The US Capitol permits each state in the Union to place two statues honouring notable figures in a state's history on permanent display as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. Today, California replaced one of its statues, honouring the Rev. Thomas Starr King, with a 7-foot tall figure of Ronald Reagan.
Who was the Rev. Thomas Starr King?
The Rev. King was a Unitarian minister, an ardent supporter of the United States Sanitary Commission - now the Red Cross - and the man credited by Abraham Lincoln with "saving the Union" by convincing Californians, through oratory, not to secede as a separate republic during the American Civil War. The Rev. King has two mountains, two San Francisco streets, a middle school and a Unitarian theological seminary named after him.
I'll leave you to judge for yourself as to which is more deserving.
03 June 2009
Golden State
14 April 2009
Incomprehensible
Across Canada, six federal prisons operate functioning farms. About 300 inmates take part, doing everything from milking cows to fixing equipment to producing food that’s fed to fellow offenders. This summer could be their last harvest: the government recently announced that Canada’s prison farms will be shut down over the next two years. “We determined very few ex-inmates were obtaining work in agriculture,” says Christa McGregor of the Correctional Service of Canada, adding that the CSC spends about $4 million annually on the program.Idiocy. Unmitigaged, ideological idiocy. Is anybody "obtaining work in agriculture"? Is that really the point? Is farming given so little respect by an ostensibly rural-friendly Conservative government that the skills and work ethic taught through working the land are not considered transferable?
This news is offensive in the worst way. The actions of the current government reach new heights of appaling, self-serving and short-sighted destructiveness on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, our putative PM-in-waiting is busy complimenting an erstwhile one - and it's not Trudeau.
31 July 2008
Klassic Komedy Kuote II (Or, funny...but really...not funny at all)
“It’s not something that happens regularly on a bus"
-RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Colwell, reassuring the public after a teenager was decapitated on a Manitoba Greyhound for no particular reason
08 March 2008
Sweet Land of Bigotry...
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa 5th) indulges in a great American pasttime:
Transcript (hat tip - Crooks and Liars): I don’t want to disparage anyone because of their, their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father, father might have been.
I’ll just say this that when you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States — and I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?
And I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the, the radical Islamists, the, the al-Qaida, and the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11...
It does matter, his middle name does matter. It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world, it has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict.
So there are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he’s taken. If he were strong on national defense and said ‘I’m going to go over there and we’re going to fight and we’re going to win, we’ll come home with a victory,’ that’s different. But that’s not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he’s elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror.
