You know, if he *really* wanted to teach history, that news segment that showed him visiting the former slave holding area would have pointed out that the slaves held there were captured not by white men, but by Arabs and Africans who held them to sell to others. The white man didn't cruise by, land on some beach and chase the soon to be slaves around and snag them. They BOUGHT them from others of their own kind. Reparations? Sure, Barry. Make sure those in Ghana pay you all well. And make darn sure that YOUR own lineage doesn't include the sellers, or you're out a bucketful.

As to slavery of other races, it's well documented that somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty five thousand WHITE sailors were taken captive along the African coast when their ships became stranded.

Reparations? Pony up, Barry Boy.

You can make my check payable directly to me.

Forty acres, a government mule, and you out of my life would be even better than cash.

mpg8, I think I would begrudge it even under the best of national financial circumstances. A trip abroad now and again with the resulting huge sums spent on extra security for his family as well as himself? Sure. This constant globe trotting, creating a bigger "carbon footprint" in a single day than most of our entire families will create in their entire lifetimes, telling the American people "that we might not get to drive the cars we want, or eat as much food as we want, etc., etc." all the while murmuring "let them eat cake."

The current resident of the White House plain sickens me with his hypocrisy, his deceit, his arrogance.... this is a list that could go on for days. I find his wife and cronies no better in any regard.

I surely would like to be able to afford to spend $24,000.00 in order to take my oh so deserving wife out for a date... but as dear as she is to me, I'd be rolled in poo and dipped in peanuts before I'd take YOUR money to do so. Of course, the reported $24,000.00 was only the TIP of that iceberg, as we all know that the costs of extra security, traffic jams from blocked streets, etc., etc., ad nauseum were MUCH higher than that.

Hypocrisy. I'd say that nail was most soundly pounded by you square on the head.

Yep. From what I just heard, down to his pre-post first one hundred day Obasm from the fawning press. From day one, he committed to a steady decline, dropping thirteen percentage points in just three short months. The "major networks" go to work, and those numbers come back up to entry level numbers after day one hundred. He's right back where he was before the Obasm began now, and I don't think that his handling of Korea or Iran or any of his domestic issues are going to allow him to go anywhere but down. Mark it down, a new wave (tsunami rather than his usual "just flood them" wave of "Blame W." is coming. So far, it's his only known defense.

Just wait until he gets his way on health care, and the elderly folks see how their lives hold about as much import to him as the life of an unborn baby, and I predict not only a crash in numbers, but perhaps even lower approval ratings than W. himself had.

I not only thing that Gerald Walpin should still be working, I think he should be given direct supervisory capacity over Obama himself.

As to Robert Gibbs - PLEASE don't fire him. There are some days I would get no laugh at all if it weren't for him bumbling around trying to find his own arse with both hands!

If I could march with you, I would, mslisaintexas. Unfortunately, three heart attacks, congestive heart failure and cardiac asthma has made a walk to the mailbox a long hike. I can really appreciate BillHiggin's post. I had my first heart attack on Thursday afternoon at 4:30. Good Friday was a holiday, and on Monday, I was back at my post. Total missed time: thirty minutes. Next I managed to break my elbow while working, got it x-rayed, they said bad sprain, put it in a sling and don't use it for a few weeks. No way I could do my job that way, so I just went back to my regularly scheduled lifting and pushing and shoving. They called back the next week and told my supervisor that I was not to be using that arm, as they had misread the x-ray and it was indeed broken. It took me two years of climbing up and down the back steps to my deck carrying a five gallon bucket full of water to be able to straighten that arm out again. My second heart attack was a doozie. There was nothing they could do for me at our regional hospital, and called in the Life Lift not expecting me to be alive when it got there. After surgery and recovery and finally regaining some reasonable semblence of conciousness five days later, I remarked to the cardiologist that it felt as if my heart had kept stopping while enroute to the major hospital an hour and a half away. His reply was that it had indeed stopped beating. Eight times. I spent the first two weeks dragging myself out to polish my motorcycles while sitting beside them leaned up against them, napping, waking, polishing, napping. Then two more weeks of what was supposed to be a twelve week rehab program. That was enough of that, and I just HAD to get back to work. The third heart attack occurred in my doctor's office - who by this time was absolutely FURIOUS at me for not taking disability. It was at this point I knew beyond doubt that I really had no choice in the matter. In the two years I was going through all of this, I spent a total of 27 weeks out of 24 months in the hospital. There was no way in fairness to the company I worked for for me to continue this, and sooner or later they would have either had to address it or toss some dirt over me. The above is just to say I loved my work. I wanted nothing more than to work until they literally carried me out. However, the pain from a massive coronary is something that has a way of making you want it to not happen again.

Do I feel ashamed of taking SSDI? Yes. Even though I paid in from the time I was sixteen on, and even though I paid in at near maximum contributory levels for most of my later working life, I hate it. So I really can relate to Bill's plight.

I also recently woke up to why they have been lumping SSDI and SS retirement benefits under the "entitlement" umbrella. While they are NOT "entitlements" like welfare, food stamps and Medicaid, by placing them in that catagory they open the door to means testing (own a home? Too bad. Own a car? Too bad). They want to create yet another class who feels beholden to them.

You've just hit on one of the biggest statements from The Anointed One that I've heard him make. (And brother, I've heard him make plenty). Imagine if you will, an army recruited by Acorn. The same Black Panther types who so glibly stood outside a Philadelphia voting precent brandishing deadly weapons and shouting racial slurs and intimidating voters. All with the full understanding there was no price to be paid for this kind of activity. Now imagine an army of that sort armed and equipped "as well as or better than" our own military.

Our biggest hope is that they show all the discipline most thugs are known for and mistakenly hold their weapons like Black and Decker drills while forgetting what it's like to be "reached out and touched" from six hundred yards away.

ALL my collection consists of "one shot, job done, move on" firearms. As for ammo, if they can't stem the flow of illegal narcotics, or illegal aliens, or illegal anything that anyone might want to buy, they aren't likely to stem the flow of "illegal" ammo.

As to gunpowder, a fifty five gallon drum of cow manure left with the lid off and a spigot on the bottom will net you saltpeter, finding a mound of sulphur near a railroad yard isn't too difficult, and willow trees to make charcoal out of aren't all that rare. With these in hand, the old smokepole will do an admirable one shot job. You just have to pick out your targets alone and then take THEIR Government issued ammo.

Not saying it's coming to that. Definitely not saying I ever *want* it to come to that, but it is what it is.

Hmmm... trying to get out of China by training at a terrorist facility? Odd way to immigrate, I must say.

Not only pooping, but the fishie equivelant of "bumping uglies".

Most simple plan? Have everyone in the US buy a *real* made in the USA truck, attach cattle slats to the bed, rent a cow from a rancher, run a tube up it's moo-hole and into the gas tank. Burn the methane, convert it to something less hazardous than the old batteries from the Priuses, and solve all the problems at one fell swoop. Puts Americans back to work building trucks, removes our dependance of foreign oil, gives ranchers a steady income so that milk subsidies can end, and gives otherwise underpriviledged cows a chance to see the world.

Makes more sense than most of the bull feathers I see flying around from the left.