My Mom and Dad pretty much voted straight ticket in all elections. In part, most offices in this state, from Governor to County Commissioner to Councilman are held by one party, and the other rarely puts up viable candidates. In part, because they happened to like the candidates and party they voted for better than the other.
They occasionally crossed party lines if the candidate put up by their party wasn’t, in their judgment, the better person for the job. I mean, they wouldn’t deny friendship to someone because he voted for the other guy or call him an idiot, moron, traitor, or whatever to his face because they had a different point of view on how best to run the country. They didn’t shout down the other guy when he expressed an opinion they didn’t agree with. They weren’t ideologues, just thoughtful, thinking citizens.
“The Salvation of the State is Watchfulness in the Citizen” ~ Hey, it’s carved in stone!
Apropos civil discourse, here’s an example of how Mom handled such things:
Once, during the evening news, someone made a disparaging remark about the President at the time. Mom started to cry, her angry cry. I was confused because I didn’t understand what was going on.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked.
“I didn’t vote for the President, but he is the President of our country. You should never be disrespectful of the President. If you can’t respect the man, respect the office,” she said.
That was then.
The party Mom and Dad supported has been taken over by people who show incredible disrespect for our current President. As much as I miss them, I’m glad Mom and Dad aren’t alive to see and hear the appalling slanders made against the President or to see how the politicians in the party they once supported behave more like spoiled brats than statesmen and people who won’t put country above party.
This is now. They would not approve.
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I intended to put a video in this post of Thumper Rabbit saying “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” It struck me, though, that there are several individual uploads of that Disney-copyrighted material on YouTube. I ran afoul of the copyright nazis when I made three short videos of my cat Andy when listening to a favorite Louis Armstrong CD. See below. Yet I found at least 10 different uploads of the Thumper quote alone, one posted as far back as 02/17/07! I’m having a Thumper moment, but I’m not thinking about saying nothing! While I think happy thoughts, go to my happy place, you read the table below. Please and thank you!
Ten people who uploaded Disney-copyrighted videos of Thumper saying “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
It just occurred, too, I bet Thumper’s words of wisdom are probably copyrighted by Disney. Oh #&@*.
There is some evidence of Disney videos pulled off YouTube for copyright issues. See the “Wrath of God” bolt of lightning?
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HERE’S WHAT CAUSED ME TO SEEK MY HAPPY SPOT:
http://phainopepla95.com/2013/09/06/21st-century-i-p/
http://phainopepla95.com/2013/09/05/copyright-or-copywrong/
From Wikipedia
The copyrights for Bambi, A Life in the Woods were inherited by Anna Wyler, Salten’s daughter, who renewed them in 1954. After her death, Wyler’s husband sold the rights to Twin Books, a publishing company which subsequently filed a lawsuit against Disney, claiming Disney owed it money for the continued licensing for the use of the book. Disney countered by claiming that Salten had published the story in 1923 without a copyright notice, thus it immediately entered into the public domain. Disney also argued that if the claimed 1923 publication date was accurate, then the copyright renewal filed in 1954 had been registered after the deadline and was thus invalid. The courts initially upheld Disney’s view; however, in 1996, the Ninth Circuit Court reversed the decision on appeal.[33]
If I read the above correctly Bambi is in the public domain. (As it should be)
Interesting!
As I stated once before, eventually things are supposed to roll over into the public domain. Whether they be things or ideas or songs or movies or art, eventually they’re supposed to roll over into the public domain.
Copyright law is one I’ve stumbled on, and felt abused (raped) for the encounter. Music recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1927-1929, you’d think, should be in the public domain. However, each time it’s re-engineered to reduce pops and other extraneous surface noise, that process’ result is given a new copyright. The original performance isn’t copyrighted, the improved, re-engineered sound is! In consequence, the copyright potentially continues till the sun burns out, if a new generation of sound enhancement techniques is applied to an enhanced version at the end of its copyright.
I love Baroque music. All of those works are well past copyright protection unless…well, above, with copyright protection for each new performance of the works by new or the same performers. Or each time an old recording is “cleaned up” and re-issued.
The problem a casual user of recorded music (among other copyrighted materials) runs into is understanding just what is or isn’t copyright-protected. Just making a copy of a recording you bought for personal use makes you a criminal of the worst sort, according to record and movie copyright holders!
I tried to read and understand the Creative Commons business, and gave up.
Come and get me, Copyright Nazis!
I imagine Disney has rights to Bugs’ philosophy, “Don’t take life too seriously – you never get out alive.”
Ha! Now we have to worry about Warner Brothers. Aren’t they somehow connected with Sony now? Maybe that’s just music.
Anyway cats are a much nicer subject that lawyers and politicians.
Check this out for cuteness: http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=00209CNU&utm_source=GodTube%20Must-See%20Video&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=09/20/2013
I agree! That’s a cute video, and good “press” for the felines among us.
Unfortunately, though, as a retiree, the recklessness of one party threatened my monthly Social Security check. I paid into that fund from the age 12 until I started getting some back at age 62, so don’t care for politicians getting cute and clever with it. Fortunately, I also made investments that put me in better shape than most retirees. I’m not Koch Brothers rich, but I’m not poor, either, compared with most retirees.
@grannysplace, SO TRUE. Woof!
Some of our $172,000 a year representatives want us all to live a dog’s life, no slam intended. Think back to before you were rescued. That’s what I mean.
Oh, I agree 100%. But no shelter life for them! I read today that food stamps were cut. I’ll bet if our reps needed assistance, that would never be cut. The VA always gets cut, too, and that boils my blood because that’s like shooting fish in a barrel…what’s a vet going to do who is blind or gave their hearing? Many don’t have insurance. I don’t really have good things to say about politicians. (growls)
Sad to admit that Senators and Congressmen from my state are among those who believe the poor somehow all sit around on couches, watching daytime television on 60 inch screens, refusing to work at minimum wage jobs that would feed them for part of the month (too lazy to get a second minimum wage job for the rest of the month…!), while popping out ten babies a year with different men each time.
I was raised in the era of if you can not say something nice, do not say anything at all. Then came the time we all needed to have our voices heard, but all of those voices arguing and name calling lost the reason why we all needed to be heard.
We have all forgotten why we come together to create change and instead we all feel the need to put each other down instead of working together to create a change for the better for all of us.
Sad, very sad.
Yes, it’s always the other guy’s fault, isn’t it? Though the party I speak of above gets no hosannas from me, the problem I see with both parties is leadership lacking at the top and an unwillingness to risk talking together for the benefit of all.
As a retiree who gets portion of his income from Social Security, I am fortunate to be able to deal with the government defaulting. I won’t be happy getting into those investments because of the recklessness of a factor within one party, and there will be hell to pay at the voting booth if any of my Congressional representatives vote to defund the AHCA. (I ALWAYS vote!) I also write letters, send e-mails, and donate tidy sums to candidates who go to Washington to work, not play ego and political games.
That said, I really, really, really have to remember the words of Thumper before I shoot off my mouth these days.
Yes, but that was then. It is possible your mom might have reacted differently if she had seen George Bush and Barack Obama and/or known the truth about Bohemian Grove and other unpleasant things that we know now. I know Christians are supposed to pray for their leaders, but at the same time we are not supposed to be ignorant of the devices of ‘the dark side.’
You may find this of interest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk
Almost 30 years later, and there still is something to it. I see the extreme right as the far bigger problem. Though I am hesitant to make the old Hitler comparison, review how he won legitimate representation in the German Reichstag, but slowly subverted the law to cement his place as leader.
Of course, he promised a better time for the German people, for a time – till September 1939 – the improved economic conditions (thanks to war build up) for most Germans, to regimentalization of the nation from kids to the old (fostering nationalism, chauvinism), the promise of a Volkswagen (which many people were paying for on a monthly basis till they paid for the car and after they – the people hoped – became available), the reality of the engineering marvel of the Autobahnen system, and the fervent nationalism all contributed to the ultimate fall of the nation.
All the while, their rights were stricken, camps were established for those who didn’t fit the Nazi ideal, books were burned, churches were subverted, courts were subverted, and most people just enjoyed the improved economic circumstances.
Similarities are there, but I can’t guess how things will play out. There will be a measure of the future to come by the end of September.
I’m no lawyer, but what the extreme right in the House of Representatives is involved in right now seems close to sedition, by definition. [Per Encyclopaedia Britannica: Sedition is the illegal act of inciting people to resist or rebel against the government in power.]
When the people inciting resistance or rebellion against the government are elected representatives of that government, wouldn’t causing a default in the government, with all of the ramifications from no Social Security checks, no military pay, no government employee pay, etc. just to start, shutdown of the FBI, the military, etc., border on treason? [Same source as above: Treason against the United States “shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”] “them” = the USA, the convention when the Constitution was written being that the United States was referred to in the plural, rather than singular, which is how people began to speak of the USA after the Civil War. The United States are in turmoil over sequestration = 1776 format; the United States is in turmoil, etc. = 2013 format.