In a speech to the United Nations yesterday, President Obama said he's decided America should change its strategy when it comes to helping poor countries around the world. Instead of simply throwing food, money and medicine at them, we're going to help them develop their countries. In other words, we need the people in those countries to stop living off the dole, get jobs and start buying the crap we want to export to them so we can turn them into consumerist clones of ourselves. Oh, and it sure would be great to partner with other countries, especially stable ones we honed to suit our needs, in future wars.

Now, I'm all for teaching a man to fish. (You know the parable, right? Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life.) But instead of looking beyond our borders for poor people to aid, how about we start off by getting our own house in order first — before our citizens have to start reaching out to foreign countries for food, money and medicine?

Further reading: Poverty Spikes in the U.S. — CNN Money

Here's a two-year-old video from The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, an organization that seeks to help impoverished people person-to-person, featuring some of America's poor:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. She will be a guest on WFAE's "Charlotte Talks" program Sept. 23rd where she'll discuss coal ash. She'll also be live-Tweeting from TEDxCharlotte Sept. 24. Additionally, she's on the steering committee for the Greater Charlotte Society of Professional Journalists. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.