The, Uh, “Conservative” Case for Spitting on American Soldiers

American Greatness offers a red-pill argument for hating on the military.

Leading The Bulwark…

The, Uh, “Conservative” Case for Spitting on American Soldiers

JIM SWIFT: American Greatness offers a red-pill argument for hating on the military.

🎧 On the Pods… 🎧

David Priess: Was It An Intelligence Failure?

On today's podcast, Lawfare's David Priess joins host Charlie Sykes to discuss mosquitos, vaccines, and whether Afghanistan represented a failure of intelligence... or policy.

For Bulwark+ Members… 🔐

MORNING SHOTS: Biden's Numerator/Denominator Problem 🔐

CHARLIE SYKES on a brutal poll for DeSantis.

THE TRIAD: How Louisiana Police Covered Up "Pain Compliance" 🔐

JVL: Law enforcement institutions are still broken.

From The Bulwark Aggregator…

• Gottheimer’s Suicide Squad Hurt Their Party But Gained Nothing - Jonathan Chait, Intelligencer

• Matt Gaetz Failed to Properly Disclose His Abysmal Book Sales - Roger Sollenberger, The Daily Beast

• The Coronavirus Could Get Worse - Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic

• Alabama's Dumb Health Care Regulations Helped Create a Shortage of ICU Beds - Eric Boehm, Reason

• Afghanistan’s Falling Man: The 17-Year-Old Soccer Star Who Plunged From a U.S. Military Jet - Joe Parkinson, Ava Sasani and Drew Hinshaw, The Wall Street Journal

• Target Was Unusually Cozy With the Police. Now It’s Trying to Reconcile With Black America - Peter Waldman and Lauren Etter, Bloomberg Businessweek

• Separation mixes with hope and uncertainty in the U.S. base hosting Afghan evacuees - Loveday Morris, The Washington Post

In Today’s Bulwark...

Biden’s “Please, Putin?” Moment

BENJAMIN PARKER: Yet another botched aspect of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Nation-Building Was Not the Point

MONA CHAREN: The realist case for staying in Afghanistan.

🚨OVERTIME 🚨

Let’s start with some happy news… 🇺🇸

Steve Beynon @StevenBeynon

The Afghan baby born on the C-17 on the flight from Afghanistan was named "Reach" after the plane's callsign.

Speaking of ‘happy’ let’s talk about about ‘happy little trees’ that might not be so happy… This Netflix documentary is about to strip off some paint.

The best negotiator… ever? Hardly.

Scott Lincicome @scottlincicome

This shouldn't surprise anyone - it's literally what many trade/automotive experts said would happen if the automotive rules of origin were too onerous (along w automakers staying in the NAFTA region but just paying the 2.5% tariff applied to cars)

Chad P. Bown @ChadBown

American interpretation of Trump’s US-Canada-Mexico trade agreement could push some automakers to abandon the North American region due to cumbersome and costly content requirements. By ⁦@MayaAverbuch https://t.co/5aV7vpzozG

Should have stuck with NAFTA.

YES…

Leslie Josephs @lesliejosephs

Delta to charge unvaccinated employees extra $200 a month for health care. Says average hospital stay costs it $40K/a person. "This surcharge will be necessary to address the financial risk the decision to not vaccinate is creating for our company."

cnbc.comDelta Air Lines is raising health insurance premiums for unvaccinated employees by $200 a month to cover higher Covid costsDelta is the latest company to issue new rules for employee vaccinations, but stopped short of an outright mandate.

Greg Abbott is #TeamVirus. There’s no other explanation for it.

Andrew Egger @EggerDC

In April, Gov. Abbott of Texas banned localities and businesses that receive government funds from requiring anyone to receive "a COVID-19 vaccine administered under an emergency use authorization." Now that Pfizer has full approval, he's updated it to any "COVID-19 vaccine."

Let’s not WARP SPEED too fast!

The Daily Show @TheDailyShow

When you love warp speed but not TOO much warp speed

I feel a bit seen! Will Leitch’s great newsletter is something you should sign up for. Here’s a taste:

I am always suspicious of anyone who is too confident in themselves. This is one of the (many) reasons I am terrible at social media. That social media does not do nuance well is baked into the platform, which wouldn’t be that big of a deal except for the fact that America’s media organizations have started using Twitter as an assigning editor, making it increasingly impossible for anyone to have a large-scale good-faith conversation about anything. (Afghanistan only being the most recent example.) But I’d argue social media does uncertainty even worse. Nearly everything on social media is posted with the utmost conviction and self-assurance, as if each statement is so painfully obvious that it’s embarrassing that anyone would even have to say it. This makes sense: It’s our strongest thoughts and beliefs that we feel compelled to broadcast to the outside world; it’s why we’re broadcasting them so loudly. Few leap to exclaim, “Here is something I haven’t made up my mind about!”

Read the whole thing.

Your film score of the day… As longtime readers know, my late grandmother (RIP) was a violinist with the Dayton Philharmonic, and I absolutely love music scores and the effort it takes to make them great.

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.