One should note that all the lying and chicanery involved over a wide variety of different areas demonstrates just how crucial this election is for the Democratic Party’s plan to destroy the country—IOW, demonstrates the extent to which this is an election that the Democrats, if they are to succeed in their plan of total destruction, know they MUST NOT LOSE…which goes a long way to explaining the airbrushing of Joe Biden out of the picture and the concomitant mega-rehabilitation of Kamala Harris (AKA making something out of nothing).

Mpox—i.e., Mbusiness, on a huge scale—indeed…

These are my topic “summaries” (my numbering); the first is the longest topic of a very long post, but all of the entries are important in some way.

https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2024/08/22/toc-ready-room-22-august-2024-biggest-grab-bag-evah-defense-economics-nuclear-energy-more/

(1) “Price-gouging”: Just say no to the witch-hunt

The topic is being discussed among pundits as “price controls.” Candidate Kamala Harris spoke relatedly on the matter late last week, and pundits, knowing well the counterproductive damage always done by price controls, were off to the races laying out for us the excellent case that it’s lunacy to impose price controls.

But in Ready Room at TOC, we’re all about getting inside the OODA loop. And in this case, that means listening with our ears to what Harris actually said. What she said was much more dangerous than “price controls.” That’s why, no matter what you hear in mitigation of her bad proposal, it is imperative to understand that this is, in fact, the road to socialist managerialism, and its premise is Marxism.
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The Administration Formerly Known As Biden (TAFKAB) has been assuring us for more than two years now that we mustn’t trust our lying eyes: inflation is greatly exaggerated, and we really aren’t paying enormously higher prices for food since Biden took office. Yet in the summer of 2024, Harris comes along to suddenly join the Warren bandwagon and inform us that, yes, we are paying much higher prices for food (and rent, and fuel, and everything else), and what we’re seeing is not inflation, per se, but price-gouging.

This is sleight-of-hand.
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This drama, incidentally, is a superb case-study of how creeping Marxism in the progressive administration of your government is slipped right past you. Everyone feels well-informed about the temporary matter of price controls; the earnest, undoubtedly intelligent discussion of it sucks up all the oxygen. Meanwhile, the premise is quietly laid for expanding government to yet another emotional, demagogic experiment, with great promise for abusing the people.

Don’t let the witch-hunt for gouging get started.
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(2)Defense and security escapades

One is the astonishing (or perhaps not) news that the U.S. is recruiting Afghan refugees to learn the skills to build nuclear-powered submarines for us. And not just nuclear-powered submarines, but apparently our new class of strategic nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).
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My opinion can be expressed pretty briefly. I have no prior animus against the Afghan refugees, but I do note that many of them are likely to have family still in Afghanistan, and thus are subject to ready levers against their loyalties in sensitive industries in America. I also see no reason why they need to be recruited for this industry niche in preference to the many American citizens who, among other things, already speak and read English to a level that would make technical training go faster.

It’s a serious question why “we” would prioritize hiring recent foreign refugees for such work. There are many other useful lines of work for the refugees to earn a living in.
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(3) Belt, Road, and Container

The other national security development has to do with China, and the discovery of drones being smuggled to Libya among parts for wind turbines.
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China is taking advantage of this to fund the installation of new Chinese cargo cranes in Gioia Tauro. The ZPMC cranes are the ones I’ve called out before at TOC as state-of-the-art, and, according to testimony from U.S. officials, likely to be recording and sending masses of data on U.S. shipping and port operations (e.g., in the Port of Los Angeles) to a CCP-linked mothership.
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The likelihood that China is covertly shipping drones, and even container-launched missiles, to foreign ports – including ours – has also been noted with in-depth treatment at TOC.
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It does not seem particularly wise for Italy to accept Chinese cranes, running about 170-175-feet in height and probably embedded with spy sensors and devices, at a port near the toe of the “boot” overlooking the Strait of Messina, and in easy distance from the major U.S. and NATO air base at Sigonella, Sicily. (A sector of the Italian coast guard also operates from the Gioia Tauro port.)
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(4) “Economy, stupid” update

The first item here has to do with Kamala Harris’s promise last week to “build 3 million new affordable homes for the middle class.”
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Read here the kind of thing Harris’s backers have in mind.
Bypassing regs, community approval, & cramming in max APT BLDG density to get “affordable housing” done.
Also a good bet foreign capital is heavily involved
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The attraction of the program isn’t that it’s subsidized. It’s not. It’s that it avoids a lot of the usual red tape, and it requires very high-density, small-apartment development, basically as if the developers are building tiny high-rise dwellings for Chinese workers in industrial cities.
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Beware leftists bearing “housing” plans.
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(5) The second economic development is a curious drama unfolding in Michigan. I’m still working the backstory on this, and so don’t have a lot to report on it yet. But it’s very noteworthy. It involves the rare restart of a previously decommissioned nuclear power plant called the Palisades Nuclear Plant, in Covert, Michigan.

It’s the first such restart ever (i.e., from full decommissioning) in the United States. As the Canary media article (above paragraph) indicates, there’s little precedent anywhere else in the world either.
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Holtec is a well-established nuclear-industry company (with a history of operating in other forms of energy), and I have nothing against it that I know of. I’m a proponent of nuclear power as “clean,” efficient energy. That’s the perspective from which the following quick-look comments come.
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You don’t just assume the best about something so important. At a minimum, the U.S. Congress needs to work now to ensure we’re ahead of the issue of nuclear-waste supervision with SMRs.
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(6) (Ship movements)
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(7) One of the additional random topics is that X (formerly Twitter) has decided to end its operations in Brazil (although the social media platform will remain available to users in Brazil. Elon Musk is withdrawing any corporate footprint from the country).
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Topping the list of the threatened accounts is that of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro remains a vocal opponent of the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the socialist former president (2003-2011) who was returned to office in an irregularity-filled election in October 2022 (assuming office on 1 January 2023).
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(8) Meanwhile, the scourge of Monkeypox (the politically correct term is now “mpox” – which is not a joke; the name really was changed to mpox in order to remove the possibly-offensive word “monkey” from the nomenclature) is being touted by the World Health Organization as a threat. By no measure is “mpox” verging on an epidemic, much less a pandemic. But WHO is warning of the need for lockdowns.
,..
For those with quick perception, yes: I agree this is probably related to pushing the cause of irregular, poorly-supervised voting in the U.S. election in November. Scary disease? Bring on the mass-mailed ballots, pop-up “early-voting” kiosks, and drop-boxes.
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(9) Another subject worth a short tag is a question advanced on X last week about what the U.S. Department of Education actually does. The shortest of answers is that it administers federal regulations and grants relating to education. It’s about regulation and money. But as always, government regulation and money are connected with leverage, influence, and even extortion of constituencies and targets. The ultimate point is to push a political agenda, typically one that Congress wouldn’t vote to implement.

Here’s an X post expressing that in a succinct, easy-to-remember, and accurate way.

It uses grants funded by the taxpayer to buy US schools into submission to its radical indoctrination program.
It writes the rules for the indoctrination & extorts states & school districts to follow them, once they’re hooked on the grants.
That’s literally what it does.

— J.E. Dyer ?? (@OptimisticCon) August 16, 2024
I note in conclusion that a number of interests the federal government has taken, with progressive bureaucratic government over the last 100-odd years, are well described in the same fashion. Examples include housing, urban development, regional planning, and large-scale land management. Using federal money to bypass state legislatures and override the interests of local communities in those matters is now a standard, pervasive, and tyrannical practice.

Have you seen polls? If not, what is your evidence? I saw a poll the other day (can’t recall where) that said the Jewish vote was now 50/50, which is a very significant swing to the right.

It’s possible that Raimondo didn’t want to answer the question and just wanted to break off the interview or conversation. It’s not impossible that she hadn’t heard the news Did she really not know there was a Bureau of Labor Statistics? That’s much less likely, but it’s an intriguing idea. Buttigieg and Granholm know nothing about transportation or energy. Maybe Raimondo knows nothing about commerce or the economy. Were cabinet secretaries always this ignorant? Or is it just that they were kept away from reporters and microphones and television cameras, so no one knew just how ignorant they were?

Let’s see the Venn diagram.