US Bank Building in Los Angeles

US US Bank Bldg from 5th and Figueroa Street — US Bank Bldg from 5th and Figueroa Street

Standing 72 stories on Bunker Hill, the building holds a prominent position in business and in popular culture. It has appeared in numerous movies and even been fictionally destroyed for dramatic effect in such films as “Independence Day,” which saw aliens blow up the tower as they began their invasion of Earth.

The building was the tallest west of the Mississippi River until another building the Wilshire Grand Center competed on June 23, 2017 opened with one more floor.

Still, going to the top of the US Bank Building is fun to do and besides the views there is a glass slide from the 70th floor to the 69th floor that is mounted to the outside.

The views from the those two floors are spectacular.

City at sundown (Photo taken by a friend)

Westin Bonaventure Hotel (numbers indicate the weight the roof will support in thousands of pounds)

Hollywood sign and Griffith Park Observatory in the distance

Snowcapped Mount Gorgonio and Mount Baldy.

A wave building on Oahu’s North Shore, Hawaii

This photo was on my computer when I restarted the processor.

The North Shore on Oahu is a great place for photographers to capture vivid images of the Pacific in motion, as the beach’s legendary monster waves rise up before breaking on the beach. This long-exposure photograph, shot early in the morning, shows off the power and motion of the water as it rises to form a curled wave. These waves make the North Shore one of Hawaii’s prime surfing destinations. When his ship, the HMS Discovery, was navigating the South Pacific in 1778, British explorer Captain James Cook noted the locals out in the waves riding on boards. Surfboards date back to at least 500 CE and possibly much further back in history.

The first topless Sports Illustrated cover

Enough with the politics!

This is way more fun!

This was the month that Sports Illustrated always published their swimsuit edition. They aren’t doing it. They say maybe in May.

Model Veronica Varekova autographs copies of the 2004 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue. | Scott Eells/Getty Images

The problem: the lack of swimwear in a swimsuit-focused magazine

The Czech model has participated in eight SI Swimsuit issues, but her most controversial was 2004’s topless cover image. The shoot, which took place in Montauk, New York, features Veronica Varekova holding her swimsuit top rather than wearing it — and people freaked out. Many wondered if the Swimsuit issue even needed swimsuits anymore.

Declaring a National Emergency should freak out (frighten) most Americans

Once again the U.S. government is faced with a possible shutdown that will impact about 800,000 workers. Its cause is the same as the last shutdown. President Donald Trump wants $5.7 billion dollars to build a border wall and congress is only willing to allocate $1.3 billion dollars.

To avoid another shutdown Trump will sign the law and then he could obtain the balance of the money by declaring a National Emergency that would give him the power to take the additional funds from any other funded project or any department. And he has the authority to do that.

So what’s wrong with this scenario?

What we have here would be the overturning of a constitutional requirement that all funding must be made by the congress.

Texas Republican senator John Cornyn summed up the problem succinctly when he said to CNN on February 4, “The whole idea that presidents — whether it’s President Trump, President Warren or President Sanders — can declare an emergency and somehow usurp the separation of powers and get into the business of appropriating money for specific projects without Congress being involved, is a serious constitutional question.”

I can imagine the congressional response to Trump usurping congressional authority would be taking the question to the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court supported Trump, you can kiss the Republic of the United States goodbye.

We will be left with a dictatorship.

Five takeaways from Trump’s State of the Union address

The speech was not inspiring. It felt like Donald Trump was reading from a shopping list.

Trump ignored the issue of dealing with DACA and deaths caused by repeated use of weapons by the hate filled and deranged people that have committed repeated killings. Even in his honoring those who stopped the killing at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh shooting but not a word about stopping the killing committed by the use of guns. Gun violence is a national emergency.

1. A discordant call for unity

“We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution — and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good.”

Starting with Donald Trump’s attacks and name calling suddenly he started his speech with conciliatory words that were nowhere to be found since he began his candidacy for the office of president. Who did he think he was talking to? Does he really believe one speech will change Democrat perception of him as a bully who only wants his own way?

2. A call for a wall, but no demand

“It will be deployed in the areas identified by border agents as having the greatest need, and as these agents will tell you, where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down.”

Could Donald Trump be backing down just a little? These word along with his recent statements that the wall is already partially built and more has already been approved may be a signal that a wall from sea to shining sea is something he understands he will never achieve. And there wasn’t a word about declaring a national emergency.

3. A double-down on withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria

No adamant insistence that there immediate withdrawal of all troops by a date certain but he is determined to bring all troops out of those countries very soon. Maybe James Mattis’ resignation did send a message along with words from some Republican lawmakers did have an effect.

4. Areas for compromise?

Infrastructure repairs and prescription drug cost controls are areas where there could be compromise if both parties are really serious.

5. The shocker

Congress should pass a law denying pregnant woman the right to a late term abortion said the president. No one wants an abortion. The decision to abort is horrible. Should those decisions be controlled by a law or by what would be best for mother and child? Happily as Trump pointed out there are more woman in Congress than ever before. They were mostly wearing white outfits and mostly Democrats This proposal made his base happy but happily it’s dead on arrival.

Robots are coming. A quarter US workers at risk!

As reported in USA Today one man is sitting “alone atop a tractor with a specialized mechanical attachment” that now performs the work of 30 people.

The Los Angeles Daily News reported “Members of the longshoremen and warehouse workers union picketed outside a meeting of the L.A. Board of Harbor Commissioners Thursday morning, Jan. 24, protesting the approval of a permit that will allow a major terminal operator to increase automation at the Port of Los Angeles.”

According to a new Brookings Institution report one fourth of all jobs in this country are at risk due to automation.

Without a job what will those people who lack the capacity to learn complex job functions do? This will most likely be a world wide problem. We as a nation will not let them starve. Most likely more people will be on a welfare program.

This won’t happen in 2019 but the structure of our society will be changing before this century is over.

There is no “Art of the Deal”

Donald Trump lost for the second time in less than a week. He is not a happy camper. First he had to postpone his State of the Union speech and now he has agreed to the Democratic Party proposal to open the government. Let’s be clear. What Trump has agreed to today was a proposal put forth by Democrats even before the shutdown had started.

After a 35 day shutdown caused by President Donald Trump refusing to sign a law funding the government, he agreed to funding for three weeks while there are negotiations on border security.

So the reality is the president caved into reality. That reality is government workers can’t pay their bills, flight delays are impacting businesses, IRS and other departments are impacted by furloughs.

What hurt Trump even more is he looks weak against a woman.

Is Trump prepared to make a deal on border security? I would suggest he read the book “Art of the Deal.” Oh wait Trump wrote that book. Too bad he never read it.

Trump sees the wall as a monument to himself

This analysis of Donald Trump and his obsession with building a wall along America’s southern border is worth your consideration.

Analysis by Gloria Borger, CNN Chief Political Analyst

Updated 12:27 PM ET, Tue January 22, 2019

(CNN)One thing about Donald Trump: He knows how to tell you what he’s really thinking.

About the wall, for instance.

Consider this from Trump during the campaign in 2015, explaining the rationale for his favorite edifice:

“What I do best in life, I build. … I want it to be so beautiful because maybe someday they’ll call it ‘The Trump Wall.’ Maybe. If they call this ‘The Trump Wall,’ it has to be beautiful.”

There you go. The wall, for the President, is a monument. To himself. A visible legacy of his achievement; an example of what he considers himself best at: building and branding. It’s not like tax reform or trade policy. It’s actually concrete (or slats) and there for all the world to see as a Trump achievement. Even when he leaves the Oval Office. And way beyond.

If he could put his name on it in gold filigree, he would. But maybe calling it The Trump Wall is good enough.

This is not new for Donald Trump. His life has always been about the theatrical product. “It’s like the curtains opening at an opera,” says biographer Michael D’Antonio. “It’s like a piece of scenery for his show.”

Indeed. And as Trump produces this scene, his concern for the hundreds of thousands of furloughed government workers is lost, taking a back seat to his star, the wall. Kind of like Atlantic City 30 years ago when he was building other monuments to himself, inconspicuously named The Taj Mahal, for instance. The gilded splendor marketed as Trump mattered the most; paying the contractors what they were owed took a back seat. Always.

And so now he has boxed himself in. He truly believes the artifice he has constructed about both his great ability to build and his prowess at negotiating for permission to build. He did it in real estate, he tells us, and he was brilliant, or so he claims.

But now his monument is caught between his own grand vision and Democratic priorities for immigration reform, not to mention his party’s far right. Trump probably longs for the good old days, when he could — and would — say just about anything in a room to test a real estate deal, especially since his company was not publicly held. Exaggeration was king, a perfect fit for Trump. Alan Pomerantz, who represented a group of Trump’s creditors in the early 1990s, calls it “puffing.” Trump probably perfected the art of the hype.

Problem is, negotiating with Congress isn’t like doing a real estate deal. In real estate, you can walk out of a room, as Trump did many times. But when he tried it with Chuck and Nancy it didn’t work. In fact, it backfired.

So now, Trump is left with the ideal of a shrine to himself, but no deal. Concrete or slats, who cares? Furloughed workers in distress, never mind.

So long as the monument can be built, standing for future generations to be reminded of the President of the United States, the Master Builder.