90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, November 24, 2022

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1912 - Happy Thanksgiving!

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Visage à trois #611

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #791

Biden Agrees To Pay Climate Reparations—And China, the World’s Top Carbon Emitter, Could Profit

US 'pushing for assurances' that China, which the UN still considers a developing nation, won't benefit from fund

The Biden administration on Saturday agreed to pay climate reparations to developing nations, a move that China—the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and one of its largest economies—could profit from.

Administration officials emerged from the United Nations Climate Change Conference over the weekend with a global agreement to establish a "climate justice" fund that would see the United States and other wealthy nations pay developing countries for "loss and damage" caused by climate change. But the U.N. still classifies China—which boasts the second-highest gross domestic product in the world—as a developing country, meaning it could benefit from the fund. That classification has left the United States scrambling to assure "that China will eventually contribute to any fund created—and that China would not be eligible to receive money from it," the New York Times reported Saturday. Beyond its economic status, China is by far the world's number one carbon emitter: The communist nation's greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 "exceeded those of the U.S. and other developed nations combined," according to CNBC.

It's unclear exactly how much the fund would cost, but a 2021 U.N. estimate placed the annual price tag in the hundreds of billions of dollars. That sky-high figure—and China's potential to receive a portion of it—will likely draw Congress's ire, particularly after Republicans take control of the House in early 2023. Biden's climate diplomats agreed to the fund at the conference, but Congress still must appropriate any taxpayer money that goes into it. Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) has already called the fund "completely misguided," and even a razor-thin House GOP majority could decline to bankroll it should its members remain united in opposition.

Biden's decision to back the climate fund comes just days after his climate czar, John Kerry, assured reporters that such a fund was "just not happening." "It's a well-known fact that the United States and many other countries will not establish … some sort of legal structure that is tied to compensation or liability," Kerry said on November 12. Roughly one week later, after the conference's conclusion, Kerry released a statement saying he "welcomes" the fund's creation.

The White House did not return a request for comment.

Beyond the Biden administration's support for climate reparations, conference attendees faced criticism for using gas-guzzling private jets to travel to the two-week summit, which was held in Sharm El Sheikh, a swanky resort town in Egypt. Brazil's president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, flew to the climate conference on a millionaire businessman's private jet, and more than 400 private aircraft flooded Egypt's airports during the conference, according to Business Insider. Last year's conference, which occurred in Glasgow, contributed to the emission of roughly 103,000 metric tons of...

Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock steered $16.4 million in federal earmarks to a project that benefited the co-owner of his controversial low-income apartment complex.

The funding was intended to construct a trail connecting a residential and commercial complex known as "Pittsburgh Yards" with other portions of Atlanta's BeltLine. The developer of Pittsburgh Yards is Columbia Ventures, part of the Columbia group of companies that co-owns and operates a low-income housing complex with Warnock's church.

The funding raises questions about whether Warnock's business relationship with Columbia had any bearing on his funding decision. Warnock did not respond to a request for comment.

Warnock's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he serves as senior pastor and CEO, in 2005 "formed a partnership with Columbia Residential to rehabilitate [a] dilapidated high-rise" and turned the building into low-income apartments. Ebenezer and Columbia are co-owners of the business through a joint venture, with Ebenezer owning 99 percent and Columbia owning the remaining 1 percent, according to a state grant application filed by the entities in August.

Last November, Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D., Ga.) announced that they had helped secure the funding for the trail project, which would "construct approximately two miles of the Southside Trail component of the Atlanta BeltLine from Pittsburgh Yards to Boulevard Crossing Park."

"When we connect our communities with pedestrian and bike trails, we provide a pathway for residents to enjoy local green spaces and invest in small businesses," said Warnock in a press release. "We bolster social and economic mobility for hardworking Georgians when we make strong federal investments in projects like the Atlanta BeltLine, and I look forward to securing more infrastructure investments like this one for other vital transportation projects in Atlanta and across our state."

Atlanta's BeltLine, which has been under construction since 2010, has been a lucrative project for property developers and led to a spike in property values. Columbia Residential and its sister company Columbia Ventures have worked on multiple developments along the trail, which when completed is supposed to loop around the city and connect neighborhoods through a light rail. The $16.4 million earmarked by Warnock, from the U.S. Department of Transportation, funded a "critical" segment of the trail that connected the "Eastside and Westside of the BeltLine" starting at Pittsburgh Yards, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

One of the more ambitious projects is Pittsburgh Yards, a 31-acre mixed-use development that includes commercial and residential buildings. The property is owned by...

Visage à trois #610

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

FOUR Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #790

The Strange Morality of the Bay-Area Billionaire Left Sam Bankman-Fried is the ultimate dangerous and ridiculous expression of the most toxic and creepy culture in America.

If he did not exist, he would have to be invented.

“Ya. Hehe. I had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those guys who get f—ed by it, by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.” —Sam Bankman-Fried

The FTX Bitcoin empire of 30-year-old CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is in shambles. Or more specifically, his “dumb game” cryptocurrency exchange has destroyed thousands of lives. Electronically, he may have robbed perhaps a million investors, and along with them hundreds of large institutional investors.

Mysteriously, only after the conclusion of the midterm elections, did we suddenly learn that this left-wing “philanthropist” and benefactor of Democratic politics, this megadonor to the quid pro quo puff-piece media, this con artist protected from federal securities regulators, had drained off, lost, hidden, or spent billions of dollars of other people’s money.

As a result, the Bahamas-basking, tax-avoiding, polyamorous sybarite, and heartthrob of progressive moralists, now claims he has no wherewithal to honor his financial commitments to his own investors. Preliminary postmortem auditors sigh that they have never encountered a greater financial mess than what Bankman-Fried has left in his wake.

How does the most sophisticated financial system in the history of civilization allow a virtue-signaling nerd to nearly wreck it? Where were the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, the IRS, and all the other alphabet soup agencies that supposedly exist so that someone like Bankman-Fried does not? Where is Merrick Garland and his special prosecutors, the FBI with its televised SWAT swoops and leg irons?

For all the performance-art boasts of simply doing good for others by doing far better for himself, Bankman-Fried may soon be revealed to be one of the great, dissolute con artists in American history. Like the infamous Charles Ponzi, “Bankman” may become our eponymous word in the 21st century for electronically driven, pyramid-scheme theft.

His Stanford-Silicon Valley moral veneer was shiny but otherwise razor thin. Yet Bankman-Fried told at least one truth when he explained to obsequious media what his ilk easily does to fool purported suckers who send him cash, while he avoided federal and media oversight: “This dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”

Well, not everyone. Instead, he might qualify his “everyone” as the like-minded, cynical, left-wing politicos, the kindred media hacks at the Washington Post and New York Times, and brethren investor toadies who helped him render Bernie Madoff a small-potato sinner in comparison.

Bankman-Fried had showered Joe Biden in 2020 with millions of dollars in campaign donations and did so again with larger sums to congressional candidates in 2022. His public relations arm of FTX exuded the usual virtue speak—including promised impending multibillion-dollar gifting—for utopian, Democratic, and progressive causes. And the media on spec gushed about their pet grunger as he sought to buy protection from...