Robert E. Lee Was No Hero
Robert E. Lee
Richard Cohen takes a hatchet to the reputation of southern general Robert E. Lee in an opinion piece in the Washington Post:
It has taken a while, but it’s about time Robert E. Lee lost the Civil War. The South, of course, was defeated on the battlefield in 1865, yet the Lee legend — swaddled in myth, kitsch and racism — has endured even past the civil rights era when it became both urgent and right to finally tell the “Lost Cause” to get lost.
Now it should be Lee’s turn. He was loyal to slavery and disloyal to his country — not worthy, even he might now admit, of the honors accorded him.
I confess to always being puzzled by the cult of Lee. Whatever his personal or military virtues, he offered himself and his sword to the cause of slavery. He owned slaves himself and fought tenaciously in the…
Dog Eats Sleeping Owner’s Right Foot, Saving Him
An inspiring case of everyday-life heroism, as an Oregon man awoke to find that his likely-gangrenous foot had been gnawed off and consumed by his pet dog — there have been reported similar cases in the past. Via the Huffington Post:
A diabetic Oregon man with no feeling in his feet woke up to find his dog had eaten part of his right foot, including three toes.
The man told emergency responders that he fell asleep on his couch and woke up to find pieces of his foot missing.
Roseburg veterinarian Alan Ross says that the dog may have been trying to rid his owner of dead tissue, and says he may have been attracted to the foot if it were infected or gangrenous.
George Washington Embezzled Government Funds
The following is another chapter from my disinformation book, 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Volume 2, published in 2004. For more on me go to The Memory Hole or follow me @RussKick on Twitter.
We typically imagine George Washington to be as pure as driven snow, a demigod who won the Revolutionary War, then assumed the mantle of President to flawlessly lead a fledgling country.
The reality is vastly different. Besides being borderline incompetent on the battlefield (during the first four years of the Revolution, he lost every major engagement), the man who could not tell a lie started the tradition of presidential corruption.
The whistle was blown by the Clerk of Congress — writing under the nom de plume “A Calm Observer” — in the Philadelphia Aurora, a muckraking anti-federalist newspaper founded, edited, and published by Benjamin Franklin’s grandson. In 1795, the Aurora published the Clerk’s detailed breakdown of how much loot Washington had taken from…
A Demographic Explanation of Why America May Never Be Great Again
Saturn Devouring His Son (de Goya).
Populist Dissatisfaction with Economy Hands Senate Seat to Millionaire Dilettante
Around 11:00 p.m. CNN called the U.S. senate race in Wisconsin for Tea Party favorite Ron Johnson, finally ending a nail-biter that saw incumbent Democrat Russ Feingold projected at within one half of one percentage point of Johnson shortly before polls closed at 8:00 p.m. local time.
During that three-hour window of opportunity we held a breathless deathgrip around that slender hope over at one of Russ’s suburban canvassing centers.
The crew had literally worked their asses off for Russ — at 17 calories per minute, our 12-hour shifts of non-stop door-to-door troop rallying, we’d shed about a pound each day.
I figure that I alone must have knocked on over a thousand doors during this election cycle, reminding folks not only of what Russ has done for Wisconsin, but what Johnson’s Tea Party threatened to do to it, and…
Here’s a True “Profile in Courage”: Richard Tillman Speaks Out on His Brother, Pat Tillman’s, Death
Here is a man who I say deserves a true Profile in Courage Award.
Bill Maher interviews Richard Tillman, brother of Pat Tillman, on the recent Real Time.
Any person, dealing with grief over their sibling’s death, that manages to stand up for what their lost loved one truly believed in light of a media circus, is A-OK in my book.
This is speaking “Truth to Power” in its finest sense. Anyone willing to call out these opportunistic politicians who showed up at this brother’s funeral, and co-opt what he (Pat Tillman) believe against their own self-interest…
I agree with Bill Maher. I’d be happy to share a beer with Richard Tillman any day of the week…
