Saturday Good News Roundup: Whatever It Is, It's Time

Winter is coming, Rs. It's time.

We became a majority in the US in the 1990s, held back only by the Vast RightWrong-Wing Conspiracy of lies, hate, gerrymanders, voter suppression, a corrupt Supreme Court, and the Russians, aided by thatidiotComey. But now it's time.

Our time has come. All of us, Black, White, Green, or Purple; Jew and Gentile and Muslim and whatever; LGBTYouTellMe; men, women, trans, non-binary, and other; rich and poor; native-born and transported here, enslaved; the reality-based community; and anyone else victimized by overweening Greed, Hatred, and Delusion. For all of us together, it's time.

Joe Biden's time has come, and with it time to fix Congress, the Administration with each and every one of its agencies, the Courts, and all of the states. It's time, and long past time.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave us the Dream. It's time.

Multitudes gave their lives, or had them brutally taken, for us to see this day. It's time.

That time that Reps. Elijah Cummings and John Lewis fought so long for has come. They didn't get there with us, but like MLK himself, they had been to the Mountaintop, and they had seen the Promised Land. It's time.

Whatever it is, it's time.

It has been

• Nearly 50 years since Market Fundamentalist Milton Friedman, President Nixon, MLK, and Hubert Humphrey proposed a Universal Basic Income. It's time.
• Nearly 50 years from the Stonewall riots (1969) to Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), with Rs retreating to anti-trans bigotry and discrimination in employment and housing. It's time.
• Nearly 50 years since Global Warming was definitively measured in the oceans and in insurance claims, and Denialism first got funding. It's time.
• More than 50 years since the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act, and MLK telling his jailers that "what you people want" is respect. Now we can start to dismantle systemic racism whole and entire. It's time.
• More than 50 years since LBJ proposed Medicare for all, and the Republicans and AMA beat him back to partial Medicare for retirees, plus Medicaid. It's time.
• More than 70 years since Truman desegregated the military. Now we can clean out the neo-Confederates and the Armageddonist Crusaders. It's time.
• Various times since
  • Brown v. Board (1954) "Separate but inherently unequal"
  • Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) contraception
  • Loving v. Virginia (1967) "miscegenation"
  • Roe v. Wade (1973) abortion
  • Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) Creationism outlawed as science teaching in schools
  • Kitzmiller v. Dover [PA] Area School District (2005) Intelligent Design a hoax (rAmen)
• Determined, vicious campaigns to pack the courts with incompetent, corrupt judges sworn to roll back every bit of progress ever since. It's time.

• More than 70 years from Seneca Falls (1848) to women's right to vote (1920), and another century since then. We still don't have equal pay and numerous other rights. It's time.
• 80 years since the 40 hour week and the minimum wage became law, with Republicans determined to roll back all worker protections and union rights ever since, and let the bosses steal all of our productivity gains since Reagan. It's time.
• 80 years since FDR created the Fair Employment Practice Committee and started desegregating the Federal Government. Now we can clean out the remaining White Supremacists, most notably in CBP and ICE and the Bureau of Prisons, including the camo-clad brownshirts on our streets. It's time.
• Nearly a century since the first Equal Rights Amendment, introduced in 1923, and fifty years since the next one in 1971. It's past time.
• More than a century since John Maynard Keynes demonstrated the value of countercyclical deficit spendinginvestments in fighting recessions and depressions and panics and crashes, along with raising taxes in boom times to save for a "rainy day", and to counter incipient bubbles. Economists have recently begun to propose Unbalanced Budget Amendments, for that reason, and to counter Wrong-Wing Deficit Hawkishness aimed at forcing cuts to social programs, aka Starve the Beast. Even Joseph's Pharaoh in the Bible could understand accumulating surpluses in good times and sharing them around in bad times. It's time.
• More than a century of drug panics, since the Chinese "Yellow Peril" opium drug panic, followed by the Mexican marijuana drug panic and the Black cocaine and then heroin and then crack cocaine drug panics, and the Nixon/Ehrlichman lying racist all of the above War on Druggies, with police demanding ever-bigger guns each time. Defund community-approved police lynchings under color of law. Break the Police Malevolent Associations' racist impunity, built into their contracts. It's time.
• 130 years since the Pledge of Allegiance (written in 1892, adopted by Congress in 1942) asked us to support a Republic with Liberty and Justice for All. I'm game. It's time.
• 160 years since the Civil War, Abolition, and the Reconstruction Amendments. Now, finally, White Supremacists and their enablers are a minority, and the South is thinking about rejoining the Union willingly on the third try. It's long past time.
• Nearly 240 years since the Constitution proclaimed rights for White male property owners (but excluding slaves, Native Americans, women, and others) and, in principle, all religions (but in practice, only Christianity and Judaism at the time). It's time.
• More than 240 years since the Declaration of Independence told us that All Men [sic] are Created Equal. It's time.
• 2000 years since the Sermon on the Mount said Blessed are the cheese—sorry—peace makers. It's time. And no damn splitters.
• 2700 years since Isaiah prophesied, they shall not learn war any more. It's time.
• 2800 years since Amos prophesied, But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Quoted by MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail and many speeches)

How long?

Not long.

MLK

No more. It's time.

Polls on the Issues, from Pew Research

We are ahead on everything, including guns, abortion, and income inequality. The enablers who have looked the other way and claimed that racism is over can no longer deny their lying eyes. /s

It's time.

Wilberforce et al. got the English to boycott sugar for their tea. Don't tell me what we can't do when
it's time.

We only have to win this election in a big enough way to go on and fix voting rights comprehensively. Then we can enact the entire dreaded Pelosi/Black Caucus/Biden/AOC/Bernie/Warren/George Soros/LGBTZOMGBBQ/Tikkun Olam/Stewardship/all of us agenda, and roll back all of the thousands of evils of Trumpism and the rest of the Vast Wrong-Wing Conspiracy.

It's time.

Two-Thirds of Americans Think Government Should Do More on Climate

Amid Protests, Majorities Across Racial and Ethnic Groups Express Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement

Americans Broadly Support Legal Status for Immigrants Brought to the U.S. Illegally As Children

A Century After Women Gained the Right To Vote, Majority of Americans See Work To Do on Gender Equality

61% of U.S. Women Say ‘Feminist’ Describes Them Well; Many See Feminism as Empowering, Polarizing

Most Americans support gender equality, even if they don’t identify as feminists

Worldwide Optimism About Future of Gender Equality, Even as Many See Advantages for Men

America’s Complex Relationship With Guns

Solid majorities of both gun owners and non-owners favor limiting access to guns for people with mental illnesses and individuals who are on the federal no-fly or watch lists (82% or higher favor among each group). In addition, strong majorities favor background checks for private sales and at gun shows (77% among gun owners and 87% among non-owners).

The groups are more divided when it comes to three other policy proposals: creating a federal database to track gun sales; banning assault-style weapons; and banning high-capacity magazines. Even so, significant shares of gun owners are open to these proposals. Roughly half of gun owners (54%) say they would favor creating a federal database, and 48% favor a ban on assault weapons. Some 44% of gun owners favor banning high-capacity magazines. Support for these proposals is much higher among non-gun owners, with about three-quarters or more saying they would support each of these proposals.

tl;dr We have majorities on all of the above.

As COVID-19 cases increase, most Americans support ‘no excuse’ absentee voting

Most Americans Point to Circumstances, Not Work Ethic, for Why People Are Rich or Poor

Most Americans Say There Is Too Much Economic Inequality in the U.S., but Fewer Than Half Call It a Top Priority

About six-in-ten U.S. adults say there’s too much economic inequality in the country these days, and among that group, most say addressing it requires significant changes to the country’s economic system, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

5 facts about the abortion debate in America

About six-in-ten U.S. adults (61%) said in a 2019 survey that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 38% who said it should be illegal all or most of the time.

Ask me about any other issue that bothers you, where it is now time, and past time.

Joe probably has a plan for that.

We’re in a battle for the soul of America. It’s time to remember who we are.

It is Also Time For

• Annexes

Who's up? It's always time.

• Music

• Beasties

• Anniversaries and Birthdays

Rev 'em up, Rev. It's time.

• Election Polls

Have at it, hpg and others. It is sooooo time.

Rachel had Stacey Abrams on Thursday night, and they went over the amazing Georgia polls. Quinnipiac and Fox both.

Hey, neo-Confederates! You know what? It's time.

• Weirdness

Math

I got a degree in this stuff. Now I write about math and physics and religion and this and that on Quora as well as here.

What's the craziest mathematical fact you know?

1. Infinities are big, and there are lots of them. Too many and too big to think about clearly. But that isn't the really crazy part.
2. There is a theorem that says that no matter how many infinities there are, and how big they are supposed to be, there are countable models of everything in mathematics, consisting of the names and descriptions of objects that can be expressed in the language of the theory. Anything that cannot be named doesn't have to exist.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

What cannot be spoken of must be left to silence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Physics

Time, or rather spacetime, is also weird.

• Nothing can travel faster than light. Nothing, in fact, can travel in spacetime at any speed other than the speed of light. A material object moves at 0 in space in its own reference frame, and c in time. Photons and other massless particles travel at almost but not quite exactly c in space, and almost but not quite exactly 0 in time. "The speed of light" c is defined as its speed in a perfect vacuum, which does not and cannot exist. Gamma rays from a recently observed kilonova arrived 1.7 seconds after the gravitational waves over a distance of billions of light years. Impressively close to c, but definitely slower.
• Given two observers in relative motion, each sees the other one's clock running slower.
• Kant observed that a beginning to time doesn't make any sense, and time without a beginning makes just as little sense. You aren't going to get around this one.

Immanuel Kant but Genghis Khan.

• Bad News for Trump and Trumpists

Republicans give up on Jacksonville convention

kos

07/23/2020

85

112

LOL

Federal judge issues restraining order against Trump's federal agents in Portland	Jessica Sutherland	07/23/2020 09:00 PM
Philadelphia DA Says He Will Arrest Feds If They Commit a Crime in His City	Dan K	07/22/2020 11:49 PM
We'll prosecute: Two chief prosecutors tell Trump and federal agents to back off their cities	Kerry Eleveld Daily Kos Staff	7/24/2020 9:30 PM

^^ !!THESE!! ^^

Grassley: Senate would 'probably' override Trump veto of defense bill amid base renaming fight

The basest of Red Meat

Nobody exemplifies Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class more than The Donaldinho. That will be the theme of Grokking Trumpists: The Theory of Donald Trump, Sunday at noon. The highest leisure class values, according to Veblen, are force and fraud, followed by conspicuous consumption. There you go. It's going to write itself, as this one did today. It's time.

I wrote these six years ago. The 1% is far worse now, except for the few who aren't, who are demanding that we tax the rich and take the knee, for example.

They are right. It's time.

Grokking Republicans: The Theory of the 1%, Part 1

Grokking Republicans: The Theory of the 1%, Part 2

It's time we all got Mr. The 0.00001% in Person's (as he will tell you himself) story straight. It's time for everybody to believe him when he shows us who he is. The White Supremacists certainly do. That is why his core base is immovable, except for dying off at a bit more than the usual rate. See Jonathan Metzl, Dying of Whiteness, which will get its own Diary in the series.

• Koans

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once.

Patience, Gracehopers. It's time, and it will go on being time, so that we will have time to do what is needed.

Cannot run out of time. Time is infinite. We are finite. This—is wrong tool. Never use this tool.

Zathras, B5

日日是好日。

Nichi nichi ze gou nichi.

Every day is a good day.

七転び八起き。

Nana korobi ya oki.

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

When should I start training?

You're late. Kalpas and kalpas late. But then, so is everybody.

It's always time for any of the above.