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The Complicated Politics of Homelessness

Plus: How We Avoided a Government Shutdown. (For now.)

Jim Swift

Oct 2

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Recently in The Bulwark:

CHARLIE SYKES: “The Banality of Crazy”
JVL: The R's and the A-Word 🔐
JOE PERTICONE: How We Avoided a Government Shutdown. (For now.)
BGTH: What the Writers Gained By Striking

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JILL D. LAWRENCE: A California House Fire Reveals the Complicated Politics of Homelessness.

(Screen capture from KCBS helicopter footage of the fire.)

ONE YEAR AGO, on the night of October 2, 2022, Irma Hawkins was drifting off to sleep in her second-floor bedroom in Venice, California, when she heard a roar of noise. Was it a plane, or maybe the Santa Ana wind?
Her husband, Martin Kasindorf, got up and looked out their bedroom window. In the corner he saw an orange glow next door, a few feet from his home. Maybe a party going on, he thought, half-asleep, then—wait a minute, it’s a construction site and nobody lives there. He walked into the next room to a large picture window facing the adjacent lot. The whole structure was ablaze.

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FRANK LAVIN: Ukraine Needs Better Public Diplomacy.

JUST AS UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKY visited the United States last month, I returned from volunteer work in Ukraine, delivering ambulances to hospitals. The contrast between the subdued support for Ukraine on display in Washington and the optimism I found in Kyiv was stark, almost shocking.

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ZANDY HARTIG: ‘Oldboy’ and the Art of Preparing Your Audience for the Unexpected.

Warning: Spoilers ahead if you click through!

I TRY TO GO TO MOVIES basking in complete ignorance. Unless I’ve seen the previews of coming attractions, I know nothing. I don’t look at reviews, I don’t Google, I avoid chatter on what I’m about to see. As much as possible, I like to come into a theater fresh, with no expectations. So when a friend convinced me to go to a late-night screening of a twentieth-anniversary rerelease of Oldboy (2003), I took her up on it solely because she has great taste in movies. I didn’t even know it was Korean. As we sat down in our plush, cushy movie seats, my friend said, “Buckle up, Zandy.”

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CATHY YOUNG: Have We Reached Peak ‘Karen Video’ Yet?

IN JULY 2021, THE “KAREN” CHRONICLES—video recordings that purportedly show middle-class white women behaving in an entitled, overbearing, and usually racist way—got a new chapter with “Victoria’s Secret Karen.” The video, recorded in the lingerie store at New Jersey’s Short Hills Mall by Ijeoma Ukenta, a Nigerian-American lifestyle blogger, showed a young white woman lunging toward the camera, then bursting into tears and sinking to the floor. While Ukenta makes sarcastic comments, the young woman wails, flails, and begs, “Don’t film my mental breakdown—please!” Media accounts suggested that the white woman, identified as 27-year-old Abigail Elphick, had “chased” Ukenta around the store and tried to attack her. The police came and left with no charges filed. The story was widely covered as a racist incident—according to one radio host, the same “white fragility” that once led to the lynching of Emmett Till.

READ THE REST.

🚨OVERTIME🚨

Foamhenge at Cox Farms in Centreville, Virginia

Happy Monday! I hope your weekend was as beautiful as ours was in D.C. It seems Mother Nature rewarded us for a putting up with the remnants of the tropical storm with a spectacular pair of days. Fall is the best season in my book, and going out to a farm to do October activities on an 82 degree Sunday? Can’t beat it. (Even if Tito Francona and the Guardians lost his last game. You’ll be missed!)

Your viewer's guide…. to the McCarthy-Gaetz showdown.

The Jamaal Bowman fire alarm saga… Continues to defy any rational explanation.

John Harwood interviews President Biden… About threats to democracy. A must-watch.

Arizona’s $1 billion failed experiment… In Universal Vouchers, which paid for: “waterskiing lessons in Missouri? Museum tickets in Europe? Espresso machines, home gyms and bounce houses?” Yep.

Also, in Arizona… The political climate has reached the low talk of “perp walks” again.

Go inside The Sphere… The future of concert venues? Probably.

The Eighth Dwarf… Matt Labash on whether Glenn Youngkin can save the GOP.

Cameras in the courtroom… Give us this. (Still not a fan of the concept.) It started with a spectacle, and ended with some accounting. Donald Trump and his allies are not taking the conclusion of the court very well!

The Trump administration touted him as a victim of #MeToo…. Now he’s accused of dismembering a girlfriend.

How to talk to your Republican uncle… about Ukraine.

She’s a Prophet. She’s a Theocrat. She’s the Most Powerful Lobbyist You’ve Never Heard Of.

Meanwhile, in Missouri… A sheriff’s department spent taxpayer money on “beer, 15 TVs and 76 hams” an audit found.

The Next Targets… for the Group That Overturned Roe.

The growing #PodiumGate scandal… In Sarah Huckabee’s Arkansas.