Chris Rufo and His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Afghanistan Take
Chris Rufo and His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Afghanistan Take
Cathy Young: Since all he has is a hammer, everything looks like a culture-war nail.
Leading The Bulwark…
Chris Rufo and His Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Afghanistan Take
CATHY YOUNG: Since all he has is a hammer, everything looks like a culture-war nail.
🎧 On the Pods… 🎧
Russell Moore on the Evangelical Future
On today's podcast, Dr. Russell Moore joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss the challenge that "cultural Christianity" poses to genuine Christian witness.
For Bulwark+ Members… 🔐
MORNING SHOTS: Why Does This Keep Happening? 🔓
CHARLIE SYKES on our overworked COVID karma.
THE TRIAD: Iran Is Trying to Figure Out the Taliban 🔐
JVL: Let's focus in on just one vector in the new power structure.
✉️ WEEKEND MAILBAG WITH CHARLIE SYKES 🔓
📩 JVL’S NEWSLETTER OF NEWSLETTERS: Amazon's "Just Walk Out" Is Here to Kill Your Local Grocery Store 🔓
From The Bulwark Aggregator…
‘It Nearly Killed Me’: Michael Caputo’s Life After Years Fighting for Trump - Michael Kruse, Politico
‘Katrinaesque’ Hurricane Ida Sends New Orleans Into the Dark - Dwayne Fatherree and Barbie Latza Nadeau, The Daily Beast
How a Deadly Crash Upended South Dakota Politics - Tom Kludt, Vanity fair
When the Office Is a Fly-Fishing Motel - Diana Budds, Curbed
I’m Waiting for Hurricane Ida With COVID-19 - Claire Holahan, The Atlantic
Biden's Justice Department Goes After Police Misconduct - C.J. Ciaramella, Reason Magazine
Florida radio host 'Mr. Anti-Vax' dies of COVID-19 - Sarah Polus, The Hill
In evacuation mission’s 11th hour, hope dims for Afghans seeking escape - Missy Ryan and Dan Lamothe, The Washington Post
In Today’s Bulwark...
Welcoming War Refugees to America
PHUONG TRAN NGUYEN: A moral imperative after Vietnam and now after Afghanistan.
Fed Chair Powell Repeats Past Mistakes
DESMOND LACHMAN: His speech at Jackson Hole all but confirmed that the Fed will wait to curb inflation until it’s too late.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Monday! I promised you all a #Pupdate on our foster, Rusty. First, here’s a picture.
They said he was a Golden Doodle of sorts, and… I’m gonna have to call BS on this one. He is a terrier through and through, and very sweet. About a year old, very friendly, good with kids, adults, and really just wants to be friends with everyone. However, old man Gus, our 7 year old Westie is a little reluctant to take him into the pack, due to his puppy energy. (Ironic, because Gus the puppy was VERY annoying to older dogs.)
There was one escape, and a few chewing incidents, and one accident inside the house, but outside of that, he has been a great addition to the house. Credit where it’s due, he is a very smart dog. He knows how to unlock gates, disable zip ties, etc. That hasn’t made things easier.
We still have a few days to get Gus to come around, but we’re gonna watch Step Brothers tonight to see if there are any tips.
If it doesn’t work out, and while I hope it will, it might not, we’ll keep fostering him until he finds a forever home. But I am not worried about that. He’s a perfect pupper, and I just want Gus to get along with him. But that takes patience, and time.
Hopefully, they won’t get tired of us.
This weekend was mostly dog dominated… So outside of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and Hurricane Ida, I didn’t do much. Though, I did watch Ohio lose its first Little League World Series championship game, and the Browns and Indians win. Sometimes, it’s good to unplug a little bit.
That said, here are some links I compiled for you this weekend that I think are worth your time.
Here’s why the Trump hotel in D.C. (doing very badly, many people are saying)… Banned a Forbes reporter for life.
Remember Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL Trump pardoned? Well, not much of a sailor, according to accounts from his colleagues.
Is Careerism over? A deep dive from Charlie Warzel’s Substack, and some good comments from my friend Nathaniel Horodam.
“He succeeded in proving the experts wrong.” This comes from the campaign website of Louisiana State Rep. Tim Kerner. Rep. Kerner’s district includes Jean Lafitte, where he was mayor for decades. Hurricane Ida hit this area hard, but Mayor/Rep. Kerner had an idea to put it on the map.
Here’s a taste:
It might seem counterintuitive to keep building on land that is submerging. But Mr. Kerner did not see it as his job to take a 10,000-foot view. In the years since Hurricane Katrina, he had grown weary of being rebuffed in his quixotic campaign to encircle Lafitte with a tall and impregnable levee. He could rhapsodize all he wanted about preserving his community’s authentic way of life. The cost-benefit calculus — more than $1 billion to protect fewer than 7,000 people — always weighed against him.
So he had set out to change it. His strategy was to secure so much public investment for Jean Lafitte that it would eventually become too valuable to abandon. In a decade, he had built a 1,300-seat auditorium, a library, a wetlands museum, a civic center and a baseball park. Jean Lafitte did not have a stop light, but it had a senior center, a medical clinic, an art gallery, a boxing club, a nature trail and a visitor center where animatronic puppets acted out the story of its privateer namesake.
It. Did. Not. Have. A. Stop. Light.
This is as Louisiana as parody gets.
It gets worse. The Kerner family gets Saddam Hussein level votes in this small town of nearly 2,000 people.
The town of Jean Lafitte was officially incorporated in 1974, an effort led by Leo E. Kerner Jr., who became the town's first mayor. His son, Tim Kerner Sr., later served 7 terms as mayor from 1992 to 2020. In 2020, his son Tim Kerner, Jr. was elected as mayor
So, now, a third Kerner is mayor, and Ida comes through, and the current mayor is saying, what, exactly? “Total devastation.” “Catastrophic.”
His dad’s campaign page bio says this:
“I have lived here all my life and love this area and our people. As State Representative, I will have an opportunity to help more people in a bigger way. From coastal restoration to tourism, to environment and economic growth—I am anxious to continue to work with state officials and real people to accomplish real results. As Representative I plan to create more jobs and a better quality of life for all our residents, and fight to protect the values and principles that made this country so strong.”
It’s political vaporware. Politicians and experts do draw the line somewhere on things like levees, dams, and whatnot, but trying to grow to be too big to fail so we’ll have to spend a billion dollars?
That’s just bad public service.
Wrestling at The Chase… My former home in St. Louis was again home to wrestling history this past weekend, as narrated by John Goodman.
That’s it for me for today. We’ll see you back here tomorrow. Tech support questions? Email support@substack.com. Questions for me? Drop me a line: swift@thebulwark.com
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.