Employment itself glares like an open wound upon the American corpus. First its limbs atrophied, then gangrene set in, and limbs had to be severed!
Now it's pretty much a case of rigor mortis. We as a nation are a body with one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel! Before I became an actor, singer, dancer, scenic designer, and finally a junior professor of theater, I became a bartender - knowing that people would always drink! Perhaps prostitution and embalming are the only other two secure as well as oldest professions.
But training costs money.
And if we don't spend it, and get discipline into our schools, we will be spoiling the proverbial child, while sparing the rod. Growing up in a traditional Italian-American home, a few slaps on the butt never hurt me!
Religion in our schools and creationism? Sorry, but that's got to take a back burner to reading, writing, arithmetic, and the arts which enrich all our lives.
How about if Wall Street and the Fed face up to reality, and CEOs stop taking exorbitant salaries and bonuses, especially from bail out money! The CEO of Bank of America has been good enough to lead the way and set an example in this respect, as he recently said in a "60 Minutes" interview. Those who don't follow suit will eventually, I hope, find themselves before an American firing squad.
Last words? Cigarette? Hell no!
So, I think to myself yet again: "It's the economy, stupid!" Do we really want the Chinese and Russians to own more of our country's businesses and debts?
"NO, Valadimir, nyet! So, stuff that in your furry, Russian hat and smoke it!"
As for the middle east,we've got to keep our hands on the pulse of Israel and all it's Arab neighbors. As JFK said, we should "never fear to negotiate, and never negotiate out of fear."
Iraq and Iran, plus Pakistan, Palestine, Afghanistan, Russia, and North Korea are situations begging for our consistently wise attention.
The war on terror's in itself pretty scary, and we all want Bin Laden hunted down. The only thing even slightly funny about him is that he needs a shave, a bath, and a haircut. But he can have that for the traditional 'two bits."
Follow that with the gallows, and now we're talking business!
Of course, as Calvin Coolidge said, "The business of America is business." Republicans have long ascribed to that, and with deregulation we've been led far astray on a primrose path, that emerged into a threatening jungle safari.
Teddy Roosevelt would tell us to pack a shotgun internationally, and to "talk softly,"but "carry a big stick" as well.
I found an old baseball bat recently, and, believe me, I'm yearning to use it to knock sense into the backward and hardheaded citizens and politicos among us.
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