Monday Miscellany On (Oops! Sorry!) Wednesday

• Kidnapped Abroad And Solitary Confinement: This Is What Due Process Looks Like For A Palestinian In Israel
  

  (Richard Silverstein at Shadowproof)

• Workers To Face Biosurveillance From Employers
  

  (Dan Wright at Shadowproof)

• A Texas Conservative Openly Calls For Violence Against LGBT People
  

  (Kossacks for Marriage Equality)

• The GOP’s deeply flawed field
  

  (Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation at WaPo)

• There was that time JEB! forced single mothers to post their sexual history in the newspaper...
  

  (SemDem at Kos)

• Krugman: Why All The Republican Candidates Are Attacking Social Security
  

  (Dartagnan at Kos refers to...)

• Republicans Against Retirement
  

  (Krugman at NYT)

Monday Medley

• Why Conservatives Still Won't Admit That Charleston Was A Racist Crime
  

  Aurin Squire at TPM lists several prominent GOPers (e.g., Jeb Bush, Rudy Giuliani, Gov. Nikki Haley, a WSJ columnist [anonymous and invisible if you don't have a subscription], etc.) who use words like "I don't know [why it happened]," "unimaginable," "we don't know the motivation," "senseless tragedy," etc., and responds to these protestations of incomprehension:
  

  Given the history of the South, along the rise of both active shooters and gun access, we can't call what happened Wednesday night a “senseless tragedy.” In fact, the Charleston church shooting is full of savage sense. Thanks to complicity at best, and outright racist at worst, the “inconceivable” is still feasible. The fear tactics that were once localized in the dark backwoods of our political landscape now reach every phone and laptop. ...

  We DO know the motivation, the act is NOT inconceivable, we CAN imagine, and Repub's will find there's no use in pretending we don't or can't.
  
  
• Sixth greatest extinction event in the history of our planet is underway
  

  (Be sure to click through to the underlying paper and at least read the abstract, in which the authors justify this statement: "These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way.")

  Yes, it IS happening, as demonstrated under fairly strict criteria. Yes, humans ARE causing it. Will H. sapiens survive it? The abstract doesn't explicitly say, but you may live to find out!
  
  
• Supreme Courts rejects appeal of decision overturning NC's mandatory ultrasound abortion law
  

  (At last, some good news, however limited: because the Supreme Court rejected an appeal of this lower court's decision, women who reside in North Carolina cannot be forced by state law to obtain an ultrasound (an unnecessary, expensive and possibly inaccessible procedure) as a precondition for obtaining an abortion.)

  Now if they can only find a clinic that has not closed and get transportation to it...
  

And now two that hardly require any explanation, considering the nature of many of today's police forces:

• Florida police murder black computer engineer as he listens to music; attempted cover-up exposed
  
  
• Police crush, kill man begging for his life, screaming he was suffocating until his ears turned blue
  
  

"Monday, Monday..."

‘Conservative Reality’

... according to Tom Tomorrow. Almost too true to be funny, but read it anyway...

(H/T ellroon.)

The Myth Of 'Makers And Takers': Conservatism As Fiction

Joshua Holland, senior digital producer for BillMoyers.com, book author and radio host, thoroughly debunks the fundamental conservative notion that Americans are divided into "makers" — hardworking, self-sustaining people who create the goods and services that drive the American economy — and "takers" — lazy bums who live on government subsidies of various sorts and never contribute to the economy.

Not surprisingly, to me at least, that entire notion, the one at the core of present-day American conservatism, turns out upon serious study to be utter bunkum, total fiction in practically every way.

Read Mr. Holland's opus and learn the ways in which virtually every American is at one time or another in his or her life a maker, and at another time or even at the same time a taker. If conservatives were not so busy patting themselves on the back, congratulating themselves unjustifiably for being the only makers, perhaps they could assist the rest of us in accommodating in our social structure the fact that everyone makes and everyone takes.