9/20/2025

 Saturday, September 20, 2025

D+319/215/-1220

1961 African-American student James Meredith was refused enrolment for the first time to the segregated University of Mississippi

1969 John Lennon privately announced to Paul and Ringo (George was not there) that he was leaving "The Beatles" at a London business meeting

2001 In an address to a joint session of Congress, George W. Bush declared a "war on terror"

2023  Homeland Security announced plans to grant special status on humanitarian grounds to 472,000 Venezuelans already in the US, allowing them to work; terminated by Trump, 2025

2023  Senate confirmed US Air Force Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown  as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 83-11; removed by Trump on 2/21/2025.

In bed at 9:45, up at 5:50, 67/73. cloudy, rain later.

Meds, etc. Morning meds at 8:15 a.m.

Mussolini: Son of the Century is an 8-episode series on MUBI.  I'm on episode 3.  It's not an easy watch.  Although it is directed by the British director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice), it's in Italian with English subtitles and directed in a mix of quirky styles.  It also has a superabundance of graphic violence, not to titillate and attract an audience that likes graphic violence, but to reflect the fact that fascism, which Mussolini founded in Milan in March 1919, is grounded in violence.  A great many of Mussolini's followers were thugs, mostly young men who were Army veterans disillusioned and disappointed after the the Great War, ardent anti-communists and anti-socialists, and lower middle-class men threatened by Italy's condition after the war.  They feared inflation, labor strikes,  and the social and economic strife that arose after the war.  Mussolini promised order, suppression of socialism,  communism, and 'weak' liberal democracy, and national renewal, which is to say, to make Italy great again.  The producers of the series had a hard time finding a distributor for the series in the United States because of its controversial subject matter, but it was finally picked up by MUBI.  I'm not sure whether I want to watch the entire 8 episodes, but I'm thinking I should.

Nostalgia & Appreciation.  I drove to the central PO this morning to mail our payment to Poblocki Paving for our new driveways.  On the way back, I drove through a bit of the Old Third Ward, seeing the many people who were enjoying the attractions of the historic district, and then along the lakeshore on Lincoln Memorial Drive, passing the Summerfest Grounds, Discovery World, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the new Couture Building, Veterans' Park, the Lagoon, the old water pumping station that is now a fancy coffee shop, McKinley Beach and the marina, the tennis courts, Bradford Beach where people were playing volleyball, the Water Tower, Lake Park and the water filtration facility.  All beautiful venues, all beautiful sights.  Then I drove by my first house on Newberry Boulevard and saw a very large and very full dumpster in front of it, and a man walking into it with some sort of large tool.  Water damage?  Wow.  I drove past UWM, our first home on Newton Avenue, Geri's old apartment on Maryland Avenue, Shorewood High School, where our kids all went to school, Estabrook Park, where the beer garden was open and doing a brisk business at 11:30 a.m.,  then onto the freeway and home.  So many truly beautiful sights.  I had the feeling that I so often have, wishing my sister and my mother were with me to see how beautiful Milwaukee is, how fortunate I have been to live in such a beautiful area.  

As I drove, I listened to the Strict Scrutiny podcast hosted by Kate Shaw, UPenn law professor and wife of MSNBC's Chris Hayes, and UMichigan law professor Leah Litman.  The episode I listened to was an excoriating review of the Supreme Court's actions on its "shadow docket" or "emergency docket" permitting the mass round of brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking, found in certain venues (Home Depot, day laborer hiring spots, car washes, etc.), in other words, racial profiling.  I should listen to more of their podcasts, although doing so will only make me despair more deeply about the 'state of the union' and the future.

I'm trying to do start some sort of study of what, if anything, these guys have in common;

John Hinkley - Ronald Reagan- Jody Foster, Taxi Driver

Ryan Routh - DJT - Ukraine  Trump

Tyler Robinson - Charlie Kirk -gay? trans? 

Thomas Crooks - DJT - Butler, PA ???  Trump  Biden or Trump 

Cody Balmer - Gov. Shapiro - Palestine   psychiatric issues

Luigi Mangione - United HealthCare - manifesto chronic pain healthcare system isolation

James Hodgkinson - Steve Schalies - anti-Republican

Lynnette "Squeaky" Froome  - - Gerry Ford  - Manson cult

Sarah Jane Moore - ford - left wing politics