Nigerian "Friends" say, "Everything is all Right!" and my Proposals for America

I don't know who they are and who is the funding behind them but this group ran a full page ad in todays New York Times with the overall message that everything is all right in Nigeria. That is almost as funny as me saying that everything is all right in America, no problem, don't worry, be happy. Stick your head in the sand people and pretty soon you cannot breath.

The April 3 Edition of Newsweek has a very informative article on Africa and some of the challenges the countries face. I want to send all of us Americans there for a month each. Yeah brother, maybe change would happen.

My Proposals for America
My proposal, as the want-to-be leader of America, is that each American child in High-School automatically spend one year abroad living with a family in another country. It would NOT be a European country with a high standard of living. The host family would send their child - an exchange program - but mandatory. It would be fun to send all the Southerners straight into the Blackest parts of the human world . . . Africa, the South Pacific, South America. White with Blacks, Blacks with whites - you get the idea and you must spend a year abroad to graduate.

My next proposal is that each family in America only be allowed to own a maximum of two cars per household. I predict the automobile companies would assasinate me as soon as possible. There goes the economy stupid! Nonetheless, we must move away from automobiles and an oil-based economy. It is too late, but what the hell! In the long run though, perhaps it is better to encourage mass consumption even more as as to enhance, encourage and facilitate the seeds of our destruction - not only of our economy but the ecosystem?

Another proposal is universal health care for everyone living in America. Smoking would be outlawed and the tobacco companies shut down and thier leaders locked up and forced to work in the oncology wards with smokers as thier only patients. People who smoke, drink to excess and otherwise abuse themselves would be penalized (how I have no idea). We already have universal health care - it is called the Emergency Room (and people wonder why it is so expensive?!).

It is two a.m. here in Northern California and I have mouthed off less intelligently than I have planned - as usual. Still, my timing on Nigeria was not bad this time. My proposals for America are partly driven by my unending ability to rant and rave ad nauseum about the State of America and our leaders. All too easy to do and remain a hypocrit as one of my only readers pointed out. So I thought it would be good to put some of my extremist views out on the chopping block - views better suited to be enacted by a dictator perhaps, but my proposals still. A dictator because the American people would never give into them - they prize their individual freedom to such a great extent they cannot see it is taking this country to a place of no retreat, hope or redemption.

I may have some interesting ideas but at least I won't bankrupt America and turn it into a police state with a populace convinced they are under siege and living in a constant state of fear, mistrust and hatred of the 'outsider'.

Thanks for reading and remember to ask yourself this . . . .

what the hell are YOU doing for your world, neighbor and fellow human being?

I like to THINK I do good but sometimes it may be as simple as helping people that don't want help. In the final analysis, I am just as irrlevant (I absolutely LOVE that word) as the next person.