As IF Times

link AFP: US senator calls for aid to Arab democracy.

And speaking of fantasy world,  John Kerry is making the case now to send U.S. financial aid to help the strife ridden Arab economies in order to build democracy.  !!!  There are few representatives more removed from reality save perhaps the other 52 Democratic senators and 193 members of Congress.  Kerry is the guy who, like his buddies, exhorts the little guy to pay more taxes but who parks his yacht in another state to avoid… taxes.  If he was a contestant on Jeopardy, his answer to the query, ‘taxes’ , would be ‘what other people pay’.

Unfortunately, all the time spent on the yacht precluded him from being able to keep up with the news affecting the U.S. economy, the main story being that the government, aka the people, are out of money.  I’m not sure how he reads the polls, but my guess is that if you asked the average Joe to shovel more money to the middle east to support nationhood, it may get a some push-back.  Heck, when you balance paying the mortgage against  paying taxes to support the middle east, the decision could be tough.

Recently, another guy, by the name of Bush,  spent a few billion with the hope of  building nations and spreading democracy in that part of the world too.  That didn’t go very well as he was roundly excoriated for his ‘imperialist’ and meddling efforts.  Ironically, Iraq is now the only nationstate there besides Israel that can be considered a democracy.   In fact, Kerry was one of the leading critics of that effort.  He is now officially against nation building before he is now in favor of it.

The other fact that has become evident with the ouster of despots in that part of the world is that the leaders have somehow managed to squirrel away some rainy day money during their time in office.  From accounts of the amount of money involved, it looks like there’s enough to sustain these guys for about 200 years of rain.  Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, 5 billion.  Egyptian Hosni Mubarek, rumored to be up to 70 billion.   This guy Gaddaffi, some large amount, yet to be counted, but rumored to be in the mid ‘B”s.  Assuming that this money wasn’t made from the hourly rate of being in the state leader business, perhaps it would be wise to re-funnel that money back into the respective states!   Even Bernie Madoff gave back his ill-gotten loot.

Finally, it may only seem illogical to the rest of the rational world that the middle east, the greatest source of natural resource wealth in the world today, should be the recipient of financial aid from a nation that is essentially running on financial fumes.  This however is logical when all your life, you’ve only dealt with other people’s money.  In the case of Kerry, maybe he thinks that if you put a bit of ketchup on it, people will swallow anything no matter how distasteful.

link American Idol Vote Begins – Jacob Lusk, Casey Abrams Impress : People.com.

A few seasons back, the irascible Simon Cowell, arguably the real star of American Idol decided to move on.  Before that happened, the fomat changed to 4 judges and Ellen Degeneres was  inexplicably added to the show.   That was enough for yours truly, causing me to pronounce the show over.  http://asiftimes.com/2010/02/07/talent-must-be-in-short-supply/

Well this season’s crop of  talent has not only proved me wrong, it proved a number of other things as well.  First of which is that Simon was NOT the show, although he dominated the program since inception with his bitingly blunt comments.  The show was supposed to be about singing talent, but with Simon’s presence over the years, it was as much about watching unfolding car crashes and the show had an almost sadistic appeal.

When you look at the talent pool in this year’s edition of AI, the producers and the judges have to be given credit for bringing the best crop ever to the stage.  So, that’s credit to Steve Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and the only carry over judge, Randy Jackson.   They bring credibility due to their backgrounds and generally lucid comments.  The show has moved on to be a talent contest, albeit a contrived one, from being the Simon Cowell show.  I’m not sure what the logic was in bringing in Degeneres, but thankfully, that’s over. 

The success this season also demonstrates that the basic concept reasonates with the public and therefore the show is bigger than its nominal judges.  Karaoke is pretty popular in most of the world and this can be characterized as the Super Bowl of that.   The show is refocusing on the talent, not on the judges.  It’s as if Simon were never there.   Charlie Sheen should pay attention to that.

When you observe the roster of talent that is on display, it makes you wonder where these people were last year, or the year before.  It also should give one pause to think about the pool of talent in every other area of life which will emerge from the wings every year.  From science, to business, to sports, the pool of talent is deep enough down there to give optimism to all aspects of culture and human achievement.   You just can’t be pessimistic.

Now if they could only get rid of that irritating Ryan Seacrest.