The Anti-Vaxx Herp Derp
The Anti-Vaxx Herp Derp
Chris Truax on the very clear obstacle to beating COVID-19: People.
Leading The Bulwark…
The Anti-Vaxx Herp Derp
CHRIS TRUAX: As it’s become increasingly clear that the obstacle to ending the pandemic is now people flat-out refusing to get vaccinated,…
🎧 On the Pods… 🎧
Tom Nichols on Cat Ladies, Fascists, and Cori Bush
On today's podcast, Tom Nichols joins host Charlie Sykes to torch just about everybody: Ben Domenech's thirstiness, Tucker in Hungary, Biden's eviction moratorium, and Cori Bush's "defund the police" fiasco. And also a discussion about his new book: Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy.
BGTH: Clayton Childress Explains How Taste and Status Reinforce Each Other
On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Clayton Childress, an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Sociology of University of Toronto who studies taste, decision, and meaning making in the creation, production, and reception of culture.
For Bulwark+ Members… 🔐
MORNING SHOTS: Biden Just Undermined the Rule of Law 🔐
CHARLIE SYKES on why norms still matter.
THE TRIAD: No Matter What You Think About COVID, Most People Disagree With You. 🔐
JONATHAN V. LAST: Everyone is in the minority.
From The Bulwark Aggregator…
A recap of a very special election season – Kirk A. Bado, National Journal
Tucker Carlson Has Seen the Future, and It Is Fascist – Jonathan Chait, Intelligencer
The St. Louis Mom Fighting Anti-Maskers Raving About ‘Filthy Tyranny’ – Michael Daly, The Daily Beast
The Mystery of the Missing Workers, Explained – Olivia Rockerman, Bloomberg Businessweek
Some Republicans Have Changed Their Messaging On The COVID-19 Vaccine. Is It Too Little, Too Late? – Mary Radcliffe and Alex Samuels, FiveThirtyEight
Landlords sue to stop Biden’s ‘nakedly political’ eviction ban – Katy O'Donnell, Politico
Not patriots, not political prisoners — U.S. judges slam Capitol riot defendants at sentencing – Spencer S. Hsu, The Washington Post
In Today’s Bulwark...
Not My Party: Vax Don’t Care About Your Feelings
TIM MILLER: Our Hot Joe Summer is at risk!
Biden Should Have Left the Evictions Moratorium to Congress
THOMAS KOENIG: The White House admitted another extension was not constitutionally permissible but went ahead anyway. Here’s why that matters.
Iran Stands Athwart Biden’s Desire to Withdraw from the Greater Middle East
SHAY KHATIRI: The geopolitical context of last week’s drone attack.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Incentives… Tennessee seems to have some odd priorities, as they pay to get cows vaccinated, but haven’t joined any of the states who are coming up with creative ways to encourage people to get vaccinated. As a result, they have one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, Medscape reports.
Decline is a choice, YAF edition…
Laura Loomer just got Loomered… From Law&Crime:
A federal magistrate judge in Florida ordered far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and her company Illoominate Media to pay a Muslim civil rights advocacy group nearly $125,000 in attorney’s fees and costs stemming from a lawsuit claiming the group colluded with Twitter to have her banned from the social media platform.
“The Guy in the Jetpack” is probably not a real person flying around. Unless they’ve invented a human-flying jetpack that somehow is way better than anything the industry offers, CBS reports. It’s probably a dummy. And it’s dangerous.
The 1/6 Commission just got a lot more interesting…
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE JERSEY TURNPIKE—
I tried to keep my Jersey bashing (anyone want to talk about property taxes?) to just gas yesterday, so I figured I should take some time to talk about how pretty the Garden State is, as we were driving around from site to site for the first vows of my wife’s Salesian cousin nun. (We failed, the traffic wasted a lot of gas, so we had to get some.)
One of the prettiest drives for us was near Picatinny, as we drove back to the hotel and saw the hulking Precision Armaments Laboratory tower from the Picatinny Arsenal in the twighlight. I was driving so I couldn’t take a cool picture of it. It was something spooky like it was out of Stranger Things.
The Picatinny Arsenal has been a U.S. military facility since the late 1800s. It’s sort of like skunkworks for weapons systems. It’s a big facility, but not that sprawling, and it does important work that helps save our soldiers’ lives.
It is also the location of one of the biggest explosions (outside of A-Bombs) to take place in America. Between WWI and WWII, it was a repository for a lot of ammunition and explosives, and lightning struck and a building caught on fire. It was full of ammunition, as The Vane reports:
More than 600,000 tons of explosives stored inside the depot detonated, resulting in one of the most catastrophic man-made explosions in the United States. The blast completely destroyed nearly 200 buildings in a half-mile radius, resulting in $47 million in damages (more than $631 million today when adjusted for inflation), 21 deaths, and dozens more injuries. The explosion was so powerful that people reported finding debris nearly 22 miles away.
Go look at the pictures of the aftermath. It was 1926 and an explosion of that magnitude was probably quite hard to fathom. Of course, less than 20 years later we were making a single bomb capable of similar destruction.
And now, close to 100 years later, it’s producing important work like this.
We have yet to embark on any diners, malls (or Cheesecake Factories)… yet. But we did go to White Castle in Orange, NJ and discovered… they put ketchup on the burgers here! Surprise! In the Midwest, they do not. And we’re far east of the Horseradish Mustard line, which is somewhere in Indiana / Ohio. And props to how fast the NJ White Castle was, despite getting the order “wrong” / I was unaware of the local custom. Unlike with gas.
That’s it for me for today. We’ll see you back here tomorrow, and we’ll see Bulwark+ members tonight at TNB. 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.