, why doesn’t he condemn his own country for not saving the food instead of constantly bashing Israel?
HullBobby,
IIRC, he actually did try to bring tons of food to some impoverished third world country. When the food got off loaded on the docks at the port, people there stole the food. He got a very harsh lesson in the reality of logistics and security.
Upstate, and I bet ne never did that again.
I repeat, why not ask Ireland to send some of their money?