I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.
Bill Cosby
Glen Campbell Is Coming Out With a New Album
I have always been a huge Glen Campbell fan; most fans know that some time back he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and is no longer able to tour. His new album "See You There" is due for release by mid-August. The lead single "Hey Little One" is a reworked version of the title song from his 1968 album; the title song originally hit #13 on the country charts, and I've embedded a 2009 remix (the above link includes an mp3 player with the new version). The new album will cover several of his classic Jimmy Webb covers; "Galveston" is one of the greatest subtle anti-war songs ever written (familiar readers know I also love Bobby Goldsboro's "Broomstick Cowboy"; I recently came across Claudine Longet's 1970 version here.)
My favorite Campbell song is another Jimmy Webb classic that was included on a mid-1970's hit compilation: "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress". (Webb borrowed the title from a science fiction novel.) I think Scott Johnson's review is spot on:
No performance of this moving song surpasses Campbell's emotional reading of it ... Although female performers have gravitated to it, the song is preeminently a man's lament over a fickle lover. Webb's old flame Susan Ronstadt inspired much of his most intriguing work ... and my guess is that she was the inspiration for Webb's lyrical exploration of the metaphor in the song's title.The See You There Tracklist:
01. Hey Little One
02. Wichita Lineman
03. Gentle On My Mind
04. I Wish You Were Here
05. Waiting on the Comin’ of My Lord
06. What I Wouldn’t Give
07. Galveston
08. By the Time I Get to Phoenix
09. There’s No Me…Without You
10. True Grit
11. Rhinestone Cowboy
12. Waiting on the Comin’ of My Lord feat. Jose Hernandez & Mariachi Del Sol De Mexico
Texas Finally Passes Abortion Reform: Thumbs UP!
Keep in mind we are not talking about abortion during the first 2 days after rape; we are talking about the so-called right to kill, by dismemberment if necessary, an innocent baby with functioning organs and nervous system, just over halfway during a normal pregnancy at 20 weeks. It's difficult to explain why a demagogue like Wendy Davis filibustered the close of the first special session to maintain the previous status quo of 26 weeks and certain Gosnell-like loosely regulated late abortion mills. (Take into an account, for example, a 2011 German baby whom survived at just under 22 weeks to premature delivery.) Gov. Perry will sign the bill into law early next week.
The Zimmerman Verdict
As soon as I saw a news alert float by this afternoon that the jury was asking for clarification on manslaughter, two things: (1) they had decided to acquit him of the second-degree murder charge (why else would they be looking at the lesser charge?); (2) the jury was also close to acquittal on the lesser charge, maybe one or 2 jurors away whom needed clarification. I went to a legal webpage and quickly convinced myself it didn't fit the facts of the case; basically the idea is the intent to kill exists in the context of mitigating circumstances. I think Zimmerman was getting beaten up and used his weapon as last resort--only once; his intent was to stop the assault; I'm sure that Zimmerman realized that he had wounded Martin, enough to escape Martin's grasp. But his reaction of disbelief at hearing Martin died, his failure to shoot a second time "to make sure" Martin was dead. There was nothing there to believe Zimmerman, e.g., lost his temper in an argument with Martin and shot him from a safe distance away. Even in the aftermath of the verdict, there was this portrayal of a gun-toting vigilante out to shoot a 17-year-old armed with Skittles and ice tea; they seemed to be totally oblivious to how a shorter, out-of-shape guy ended up with a broken nose and a bloody scalp. You would think a vigilante would have shot the guy before getting the worst of the altercation.
The "not guilty" verdicts did not surprise me. The prosecution's case was so weak, I was mildly surprised that they went into a second day of deliberation. I've never served on a comparable jury. I have been called a couple of times for jury duty, but I've never gotten beyond the general pool, which I think got excused after a few hours. I remember being unemployed at the time, compensation being trivial and largely eaten up, e.g., by parking expenses, there was this angry businessman venting about this being a waste of his time and money and how the unemployed should serve instead. Good luck on getting a jury of your peers, buster. Being on jury service wasn't enough to live on. It made me unavailable for job interviews. I don't know why it took them 2 days; perhaps they knew it was a high-profile case, and they wanted to show due diligence. But this was a very, very weird case where the state didn't go up before a grand jury and seemed to spend a lot of time trying to nickel and dime Zimmerman's account. Even when their own medical adviser admitted that Martin broke Zimmerman's nose, why wasn't Zimmerman's blood found on Martin's hand? The state was, not very subtly, trying to shift its burden of proof to the defense. It was, in fact, the state's own eyewitness whom saw Martin on top of Zimmerman during the struggle.
There's another point about this injustice of a trial which is the fact that they prosecuted the victim of criminal assault and battery. I regret the loss of Martin's life, but he chose to attack an armed man. I've read accounts that Zimmerman was not the first person involved in a physical fight with Martin. Why didn't Martin simply run away from versus confront the "crazy-ass cracker"? I'm seeing even some conservatives or liberarians all but advocate for some charge they could hang on Zimmerman. But as I heard Geraldo Rivera say tonight, sometimes tragedies occur--for instance, I remember reading about a father of a 3-year-old girl whom unknown to him had followed out of the house one morning and was behind the car when he backed over her, killing her. That man will live every day of his life knowing he accidentally killed his beloved daughter. Zimmerman will live every day of his life knowing a young man died because of what he did. Maybe he doesn't have to live in a cage for what he did, but he's serving a different type of sentence, one of his own conscience.
There is one part of this story I want to see resolved. Ben Kruidbos, an IT director working for the Florida State Attorney's Office, was terminated over whistleblowing that the prosecutors only released a fraction of the data on Martin's cellphone to the defense:
Kruidbos testified before Zimmerman's trial began that Martin's cell phone contained images of Martin blowing smoke, images of marijuana and deleted text messages regarding a transaction for a firearm and that those images had not been given to Zimmerman's defense team. For example, Kruidbos said that 2,958 photos were in the report given to the defense but that his report contained 4,275 photos. [Zimmerman attorney] O'Mara said he learned about the missing information months after he was to have received it. "The only way that we really found out about it ... and the only way that we really found out about the intensity of the failure to give us information was when a person from their own office, a whistle-blower, came forward and said, 'I gave them that information in the middle to end of January' and we didn't get it until June 4th."Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Lisa Benson and Townhall |
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups Redux
The Beatles, "We Can Work It Out"
