Babylon Berlin - Season 3 (TV 2020)

Rotten Tomatoes

Babylon Berlin - Season 3 (TV 2020): German. Economic crash, police brutality, public protests, political corruption, a looming fascist takeover, and mobsters. Babylon Berlin is set in Berlin in 1929, but it speaks to America in 2020. Intricate subplots. Rich characters. B+

POTD: Stairway to Heaven

From 2019 11 18 Old Cairo

Today's photo-of-the-day is of the entrance to the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the oldest and largest mosque in Cairo, Egypt.

Project Power (2020)

Rotten Tomatoes

Project Power (2020): Bad guys do field tests on a new drug that gives people superpowers for 5 minutes at a time. Good guys have to find the source. Violence ensues. Gets a passing grade only because of Dominique Fishback. Oh, and its two Clint Eastwood jokes. C+

To Donald: Sealed with a Kiss

Hypocrisy? Audacity? Chutzpah? I don't quite know the right word for the accusation I wanted to make when I opened my mail yesterday. Inside was a fundraising pitch from Donald J. Trump. Delivered by mail. I know that he has it in for the US Postal Service. Trump is frightened of losing re-election and sees his biggest threat as being, well, people voting. So he figures that the more he can suppress the vote, the better his chances. Hence, sabotage the USPS, since it's predicted that many, many people want to vote safely by mail in 2020 because of COVID-19. So he undermines Americans' confidence in the US Mail.

Long Shadow from Appleton

I was born in Appleton, Wisconsin. During my early childhood, I was blissfully unaware of politics. But Appleton was home base for some of the nastiest politics of the 20th Century. I gradually learned about the evil my hometown birthed and nurtured. In high school, I learned that the cemetery just down the street from my school was the eternal resting place of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

POTD: Egyptian Lamp Pendants

From 2019 11 18 Old Cairo

Today's photo-of-the-day is from a sidewalk display of traditional Egyptian lamp pendants in old Cairo, Egypt.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

Do "Black Lives Matter" in Richardson? As the old saying goes, put your money where your mouth is. George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police on May 25, touching off a national movement with the slogan, "Black Lives Matter." There were protest marches nationwide, including two in Richardson (at Berkner Park and at City Hall). The Richardson City Council invited Richardson Police Chief Jim Spivey to brief them on the department's policies, training practices, community engagement, and transparency initiatives. The briefing took almost two and a half hours. I was pleased to learn that RPD's use-of-force policies are already broadly in line with the recommendations of the #8CantWait campaign to reform police departments.

But (there's always a but, and if the council members themselves can't voice it, they aren't doing their jobs), I had some concerns as well. In two-and-a-half hours with Chief Spivey, no one uttered the words "Black Lives Matter." Maybe they all felt that was all taken care of two weeks earlier, when the City Council approved a statement condemning racism. Still, no one identified any specific areas for improvement in Richardson. No one called for change. No one put any money behind the sentiment.

The Umbrella Academy - Season 2 (TV 2020)

Rotten Tomatoes

The Umbrella Academy - Season 2 (TV 2020): It's 1963. The siblings face another apocalypse. Time travel, civil rights, religious cult, JFK conspiracy, office politics in the commission maintaining the universe's timeline, and more family issues. Fast-paced. Never predictable. B+

Richardson's Budget - Black or Red?

It's August and that means it's time for Richardson budget roulette. Will the proposed city budget be balanced? You'd think that would be a simple question. Isn't the city required by law to have a balanced budget? Well, yes, but it all depends on the meaning of "balanced".

When I looked at this question three years ago, I concluded that the city's 2017-2018 budget was indeed balanced and didn't require use of that sneaky asterisk ("plus reserved fund balance and other financing sources"). After watching this over a number of years, I found that the amount the budget is in the red or black each year is always small. Whether it happens in any given year seems to be a matter of chance.

Women Weren't Given the Vote. They Took It.

For a country that prides itself on its democracy, the United States has forced a lot of its citizens to fight for the privilege of voting. August 18th marks the centenary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That milestone is sometimes described as having “given” women the right to vote. It wasn’t a gift; it was a hard-won victory on the part of suffragists who’d been agitating for it for more than seventy years, on the basis of their common humanity with men.

Source: Margaret Talbot.

Thank you, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Thank you, Carrie Chapman Catt and Alice Paul. Alice Paul especially was a real badass. She organized a march for women's suffrage down Pennsylvania Avenue the day before President Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Anti-suffrage rioters disrupted the march while police stood idly by, giving no protection to the peaceful marchers. Then Alice Paul organized pickets in front of the White House designed to prod the president into supporting women's suffrage. The civil disobedience campaign lasted months. Paul herself was arrested several times and finally sentenced to jail for seven months. She went on a hunger strike and was force fed raw eggs through a feeding tube. The publicity of the horrible treatment of her in jail kept the cause in the public eye. After passage of the 19th Amendment, Paul said, "It was shocking that a government of men could look with such extreme contempt on a movement that was asking nothing except such a simple little thing as the right to vote."