[Consider this more as brainstorming/brain farts than anything well thought out - which places me in line with the President's cabinet]

I think we should make Wikileaks an official branch of the government with no cabinet representation - only a budget and a goal - "ferret out everything embarrassing and publish it in reasonable discreet chunks" - i.e. what they've been doing.

Task #1 - get us the meeting notes and emails on Libya

Doctrine 2, I think we need a market value on leaders past shelf-life: head of Libya, $1 billion (all that oil, all those memories); head of Ivory Coast? $50 million

We need some kind of "get out of jail free/new world purgatory" to deal with that pesky bit making amends for humanitarian atrocity on their way out - much harder to to get leaders to waltz off to prison even when bankrolled in millions.Maybe a few weeks in Antarctica doing KP and lugging observation equipment, or a special meeting with the Pope to receive absolvencies or something.

The point is, we're going to spend the money anyway. This way we save a bit, a lot less mess to clean up, can get back to our soap operas and football games and Daily Show.

Doctrine 3, Protesters and rebels and others in the opposition will need to submit dossiers - background info, ambitions, an essay on a) what they did on summer vacation or b) what they would do if presented the reins of a major world power with large caches of weapons and oil reserves or c) who special I know that should get me out of writing this garbage.

Special bonus marks for charity work, being vegetarian, hosting FIFA or the Olympics, high SATs or having a plan for peaceful transition. Having run a death squad or released Ebola for fun and profit is normally a disqualifier, but we're interested in hearing inspirational stories of drawing back from the abyss, so if you feel there's a heart warming story lurking in there, please feel free to take more pages.

Between the UN and EU and NATO, our holy triumverate, we need fast track status for processing applicants of need, while the rest will go through normal procedures and wait times. 

As part of fast track, we need to decide which types of special circumstance warrant express service: humanitarian crisis, friends with important people, truckloads of money to dispose of, vacation's coming up and gotta make plans.

While that seems a bit tongue in cheek, I think Canada for one allows rich people to skip to the head of the immigration line, and quite frankly they're going to do it anyhow, somehow, some way. This is just to acknowledge "can-do spirit" and note the bit of economic free-market attitude in every true democratic movement. (Versus socialists, for whom we'll assume that "equality for all" and "shared resources" means they haven't thought about it much - not a rejection, just a "do over - go back and figure out what the guards and the UN leaders' kids are going to live on if you try it this way".) Doha and Davos peace conventions don't come cheap - time people understand the mechanisms of funding, how the world works. (murmur murmer, bloody hippies)

The primary purpose of this exercise is to skip the wearisome rebel/bomb/overthrow/re-corrupt/stagnate rinse cycle we seem to be stuck with. (Like our friends who always choose the worst possible dates/partners available, and then complain "there are just no good single prospects out there" while we mentally adopt the "Luser" sign).

I admire America's ambitions - taking over the world's oil reserves and blowing the lot on vacations in the Seychelles or yachts in the Bahamas or just badly fitting suits and tacky homes in uninteresting places is certainly forward thinking. But somewhere in the middle of this wishful thinking, they forget that invasions have costs, and by the time we've gathered all the materials and work crews and support staff to make it happen, well, we're already in the red.

America doesn't know how to budget. Internally, externally, not for anything. Of course if you have a huge ATM that you can just go to when you have your next coke frenzy hit and need a truckload of blow, that all works fine, but most trust funds/credit lines are limited. Or at least it's nice to tell the trust managers to sell another factory or resort, tell the mint workers to print up another trillion so the Republicans/tea baggers can hyper-ventilate for the cameras while their arms contractors line up outside their doors.

So anyway, here's a box to fill in your own Hints for Heloise - how to run the next revolution. Special points for using something next generation internetish (2.0, smart grids, nanotech, convergedhypersocialaugmentedinductiveontologicalmindsharing....)

Remember who your audience is: easy-to-follow instructions are light years ahead of hard-to-understand recipes with ingredients not commonly stocked that have to be ordered or specially prepared.

While fruit cocktail is fine as an easy after-dinner treat, we'll be feeding a world of 7 billion - main course is required. Not everyone will be inspired by seaweed casserolle without a good deal of preparation, and there's only so many times you can offer hamburger helper before you inspire another revolt. (speaking of which, regional dietary considerations have to be accounted for, and leaving the house smelling of fried fish for weeks after is also unacceptable, no matter what your GOP/libertarian buddy says).

Oh, and bonus points if you can find a creative way of addressing the difference between oil-holding and non-oil-holding states besides bland puffy overused phrases like "strategic interests". "Them's the breaks", "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em", and other blithe ways of dismissing the interests of several billion people in one swell foop are all appreciated. A sense of irony and self-deprecation goes far.

Go get 'em, dagblog tigers!

Your brain fart here ----->