Short Spring and More of the Awful

We had two days of spring,  Tuesday and Wednesday.  Both were just lovely, we were sitting in a neighbor's driveway chatting, facing into the sun, and I got a little bit sunburned.  Ahhh spring, we miss you.  Today it's windy and pouring down rain.  Rain is actually good, we need it.  However, next week every night is predicted to have lows in the 30's.  This is ridiculous.  It's not just me whining about the weather, everyone is.  It should be in the 70's by now.  Here are two photos from up the street.  Some people are serious gardeners.  I would not be one of them.

Now I will segue into doom and gloom on a few fronts.  My first issue is water, or the lack thereof in the south west.  From The Counter we learn, "In the desert west of Phoenix, the city of Buckeye is growing faster than almost any other city in the U.S. City leaders anticipate housing 1 million residents by mid-century. At current rates of water consumption, Buckeye would need over 100,000 acre-feet annually, or 90,000 acre-feet more water than today."  AZ law says you have to guarantee water for 100 years.  Buckeye is convinced it can do this by raising the level of an existing dam, and drawing up ground water, which may or may not be there in the amounts needed.  Water is a zero sum game these days.  Desalinization is not really feasible in a land locked state.  Collection and reuse of waste water is feasible and could be done, but there is not public enthusiasm for this.  Tucson runs waste water through purification and then into wet lands; that water grows fish so it's pretty clean.  Anyway, the level of denial is just amazing when it comes to the drought and the fact the climate change makes it unlikely to get any better.

Las Vegas is also in a world of hurt.  There are three water inlets in Lake Mead, used to draw water to be piped into Las Vegas.  This picture is the first of three.

This is not good.  The water level of Lake Powell has dropped to the point where there is fear that Glen Canyon dam will not be able to generate electricity.  That means no air conditioning in the summer. Water is being released from Lake Mead to Lake Powell to keep the turbines running which puts more pressure on Lake Mead.    Read more on the subject here and here.  It's amazing to me that humans can deny what's right in front of their faces and continue on a path that will lead to destruction.  Growth in Arizona is just not sustainable at the current rate.  However, property rights advocates, developers and their ilk will not consider any limits to rampant development.

Louisiana is rushing a bill forward that will allow for prosecution of a woman who aborts a fetus (including an ectopic) and the doctor who performed the procedure.  The full weight of the state's power will be used to bring murder charges.  Their definition of "life" is from the moment of conception, they don't even allow the 6 week period used in Texas.  Republicans are now saying out loud that the life of the fetus is more important than the life of the woman.  We're expendable in their world view.

Meanwhile, in Texas, Governor Abbot wants to do away with public education for the children of undocumented people.  Governor Greg Abbott, wants to do this by having SCOTUS over turn a ruling from the 70s — Plyler v. Doe, which established that every child in the United States has the right to a free public education, regardless of their parents’ legal status.  He doesn't like spending the money to ensure these kids can grow up, hold jobs and pay taxes.  He really is a horrible person.  He was just fine with costing the state four billion dollars by holding up truck traffic at the border for no good reason, he's also fine with stationing the Texas National Guard at the border for no good reason.  Since he called up the Guard, he has to pay them, not the federal government.  There appears to be a land rush towards the Supreme Court by the conservatives to over turn all the rulings from the last 50 years that they don't like.

The Vanity Fair Hive has an interesting take on Alito and his reasoning to over turn Roe.  It's all over twitter, as well, but this has the better formatting and punctuation.  I'm extensively quoting in case it's behind a paywall for you.

As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern notes, the draft—which could change before a the final ruling, as could the various justices’ votes—doesn’t just lay out the case for why Roe should be overturned, it goes full scorched earth. Alito, Stern writes, “does not seek out any middle path. He disparages Roe and its successors as dishonest, illegitimate, and destructive to the court, the country, and the Constitution. He quotes a wide range of anti-abortion activists, scholars, and judges who view abortion as immoral and barbaric; there’s even a footnote that approvingly cites Justice Clarence Thomas’s debunked theory that abortion is a tool of eugenics against Black Americans.” The opinion is an appalling, heinous attack on people who have relied on Roe for nearly half a century, and the most sickening part is that the conservative justice clearly doesn’t give a shit that obliterating the landmark ruling will ruin countless lives. In fact, one might argue, that’s all part of the plan. And if you needed further proof that Alito is pure evil and wants to take the U.S. back to a time when women’s bodies were property for men to control, know that one of the people he cited in his opinion was an English jurist who defended marital rape and had women executed for “witchcraft.”

Yes, Alito literally quoted this guy, who was born in 1609, as a defense for ending Roe v. Wade in 2022. “Two treatises by Sir Matthew Hale,” Alito enthusiastically writes, “described abortion of a quick child who died in the womb as a ‘great crime’ and a ‘great misprision.’ See M. Hale, Pleas of the Crown.” As Jezebel notes, The History of the Pleas of the Crown “is a text that defended and laid the foundation for the marital rape exemption across the world” and reads: “For the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract.” Again, Alito used the arguments of this man to bolster his case.

Finally, there was a horrible article in WAPO this morning, but it is news you can use.  For most of us, ability to obtain an abortion is mooted by age.  However, for many this is not the case.  Smart phones will likely be an enforcement tool for states who outlaw abortion.  There are apps that track your menstrual cycle.  These apps sell that data, it's not protected by HIPPA.  Police can get that data and use it to determine if you've missed enough time that you might be pregnant.  I think it's Missouri that either has or will be passing a law to make it illegal to leave the state for an abortion.  This is one way that they will know to be looking at a particular woman.  Location data is tracked and sold, they know where you've been.  In 2017, prosecutors used Internet searches for abortion drugs as evidence in a Mississippi woman’s trial for the death of her fetus.  The extent to which we're under surveillance becomes more clear when you read the WAPO article.  Young women need to learn to clear cache and cookies and delete history every time, and get a burner phone if they're in red states.  I did not expect to ever write that sentence.

There are two twitter threads I don't want to lose, so I'm sticking them here.  They're long.
First is a thread about Matthew Hale, the 17th century jurist quoted by Alito.
Second is a thread about SafeGraph and the men who plan to profit from it.  SafeGraph was called         out in the WAPO article.  This may or may not be inflated in its awfulness.

Well, if you've made it this far, I salute your tenaciousness.