Thursday, February 24, 2005

National budgets are a nation's theology walking

I first saw Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, on Bill Moyer's excellent program NOW. She was simply brilliant. Smart, fun and NOT BORING. I really hope to see more of her on TV as the "moral values" President continues to push his true agenda of death and destruction. Below is one of her weekly "From Where I Stand" columns.

In an era in which we call poverty "low-income" and hunger "lack of food security," the number of poor, according to the U.S Census Bureau, is increasing and the number of hungry in the richest country in the world has been rising steadily for four years. To pay for a war we should never have fought -- at least not for the reasons they gave us -- this budget is slashing domestic programs.

The budget of this Christian presidency cuts food stamps. It reduces support for subsidized housing. It suggests pillaging social security. It reduces environmental enforcement programs and scientific research in a scientific age. It even reduces veteran's health benefits.

Clearly, the country is in danger of going the way of all oligarchies; power and wealth are sucked to the top, while those on the bottom bleed. We can call it "Christian" as it collapses.

She also had this to say about the "religious right".
I understand the so-called "conservative" agenda. I even share its concerns. They are real and they are important. But they are also incomplete -- which is why I doubt that, as they are being framed right now, that they are either "right" or "religious." The agenda is simply too narrow, too concentrated on issues around human sexuality alone, and too self-centered to be the agenda that drove Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem curing lepers, feeding the hungry and raising the dead to life.

9 Comments:

Jeffraham Prestonian said...

You can expect another reader in the next months... I've linked to yer blog, yarrrr...
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12:48 PM  
ellroon said...

Wonderful quote about 'the way of all oligarchies'. Sent it on, thanks for a good catch.

1:05 PM  
spocko said...

Jeffraham Prestonian; Welcome!

Hey, I read your bio on your blog. I'm going to get a Pioneer DVD burner, Any experience with the Pioneer DVD burners?

Check out my DV "ad" I made about Condi "I Lie through my gap" Rice before the election. After I made that video she re-canted but then recently it was released that Richard Clarke DID give her a plan (of course she downgraded it to a 13 page document of 'ideas', not a real plan).
http://s88172659.onlinehome.us

Choose your poison to play, but I think the quality on the Real media is better.

2:00 PM  
Jeffraham Prestonian said...

Spocko: Hey, I read your bio on your blog. I'm going to get a Pioneer DVD burner, Any experience with the Pioneer DVD burners?Nope, sorry. The TDK I have now is the first DVD+R burner I've ever owned. Lots of folks recommend the Plextor, though. I hear a lot of good things about Lite-On, as well, believe it or not.

I'll check the vid here in a sec... ixnay on Real, though. I wouldn't install that on Chimpy's PC. :)
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10:05 PM  
Jeffraham Prestonian said...

I hate this commenting app, btw -- output NEVER looks like the preview!
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10:06 PM  
Jeffraham Prestonian said...

Nice. What did you use to make it (aside from Photoshop, I would assume)?
If you haven't seen MS's PhotoStory 3 (free d/l for XP owners), it's a very basic, straightforward app for doing stuff like that, and outputting to (yeah, I know) .wmv format. I may use it for 80% of FVC™ this week.
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10:13 PM  
spocko said...

Thanks for the comment. It's interesting, so many people have problems with Real on a lot of levels, but I would think that the video and streaming community would have embraced it more as the alternative to Microsoft. I've found the quality of their output better than WMV. If nothing else they set up a little competition to Microsoft, who can embed crap for free and stich up the market just about when ever they want. It's hard to compete with free. And when a monolopy wants to run you out of business and there are no checks or balances for them doing that, by by. It's amazing that Real has stayed in business this long. Maybe, like Apple, Microsoft keeps them around to trot out for the Justice Dept, when ever they get antsy about their power.

That being said, nobody likes buggy software and annoying marketing programs.

That's a funny image: Chimpy's PC, do you suppose he gets a peanut reward when he does something right on the computer?

Actually I read where they told Bush he could not send and recieve email because it would come back to bite him some how. Cheney and Rummy learned a few things from their stint in the Nixon White House. 1) Don't get caught
2)If you get caught don't let them have any hard evidence. You can argue about the defination of a relationship between Bin Laden and Saddam all day long but as long as you never put something in writing that says, "We know that there is no relationship beyond Bin Laden asking for money, but we need to keep saying it to justify this war, especially since they figured out the WMD excuse didn't pan out."

Makes you wonder what was on those energy task force memos that Cheney is so eager to protect.

10:19 PM  
spocko said...

I used Premiere. I have a Pinnacle DV card that I use to get analog video into the computer. I suppose this whole thing could have been done in flash, but I don't know anything about any flash tools. Plus it keeps me familiar with the DV tools.
My favorite part of this was timing the music to the images and text. I loved the way the text pops on a blast of a trumpet.
I'd actually like to make more ads that look like the ads that ran during the campaign. With the ripped headlines, the moving photos and the deep voice over.
"George W. Bush has spend over 160 BILLION dollars on the War on Terrorism yet the man who planned it is still at large. How much more money and time do you need George?" You know shit like that. But what I was really interested in was taking an old move and inserting some new stuff in the movie and doing new voices for some of the actors and animated cartoons.
I want to show people who think that it's no big deal not to have social secuity what life was like BEFORE that had it and how easily it can be again, especially when it would take 2 trillion in additional debt to transform it into a cash cow for wall street.

On and Blogger commenting sucks. I would have gone with Haloscan, but they limit characters to 1000 unless you pay them. This is free (for now!)

10:28 PM  
Jeffraham Prestonian said...

Heh -- don't mind me (complaining about the comments app). I've been up too late, an' I'm grouchy. Sorry. :)

Premiere seems like overkill for stills/graphics/text, but it sure will work just fine. I agree with you that video is a saner path to follow than trying to wrap one's head around Flash (I know people who can do amazing things with it, but it has a steep learning curve, and I've never seen high-quality come out of it in a short period of time -- unlike DV).

Premiere Pro 1.5, coupled with After Effects ought to enable you to do most of the things you described. My needs are more modest from the standpoint of "3D gfx and efx," so I've not studied the best packages for that.

Real -- I just had a nightmare scenario cleaning up after an install of it once. I made a vow, and kept it. ;)

I actually like QuickTime best, but it seems less pervasive on home PCs than WinMedia, obviously. I'm not happy with that state of affairs, but there's little to be done for it. What I really hate about WMV is how nicely the video can come out at high compression, and still be a relatively small file -- but the audio is hosed to hell and back! Ah, it's all a tradeoff...

I'm guessing they don't let Chimpy near a PC, unattended.
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1:03 AM  

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