America is not doing well and I have a PLAN. Look, guys and gals, (guys must always come first, this is America, after all), we are behind or losing in so many areas. Iraq is lost, just like Vietnam, Lebanon, and Somalia. We did whip Grenada and Nicaragua and that is something to be proud of, in fact, just the other day I told my 10 years old son "when you walk the street you never need to fear a Grenadan or Nicaraguan again. We won 'em".
I have read that I, as an immigrant, can never be president. Well, I reckon that is OK since I will never achieve the magnificence of address of President Lincoln or match the mellifluous eloquence of President Bush. But I do have a PLAN.
But before I present my PLAN I need to give some background. A WHO (World Health Organization) survey of the health systems of 150 plus countries placed the USA as 37th, just ahead of Costa Rice. I mean, that is pretty bad - who knows where Costa Rice is, anyway? Talking of geography, which is mainly about where countries are not, a National Geographic survey of young adults in nine countries had America behind Canada and all the participating West European countries in geographic knowledge. We did beat Mexico, which, I guess, spends about 10% of the money in educating each kid that the US does. No matter, who needs to know where Costa Rice is anyway (BTW is Condaleeza a Costa Ricean?). Anyway, I digress. Back to my PLAN, guaranteed, yes sir, 100% guaranteed to make America number one, again (well, 99% anyway). But one last statistic. We were 53rd on a international journalists survey on press freedom and journalistic standards. Now, don't that make you so, so proud?
So I looked at the problem and then realized that since the US has the greatest disparity of incomes in the developed world it was all those poor people, ethnic minorities, country hicks, and immigrants like I that pull us down. I mean they don't get the helth ensurance or the edumacation of the likes of you and, well, not me. And press freedom? Well, I was once in North Dakota during a summer heatwave and the headline of the main paper in the state was "Cows can stand the heat". I mean, what do North Dakotans need to know about Costa Rice?
A great man, not an American unfortunately (Disraeli, supposedly), once said there are "lies, damned lies, and statistics" by which he meant, I reckon, that statistics were neither lies or damn lies so must be the truth. So I get to my PLAN. We change the definitions of health, welfare, education,economic, and social surveys to exclude EVERYTHING, and I mean, everything below the mean. So, for example, in the real world if we are looking at income per capita, we are number one, well, number two, actually, behind Luxembourg. Is Luxembourg near Costa Rice? And, tell me, does a North Dakotan need to know ANYTHING about Luxembourg? Can we bomb them back to the stone age? Well, I did read that Michael Ledeen, that expert on foreign policy, favored, every few years, taking a small nation and bashing it against a brick wall to show the world who really is boss. Luxembourg, here we come. Anyway, I digress. Back to my PLAN.
So, on health statistics, we exclude the lower half i.e. all those without insurance plans or pretty feeble insurance plans and compare those with decent plans to those socialistic West Europeans and we're number one again. On journalism we exclude trash papers like that North Dakotan cowsheet and the Wall Street Journal, and hey, we beat them so damn superior Brits. On geographical knowledge we exclude all those without college degrees (or those from Yale, since President Bush came form there and, geographically, he knows nuffin from nuffin. I bet he doesn't even know if Condaleeza is from Costa Rice). Bingo, number one again. On income per capita, we can exclude the rural poor (cow people, you know), urban poor, blacks, Hispanics (other than those super-patriotic Miami Cubans) and we don't even need to bomb Luxembourg (or find it on the map next to Costa Rice - I looked and it ain't there: can someone find Luxembourg for me?).
Back to my PLAN. Take prison population, for example. We are number one in percentage of people in jail in this country, but that is not something to be, well, that proud of. So exclude the poor half of the population and the jails empty, and the only ones remaining are those at Guantanamo, Karl Rove, and Gonzales (if only!!!!). And, shucks, I will admit that my PLAN is not entirely new. Our unemployment statistics are meaningless in measuring real unemployment since a third of those unemployed are not counted and many underemployed are counted. But my PLAN moves it all to a new level of sophistication.
Here's how. We get a bunch of those leftist Professors of Statistics (do I capitalize the Pees and aSSes?, I'm an immigrant, remember), give them $300,000 a year to work for the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, Department of Labor, Wall Street Journal and other such professional liars and have them cook all the statistics according to my PLAN and America, my adopted country, will be number one again.
I did say that I was 99% sure it would work. Well, in the unlikely event that it does not, then I have PLAN TWO. Since we are number one in military power (more than the rest of the world combined, I believe) let's just eliminate every other country: conquer, annex, bomb them back to the stone age, or Iraqify them and, presto, number one again. I mean we must be ahead of Iraq on EVERYTHING by now.
I most sincerely apologize for my use of the beautiful American language. As I have already remaked, I am an immigrant, can never be a president of the calibre of President George W Bush, and American is not my native language. I come from a country that you can find on a globe (you know, one of those geographical thing-a-ma-jigs that looks a bit like a basketball with pritty colors on it). My country is just a few inches to the right of New York, a country called Englund.
