Kerfuffles

Why does the FBI rail about music piracy, but ignore piracy of photographs?

Isn’t it interesting that the FBI and everyone else is so uptight about copyright violation of music? Yet almost no one anywhere has respect for the “© All Rights Reserved” labeled photographs we amateur photographers upload to Flickr and elsewhere. I have found my © photographs taken from my Flickr photo-stream and used commercially without my permission, nor even credit given, at Ancestry.com (The Generations Network, Inc.) and Icanhascheezburger.com (LOLCATS).

Amateur photographers such as myself upload photographs to share with others. We do not charge anything for you to view our photographs. We are not in the photography business; we just enjoy taking photographs and sharing them. We do not enjoy having those photographs stolen and used commercially by Internet businesses.

Even though it is against copyright law to download our copyrighted photographs and then to pass them on to others as your own, with no credit to the original creator, it is rampant on the Internet. Sites such as Ancestry.com and Icanhascheezburger.com profit monetarily from our photographs that we never offered for sale. Those sites allow derivative products to be made from them, and then they claim ownership of our photographs and post warnings that it is illegal to steal “their” photographs, as both Ancestry.com (The Generations Network, Inc.) and Icanhascheezburger.com (LOLCATS) do at their sites.

Ancestry.com (The Generations Network, Inc.) operates behind an expensive subscription wall, so that most Flickr members will never find their photographs that have been illegally uploaded there. While Flickr members allow their photographs to be viewed for free, when they appear on the Ancestry.com site, one must pay a subscription fee to view them.

After performing all of the legal requirements that Icanhascheezburger.com (LOLCATS) required before they would remove my photograph from their commericial site, someone has advised me that they continue to brazenly store my photograph at their Wordpress.com server here: http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/funny-pictures-cat-has-hired-a-substitute.jpg . Someone else has it stored at the Photobucket site.

♫ Who can take tomorrow And spend it all today?

♪ Obama-man can!
Obama-man Sing Along, from Greg Morton (Good thing he’s a black guy, or this lampooning of the President would be RACIST!) What’s worse, aren’t these people Canadians? Why would Canadians make fun of our president? Canadians are supposed to love us when we go Socialist! What gives?

We need some more lyrics describing how Obama-man can make abortion sound like a sunlit walk in the park, close Gitmo yet keep it open, and blame everything that he cannot get right on George Bush.

Who can fix the mortgage?

General Motors, too

A bailout check for me

And a bailout check for you

Obama Man. Yes, Obama Man can

Obama Man can ’cause he mixes it with hope

And makes the world taste good

Who can give ya health care?

Who can save the poor?

Who can pick the teams

That are in the Final Four?

Obama Man. Yes, Obama Man can

Obama Man can ’cause he mixes it with hope

And makes the world feel good

Obama man takes problems that he makes

And turns them into cream and peaches

With sugar-coated, smooth-tongued speeches

I hope he practices what he preaches.

Who can take tomorrow

Spend it all today?

Who can take your incomes

And tax it all away?

Obama Man. Yes, Obama Man can

Obama Man can ’cause he mixes it with hope

And makes the world feel good

Yes, Obama Man takes

Every speech he makes

Gives it a whole bunch of thinkin’

When Michelle Obama’s winkin’

Then he runs it by Abe Lincoln

Who can buy an iPod

Give it to the queen?

Who can take a cut of me

And turn it into green?

Obama Man. Yes, Obama Man can

Obama Man, Obama Man, Obama Man

Hey Chrysler, GM — you want some money?

Ford, you want some? No, you don’t?

OK, good. More for GM

God bless this mess, everybody

Obama Man can

FORGET ‘My Country Tis of Thee.’ America’s new song is “PAY ME MY MONEY DOWN.”

Corporations do it, banks do it, Wall Street’s a doing it, so why not us working stiffs? March on Washington and surround the White House, chanting to Mr. Obama: “PAY ME MY MONEY DOWN.” Afterall, Obama loves chants, doesn’t he? Do you think we can enlist “The Boss” Mr. Springsteen as our leader?

Don’t worry about that nasty threat of “go to jail.” That’ll never happen again, as our great new leader of America’s Treasury and Income Tax Departments, Timothy Geithner, has shown by example. Secretary of the Treasury Geithner says to follow his lead and don’t bother paying your taxes. “Go to jail” ain’t never gonna happen no more. The worst to expect is that you may be asked to fill a high-paying, fat cat goverment position - like Secretary of the Treasury, in charge of the IRS. OH GLORY!

Jeremiah Wright Was a Bullfrog,
He was a good friend of Barack’s.
Barack never understood a single word he preached,
But he helped Jeremiah drink the wine;
They always drank some mighty fine wine.
He sang “When I am the King of the World,
Tell you what I’ll do, … Jeremiah;
I’ll throw away the laws, and the rules, and the Jews,
And give all my love to you … and the media,
And we’ll all Sing Joy to the World.”

“These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an ‘Obamanation‘ unto Him: A proud look, a lying tongue, … An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief …” ~~THAT’S IN THE BIBLE TOO (Proverbs 6:16-18).

Poor Obama! Where’s HIS country music? Can a man be elected president of these United States without the backing of real American music? I don’t think so. Those Germans and Euro-peons may love the guy, God bless em, but these folks here in this video get to vote for the Leader of the Free World. So long, it’s been good to know ye, Obama. “Auf Wiedersehen” until we all learn to speak French or one of those other useless Euro-lingos. For now - we’re all just raisin’ McCain.

If that’s not enough “raisin’ McCain” for you, they are giving away a FREE download of the MP3 file at: JohnRich.com.

I wish I knew. I thought it was the Grinch himself, Redskins owner Mr. Danny Boy Snyder, as I turned on my favorite radio station and heard naught but sports talk. However, I have since read that it was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who plunged the knife into WGMS’s heart. Of course the LDS Church had every right to kill WGMS, as it, as Bonneville International Corporation, was the owner of the station. I do wonder how WGMS’s classical music was not compatible with the “values-oriented programming” goals of Bonneville and the LDS Church. But how did WETA, a public radio station, become involved in the scheme? What was its role in the legal execution and how is it that WETA obtained heirship while virtually all of the on-air employees of WGMS were terminated by the Church, aka Bonneville International? And BTB, what does the LDS Church have against classical music anyway?

Does anyone know who really killed WGMS?

Kerfuffling the Bruce Springsteen - We Shall Overcome CD/DVD.

Pete Seeger did write folk songs, such as the American communist anthem, “If I Had a Hammer”. However that song is not on the new Bruce Springsteen album, that seems to give credit to Pete Seeger for traditional American folksongs that have been handed down through the years by hard-scrabble pioneers who loved their God and their country. As is de rigor for American communists, their political beliefs are easily compromised where the rubber meets the road - when fame and fortune are within their grasps. Pete Seeger managed to take these traditional American folksongs that now appear on Springsteen’s album and pass them off as his own creations. Some of these musical inspirations of both Seeger and Springsteen are well over a century old. With Bruce Springsteen indeed “We Shall Overcome” the Seeger sessions. Good on ya, Bruce. These songs belong not to Pete Seeger, but to the early Americans who lived them. Thanks Bruce Springsteen for the “double entendre” that is the title of your album: We Shall Overcome Pete Seegar.

Old Dan Tucker

Pharaoh’s Army Got Drowned

Classical music and commentary from WGMS-fm is no more, having suffered extinction at the greedy hands of Redskins owner, Dan Snyder. (See “Dan Snyder - The Grinch Who Stole Washington’s Christmas”.) However, WETA, one of Washington’s public radio stations seems to have usurped everything that was WGMS, as they hope to fill the void that has been left by the death of Washington’s beloved classical music station. Seeking to find WGMS still on the Internet, I went to their website and found it totally taken over by WETA. What a shock!

ATTENTION WGMS LISTENERS: On January 22, 2007 WGMS ceased broadcasting classical music and WETA 90.9 FM switched radio formats to become the exclusive classical music station in the nation’s capital.

Give me a break! WETA has been around for forty-five years and no one listened to its classical music. It’s selections were boring, its commentators worse than boring, its newscasts from NPR made one feel as though one were imprisoned in a Communist Gulag and forced to listen to State-run Radio. Now that WGMS is dead and gone, WETA believes they have an opportunity to garner its listeners. HA!

Is WETA with Sharon Rockefeller in control, about to change its stripes? I don’t think so. And besides, I would rather tolerate minutes of commercials every day, as opposed to hearing pitiful and long-winded beggings for pennies that continue for an entire week of broadcasting, four times a year.

I don’t know about others, but I don’t want to get my classical music from government-sponsored radio, no more than I want to get my news from government-sponsored NPR. Afterall, we may live in Washington, but we are still Americans, we are NOT Canadians.

I hear that the Washington area is getting into "FREE" HD Radio, whatever that is. Perhaps that will be our solution. Certainly, it will not be WETA-fm!

We Shall Overcome Pete Seeger, (YEA!) with … Bruce Springsteen. Perhaps it will be an improvement; only time will tell. One of my favorites is John Henry.

I first heard the album from my neighbor and went and bought three of the combination CD/DVDs. I gave two as gifts and kept one for myself. Although both CD and DVD sides played well on my media player, the tracks from the CD would not store in my Bose tuner, as they are supposed to do. I phoned Bose, and they said that was a problem with the CD side and told me to copy it onto my computer and then make a CD and use that to store in my tuner. Well, that is when I discovered that the CD would not play on my computer’s CD player, although the DVD would.

I looked all over the album cover and there it was! Why had I not seen it when I purchased the recording? The “teeny, tiny” small print disclaimer is on the inside of the CD/DVD jacket, which can be read by the purchaser only after opening the well sealed packageing. It is the “liberal” way that those pseudo-capitalist liberal artists have of treating their paying customers, I suppose. The fine and teeny print reads “The audio side of this disc does not conform to CD specifications and therefore will not play in some CD and DVD players.” Thank you, Bruce Springsteen Productions. Should I return it to Best Buy?

The “some CD and DVD players” on which it does not play is my Gateway computer. Gateway must be one of those capitalist pig companies, I suppose. Anyway, I had come across the entire Springsteen “We Shall Overcome” CD at MuchMusic.Net, available for free download. I had wondered about that. Now I guess I understand - at least I can listen to the album on my computer now.

I probably will not return the CD/DVD because I do enjoy watching the performance. It is great. It does puzzle me that the best country music produced in fifteen years is coming from … ugh … Bruce Springsteen. But I’m not gonna worry myself about that now as I am just enjoying these songs of true Americana. Only one thing - I’m not giving Pete Seeger any credit for anything! They are not his songs; they belong to America! Not only is this one of the best country albums in years … not since the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was recording, but they say it is also a great … ugh … folk album and one the best rock albums. Rock? Who knows? Certainly I don’t.

Even if you cannot play this album on your CD player, buy it for the DVD, as I ended up doing, and download the MP3s from the Internet. Give a liberal credit when he does something good and right for America. Buy it from Amazon, above, as it’s cheaper than Best Buy. As of today, the mp3 download is still up at MusicMatch.

John Fahey’s Primitive Guitar Music

If you are into guitars and old music, here is one video you cannot miss: Death of The Clayton Peacock (High Quality)

Add to My Profile | “The Death of the Clayton Peacock”.

You can see a dobro being played, perhaps for the first time, at a website dedicated to John Fahey. Listen to “Sligo River Blues” - beautiful!