Well that’s nice.  Glad you’re comfortable.  Now while you’re sitting there surrounded by all that cottony comfort, I thought you might like to hear about the $20 million dollars that was spent last year by the Cotton Council International.  Spent where?  Spent in India, that’s where.  Spent on what?  Well … how about a reality show?  Sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?  $20 million for an Indian reality show. 

Now a reality show needs a name, and Bangalore Shore didn’t seem to cut it.  I’m told they thought about the Misfit Housewives of Mumbai, but that didn’t pass the focus groups either.  So they settled on “Let’s Design.”  I don’t know --- maybe something was lost in the translation there.  “Let’s Design” doesn’t exactly light my pyre … but it has the Indian television audience whooping and hollering.  But back to the $20 million.  Why did the Cotton Council want to finance this reality show?  Perhaps it’s because all the contestants have to wear cotton clothes.  Oh … and the $20 million?  That came from YOU.  It’s taxpayer money.  Part of the Department of Agriculture’s Market Access Program.

Now just remember that $20 million.  That $20 million represents the entire federal income tax liability of about 2000 American families.  That money is money taken from these families that could have been used to pay some past-due bills, get a home out of foreclosure, pay for a family vacation, or put that new roof on the house.  But those families didn’t have that money to spend.  They didn’t have it because some sharp lobbyist for the Cotton Council managed to talk some political types to seize that money instead and send it to India to swath some Indian babes in brightly colored sarongs for an Indian TV reality show.

Makes perfect sense to me.

You?