Madeleine Allbright

Well, Bammy has achieved one of his campaign goals: making America popular again.

Barack Obama has restored America’s global standing to where it was before the Bush era, but many in the Muslim world remain hostile, according to a survey published on Thursday.

The Pew Research Center’s annual global attitudes survey indicated that people polled in 25 countries now had a more positive attitude towards the US. The exception was Israel, where approval dipped after President Obama courted the Muslim world in a June speech in Cairo.{...}

 If you want the actual "improvement" numbers, hit the link and you'll get the rundown.  But, the real whopper comes from Madeleine "Foggiest Bottom" Albright, idiot ex-Secretary of State.

“It is certainly better to have a president who is respected and who is popular than who is not,” said Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, referring to the contrast in international public regard for Mr Obama with that for former president George W. Bush. “We were in a hole in our reputation and leadership... There is a long way to go but it is much better to start here.”

For the most part, however, attitudes were negative in much of the Muslim world, including allies in Turkey and Pakistan. Only 14 percent of Turks gave the US a favourable rating, barely up on last year.

“I personally am a little surprised by the continuing Muslim numbers,” Ms Albright said. She described the Muslim and Western worlds as being in a “very deep rift”, which would “take some time to fix”.

So, according to Madeleine Albright, somehow, a. Barack Obama is now, apparently, the United States of America and b. she couldn't possibly understand how the numbers from Muslim countries could be bad when it comes to America's "popularity."

Barack Fargin' Obama is NOT the United States of America.  He's not God.  He's not Jesus.  He is a politician.  Who happened to get elected, God only knows how, President of the United States of America.  That does not mean he is now the actual country.  One does not equal the other. He is not the land north of Mexico and south of Canada, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  I know Europeans are stupid this way, and could actually believe this, but you can't travel to Obama's navel, like you would Yellowstone National Park.  His shoulder is not Chicago.  His ears are not San Francisco.  His dreamy brown eyes are not New York.  He is the president, but he is not America.  How hard is that to understand? 

Oh, yes, I'm probably taking this a little too literally, but how the fuck do you equate America's supposed new popularity with Barack Obama?  America is a country.  It's ridiculous. Barack Obama is one of its citizens.  He is not the country; he's just another citizen, despite his job. He will leave office someday.  You might want to gird your loins for that, because, according to the Constitution, the peaceful handover of power is absolute, and one day he will either get spanked out of office (hopefully) or will leave after two terms.  Are you going to hate my country then, depending upon who's elected?  Who the fuck are you to say which way we should go?  That's our business.  If you want a say in it, move here, gain citizenship, and effin' vote, you assholes.  Otherwise, it's none of your goddamned business.  I would never say, "Oh, I hate Germany because Angela Merkel is Chancellor. I would never visit because she's in charge.  I hate them!"  Why wouldn't I say that?  Because it's none of my goddamned business who the Germans elect to be Chancellor.  Neither is it any of my business to say Ahmadinejad is a good reason to hate Iran. Because then you're proclaiming dislike for millions of people based on the cock-eyed views of one man. It's patently unfair to the people of the country to have their worth judged solely on who happens to be running the joint.

But, apparently, no one has a problem doing that to America.  America's fair game.  We can only be popular if a democrat is at the helm.  

Fuck that.  

Bammy's no better than the rest of us, but, because he's a politician, he might actually be worse. If you came to America, you might learn that the majority of the citizenry hate politicians because they're a bunch of lying windbags, who only look after themselves.  If you think positively of America now that Bammy's in office, well, you're stupid.  America has THREE HUNDRED MILLION people living here other than Bammy.  Come and visit.  You might like the landscape.  You might like some of us.  You might not.  But to base your opinion of a country solely on its elected leadership means you're an uneducated, poorly travelled idiot. 

I can understand how it helps to get things done on an international basis, fair or not, when you've got someone at the helm who is respected by all.  Witness the seemy underbelly of international trade negotiations.  Peter Mandelson---who is now a cabinet member for Gordon Brown and who is now Lord Mandelson to you, you common peon---a few years back was the EU Trade Commissioner, and he made it patently clear he wasn't going to make any concessions on the EU's agricultural subsidies until the US did.  Which was complete and utter bullshit, because President Bush had already said, repeatedly, to the EU that if they made cuts, the US would follow, which, at the time, was a rather large possible concession, meant to move trade talks forward. Bush meant it, and was willing to take the heat from the agricultural community for it if the EU bit.  Mandelson meant his statement, as well, yet the difference was that Mandelson didn't want to make any concessions, because the French would have strung him up by his thumbs if he did, so he used Bush's unpopularity, and the general opinion of him as the bad guy, as a convenient excuse for getting out of actually negotiating for change.  Mandelson was a weasel, and he got away with it, simply because Bush was unpopular.  There are a thousand different examples from the world of IGOs to further this point.  Bush was unpopular from Day One, simply because of who he was and what he represented. No one wanted to do business with him, and, furthermore, people cheered and screamed with delight when Hugo Chavez spoke from the podium at the UN General Assembly when he said he smelled sulfur in the air after Bush spoke.  It's not pretty, but those are the facts.  It helps to be popular.  Or at least unassuming.  43 was neither of those, and it did make things harder for him. 

That aside, why should popularity, of all things, be what greases the skids?  And I'm not talking about "majority wins" here; I'm talking about this absurd notion that someone who is popular is always better.  Why does it matter?  I really dislike this crap, because it means that the only people qualified to get things done, apparently, are the Prom King and Queen, and the Captain of the football team and the cheerleading squad. Get over thinking high school is the ruling paradigm of life, for chrissakes.  Why do you accord more status to the jerk whom everyone likes rather than the spotty geek in the corner whom everyone hates, simply because no one gets them, but who is smarter than everyone else combined?  It makes no sense.  Get a spine already and get over it. 

I've rambled on long enough.  Time to end this post before it gets even more incoherent than it already is.