The pioneering television journalist Edward R. Murrow famously once said about television:

"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful."

House M.D. is one of the few shows on commercial television today that can actually live up to Murrow's vision of television as more than just distraction or entertainment.

In the modern television desert filled with "reality" TV mirages that waste our time and lower our IQ's, House M.D. actually is about something real.

It intrigues its audience to learn more about medicine in the same way that "The West Wing" hooked millions of people on learning more about politics and government ten years ago.

The "medical" genre like the detective story has been around since the earliest days of television beginning with Marcus Welby and has included many fine and worthy shows including Emergency, E.R., and others - but House has taken it to new places.

It does its best not to fake the science, cheat on the medicine or gloss over the details as happens on almost every episode of Bones, CSI, Burn Notice , 24, or NCIS.

More true to reality than these shows however: On House there aren't always easy answers or happy endings.

Yes, House has people Googling terms like "sarcoidosis", "lupus" and "differential diagnosis".

More importantly, in these days of rote teaching to the standardized test, it has people learning how to analyze complex problems, eliminate bad answers and think critically.

More than this: It is a show that teaches humanity - human compassion, friendship, and personal sacrifice for a greater good - values which are antithetical to those being taught to us by the so called "reality" genre which has more in common with the "panem et circenses" of gladiatorial Rome than with what Murrow wanted for television.

The sixth season of House has had two breakthrough shows that moved the point of view away from Dr. Gregory House to other characters.

It let us see the world of House from Dr. Lisa Cuddy's point of view as a beleaguered hospital administrator trying to hold the ends together on a difficult day ("5 to 9") and shows that running a hospital isn't simply about doctors and patients but also about lawyers, employees, paying the bills, keeping your sanity, and exerting leadership.

The other point of view offered to the viewers this season was that of oncologist Dr. James Wilson as he strives desperately to save a close friend dying of cancer ("Wilson") - a show that ended up teaching this viewer that your liver can actually regenerate itself in a very short time; apparently the only body organ that can do so in the human body - and that sometimes you have to make difficult sacrifices and take significant risks in life.

House is one of the few dramas currently on television worthy of watching - The only worthy competitor would be TNT's "The Closer".

We could use more Houses and less 24's on Fox TV.


Doug De Clue,
Orlando, FL

they need to start serving their country or get the hell out..

What we need to do is ACT, not talk about new jobs.

We need to be repairing and upgrading infrastructure.

We need to be engaging in scientific research and discovery - NASA, CDC, EPA, NOAA, etc.

We need to be educating people at gov't expense.

We need to be sending more Americans abroad to help others through the Peace Corps.

We need to be putting an end to usuarious credit card companies and insurance companies.

We need to be breaking up big companies so that the resulting companies have to compete with each other and they won't be "too big to fail".

We need to be raising the minimum wage so that people have money to spend into the economy. Wages should further be linked so that no person can be paid less than a fixed multiple of the highest paid person in a business including stock options, bonuses etc - i.e. if the CEO makes $50 million then his least paid employee ought to be making $50,000.00

We need to be enforcing minimum wage, labor, environmental, and safety standards on companies that want to import product into the U.S. and if they want to violate them we need to tax them to parity.

We need to be strengthening labor unions in this country and around the world.

We need to be re-regulating the stock and commodities markets which are screwing Americans out of a proper pension and gouging them at the gas pump. Anyone who buys a stock or commodity should be forced to hold it for a solid year before selling - if this means making the short term capital gains rate 99%, I'm all for it if it will put an end to the casino mentality on Wall Street.

We need to put an end to derivatives and complicated "investments" which have no relationship to actual production of goods or services but which serve only to make a few connected people rich in our "Casino Nation".

There Mr. President - I've just conducted your "jobs summit" for you - you don't need to wait until December to just talk and do nothing - GO FIX IT TODAY!

A year ago today I was watching the election results on the BBC in Cambridge England on a little TV in a garrett hotel room with very poor internet service in a little B&B where my company had put me.

It was very strange and I felt very disconnected from this victory since I had worked so hard on the Alan Grayson campaign and other campaigns for most of the year.

I had to give up my political work in mid September because I needed a job and had found one in Fort Lauderdale that then took me overseas to the U.K. for two weeks right during the election. I had been in the country just about a week when the election took place.

A few days before my U.K. trip I managed to score a ticket to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden speak at the Sunrise center (used to be National Car Rental Center) in Fort Lauderdale with tens of thousands of my fellow Democrats. I did run into one person I knew but I still felt strangely isolated from most of my friends who I knew were waiting to see Barack Obama and Joe Biden later that night at their next scheduled stop in Orlando 200 miles north of me.

On my trip overseas, I actually found myself face to face in the Orlando International Airport with George W. Bush - not really - but an incredible facsimile named John Morgan from Orlando who had a pretty good career impersonmanating "W" and had a picture taken with him and his Sarah Palin knock off (Tina Fey was better).

I had managed to find and meetup with a group of ex-pat Democrats in Cambridge just a day or so after arriving and met up with them in a pub in Cambridge for a social hour/dinner - not so much to do anything political - more just to enjoy the company of my compatriots.

While my British friends were celebrating Guy Fawkes Day with fireworks and bon fires in the somewhat cold (for a guy from Florida) weather, I was quietly smiling and celebrating my own little victory - the election of Barack Obama to the White House and the election of Alan Grayson to the 8th District in Florida.

Much has happened in the year since the election:

I watched the inauguration from a cold and windy Wall Street cafe in downtown Orlando in front of Orlando's only jumbotron with a handful of my Democratic friends with a great deal of pride.

I looked for a job for months and months - then found one.

I re-engaged in the political process and helped rally the troops for Grayson's town hall meeting to turn back the tea baggers and succeeded.

I went to the State Jefferson Jackson dinner and met Debbie Wasserman Schultz and got to know Kendrick Meek better and have done some work for his Senate bid.

I went to Wellstone Campaign training and am helping out a Minnesota Congressional Candidate now.

I got laid off just on Monday and I'm back to looking for work again - the third time in two years.

Now it is a year since Guy Fawkes and being in England and I think I'm going to make it something of my own personal holiday even in non election years. I'm planning to go to a Guy Fawkes day celebration tomorrow being held by the British American club in Kissimmee Florida for a "few quid" and have me a good time and remember what it was like to win a big one.


Doug D.
Orlando, FL

As in Brooksley E. Born?



I watched Frontline's "The Warning" last night and it was like watching Admiral Kimmel and General Short try to explain why they parked all the financial battleships and airplanes in neat rows close together.



On second thought Kimmel and Short didn't have the kind of inside info and connections that Geithner and Summers had so I'll have to cut the the Admiral and the General at least a little slack.

Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers on the other hand ought to be summarily fired and investigated for their connections to Wall Street banks!

I'd demand we fire Alan Greenspan too but he's out now anyways.



Brooksley is my new hero of the week and I'd love to be able to buy a t-shirt with her picture saying "I'm a Born again Common Sense Economist".



We have to put an END to derivatives - 360 TRILLION dollars of phony baloney monopoly money is more than the entire accumulated actual wealth of the entire world since the beginning of time.

If you haven't seen this, you need to:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/wa... /

"We didn't truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market," says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency -- the Commodity Futures Trading Commission -- who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country's key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. "They were totally opposed to it," Born says. "That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?"

In The Warning, veteran FRONTLINE producer Michael Kirk unearths the hidden history of the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. At the center of it all he finds Brooksley Born, who speaks for the first time on television about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multitrillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008.

"I didn't know Brooksley Born," says former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt, a member of President Clinton's powerful Working Group on Financial Markets. "I was told that she was irascible, difficult, stubborn, unreasonable." Levitt explains how the other principals of the Working Group -- former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin -- convinced him that Born's attempt to regulate the risky derivatives market could lead to financial turmoil, a conclusion he now believes was "clearly a mistake."

Born's battle behind closed doors was epic, Kirk finds. The members of the President's Working Group vehemently opposed regulation -- especially when proposed by a Washington outsider like Born.

"I walk into Brooksley's office one day; the blood has drained from her face," says Michael Greenberger, a former top official at the CFTC who worked closely with Born. "She's hanging up the telephone; she says to me: 'That was Larry Summers. He says, "You're going to cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II."... 13 bankers in his office who informed him of this. Stop, right away. No more.'"

....

snip


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/wa... /

Men aren't happy either.

Everybody works much too hard and makes much too little to have a comfortable life and sense of security. If you're lucky you get two weeks vacation a year and 6 holidays. If you're unlucky you're off every day because you are unemployed.

A college education is no guarantee of a job or happiness or being able to buy a house or save for retirement or get married and have kids.

Women with college degrees have tended at least historically to get jobs in lower paying fields like nursing, teaching, etc instead of becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers or scientists - that is changing but generally still true. Of course money doesn't buy happiness but it sure can rent some for a while and women generally have less money available to them to be happy with (about 72 cents on the dollar compared to men).

On the other hand, the recent recession has affected men much harder than women as more of the jobs lost have been in traditionally male dominated fields like manufacturing and construction.

I know a lot of unhappy and frightened people. I have been through about 7 months of unemployment in the last 2 years in spite of having good technical skills and experience - fortunately I've been working the last 5 months or so but I still worry that at any day it could all fall apart again.

Until people can feel secure again in their futures they won't be happy and they won't spend money so the economy will continue to tank. People are afraid to spend what little money they have because who knows what will happen tomorrow?

Health care is just one more worry that frightens people and women get treated unfairly by insurance companies because of child birth issues and usually get charged more than men although statistically speaking women live longer and are generally healthier than men.

Until we can fix a few things around here for the regular working people and give them some sense of security we're all going to continue to be unhappy.

to claim she "regrets" voting for him.

Please let them know what you think of their "fact checking process":

To comment on the particular story:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...

To provide show feedback:
http://help.npr.org/ics/support/default.as...

LAK 104810170 Morningstar Irene 32767 F 5 REP

FACT CHECK: IRENE MORNINGSTAR IS A REGISTERED REPUBLICAN.

According to the Florida Voter Registration System as of April of 2009, Ms. Morninstar was NOT a Democrat but was ACTUALLY a registered REPUBLICAN:

LAK 104810170 Morningstar Irene 32767 F 5 REP

LAK=LAKE COUNTY
104810170= Her state voter ID
32767 = her ZIP code
F = FEMALE
5 is her RACE=WHITE (3=black, 4=hispanic, 5=white)
REP is her PARTY = REPUBLICAN

I have redacted her street address and birthdate info here (although she doesn't deserve it for pulling this dirty trick) but can make it available to any NPR reporter who wants it. My source is the Florida Voter Registration System from April of 2009.

NPR needs to correct the error and apologize to Congressman Alan Grayson for not fact checking their interview before going to air with it.

Sincerely,

WASHINGTON D.C. 6:54PM 10/7/2009 - There had been subtle warning signs of late of the impending danger as the moon began waning to earthbound viewers around the world but until just a day or so ago only a few Federal researchers with NASA's LCROSS project were actually aware that the Moon was going to crater spectacularly tomorrow.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in coordination with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geightner is now working feverishly late into the night to bail the Moon out as soon as possible after it craters tomorrow afternoon after receiving a late night phone call from President Barack Obama.

President Obama became deeply concerned after receiving reports from NASA researchers that the moon was going to crater and yesterday evening actually set up multiple telescopes on the White House lawn and brought in numerous student observers from his daughters' school to help them study the impending event in greater detail at first hand.

The President is quoted as saying in a late night phone call after the event on the White House lawn that "The Moon is simply too big to fail. I don't want to be in the business of orbital mechanics but we simply can't allow the Moon to falter like this- too many Americans depend upon it, in fact too many around the world depend upon the Moon for their livelihood."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs when asked in this morning's press gaggle what the proposed bailout would cost said "the Administration is considering multiple options for the bailout but we do not have details at this time."

Federal Reserve Bernanke when pressed for comment is quoted as saying "I'm sorry but I cannot discuss which lunar craters will specifically be bailed out or how much will be going to each crater. If we were to discuss these details it could well undermine confidence in these lunar craters amongst the lunar observing public and discourage individual craters from seeking the Fed's help".

FLORIDA IS BACK IN THE STOOPIT BASEMENT AGAIN..




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So embarrassed, so sorry,
Doug D.,
Orlando, FL

Democratic Friends:

Apparently Charlie Van Zant (R-Keystone Heights, FL) thinks that the Cubans and terrorists are just going to show up one day three miles off the coast of Florida and set up their own oil rig in plain sight of the touristas, the Coast Guard, the Navy and the natives and start drilling for oil and piping it underwater back to Havana so we'd better start drilling now and beat them to the punch!





This kind of crazy has to be an inborn talent – I just don’t see how you could teach it.

Here’s my post in reply to this story at the Sentinel’s Political Pulse Blog:

Charlie Van Zant - what an embarassing idiot.

Are there ninjas on your lawn too Charlie?

Do you really think that a foreign government is going to violate not only Federal waters but come all the way to within THREE to TEN miles of Florida's shoreline and blatantly set up an oil rig and start drilling?

It's either time for you to stop drinking or start. In any event, it's a shame that 70,000 voters somewhere in Florida have to call YOU their state representative!

Oh teh crazy!

Doug D.

Original Sentinel Story:

http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_poli...

TALLAHASSEE -- Oil-drilling sponsor Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Keystone Heights, said in floor debate today that exploration 3-10 miles from Florida’s coastline is a “national security issue” because if we don’t drill, terrorist sympathizers would use technology to extract oil under state waters.
Zant said “Arabs,” as well as those from Cuba, Argentina and elsewhere, would extract Florida’s oil and natural gas and “use the profits from that as terrorist activities against our nation.”
“We must drill,” he said.

The late-hour proposal to allow the governor and Cabinet to authorize oil and natural gas exploration off the coastline is on the House floor today – and drawing testy question-and-answer sessions between Van Zant and Democrats opposed to the idea.

Question from Rep. Evan Jenne, D-Dania Beach: There’s no chance of an oil spill?
Van Zant: With modern technology instead of the “archaic equipment” involved in Exxon Valdez, oil spills are “more or less a thing of the past."

"Can I guarantee you this personally, can I give you a 100 percent? No, sir. But I can tell you it’s very, very minimal.”

Weren't any of you ever in a band? Didn't any of you ever listen to the radio or buy records growing up? Have you never been to a party or a bar or even out to a movie?

This is just sad..sad..sad..

Even if you wanted to play Sousa marches that would still be much much better..



Let's face it - We the People already know a lot more about good music than you do and our choices have already been tested in the market place and throughout time much more than the nonsense you had some company come up with after psychological testing.


I'm posting my playlist for WDRR (Disaster Recovery Radio) for you guys - PLEASE use it - NO charge for the compilation - PLEASE don't use that crappy pyschologically tested nonsense you paid for.

Here’s my top 100 “start me up” sound track for you boys at the D.H.S:

1) Learning to Fly - Pink Floyd.
2) Bad Moon Rising - CCR.
3) Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones.
4) Right Now - Van Halen.
5) Dreams - Van Halen.
6) Jump - Van Halen.
7) On Top of the World - Van Halen.
8) Back In Black - AC/DC.
9) Hells Bells - AC/DC.
10) Top Gun Anthem. from the Top Gun Album.
11) Danger Zone - From the Top Gun Album.
12) Mony Mony - Tommy James
13) When I'm Gone - Three Doors Down
14) Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones.
15) Start Me Up - The Rolling Stones.
16) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones.
17) Good Golly Miss Molly - Little Richard
18) Run Through the Jungle - CCR.
19) Tutti Frutti - Little Richard.
20) Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry.
21) Sweet Little Sixteen - Chuck Berry.
22) Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry.
23) Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley and the Comets.
24) Revolution - The Beatles.
25) Helter Skelter - The Beatles.
26) Not Fade Away - Buddy Holly.
27) Great Balls of Fire - Jerry Lee Lewis.
28) Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On - Jerry Lee Lewis.
29) Sweet Home Chicago - from the Blues Brothers Soundtrack.
30) Jail House Rock - from the Blues Brothers Soundtrack.
31) Legs - ZZ Top
32) Gimme All Your Lovin' - ZZ Top
33) Jesus Just Left Chicago - ZZ Top
34) Got Me Under Pressure - ZZ Top
35) Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top
36) Copperhead Road - Steve Earle
37) Smugglers Blues - Glen Frey
38) Miami Vice Theme - Miami Vice Soundtrack
39) Turn the Beat Around - Gloria Estefan
40) YMCA – The Village People.
41) Kung Fu Fighting – Carl Douglas
42) Theme to Rocky – Rocky Soundtrack
43) Theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark – ROTLA soundtrack.
44) Superman Theme – Superman Soundtrack
45) In the Navy – The Village People.
46) Midnight Rider – Allman Brothers Band.
47) Whipping Post – Allman Brothers Band.
48) Put Me In Coach – John Fogerty.
49) Fortunate Son – CCR.
50) Born on the Bayou – CCR.
51) Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen.
52) Proud Mary – CCR
53) Kansas City – Paul McCartney
54) Long Tall Salley – Little Richard
55) Little Deuce Coupe – The Beach Boys
56) Shut Down – The Beach Boys
57) Shot Gun - Jr. Walker and the All Stars
58) Nowhere to Run – Martha Reeve and the Vandellas
59) Up Tight – Stevie Wonder
60) Star Wars Theme – Star Wars Soundtrack
61) Star Wars Throne Room Theme – Star Wars Soundtrack
62) Dallas Theme – from the TV Show.
63) Magnum Theme – from the TV Show.
64) Greatest American Hero Theme – from the TV Show
65) A Team Theme – from the TV Show
66) When The Going Gets Tough the Tough Get Going – Billy Ocean
67) Theme from Baa Baa Black Sheep – from the TV show.
68) Theme from Adam-12 – from the TV show.
69) Theme from S.W.A.T. – from the TV show.
70) Hit Me With Your Best Show – Pat Benetar
71) Don’t Be Cruel – Cheap Trick
72) Louie Louie – The Kingsmen
73) Rebel Yell – Billy Idol
74) White Wedding – Billy Idol
75) Back In the USSR – The Beatles
76) You May Be Right – Billy Joel
77) Fast As You – Dwight Yoakam
78) Rock This Town – The Stray Cats
79) Theme to Hogans Heroes – from the TV Show.
80) Mission Impossible Theme – from the TV Show.
81) Hawaii Five-O Theme – from the TV Show.
82) Oh Atlanta – Bad Company
83) Bob Seger – Old Time Rock and Roll
84) Bob Seger – Shakedown (from Beverly Hills Cop)
85) Axel F (Theme from Beverly Hills Cop) – Harold Faltermeyer.
86) Bad – Michael Jackson
87) Beat It – Michael Jackson
88) Thriller – Michael Jackson
89) Man In the Mirror – Michael Jackson
90) The Heat Is On – Glenn Frey
91) The Sopranos Theme Song – from the TV Show
92) Like Steve McQueen – Sheryl Crow
93) Live and Let Die – Paul McCartney
94) Gangsta’s Paradise – Coolio
95) Conga – Gloria Estefan
96) Rythym Is Gonna Get You – Gloria Estefan
97) Get On Your Feet – Gloria Estefan
98) Life In the Fast Lane – The Eagles
99) All She Wants to Do Is Dance – Don Henley
100) Rocky Mountain Way – Joe Walsh

Oh and here's the bonus Song: #101) Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow - Fleetwood Mac


Doug De Clue
Orlando, FL

This is a picture of Earth taken from Voyager 1 several billion miles away.

If you could see the moon at this distance it would be about 3 inches away on your computer monitor assuming the Earth you see is about a tenth of an inch across.

The moon has no atmosphere and no known water and is 250 degrees in the sunlight and minus 250 in the shade and the days are 14 days long and the nights are too. You could not live there without massive support from Earth and it cost 2 billion dollars in 1969 dollars every time we sent two people to the surface back in Apollo and one of these missions failed.

Mars meanwhile would be 35 feet away from that speck of light at the closest point.

Mars is the closest planet to have conditions even remotely similar to earth - it has a very thin atmosphere with very little oxygen -it is mostly CO2. There are polar ice caps on Mars but how much water they actually contain as opposed to frozen CO2 is anybody's guess. It might be possible to live on Mars after decades of investment and terraforming on a scale that would make the Apollo program seem like a flight to Cleveland.

Mars is the only planet in our solar system to even come remotely close to Earth-like conditions.

The nearest star system from Earth is 4.3 light years away in the real world. That's hard to understand but to put it in terms of our picture, it would be about 5000 miles away from the speck on your screen.

This is the Earth.

There are no second chances.

Don't screw it up.

We now return you to your regular broadcast program.

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

<rant>


Ahem..

All you whiney assed "teabaggers" out there:




I filed my taxes today and I made $70,470 and paid right at $12,038 in income tax or about 17.08%.

Let's be clear:

I'm hardly the poster boy for clever tax shelters, investments or deduction gaming.

I'm single, I don't own my own home, I don't have a 401K or IRA, I don't even have any kids.

In short I took the STANDARD deduction and the one single exemption and didn't take advantage of ANY of the many tax breaks our government gives me and I paid a measely 17.08% in income tax.

I pay a mere 17.08% when I make far more than the median US household income of around $50,000 and far far more than the average personal income for full time workers over age 25 of $39,000.

And that's without even trying to reduce my taxes down. I'm sure if I tried, I could get that number down to around 10%.

The truth is that you guys are just a bunch of whiners who don't really even pay anything in taxes.

You are a bunch of crybabies who can't accept the fact that you got your ass kicked in the elections last November because America is sick and tired of your right wing crap.



The Founding Fathers didn't complain about paying their taxes.



They complained about not having representation in Parliament.

They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors to found this country and quite a number of them went broke doing just that - so STFU about your taxes already.

The truth is that you were all born on third base and think you hit a triple.

Not a single one of you would be willing to man up enough to go live on a desert island with Wilson the Beach ball for the next four years and finally stop leeching off of all those government paid for benefits that you don't want to pay for.



Show us that you really DID make it where you are now in life without anybody's help.

I dare you.

Until you do:

Shut the fuck up already.

You ought be happy that you have Barack H. Obama for your President instead of Jesus H. Christ.

If it were up to Jesus, you'd be paying a 50% tax rate - if you have two cloaks, you'd have to give up one to the guy who didn't have any - and that damned Jesus would be going around spending your tax dollars on health care for the sick, clothing for the naked, and food for the homeless and hungry.

Instead of being a "teabagger" Jesus would be telling you to "render unto Caesar" and sit down already.

What's the matter Jesus?

Didn't you get the teabaggers' memo?

We can't afford your tax and spend lib-uh-rul ways helping the needy like that.



Can you imagine Jesus saying things like:

Can I see your insurance card?
Sorry but your plan doesn't cover leprosy?
I'm sorry but you're "out of network"?

Until you figure out that America is sick of your selfish petulant whining - your side LOST last November for a REASON - all you are doing is making yourselves more and more irrelevant and ridiculous so stick a sock in it already.

</rant>

Doug D.
Orlando, FL