90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, January 27, 2022

Hey Truckers, "Jump up, look around, find yourself some fun"

Well the Don was coming
Heard him ringing on my bell
He said, "My name's the teacher
Or that is what I call myself
And I have a lesson
That I must impart to you
It's an old expression
But I must insist it's true

Jump up, look around, find yourself some fun
No sense in sitting there hating everyone
No man's an island and his castle isn't home
The nest is full of nothing when the bird has flown"

Equity in Medicine is Racist and Lethal

Killing more minorities to kill more white people.

February 1st is the Department of Health and Human Services deadline for public comments on bringing "equity" to organ donations. Equity invariably means racial quotas and artificially moving minorities to the head of the line and there’s no reason to expect anything else.

The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO), which had already been blamed for “organ transplant disparities”, has been constantly touting its own AOPO Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force and promising to implement its recommendations.

Lost in all the noise is the reality that lower rates of organ donations and transplants from minorities are not, as equity advocates insist, evidence of systemic racism, but medical and behavioral differences. For example, “African Americans are half as likely as whites to agree to donate a loved one's organs” and there’s generally a “lower donation rate among racial/ethnic minorities, specifically including Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians”.

Organ donations require a certain degree of altruism and trust toward a larger group whether it’s the family or the country as a whole. Indoctrinating racial minorities with critical race theory myths about systemic racism makes them much less likely to donate organs.

The ultimate victims of lower organ donation rates by black people are… black people.

Instead of addressing this familiar Black Lives Matter cycle in which belief in one’s own victimhood ends up killing the members of the group by deepening social mistrust, equity in organ transplants takes the victimhood as a given. Much as in education, employment, and every other area, equity in organ transplants seeks to rig the game by fiddling with the metrics.

The familiar argument from equity in medicine is that minorities, especially black people, are disadvantaged, and that moving them to the head of the line will remedy the...

Republican Rep. Michael Waltz praised the negotiators who have stepped back for 'recognizing when diplomacy is getting too desperate'
Waltz has had his own experience in the Middle East as an Army Green Beret
State Department official confirmed Tuesday that Richard Nephew stood down
He was U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Iran and known as sanctions architect
Nephew, who wanted Biden to take a harder stance against Iran, has reportedly been avoiding the meetings in Vienna since December
At the same time, reports emerged that two other negotiators had left
It comes at a critical time in negotiations between the West and Tehran
Iran has rejected talk of an interim agreement and wants a legal guarantee that the U.S. will not walk away from the nuclear deal
It also won't negotiate directly with the US, with European intermediaries

A Republican member of Congress on Tuesday praised three Biden administration officials who walked away from their roles on the State Department's nuclear talks with Iran.

Rep. Michael Waltz of Florida, who served in the Middle East as one of the Army's elite Green Berets, told DailyMail.com their departure at a critical junction of the discussions is a reflection of President Joe Biden's policies putting 'national security at risk.'

A State Department official confirmed that Richard Nephew, known as the architect of sanctions on Tehran, had stepped down as U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Iran after urging a tougher stance on nuclear talks.

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported that two other negotiators had stepped aside from their positions because they wanted a harder negotiating position.

Waltz joined their call on Tuesday by urging Biden to return to his predecessor Donald Trump's 'policy of maximum pressure' against Tehram's regime.

'It’s good to see some officials recognize when diplomacy gets too desperate and begins to really put American national security at risk,' the Florida Republican said.

'The Biden Administration should revert back to a policy of maximum pressure that focused on holding the Iran regime accountable for their nuclear capabilities, missile development, and regional terrorism and build on Abraham Accords to counter Iran’s aggression.'

A State Department official confirmed that Richard Nephew was no longer deputy special envoy for Iran but was still working at the State Department

THE FATHER OF US SANCTIONS ON IRAN WHO STORMED OUT OF NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS

Richard Nephew, the Deputy Special Envoy for the State Department's negotiations with Iran, left his role after urging the Biden administration to take a tougher stance in the nuclear talks.

Widely regarded as an expert on sanctions policy, Nephew was named the Principal Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions Policy in Barack Obama's State Department in January 2013.

In the role he engineered sanctions against Iran that helped forced Tehran into signing the historic JCPOA, and was involved in the talks from August 2013 to December 2014.

He reportedly thought the United States was taking too soft an approach to an Iran that not only rebuffed agreements its previous government made but is also building up its nuclear capabilities at a break-neck pace.

It led to a disagreement over the direction of the talks with his boss, US Special Representative for Iran Robert Malley.

He'll continue to serve in the State Department albeit in a different role, according to NBC News.

Before joining the Biden administration, Nephew was a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institute and a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.

He also authored a book in 2017 on the role sanctions play in foreign policy, titled The Art of Sanctions.

The negotiating team's policy differences reportedly involved the enforcement of existing sanctions and even pulling out of the talks altogether.

Their departures, another blow to President Joe Biden's foreign policy goals and a State Department grappling with Russian diplomats who appear poised for conflict in Ukraine, come at a critical time in talks that resumed two months ago.

Western diplomats say they hope for a breakthrough in the coming weeks - but critical differences remain between the two sides and Britain on Tuesday warned of a looming impasse.

Meanwhile the Biden administration has been grappling with bipartisan criticism at home that it's taken too soft a stance against Iran as the Middle Eastern nation builds up its nuclear capabilities at breakneck speed.

A State Department official declined to comment on the specifics of internal policy discussions.

'The previous administration left us with a terrible set of choices on Iran,' he said.

'Maximum pressure failed, leaving Iran with a rapidly expanding nuclear program and a more aggressive regional posture. At the same time, we were isolated from many of our closest allies and partners.

'Working our way out of this crisis requires many difficult, closely balanced decisions, on which there can be reasonable disagreement.'

Nephew, who wanted Biden to take a harder stance against Iran, has reportedly been avoiding the meetings in...

Corruption: Beijing Nancy: Pelosi Shifted Her China Stance as Her Family Scored Beijing Deals

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi softened her previous criticisms of China’s communist regime as her husband and son scored big business deals in China, Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer’s new book reveals.

The bombshell revelations about Pelosi in Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win also come as the Democrat stalwart is under fire for stock trading returns made by her and her husband that regularly outperform the market. Now, it appears as though her family’s business opportunities in China have influenced her policy views on America’s chief adversary, something sure to fuel the fire to rein in corruption in Congress.

Pelosi’s family, Schweizer reveals, has had millions of dollars on the line when it comes to China, and the Speaker seems to have altered her positions on China’s communist regime from a policy perspective as these investments grew and took shape.

Pelosi began her career as tough on China and still occasionally rips the Chinese Communist Party for human rights abuses.

“The longtime member of Congress and Speaker of the House was, early in her career, a particularly harsh critic of China’s human rights practices,” Schweizer writes. “She continues to be vocal about some issues, but her positions have softened as her family has sought and received lucrative commercial opportunities in mainland China.”

In the early 1990s, Schweizer recounts how she even pulled off a protest in Tiananmen Square that infuriated Chinese officials:

In 1991, as a junior member of Congress, Pelosi found herself in Tiananmen Square. She was part of a congressional delegation visiting Beijing barely two years after the horrific events had un- folded. Pelosi had been in meetings with Chinese officials, but with a couple of colleagues, she covertly carried a banner into the middle of the square and unfurled it in front of a small crowd and the media. “To those who died for Democracy in China,” it read. The Chinese police were furious. They pushed through the crowd to seize the banner. “I started running,” Pelosi recalled. “And my colleagues, some of them, got a little roughed up. The press got treated worse because they had cameras, and they were detained.” The Foreign Ministry denounced the event as a “premeditated farce.

This move was not an isolated incident; Pelosi actually was tough on China for years.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with Rep. Ben Jones (D-GA), left, and Rep. John Miller (R-WA), right, hold a banner in Tiananmen Square on September 4, 1991, to honor the pro-democracy protesters slain by China’s communist regime in the 1989 massacre. (AP Photo)

Schweizer also recounts how Pelosi fought against giving China most-favored-nation trade status and against allowing China entry into the World Trade Organization. He also noted that in 2005, Pelosi spoke on the House floor in support of an amendment to block the Chinese National Overseas Oil Company (CNOOC), a Chinese government-backed entity, from purchasing Unocal, a California-based...

Sohn, a longtime progressive activist, has called for the shuttering of right-wing networks throughout her career

Just one day after President Joe Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to the federal agency that oversees television networks, her nonprofit secured a favorable legal settlement with those same networks that reduced her financial liability by more than $30 million.

According to a confidential settlement revealed by Bloomberg Law, Sohn's now-defunct nonprofit, Locast, agreed to pay a number of top broadcasters $700,000 after it illegally streamed their programming. That amount is a mere fraction of the $32 million Locast was initially ordered to pay. Sohn, who served as one of the nonprofit's three directors, signed the agreement one day after Biden announced her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the same networks she settled with.

Sohn's settlement with the likes of ABC, CBS, and Fox has impeded her confirmation process. During a December hearing, Republican senators Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Roy Blunt (Mo.) expressed concern over the lawsuit, with Blunt asking Sohn if the ordeal would impact her "dealings with the very same local broadcasters that sued" Locast. Last week, Wicker called for a second hearing on Sohn's confirmation due in part to the "timing of this settlement in relation to her nomination."

"The possibility of the nominee's future financial liability to a number of companies regulated by the FCC, and the timing of this settlement in relation to her nomination, demands a full discussion by the committee to ensure that there is a clear understanding of the ability for this nominee to act without any cloud of ethical doubt," Wicker said. "The committee needs to hold a new hearing on this matter to provide the nominee an opportunity to fully address these concerns."

While Bloomberg Law wrote that Sohn's settlement "appears to undercut" Wicker's "stated reason for opposing her nomination," others aren't so sure. American Commitment president Phil Kerpen questioned both the timing and terms of the settlement, arguing that it raises new ethics questions.

"How does this eliminate criticism? The terms of the deal are incredibly favorable to her," Kerpen told the Washington Free Beacon. "How could anyone say that she can now objectively vote on anything involving any of the big broadcast networks that just basically let her company off the hook?"

Bloomberg Law initially published Sohn's settlement details under the headline, "FCC Nominee's Settlement Undercuts Rationale for Blocking Her." Hours after publication, the outlet changed that headline to read, "Biden FCC Nominee Settles Case That Spurred GOP Senator's Fight." Bloomberg Law did not immediately return a request for comment on the change.

Sohn's tenure on the board of the illegal TV streaming service is not the only reason Republican senators are hesitant to confirm her. Sohn, a longtime progressive activist, has also called for the shuttering of right-wing networks throughout her career, views that Sen. Dan Sullivan (R., Alaska) in December Said "completely disqualify" her from...