Mira
Mira's JournalArchitecture, Art and Reading. How much better can it get?
Yesterday I gathered my son and grandson, both graduates of UNCSA - North Carolina School of the Arts - and we went to visit the brand new library they built at what is the highest spot in the city.At night it is a hugely beautifully lit beacon in the sky, and it's in walking distance from my house.
It was not meant as a photo taking visit, but I did have my camera.
I learned that anyone can get a library card there, and among the wonderful artwork are many areas where one can sit in the streaming light and read. The last photo is at a seating area where I plan to go as a new destination, take a book, get into it, and away from everything else 
Billionaire Republican donor Charles Koch likens Donald Trump's Muslim ban to Adolf Hitler's policie
Influential industrialist says travel restrictions 'wrong approach' for 'free and open societies’
Charles Koch first likened candidate Donald Trump's plan to ban Muslim immigrants to something Adolf Hitler would have done in Nazi Germany.
The billionaire industrialist and his chief lieutenants offered a more delicate response this weekend when asked about President Trump's plan to block immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. They described Trump's plan as “the wrong approach” that violated its dedication to “free and open societies.”
The criticism comes as the Koch network, among the most powerful conservative groups in the nation, works to strike a delicate balance in the early days of the new administration. The Kochs refused to support Trump's candidacy last fall, but they now see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to influence the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress.
For all of it go here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-muslim-travel-ban-billionaire-republican-donor-charles-koch-likens-policy-to-adolf-a7552531.html
Scientists Baffled by McConnell and Ryans Ability to Stand Upright Without Spines -reports Borowitz
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it a “medical mystery of the first order,” scientists are baffled by the ability of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan to stand upright without the benefit of spines.
Doctors at the University of Minnesota Medical School, who have been studying the skeletal structures of both Republicans for months, believe that their ability to stand, walk, and even break into a brisk trot when confronted by reporters’ questions is “virtually inexplicable.”
“The fact that they can do these things without the aid of spines makes McConnell and Ryan anomalies in the animal kingdom,” said Dr. Davis Logsdon. “According to everything medical science teaches us, their bodies should be collapsing to the ground in two heaps.”
As the Minnesota scientists have struggled to solve the medical conundrum presented by the two invertebrate leaders, one theory that has gained traction is what Logsdon calls “the startled-deer hypothesis.”
“Just as a deer freezes in the headlights of a car and briefly appears statue-like, we believe that Ryan and McConnell’s bodies may retain their rigid structure out of terror alone,” he said. “In other words, fear is performing the function that a spine performs in other people.”
Calling it “just a theory,” Logsdon said that the anatomies of McConnell and Ryan require further study, and that there was growing public support for both men to be dissected.
www.borowitzreport.com
The Anne Frank Center Responded To Trumps Wall Order
The Anne Frank Center Responded To Trump’s Wall OrderBy Colin Taylor
http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/01/25/trump-just-ended-refugee-program-anne-frank-centers-response-perfect/
As President Donald Trump unveils a stunning bundle of unconstitutional and discriminatory executive orders – a registry on Muslim visitors to the United States, a moratorium on visas for citizens from eight Muslim nations, a weekly list of crimes committed by “removable aliens,” a reinstatement of the torture program, to name a few – he was met with a horrified response from Steven Goldstein, Executive Director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect.
Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who famously kept a diary as she and her family hid from the Nazis before being caught. She later died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, most likely of typhus. The steps that Donald Trump is taking to discriminate and dehumanize Muslims and illegal immigrants mirror the early actions that the Nazi Party took to isolate and dehumanize European Jews, paving the way for mass complicity in the systematic extermination of six million innocent people.
Goldstein, writing from the Anne Frank Center For Mutual Respect’s Facebook page, blasted Trump’s shocking orders with this painful condemnation.
AS PRESIDENT TRUMP TARGETS
MEXICANS AND MUSLIMS
Statement of Steven Goldstein, Executive Director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, the U.S. civil and human rights organization among Anne Frank organizations worldwide:
As President Trump prepares orders to wall out Mexicans and shut out refugees from America, today marks one of the most hateful days in our nation’s history. Donald Trump is retracting the promise of American freedom to an extent we have not seen from a President since Franklin Roosevelt forced Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II. Today the Statue of Liberty weeps over President Trump’s discrimination.
President Trump is beyond the wrong side of history. He is driving our nation off a moral cliff.
When President Trump uses national security as a guise for racism, he doesn’t strengthen our national security. He compromises our national security by engendering disrespect for America by people around the world.
Make no mistake, suspending visas for citizens of Middle Eastern and African countries is not called national security. It’s called prejudice.
President Trump is now exacerbating the largest global refugee crisis in history. His slamming America’s doors on the starving, the wounded and the abused is a grotesque blot on our nation’s history of freedom. The President’s actions are an embarrassment to the timeless vision of America as inscribed by Emma Lazarus to “give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Demonizing refugees and immigrants, and spending billions of taxpayer dollars to keep them out of our nation, will go down in American history as one of the most tragic deviations from our national conscience.
Mr. Goldstein summarized what we’re facing perfectly. Donald Trump’s actions are a despicable affront to the values of tolerance, diversity, and religious pluralism that our nation was founded on. Our Founding Fathers will be rolling in their graves tonight as Trump’s reckless string of executive actions shames our nation before the world and unleashes the darkest demons of the human spirit.
Only three ever issued at the time of *W Bush. Do you remember ITMFA ?
Mine in NC, and one in Oregon and one in Washington State.
the Dept of Motor Vehicles caught on to the message and made me take it off, wanted me to send it back, which I "forgot" to do.
I think the time has come to put it on the front of my car
Anything you like to send to Solly Mack during her recovery: Post it right here / let's keep it up
All I know folks is that her recovery is tough going and she might want to be lifted up and thought about.Post something, whatever you might like that will entertain her, and if you feel like it add what it is about and why you are sending this particular photo.
Here is mine. An orchid from my bathroom window. It was saved separately, I discovered, and not lost in the many photos I lost when I dropped my hard drive.
It made me happy to find that I still had it.
This is for you, Solly.
Today was the day of Solly Mack's surgery
Word has reached me that she came through it OK.
This is to let you know that any kind of good thoughts, prayers, meditations and healing spirits can help in her recovery.
I added the photo because it speaks to me of a new day of hope for a pain free future for Solly, whom we all love.
At 10 pm you can turn on the tele / HBO / also streaming live on youtube / Bill Maher back TONIGHT
GUESTS:Jane Fonda, Keith Olbermann, Heather McGhee, Jon Meacham, Dept. of Labor Sec. Thomas Perez.
http://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/index/2017/1/13/bill-at-his-best
Stifled myself from entering this in the current contest:A new beginning
"After the measuring: New curtains in the Oval"
Bush Counting Down Days Until He Is No Longer Worst President in History -Borowitz satire
DALLAS (The Borowitz Report)—Former President George W. Bush is eagerly counting down the days until he is no longer the worst President in U.S. history, Bush confirmed on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters at his home, Bush said that he “could hardly wait” until Friday, when he will be officially bounced from the worst-President slot.
“I have to admit, I never thought I’d see this day in my lifetime,” the former President said. “When you leave office with the nation in smoldering ruins, you sort of come to accept that you’re gonna be worst for a long, long time.”
“I guess you could say I set the bar kind of high, worst-wise,” he chuckled.
As the returns came in on Election Night, however, the former President suddenly realized that his days as the worst President in U.S. history might be coming to an abrupt end.
“Holy cow,” Bush remembered saying to himself. “Just holy cow.”
While Bush recognizes that many Americans are dreading Friday’s Inauguration, he said he hoped that they could “sort of understand” why he might see things differently.
“To be honest, Friday can’t come fast enough for me,” he said. “I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas.”
www.borowitzreport.com
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