Washington’s Teeth were wooden if wooden means pulled from a Slave’s mouth

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And what history is still taught today:

In 1780 a French dentist named Jean Pierre Le Moyer (also called Le Mayeaur, Le Mayeur, and Joseph Lemaire) came to America, possibly as a naval surgeon with the French forces commanded by the Comte de Rochambeau, and over the next decade treated patients in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Alexandria, and Richmond. […] Le Moyer first treated George Washington’s teeth at his military headquarters in 1783.

The following year, in May of 1784, Washington paid several unnamed “Negroes,” presumably Mount Vernon slaves, 122 shillings for nine teeth, slightly less than one-third the going rate advertised in the papers, “on acct. of the French Dentis [sic} Doctr. Lemay [sic],” almost certainly Le Moyer. Over the next four years, the dentist was a frequent and apparently favorite guest on the plantation. Whether the Mount Vernon slaves sold their teeth to the dentist for any patient who needed them or specifically for George Washington is unknown, although Washington’s payment suggests that they were for his own use. Washington probably underwent the transplant procedure–“I confess I have been staggered in my belief in the efficacy of transplantion,” he told Richard Varick, his friend and wartime clerk, in 1784–and thus it may well be that some of the human teeth implanted to improve his appearance, or used to manufacture his dentures, came from his own slaves.

via Special Video Reports – The Private Lives Of George Washington’s Slaves | Jefferson’s Blood | FRONTLINE | PBS

props to FranChescaleigh’s blog

Drug testing welfare applicants is bad policy

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Drug testing welfare applicants a big zero:

Drug testing welfare recipients is demonizing. Courts have ruled on numerous occasions that Republican efforts to make every applicant pee in a cup are unconstitutional. The laws that do go into effect only confirm what researchers already know: Welfare recipients are not rampant drug users, and most of those who do take drugs are not addicts.Those who do have substance abuse problems mostly drink alcohol.

Greece’s new response to austerity demands…

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Greece’s new response to austerity demands…

Syriza, in particular, has been outspoken about the need for Germany to atone for its past in Greece, or at least show a bit more leniency now as compensation. Tsipras has campaigned on the issue for more than a year, including in the build-up to Sunday’s election. “We are going to demand debt reduction, and the money Germany owes us from World War II, including reparations,” he said earlier this month.

A 2013 study carried out by the previous Greek government of defeated Prime Minister Antonis Samaras estimated that Germany owed Greece some $200 billion for damages incurred during the Nazi occupation, the cost of rebuilding destroyed infrastructure as well as loans Nazi authorities forced Greece to pay between 1942 and 1944.

via Greece’s new prime minister wants Germany to pay for Nazi war crimes – The Washington Post.