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‘U.S.A! U.S.A!’ George Washington dunking on Kim Jong-un. Because America!!!
03.19.2014
05:36 pm
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George Washington dunks on Kim Jong-un
 
A few weeks ago, Redditor fact_school_cat called for an ass-kicking bit of counterfactual patriotic sports propaganda:
 

There is not nearly enough art depicting our country’s Founders playing basketball, a game which was not invented until 100 years after the final colony ratified the Constitution. I want this art…

I haven’t quite decided on content, but I’m thinking either a team of Founding Fathers versus international enemies (think Kim Jong Eun — a real basketball fan) or versus a team of my least favorite players (think Andray Blatche). The game should probably take place in Philadelphia’s basketball arena.

This is a strange but serious request.

 
Redditor I_may_be_Dead (Aaron Needham) has stepped up. That’s the painting he came up with. It’s the best thing I’ve seen in weeks.

I love the detail of Honest Abe Lincoln boxing out Uncle Joe Stalin in the background. You can reach Needham for further commissions at his website or at aaronm.needham@gmail.com.
 
via Deadspin

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘North Korea is Best Korea’: Timelapse video of Kim Jong Il tattoo
And now we have the website… Kim Jong-Un Looking At Things
‘Basketball Jones’: 1974 Cheech and Chong cartoon

Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.19.2014
05:36 pm
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George Washington signed the first health insurance mandate!
04.13.2012
02:44 pm
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Medical insurance mandates are nothing new, as Einer Elhauge, a professor at Harvard Law Schoo, explains at The New Republic:

In making the legal case against Obamacare’s individual mandate, challengers have argued that the framers of our Constitution would certainly have found such a measure to be unconstitutional. Nevermind that nothing in the text or history of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause indicates that Congress cannot mandate commercial purchases. The framers, challengers have claimed, thought a constitutional ban on purchase mandates was too “obvious” to mention. Their core basis for this claim is that purchase mandates are unprecedented, which they say would not be the case if it was understood this power existed.

But there’s a major problem with this line of argument: It just isn’t true. The founding fathers, it turns out, passed several mandates of their own. In 1790, the very first Congress—which incidentally included 20 framers—passed a law that included a mandate: namely, a requirement that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. This law was then signed by another framer: President George Washington. That’s right, the father of our country had no difficulty imposing a health insurance mandate.

Elhauge joined an amicus brief supporting the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. You can (and should) read his entire piece at TNR.

This brings to light some extraordinary “lost history” that the Reichwing needs to consider as they hone their threadbare, tissue-thin arguments to deny healthcare to their fellow man…

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.13.2012
02:44 pm
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Huey Newton compels William F. Buckley to side with George Washington, 1973

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Huey Percey Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, would be 68 years old if he hadn’t been shot in Oakland on this day in 1989 by Tyrone “Double R” Robinson, an alleged member of George Jackson’s Marxist prison gang The Black Guerilla Family.

Here he is engaging William F. Buckley on his show Firing Line in a preliminary thought-game before getting deep into the kind of civil dialogue on political theory that’s absolutely impossible to find on television today.
 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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08.23.2010
02:01 am
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Bigotry gets no sanction from the Founding Fathers: What George Washington said on this day in 1790

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Like many of you, I am sick to death of watching ill-educated and misinformed Tea party-types attempting to hijack the notion of “what our Founding Fathers would have wanted” in favor of what they and their ignorant brethren actually want. Whenever someone pulls out the “Founding Fathers” card these days, I recoil immediately because I know I am dealing with an intellectually dishonest scoundrel from the get-go, as this is usually an admission that what they have to say is totally bogus and very often has next to nothing to do with actual history. Referring to what the Founding Fathers would have wanted has become a fall-back straw-man argument of the historically-challenged Glen Beck set and it’s being rendered meaningless the more and more often it gets repeated by ignorant people wanting to shoot their mouths off on TV and at Tea party rallies regarding issues they know nothing about.

While we can’t know exactly what the Founding Fathers would say about the racists on the radical right who are protesting the plans for the Cordoba House in downtown Manhattan, we can read what George Washington himself said about religious freedom on this very in history, August 18th, 1790, in his letter to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island:

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Not very ambiguous is it? Even something like the above would probably still fail to faze the Facts? Who Cares About Facts? brigade of the Republican party. If you are going to invoke the matter of what the Founding Fathers would have wanted, you simply can’t pick and choose from history willy-nilly to suit your argument and be considered credible. But whether they are misinformed or simply lying, however you slice it, when these folks start to evoke what they Founding Fathers would have wanted, they are almost always just plain wrong.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.18.2010
02:21 pm
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