Happy July 4, 2013!
Quote of the Day
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
they are not certain,
and as far as they are certain,
they do not refer to reality.
Albert Einstein
Proud To Be an American
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| Courtesy of Gallup |
‘Cause the flag still stands for freedom,The second highlighted line in particular has always stuck out to me as a sore thumb, unduly defensive. At some point I'll probably tweak the lyrics to my tastes, for example, something like 'from the land of opportunity'.
and they can't take that away
And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
In that last line, I believe our liberty is an unalienable right, God-given, not man-created. So I would have probably rephrased the line "who secured that right for me".
The first line comes across to me as sounding a little paranoid (although I grant statists, like progressive Democrats, are legitimate internal threats to individual liberty). I would probably substitute a confidently toned verse like "from which we'll never stray".
I can just hear my former college students advise my readers, "See what we had to put up with for 8 years?" Guilty. I'm also concerned Lee Greenwood will send Cordell Walker, Texas Ranger, after me....
Barry! Hillary! Heck of a job on Egypt!
I generally don't discuss Islamic radicals in this blog, but as a Catholic I found this news item disconcerting:
Islamist supporters of Mohamed Morsi have burned down a Coptic Catholic parish in retaliation for the former Egyptian president’s ouster.
After looting the parish priest’s home in Delgia, a village in Minya Governorate in north-central Egypt, the Morsi supporters set fire to some of the parish’s buildings.
Bishop Kamal Fahim Awad (Boutros) Hanna of Minya told the Fides news agency, “The fundamentalists have closed the roads at the entrance to the village. They shout slogans against Christians, they say they want to destroy everything, and now they are trying again to storm the church. The local police are helpless. I called Cairo to ask for the intervention of the army.”I'm not going to go into detail here, but the economy is even worse than under Mubarak: half the economic growth, high unemployment, drawn-down foreign reserves, bloated deficit, shortages of various products--and no substantive economic reforms. Promised political reforms, particularly of individual liberties, have gone unfulfilled, the electoral process, favoring the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated ruling party, declared unconstitutional, has not been reformed. The government has refused to act on evidence of certain alleged abuses by certain Egyptian military personnel around the time of the uprising. For a more comprehensive discussion, see Rohac's post here.
Obama doesn't like the idea of a coup against an elected head of state, but tyranny, even under a democratic fig leaf, is morally unacceptable (see below image). The military did keep its promise of holding elections after Mubarak's overthrow. My perspective? I support Sen. Rand Paul's effort to scale back Egyptian aid and oppose the Obama Administration's deepening involvement in Africa and the Middle East, particularly Syria,
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| Courtesy of Against Crony Capitalism |
I am not following the trial real-time, I was not aware of a Hannity interview with Zimmerman, and apparently there was a police interrogation video of Zimmerman on the Internet. I found myself reading information about Zimmerman following Martin on foot for a while and also Trayvon Martin apparently approached Zimmerman's car at one point, with Zimmerman rolling up the window not talking to him. My recollection of earlier reports was that he had gotten out of his vehicle to read a street sign. So apparently there are a lot of details in the public arena I need to be more familiar with.
I was reviewing headlines and summaries on the Fox News live coverage webpage, and it looks like the prosecution is trying to poke minor holes in the Zimmerman account. For instance, a prosecution medical witness was largely dismissive of the significance of Zimmerman's head wounds, and there apparently was no Zimmerman DNA under Martin's fingernails (I'm not sure the significance of this: did Zimmerman claim that Martin scratched his face? I don't recall reading about scratch wounds.) They are also trying to dispute Zimmerman followed Martin on foot walking, claiming that Zimmerman was panting (my inference is they are suggesting Zimmerman was running, a more aggressive pursuit). There are several possible explanations, e.g., Zimmerman was out-of-shape, or Martin was walking at a brisk pace. All of this strikes me as much ado about nothing, even in my limited following of the trial. Why do I say this? Because the police knew all this before declining to file charges. If anything, some of the witnesses help Zimmerman, e.g., getting the worst of the struggle. Then there was his reported shock, thinking he had wounded, not killed Martin. In fact, if Zimmerman had intended to kill Martin, why weren't there more gun wounds to ensure the result? The police were unable to catch Zimmerman contradict his explanation of what happened.
I have not seen anything the prosecution has done to date that amounts to more than nitpicking over minor details.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Robert Ariail and Townhall |
The Beatles, "And I Love Her". One of the greatest love ballads ever written, yet oddly it just missed the Top 10. Timeless, glorious melody; in my mind, I always hear this as a serenade via Spanish guitar, although the lyrics are written in the third person.... Even if McCartney had only written this song and 'Yesterday', he would have proven himself one of the greatest songwriters ever.
