I had a cabbie in Wellington NZ tell me I couldn't ride in his cab unless I had voted for Obama.

That word doesn't mean what you think it means.

My dad was a KKK member, even took me to a Klan rally once, but I have NO TROUBLE WHATSOEVER in denouncing that shit.

I really love looking at pictures and videos of Obama with small children and babies. Both just light up.

I don't think people from MI can rightfully be called 'hillbillies', hills being pretty sparse in MI.

Custer has a statue in Monroe, MI.

Yeah, it was a sea of young white male faces, that's for sure.

And if that made any sense at all, I might respond.

Meh, that's what us Boomers said, and here we are.

Build one to my gg-grandfather, who lied his way out of the Confederate army, moved his family to Kentucky and joined the Union Army (changing races as he crossed the border).

Most of them are just mass produced generic statues anyway. There's very few that were actually modeled on the person they depict.

Yeah, the whole parole system broke down over that. In the early days of the war, prisoners were paroled and sent home with a pledge not to take up arms until they'd been 'exchanged' - on paper. Once that system fell apart over the South's intransigence over black troops, you got things like Andersonville.

Snort.

I've been to the Jefferson Davis Monument (my aunt lived in the town where it was).

The guy who was pretty much in charge of all the logistics for the March on Washington was gay. Gay marriage was not an issue in the '60s, I doubt it's anything MLK ever gave a thought to, but he did work with some and seemed to have no animus.

There was once a statue commemorating the black soldiers who won the battle of Milliken's Bend in Louisiana, but it was melted down for metal during WWII and never replaced. A fate shared by most monuments to those who fought for the Union.

The statues were mass-produced kitsch produced between 1920-1960. They don't belong anywhere - they're not relics or of historical interest in any way, shape or form.

He's got a vocabulary of about 250 words. He can manage 'The Cat in the Hat', but not much more.

On the way to Gettysburg, the Confederate army rounded up thousands of free blacks in Maryland to take back to the Confederacy to sell as slaves. They didn't see that as any different from stealing the enemy's horses or cannons.

Then why did you change?