Absolutely Delusional

Click photo to help gage the popularity of the Bush Regime in Africa

I guess the same way Bush has avoided reading newspapers that involve anything he's involved with, I've gone to great lengths to avoid watching Bush when he's on TV. His moron's voice is like fingernails on a blackboard to me and usually, if I wander into a room with a TV that he's on, I turn and walk away. This morning I didn't turn; I was too aghast. I only watched 10 minutes or so but I was flabbergasted at what I heard. Has he fallen off the wagon again? This guy is utterly delusional-- with the kind of 50 foot steel perimeter around him that xenophobes and racists would like at the Mexican border-- or his handlers have been really successful at keeping reality completely at bay. Turns out, the brief part of his press conference I watched-- a question from the Washington Post's Michael Abramowitz and the ensuing rambling, self-justifying rant-- was the highlight of the event. Watch the segment for yourself. The part I'm referring to starts at 1:32:



I left home at an early age-- hitchhiked to California from New York when I was 15, stowed away on a ship and continued traveling-- and living-- all over the globe. (The motto at my travel blog is from Herman Melville: "I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.") I have watched over the past 8 years as the high esteem and prestige with which my country-- and it's citizens-- were held by people in every corner of the world, has plummeted-- in some cases plummeted to such an extend that it had become dangerous for Americans. I just came back from Mali and while I was there I ran into some Peace Corp volunteers who told me that two-thirds of the country-- including Timbuktu-- was deemed too dangerous for Americans to visit. I visited and they wanted to but couldn't.

Today Dan Froomkin pointed to a survey from Pew on global attitudes about America in answer to Bush's delusional raving. Despite his sociopathic remark that positive feelings for America have only fallen among some elites-- "It may be damaged amongst some of the elite, but people still understand America stands for freedom; that America is a country that provides such great hope"-- the kind of hard data that the Bush Regime has always feared and discounted proves that since Bush took over the White House, favorability ratings across the globe have plunged for our country. Examples from Bush's first year to his last year:

Britain- 83% to 53%
France- 62% to 42%
Spain- 50% to 33%
Germany- 78% to 31%
Poland- 86% to 68%
Turkey- 52% to 12%
Japan- 77% to 50%
Indonesia- 75% to 37%
Brazil- 56% to 47%
Mexico- 68% to 47%
Argentina- 50% to 22%


Two countries where the favorability rating has increased should give scant joy to anyone paying attention. Fascist-trending dystopias Russia (37% to 46%) and Nigeria (46% to 64%) feel relatively comfortable with George W. Bush and what he's peddling. Bush made a point about how loved he is in India and Africa. The Indian elite is pretty pro-American and likes Bush-- after all, he gave them nuclear technology that a more level headed leader would never have agreed to-- and African elites may like him too, although I just came back from Mali (see photo) and whatever people thought of Bush, they were over the moon about Obama. Virtually every bus, taxi and truck in Bamako, Mali's capital city, had a U.S. decal on it and even in remote villages far from roads people were positively reverent about Obama. I swear I saw more Obama/Biden stickers in Mali than I did in Los Angeles! In the photo above we had just given a 4 pound container of GNC Pro Performance Weight Gainer 1850 to all the women in a small village way off the beaten track (we were lost). We showed them how to prepare it and told them it was a gift to their village from Obama. They seemed shocked, then overjoyed-- and sent runners to the surrounding villages to come have a look.

With the exception of a few countries ruled by renegade regimes like Sudan, Iraq, Algeria and Cuba, the overwhelming majority of people from every nation in the world were rooting for Obama, primarily because they believed that McCain would mean 4 more years of Bush policies-- and 4 more years of lies and distortions from the White House. Let's hope Obama can live up to the hopes the whole country and the whole world have for him.