Welcome back to the Scuttlebutt. JFK once wrote a book called Profiles in Courage. Well, I’m not JFK but this week we’re going to talk about some people with courage. Kennedy’s book decided to single out US Senators who were willing to go against the common wisdom or the desires of their party. We’re going a slightly different route, for a few reasons.
For one thing, the number of senators today with the courage to do the right thing even when the party says they’re wrong is greater, but sadly all on one side of the aisle. I see a fair number of Republicans who are willing to break with the party when they think they’re wrong. The Democrats, however-- seem to have embraced the old story of the Communist party with “don’t be the first to stop clapping comrade.”
For another, I’m not running for office, so I don’t need to find ways to ‘make my political chops’ with people on the fence by showing how I’m not a partisan hack like Kennedy did. I want to acknowledge writers and others who have dared to tell the mob to get bent.
So, pour yourself something from the bar, and as always, please notice the cup at the tip jar Where we restock. Now let’s get started.
My blog will always be free, but comments require you to join and pay a very nominal fee. I got shouted at and cussed out on this, my little spot on the internet. I figure if you want to call me a ~0~< $^~<3r, you can buy me a coffee first.
First up, we must acknowledge the divine J.K. Rowling. If you have somehow been living under a rock for the last three decades, and yet still get my blog, Ms. Rowling completely revitalized Juvenile Fiction, (JF) a style that was dead and believed to be beyond resurrection.
Of course, calling it JF is itself a faux paw these days, it’s (spoken with a pseudo-intellectual sneer) Young Adult Novels (YA). Well, pardon me, but where I come from Young Adults are working, or in college, or wearing a uniform and standing watch. These books were targeting the 12-18 market, and those aren’t adults. Does that mean they weren’t readable and enjoyable by adults? Of course not. If you write dreck that won’t entertain a twenty- or thirty-year-old, it probably won’t entertain your target audience for very long, whereas a well-written piece may target that youth group, but will be just as enjoyable by grumpy old grandpas like me.
That’s where Rowling shined, and this divorced mother on welfare produced an entire industry of books, games, movies, and other entertainment that was so overwhelmingly successful that it made her the richest writer in GB, possibly in the world. That alone would get her a nod from me, even if her stories weren’t how I taught my kids to read and instilled in them a lifelong love of reading.
But she didn’t stop there, and that’s why she is getting top billing. Scottland passed this Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_Crime_and_Public_Order_(Scotland)_Act_2021 making it a crime to say anything that might suggest for instance that saying “Just because you say you feel like a woman today doesn’t make you female.” Or “If you’re born male, you’re not, and can’t be, a woman.” This made ‘Woke Speech’ law, and offered arrest, fines, and imprisonment to anyone who dared to say your genetic sex was your sex. The day the law took effect Rowling sent out a series of Tweets on X that effectively dared her home nation to arrest her.
The advantage she has, of course, is that she has “Fuck off” money. She literally said, "I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offense under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment." For good measure, she repeatedly used the hashtag #ArrestMe.
She Dared the Government to have this fight with her, stating that she was more than willing to take this all the way to the ‘High Court of Justiciary and beyond to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (which would have jurisdiction because it’s arguably a “human rights” question.)
In this staring contest, the government blinked. They formally stated that they would not be attempting to prosecute Ms. Rowling for violating the law. (I’m pretty sure that was because they knew that they would lose!) This is huge because it’s a defense under UK law (and Scottish, which is sometimes different) that “this law is not enforced uniformly.” IE You didn’t prosecute Rowling, so you can’t prosecute me.
Let it never be said that the rich never use their powers for good. It’s easy, especially when you’re someone that the crowds idolize, to go along with the herd. It’s HARD to buck the herd, to be the guy or gal that stands in front of the charging crowd and says NO, YOU TURN. When all the force and might of the government is alongside that crowd, it’s even harder.
Bravo Ms. Rowling, you have my respect.
On an entirely different note, Newsweek has dared to say what no one else has: https://www.newsweek.com/israel-has-created-new-standard-urban-warfare-why-will-no-one-admit-it-opinion-1883286 By John Spencer
(chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point; served for 25 years as an infantry soldier and two tours in Iraq)
The article points out that Israel is being far more considerate in the face of gross violations of the Laws of Land Warfare (LLW) than anyone else ever has, and yet is getting pilloried for it. Basing military command posts inside civilian hospitals, by the LLW means that the attacking units are perfectly within their rights to pave that sucker without any warning. Yet, far from doing that, the IDF is risking their hides going into those buildings after the beasts that raped and killed their civilians. Further, they are bringing in supplies for the civilians being used as shields. This is far more than the US would do, and let’s not even talk about what Russia is doing in Ukraine, or the behavior of third world nations like Nigeria.
Saying this though, seems to be anathema to the mainstream press. The fact that someone has had the courage to step out from the crowd and point out the facts should be acknowledged and recognized. Bravo Newsweek, I take back what I’ve said about you (well, OK some of what I’ve said about you in the last month.) Good job, go do this some more.
25-year NPR veteran Uri Berliner is someone we’ve discussed before, so I’m just going to link that discussion here: https://wlehman.substack.com/p/free-speech-and-censorship if you’ve forgotten his courage in coming forth (noting that it cost him his career to do so.) The only thing I have to add here on this subject is some quotes from the gal who fired him… They stand alone: (oh, it’s worth mentioning, I suppose that she’s basic white bread)
“America is addicted to white supremacy.”
“Never underestimate the ability of white people to center ourselves.”
“Lots of jokes about leaving the US, and I get it. But as someone with cis white mobility privilege, I'm thinking I'm staying and investing in ridding ourselves of this specter of tyranny.”
“I made a commitment to never step on a speaker's stage without talking about our climate crisis.”
“I mean, sure, looting is counterproductive. But it's hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people's ancestors as private property.”
“Who was it that declared a fetus was genetically human from the point of conception?” (Uh, what the hell else would it be???)
Donald Trump, she said, is a "deranged racist sociopath." After Joe Biden's 2020 victory, she said, "I can't stop crying with relief."
“Hillary Clinton shouldn't say ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ because it's ‘erasing language for non-binary people.’”
Maher didn't have children because "I dunno, the planet is literally burning."
Maher's comments about Berliner's op-ed are worth a special mention: She called it "profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning" because it amounted to "a criticism of our people on the basis of who we are." Oh, it’s also worth noting that she considers “the First Amendment is the number one challenge to controlling ‘bad information’ and really problematic.”
Yeah, she’s a piece of work alright. This is the person who’s running NPR with the approval of your government. Is anyone surprised that she shitcanned Berliner rather than admit that NPR is as biased as hell?
Next, I have to tip the hat to the Washington Examiner https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2951435/about-studies-show-dei-programs-boost-corporate-earnings/ for saying what many of us have suspected for a long time. It turns out that the bullshit about how “Study after study has proved that diverse companies perform better than their more homogeneous counterparts,” turns out to be a lie made up by McKinsey & Company (a multinational strategy and management consulting firm) based on four separate studies showing that DEI initiatives boost corporate earnings.
According to the article referenced above though, “A new study published in Econ Journal Watch, a semiannual peer-reviewed academic journal, shows that researchers were unable to replicate the results of all four McKinsey studies.
“[O]ur results indicate that despite the imprimatur often given to McKinsey’s 2015, 2018, 2020, and 2023 studies, McKinsey’s studies neither conceptually … nor empirically … support the argument that large US public firms can expect on average to deliver improved financial performance if they increase the racial/ethnic diversity of their executives,” professors John R. M. Hand and Jeremiah Green found.
It's not that I mind hiring a diverse workforce, but what I want is a highly qualified workforce, and I don’t care what color or plumbing they have, or who winds their clocks. And it turns out that the real world doesn’t care either.
Hiring based strictly on diversity, believing that it will give you a better bottom line, is magic thinking, and ‘incompetence welfare.’ (Giving incompetents jobs at the cost of not having the best people on the team, and damn the bottom line; because gosh darn it, that makes me feel like I’m a more compassionate person!) DEI must DIE.
Next up we have Julie Kelly, who just broke the story that the GSA seems to have dropped off a pallet of boxes full of documents
…
Ah, but WHERE they dropped them off, and when, that’s the interesting part. The where is Mar-A-Largo, the when is a couple of days before the rather famous FBI warrant search for documents that President Trump may have illegally retained after leaving office.
https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1784228073392513169
It’s not the only breadcrumb, Matt Margolis reports at https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/04/28/new-bombshell-evidence-emerges-was-trump-set-up-in-classified-docs-saga-n4928572 that “Judge Aileen Cannon unsealed a trove of new documents that Jack Smith fought to keep hidden.” “Among the documents unsealed were extensive exhibits, motions, and other filings shedding light on the intricate web of communication between the Biden White House and the National Archives and Records Administration in the lead-up to Trump's indictment.” Look, both of these folks are solidly biased in favor of Trump. But in light of the fact that the prosecutor and ‘the swamp’ are solidly biased against Trump, and the fact that they have official records of this shit happening?
Well, it’s not a guaranteed slam dunk, but it does call things into question, in a serious way. Serious enough for a judge to have to think long and hard about retrials, and judicial censure if they throw the case to the government. We still live in a nation where people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. That proof was a little questionable at the start, and it’s starting to look like a burlesque fan dance. All it takes is one jury member to consider this as exculpating evidence.
If you don’t think that breaking this sort of news is brave and risky, you lack an understanding of what sometimes happens to people who say things that aren’t supposed to be said, when the stakes are this high.
The last piece for the day is going to be yet another recommendation to go see one of Cdr. Sal’s pieces.
The subject is China’s military budget, and their threat to us. Sal is concerned that we are behind the eightball, and falling further behind. He’s usually right. Go give it a read.
QOTD "Depending on what happens in November ... I might not be sitting here. There might not be a White House Correspondents' Dinner or a free press." —MSNBC's Nicole Wallace. Well, she’s sort of right, Trump did cancel a couple of White House Correspondents’ Dinners, because after all, why would you give a soiree to people who hate you? As for a free press, I don’t think we have that now, so…
Yours in Service,
William Lehman