Reading the news today is like watching a bad disaster movie. As you shout at the screen for the characters not to open the hatch that will flood the ship, they open the hatch.

The default crisis was sort of like this, with one big difference. A disaster movie “works” because the audience knows something the characters don’t: there’s death behind that hatch. That’s not true of the default drama.

Continuing on a theme started over at my home base, let’s talk some about this pervasive belief that being a total jerkoff is automatically hilarious because it’s offensive and “un-PC” and other such nonsense.

It’s a shocking historical juxtaposition. The pro-democracy movement known as the Arab Spring is in significant part a consequence of rising literacy and declining birth rates in the Mideast. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Right is mounting a direct assault on education and a renewed war on contraception. This ought to tell us something.

We were idling away the evening on the balcony, drinking wine and talking about everything from the Keith Richards book to Medicare cuts. Our neighbors – she a world class blues singer; he an accomplished painter, musician and entertaining raconteur – were just paying a warm, old-American style social call.

But when I happened to mention that many today consider our generation, the Sixties generation, a failure, I set the singer’s eyes ablaze and we took off on a lively historical survey of the last few decades.

If Orwell hadn’t been writing so early in the age of television, he undoubtedly would have foreseen something like this. In the meantime, if Rupert Murdoch ever sets up a Fox children’s cartoon network (he hasn’t already, has he?), he’ll have some core programming ready to go.

Poopy Pat has been spreading his poop for over forty years, but he’s still mean to people who are different from him. I’m usually a lot less cranky after a big poop, so I don’t know why Poopy Pat is still so mean after all this poop. My Mommy tells me that everyone is different, and that’s what makes us special. Poopy Pat thinks different is bad instead of special. That’s really sad when you think about it.

Texas, the extreme right’s political mushroom factory, is at it again. Americans had better look out, especially if they still care about knowledge, truth, curiosity, the exploration of new frontiers, the power of literature, art, and, especially, real science.

In today’s politico-media sphere it is easier than ever to define some evil Other and blame “them” for the problems “we” face. The right-wing attacks on teachers and other public servants are the most recent example of a pernicious human habit that is now and always has been a real threat to a civilization’s social, political and economic viability.

It seems pretty clear that when the Attorney General observes that “classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny,” what he means is that “DOMA is a load of bigoted shit and continuing to defend us will make us look like a pack of crazy assholes.” I’m sure that sounds better in Latin, but that seems to be the crux of it.

Christmas is a funny holiday. Pegged to the old pagan winter solstice celebrations, it’s on the calendar now as the time Jesus was born. For the record, if I’d been a Wise Man I’d of brought the baby Jesus a Howlin’ Wolf record.