I'm Joining the Pod People

Every Saturday afternoon, the president delivers a short address followed by a response from a member of the opposition party. Both can be heard on C-Span Radio beginning at around 2:50 p.m. Eastern time, and they're also carried by some radio stations around the country.

The president's speeches are archived on the White House site and often make news.

The Democrats occasionally grab headlines with their speech, such as when an Iraq War veteran in May criticized the government for the lack of body armor, but for the most part they're a missed opportunity. There's no archive on the Web, as far as I can tell, and no publicity aside from a press release on PR Newswire.

I'm going to offer the Democratic response as a regular podcast on Workbench, beginning with today's speech by U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina.

I've attached the audio to this weblog entry as an enclosure, which you can download automatically using a news aggregator that supports podcasts.

A transcript of his remarks:

Good morning. This is Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus.

Allow me to pause for a moment to speak on behalf of all Democrats in expressing our deep condolences for the terrible loss of life in South Asia due to the massive earthquakes and tsunami this week. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and all Americans stand ready to work quickly to provide the appropriate assistance to help with this enormous tragedy.

These events remind us as we embark on this New Year of what is most important to each of us. New Year's follows our nation's most reflective and redemptive season -- Christmas for many of us, Kwanzaa for some, and others, Hanukkah. Regardless of what we call it, it's a period of rededication to the principles and various faiths that make us who and what we are.

As a new Congress convenes this month and President Bush is inaugurated for a second term, we must remain steadfast in our support of those who have been placed in harm's way defending this nation's honor. And we must be resolved in our stewardship of the values that make us Americans. We can do this by making, and keeping, a few New Year's resolutions.

First, President Bush and this new Congress must resolve to adequately equip our fighting men and women. Our soldiers should never want for proper equipment and accurate intelligence. Their patriotism and sacrifice should never be doubted or compromised. And they and their families should always be treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. Our first responders, who are the frontline defenders of our homeland, should also receive proper support and due deference. That was not always the case last year, and we must do better by those who provide for our safety and security this year.

Second, this new Congress and President Bush should resolve to give renewed hope and confidence to our future generations. It violates the basic tenets of our nation's values to saddle our children with unparalleled debt and unprecedented deficits, while underfunding 'No Child Left Behind' -- shortchanging our children's education and leaving millions of them behind. And we need to make a college education more affordable, not cut student loans and Pell Grants.

It is unacceptable that nearly 13 million American children live in poverty and 8.4 million have no health insurance. We must do more to lift the poor into the middle class and to extend health insurance to parents and children.

Finally, the President and Congress should resolve to keep faith with those whose blood, sweat, and tears have provided us with a country worth fighting for. Our seniors and vulnerable neighbors deserve better than the politics of fear that is being heaped upon them.

A surprising number of people view Social Security as only a retirement benefit. In fact, Social Security pays more benefits to children than any other program. Social Security also pays survivors' benefits and helps the disabled. It is a safety net for many of our nation's most vulnerable citizens. To jeopardize the solvency of this resoundingly successful program by gambling Social Security benefits on the stock market is a risk that President Bush and this Congress should resolve to avoid.

Democrats are resolved to protect Social Security and we will continue to do so. Our New Partnership for America's Future reaffirms our commitment to a strong and well-funded national security force, prosperity at home, fairness to all and opportunity for everyone. We are resolute in our pursuit of safe and secure communities, and accountability in government.

We call upon President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress to join us in this new covenant with the American people.

This has been Congressman Jim Clyburn, Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. I wish you and yours a safe, secure, and prosperous New Year, and I thank you for listening.

As I said in the podcast, I have no idea how to properly encode audio, which I'm attempting in Cool Edit 2000. Technical advice from sound geeks would be appreciated.

Politics · Podcasts · 2005/01/02 · 10 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

I put the enclosure in the main Workbench feed. Does it also need to be in a separate feed with enclosure entries only?

#1 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2005/01/02

Audicity. Open source and can export straight to MP3 if needed.

#2 · Arthur · 2005/01/02

Your assistance with audio is not clear to me. Are you seeking MP3 encoding advice (parameters?) or general software advice.

Audacity is very popular and can convert to mp3's if you download the freeware Lame encoder... some say Lame is too slow and
use another RAZOR(?) encoder.

The PODcast enclosure feed issue is troubling for me as a user. iPodder lemon
only downloads the most recent enclosure in a given feed and marks he others as being already read. So, on Scripting News, I'll often get the a Monday podcast and never get Sunday's. This should get fixed my favortite aggragator soon. Others may have different policies.

I also get a lot of files I don't want
because they are not audio or the right encoding... movies (mpg, avi, mov), wma's. Anything in an enclosure is delivered by my aggragator but only ONE
I think.

#3 · mcd · 2005/01/02

I can produce MP3 files with Cool Edit, but I can't tell if the sound levels are acceptable. There's also some odd stuff going on that prevents WinAmp and other players from knowing the file's length (in minutes and seconds). Stuff like that.

#4 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2005/01/02

Excellent. Good job Rogers -- finally a Podcast that even I might consider subscribing to.

#5 · Brian Carnell · 2005/01/02

The problem most software would have determining the length is likely that you are using VBR - variable bit rate - encoding. Windows Media player and others appear to base their guess re: the length of a file on a quick peek at the first few, uh, "frames" of the clip.

#6 · Astro · 2005/01/02

For the acceptable volume issue, I'd recommend Audacity. It shows the sound levels of the audio tracks and has effects
to normalize (review the peaks of the material and make the volume fit within
selected boundries... like 0 db for the peaks) and amplify, compress (softs are made louder and louds can be pulled back... compressing the dynamic range of the material).

There's a tutorial created by Michael Gouhegan (sp) at MWGbolg.com on this tool
and his other podcasting production tips.

Audacity also would indicate the length of the audio before conversion to mp3.

I hope this is useful for your podcasting skills.

#7 · McD · 2005/01/03

i have no idea what a podcast is and i'm not too inclined to find out. if i were you, i'd skip re-encoding & the other stuff.

use total recorder pro from www.highcriteria.com you can schedule it to connect to whatever live stream you want and start recording at whatever quality & in whatever format you determine. you schedule the start & stop time as well so it's totally automated. then i'd just upload the mp3s to a folder & be done w/ it.

i use it to record franken's show & the majority report on air america's stream. whenever i want, there's a folder full of small, good sounding mp3s of all the shows.

any questions, contact me through my website. i'm just passing through here and won't see a response :)

#8 · kevin · 2005/01/03

My Ghad man, do you realize what you're getting into!?!

You've got three and a half wheels in a giant pothole! Clyburn is steering the "secret mass distribution" talking points your way. I heard the exact response from a female Dem. strategist Saturday morning. In the twenty seconds of time she had she quipped; tsunami(stingy) and armor(the war is a right wing ripoff.) Note the parallel to (D)Rep. Clyburn! Shocking!

You're like a car-bomb waiting to happen! This must be your 148th attempt at "Internet Martyrdom."

My "Sound" Technical advice to you is to shut down all of your profane sites and get to church.

I'm sending you a "red" prayer clothe and a "green" money prayer clothe.

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