-By John Sexton of Verum Serum
When I caught the President talking about President Lincoln’s “intercontinental railroad” in an interview he gave in February, I thought it was just an off-the-cuff gaffe. But it turns out his former chief political adviser made the same mistake just this weekend at the Aspen Ideas Festival (full video here):
It’s not surprising that both men would occasionally misspeak. It is surprising that both would use the same example, i.e. Lincoln’s “intercontinental railroad” as an example of big government stimulus spending, and make the same verbal gaffe while doing so.
You have to wonder if both the President and Axelrod got the same talking points memo from someone at the Center for American Progress or another friendly progressive think tank. And assuming they did get the handy political illustration from a common source, you have to wonder why neither of them caught the error (replacing transcontinental with intercontinental).
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David Axelrod Agrees: Lincoln Built an ‘Intercontinental Railroad’”
In keeping with the many dozens of gaffes that Obama has made over the years, Verum Serum 
The Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum has a troubled little mind. He seems to be an excitable sort, too. I say this because during this 150th anniversary of the American Civil War he strangely sees evil Confederate, German, Nazi, racists at Civil War events. He might want to see a therapist about this. Either that or he’s just another left-wing writer that is striving so hard to find something, anything, to write about that he’s put aside common sense and instead decided to illicitly impute any manner of absurd motivations to Germany’s Civil War reenactors. You know, because he wants to be considered the thoughtful type, because this sort of tripe is what passes for intellectualism in journalism.
Here we go again. This sort of nonsense that passes for journalism rehashing our history, and badly at that, always comes up when there’s some sort of anniversary in the offing. This time it is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War which gave Discovery News an excuse to 
The polls are now open all across this great land for what promises to be one of the most historic upsets in American electoral history. And you have a chance to be a part of it.
The United States of America used to be a fearsome power but one with a soft touch. Peoples of the world looked to this great nation as that “shining city on a hill” and came here by the millions to become the next new American citizen. Producing its greatness were great men and in memory of those great men landmarks, and worthy institutions were named after them by a proud and thankful people.
These last 20 or so years has seen a bifurcated treatment of Abraham Lincoln. There are the enthusiasts and hagiographers that still revere him as the best that America has to offer — the proverbial great emancipator, Father Abraham. Then there is a second stream, enthusiasts of another sort, viewing the Civil War president in the opposite manner. That second group are the Lincoln haters. Those such as Thomas DiLorenzo, the sort that calls Lincoln a criminal and despot, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., the sort that castigates Honest Abe as an unremitting racist, have been joined by a small group of Lincoln detractors trying to convince America that Lincoln is to be discounted, even hated by history.