i read the news today

I used to post a lot about current affairs on this blog. I spent several years working on a journal with the subheading "Political Education For Everyday Life", and I wrote 2 or 3 articles for them every year. In more recent years, I've cut back on my political blog posts. I have a feeling that someone else out there has made my argument more persuasively (although I never think that I shouldn't write about movies or music just because other people do it better), so at best, I'll link to others.

At times like today, I feel the absence of those posts. Also, more than ever I write entries and then post-date them, so when something momentous happens, I've got a pre-written blog post about Miranda Lambert.

Today calls for a post. More than a post, of course ... it's heartening to see people taking actions on the streets, even as I anticipate Sunday, which I'll spend sitting on the toilet prepping for Monday's colonoscopy. But I don't know that I have a post worth offering. People are reminding us that despair gets us nowhere, and they are right, but Despair is my middle name. (I recall an old underground comic from R. Crumb, "Plunge into the Depths of Despair", with a cover that showed a husband with arms crossed saying "See if there's anything good on..." and his wife gripping the arms of her chair as she replied, "Why bother?")

Here's a piece by Samuel Moyn (it has a tremendous drawing by Mathias Ball) in the Washington Post: "Counting on the Supreme Court to uphold key rights was always a mistake".

The situation reflects a flaw in our political system: The Supreme Court has been allowed to usurp the place of national majorities in envisioning and enacting the highest values of American citizenship — the rights we hold. Contrary to a popular misconception, when the court has assigned and defined rights, more often than not it has reinforced the rule of powerful and privileged minorities rather than protecting ordinary (let alone marginalized) citizens....

Arbitrary and unreviewable power of the sort the Supreme Court now possesses is the worst threat to democracy and rights alike. Abortion rights are at stake in the Dobbs case and its political aftermath but, equally fatefully, so is whether democracies can legislate rights of almost any kind. Only when rights are legislated, progressives need to learn, are they made reliable.

Heavens to Betsy, "Baby's Gone":

I grew up in your house
I grew up with your rules and I know sex is what I shouldn't do
I know what i can't tell you

Baby's gone away
Baby won't be back
Baby grew today and she won't ever be back

Maybe he loved me;
Maybe he didn't I don't know
It doesn't matter now because when I needed help I was all alone
Now baby's gone away
Sometimes condoms break
Your baby grew today, and she won't ever be back

I'd be a little girl forever
I won't make you ashamed
Little girl's gone away because I died on a knitting needle yesterday

Baby's gone away
Baby won't be back
Baby grew today
I did what you told me to do- now I'm dead
Goodbye. goodbye