The European response to Michael Wolff's book has been outright shock.

Tomorrow's front page: Trump’s mental health questioned by top aide #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/mE0d6NkM0S

— The Times of London (@thetimes) January 4, 2018

Courtesy of WaPo: 

European commentary on President Trump is rarely flattering, but the cascading revelations alleged in Michael Wolff’s tell-all book “Fire and Fury,” drew an especially fierce response from a horrified continent. 

“Is Trump still sane?” asked the Friday lead headline on the site of Germany’s most respected conservative paper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The piece was published under the topic “mental health.” 

Meanwhile, British readers woke up to the Times of London's main front page headline that also wondered about the president’s stability: “Trump’s mental health questioned by top aide.” 

“Donald Trump’s right-hand man openly questioned his fitness to serve and predicted that he would resign to avoid being removed by his own cabinet, according to a book that the US president tried to block yesterday,” wrote the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Times of London.

For its part, France’s paper of record, Le Monde, just described the book as “haunting.” 

Trump has never been too popular in Western Europe, with approval ratings in many countries hovering in the single or lower double digits. But even though disagreement with Trump has almost become the norm here, some of Friday’s public responses to Wolff’s book still appeared unprecedented.

Let's face it, Donald Trump was NEVER going to gain any real credibility in Europe.

Those people have first hand knowledge of dealing with thin skinned megalomaniacs.

But I think that this book by Michael Wolff is going to make even those who have seemed more open to negotiating with Trump, like Britain's Theresa May, think twice about dealing with a man deemed stupid or even mentally ill by his closest subordinates.

In other words the world likely no longer sees America as having a functional leader, and there is no way that is good for our country.

Former Canadian skinhead says that Donald Trump has "normalized" white supremacy.

Courtesy of The Star: 

“I don’t know if you’re a Trump fan,” Galloway says, as I nearly fall out of my chair. “But the guy down south there is enabling this stuff, I believe, by allowing it to be normalized.” 

Galloway believes many prejudiced eyes see Trump as both a modern day prophet and a warrior who is fighting for the white side. Trump has more dog whistles than you’d find inside the Westminster Kennel Club. 

In rhetoric and by tweet, Galloway thinks Trump is making hate great again. “The movement is growing because of the normalized message coming from the United States,” he says. “It’s so often that people are latching on to this.” 

This is from a new documentary called "Skinhead" which will be broadcast tomorrow on Canadian television.

And Canada is not the only place where the number of white supremacists have started to rise.

Courtesy of CNN:

Millions of Americans are shocked by the recent displays of white supremacy on US soil. But it's not just America that is seeing these types of demonstrations. 

This Saturday, an estimated 60,000 people marched through Warsaw on Poland's independence day, with some of the marchers burning flares and carrying banners that read "White Europe" and "Clean Blood." Far-right symbols from the darkest corners of European white supremacy were proudly worn. One marcher said in a television interview that his goal was to "remove Jewry from power." To be clear, Polish leaders afterward said they condemned the hateful messages and stressed many thousands were there to celebrate the country's holiday. 

Images from Warsaw immediately bring to mind this summer's deadly rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, and for good reason: A thread of anguish and hatred connects white supremacists across the Atlantic with the ones in America. Indeed, one of the most underreported stories of Charlottesville is that Richard Spencer, David Duke, and Matthew Heimbach -- three prominent rally organizers -- have all been involved with European white nationalist individuals or organizations.

I don't think any of us are even remotely surprised that Donald Trump is helping the spread of white supremacy here in America, but to find that the same is happening not just in Canada, but around the world as well, is more than a little unsettling.

I still remember when America was considered a beacon for hope around the world.

And now suddenly the man that occupies our highest office is considered an inspiration for hatred, racism, and religious intolerance.

Some world leaders are bypassing the White House and dealing directly with blue state governors like California's Jerry Brown.

Courtesy of WaPo:  

Nearly a year into the Trump presidency, countries around the world are scrambling to adapt as the White House has struggled to fill key government positions, scaled back the State Department and upended old alliances. Now some nations are finding that even if they are frustrated by President Trump’s Washington, they can still prosper from robust relations with the California Republic and a constellation of like-minded U.S. cities, some of which are bigger than European countries. 

Brown’s 10-day trip to Europe, which ended Tuesday, was just the latest in a growing transatlantic back-and-forth that bypasses the Trump-era White House. In July, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio headlined a protest in Hamburg against the Group of 20. Several European countries have stationed ambassadors in Silicon Valley to boost trade ties.

Meanwhile, state and municipal governments are expanding or building new offices to help them manage the increased interest in Europe and Asia. This year, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (D) created the position of deputy mayor for international affairs to better manage relations with foreign governments. 

Last week Garcetti huddled in Los Angeles with the Israeli president and Armenian defense minister. The latter stopped by on his way to a peacekeeping conference and briefly described his country’s ongoing dispute with Azerbaijan over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. 

The mayor’s motives for taking the meeting were simple. “We have a big Armenian population in Los Angeles that cares about events in Armenia,” said Nina Hachigian, who filled the international affairs position and previously served in the Obama administration as U.S. ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

Many world leaders say they have no illusions that they can avoid the White House on critical issues at the core of global stability, especially those related to security. But they have embraced efforts by Democratic governors and mayors to present a different face of U.S. power to the world, albeit at a lower level than the White House or State Department. 

“There is an impression by politicians here that President Trump in person is no longer the voice of the free Western world,” said Christian Ehler, a German lawmaker who heads the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the United States and helped broker Brown’s visit to Brussels. “We are much more carefully looking now to the diversity of what is being discussed in the United States, and we see that California is one of the powerhouses of the world economically.”

Typically I would think that overall this would be a bad idea, because even though states do indeed make individual economic deals with foreign governments, the main negotiations have always been the work of the White House.

However since we have a White House that is currently critically understaffed, and in constant disarray, I am not sure what other options exist for keeping things moving forward.

One has to wonder however if this may devolve into a kind of quiet economic civil war where blue states continue to make trade deals and negotiate exchanges of information with foreign governments, which inflates their coffers, while red states sit on their hands waiting for the Republican White House to lead the way, and slip further and further into abject poverty?

Of course the solution to this is to elect a Democratic President next time and the entire country will have the opportunity to prosper as one.

Jerry Brown seems to already be doing the job, so maybe he really will be the best bet in 2020.

The Alt-Right are using NATO and British Intelligence psychological warfare techniques to spread white nationalism. Well isn't that special.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

Far right groups under the banner of the so-called 'alt right' are using psychological warfare techniques learnt from leaked NATO and British intelligence documents to spread white supremacism across the world, according to a new report. 

In a study by the the Institute of Strategic Dialogue—titled 'The Fringe Insurgency'—Julia Ebner and Jacob Davey argue that activists are "weaponising internet culture" to spread their ideology online and subvert democracies. 

After spending several weeks undercover on online alt-right forums, the authors identified the tactics that users adopted to radicalize people online and mobilize support for the far-right groups, targeting anxieties over immigration, terrorism, and race.

They used “crowd-funding platforms, custom-made social media platforms and even the use of leaked military and intelligence resources from [U.K. intelligence agency] GCHQ and NATO to run campaigns against their own governments,” the report said. 

The study identified these tactics as originating in America and then being transported to European counties to disrupt their democratic elections and incite hatred and even violence.

The article did not mention it but I would be interested in how this relates to the Russian government's attempts to undermine western democracy or if in fact they are working hand in glove. 

How Europe sees the NRA and America's fixation with guns.

Gee I so love having my country so easily ridiculed by the rest of the world.

However it is impossible to say that we do not deserve it.

Those Russian Facebook ads could have reached as many as 70 million people.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:

Russian-funded covert propaganda posts on Facebook were likely seen by a minimum of 23 million people and might have reached as many as 70 million, according to analysis by an expert on the social-media giant’s complex advertising systems. That means up to 28 percent of American adults were swept in by the campaign. 

On Wednesday, Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, revealed that Russia had “likely” used 470 fake accounts to buy about $100,000 worth of advertising promoting “divisive social and political messages” to Americans. It was Facebook’s first public acknowledgment of the role it unwittingly played in the Kremlin’s active measures campaign. Stamos’ statement was also conspicuous by what it omitted. Facebook has refused to release the ads. More significant, it hasn’t said what kind of reach Russia attained with its ad buy. 

There may be a reason for that. On the surface, $100,000 is small change in contemporary national politics, and 3,000 ads sounds like a drop in the pond when Facebook boasts 2 billion monthly users. But it turns out $100,000 on Facebook can go a surprisingly long way, if it’s used right. On average, Facebook ads run about $6 for 1,000 impressions. By that number, the Kremlin’s $100,000 buy would get its ads seen nearly 17 million times.

The article goes on to explain that the initial 17 million hits would extrapolate out if the propaganda went viral, which of course we know it did as both Trump and Bernie supporters gobbled up anything negative about Hillary.

They in turn would link to the propaganda, which would then show up all across Facebook, and probably Twitter as well.

I actually have a friend who said that he did not trust Hillary based on a phony picture of her standing with dead bodies at an undisclosed location with the words "War hawk" emblazoned across the image.

That was literally all it took for him, so I certainly know how effective this strategy could be.

And the Russians have been honing this particular skill for quite some time:

Russia has meddled in the affairs of at least 27 European and North American countries since 2004 with interference that ranges from cyberattacks to disinformation campaigns, according to an analysis by a surveillance organization. 

The findings, provided to USA TODAY, show the meddling started in former Soviet republics allied with the West and spread to Western Europe. More recently affected are Canada and the United States, where Congress and an independent prosecutor are investigating possible Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election. 

The alleged Russian interference abroad was compiled by the Alliance for Securing Democracy of the German Marshall Fund, a nonprofit organization that fosters closer bonds between the United States and Europe. In August, the group began tracking Russian efforts to influence U.S. public opinion through a network of Twitter accounts that disseminates messages considered helpful to the Kremlin.

One can only imagine how thrilled Putin was to have Edward Snowden fall into his lap and present him with the tools to supercharge his program of political manipulation.

Dutch bank predicts that by 2035 the only new cars available in Europe will be electric.

Courtesy of The Guardian:

All new cars sold in Europe will be electric within less than two decades, driven by government support, falling battery costs and economies of scale, a Dutch bank has predicted. 

However, ING warned that with battery-powered vehicles accounting for 100% of registrations in 2035 across the continent, European carmakers would lose out to their rivals in the US and Asia who already lead on battery production. 

The forecast is much more aggressive than most other projections, such as the UK’s National Grid which on Thursday said it expects 90% of new cars in Britain to be electric by 2050. 

France’s commitment last week to banning new petrol and diesel car sales by 2040 suggests it also thinks the roll-out of electric vehicles will be slower than ING’s report expects. 

However, the bank said that it believed pure electric cars would “become the rational choice for motorists in Europe” sometime between 2017 and 2024.

Well whichever of these is the most accurate they all seem to agree that gasoline powered vehicles are about to go extinct, and that electric cars are the wave of the future.

Now if only America can emerge from under the influence of big oil and start working toward a similarly progressive policy.

Polls show Donald Trump getting very close to 60% disapproval.

That's fake news.

Courtesy of CBS News: 

Nearly three-in-five Americans disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as president, according to new survey data. 

Fifty-seven percent of Americans in a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Wednesday said they disapprove of the president's job performance, while only 38 percent said they approve. 

A Gallup poll released Tuesday reported similar findings: 57 percent of Americans gave Mr. Trump the thumbs-down, while 37 percent gave him the thumbs-up.

The president's numbers were slightly better -- but still underwater -- in an Economist/YouGov survey released Wednesday. In that poll, Mr. Trump's disapproval rating stood at 53 percent, while his approval rating was 41 percent. 

For comparison's sake, the latest CBS News poll, released last month, found that 57 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Mr. Trump is doing as president, while 36 percent approve.

I'm still stunned that there are 36% of more of Americans who actually approve of this shitgibbon.

Of course it could be worse, and if you look toward Europe it is worse.

Much worse:

pewresearch: Trump’s ratings in Western Europe are similar to those for Bush in 2008 https://t.co/0uCsZRPZt0 pic.twitter.com/6GkfHzzMj1

— #Polls 4 USA (@Polls_4_USA) July 5, 2017

Damn I think the Black Plague has higher approval numbers than that.

Having successfully hijacked the election in America Russia set their sights on France.

Marie Le Pen and Vladimir Putin.

Courtesy of Salon: 

As the French prepare to vote Sunday in a presidential election marked by acrimonious debate about Russian influence in Europe, there’s little doubt about which candidate Moscow backs.

Last month, the combative populist Marine Le Pen of the right-wing National Front flew to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin. It was a display of longtime mutual admiration. The frontrunner in a field of 11 candidates, Le Pen shrugs off allegations of corruption and human rights abuses against Putin, calling him a tough and effective leader. Her hard-line views on immigration, Islam and the European Union win praise from Putin and enthusiastic coverage from Russian media outlets. Her campaign has been propelled by a loan of more than $9 million from a Russian bank in 2014, according to Western officials and media reports. 

Meanwhile, aides to Emmanuel Macron, the center-left former economy minister who is Le Pen’s top rival, have accused Russia of hitting his campaign with cyberattacks and fake news reports about his personal life. Although French officials say the computer disruptions were minor and there is no conclusive proof of links to the Russian state, President François Hollande and other leaders have warned about the risk of interference comparable to hacking operations that targeted the U.S. elections. The French government, aided by briefings from U.S. agencies about their experience last year, has beefed up its cyber defenses.

“The Russians have had an aggressive espionage presence here for a long time,” a senior French intelligence official said. “The Russians now have more spies, more clandestine operations, in France than they did in the Cold War.”

This is really the lesson that the world needs to take from the election of Donald Trump, and that is that the Russians wish to disrupt their democracy in such as way as to not only select an incompetent leader but to also show that their political process is deeply flawed.

In short Russia wishes to completely undermine western democracy.

(Let's not forget the UK officials are also accusing the Russians of interfering in the Brexit vote.)

One would think that at this point rational people would immediately reject ANY candidate that was complimentary toward Vladimir Putin, or who had actually traveled to meet him, but sadly there are literally millions of irrational people driven by deeper feelings of racism and nationalism.

These are people who use their fear and insecurities to choose a candidate, and not logic nor intelligence.

If Putin gets his way Trump may soon be joined by a number of deeply flawed, and easily manipulated, world leaders who will either refuse, or be unable, to stand in the Russian leader's way as he accumulates even more riches and positions himself as a key power in the world.

And that, in no way, bodes well for the future of America or Western Democracy.

That moment when you realize that the guy standing next to you is a blithering moron.

This moment will go down in history as the moment that Europe realized the president of the United States is completely off his rocker.

It appears that Donald Trump is doing some good in the world. No I am not kidding.

.@CSDICKEY in his reporting sees #Trump inspiring Europe not to want anyone like him running their countries #AMJoy https://t.co/sOsZ91e1DI

— AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) March 18, 2017

So apparently other countries are witnessing how badly America screwed up in this last election and deciding that they want no part of that in their country.

Interesting how inspired European countries were by the Obama presidency, and how quickly that turned to shock and outrage at the election of Donald Trump.

Gee folks, could WE be the ones that learn from the bad decisions in another country next time please?

Well it appears that the folks in London are just as thrilled with Donald Trump as we are.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

Thousands of protesters have marched on Parliament in London to demand that the British government withdraw its invitation to U.S. President Donald Trump for a state visit. 

Criticism of Conservative British Prime Minister Theresa May has swelled since her Washington visit to meet Trump last month, when she confirmed plans for a return visit by Trump to Britain expected in the summer. 

Saturday's demonstration in the British capital involved a two-mile (3-kilometer) march of several thousand people from the U.S. embassy to the Houses of Parliament. Protesters chanted "Theresa May, shame on you!"

The Parliament is set to debate plans for Trump to visit London, but clearly if he does he can expect just as many protesters there as he constantly see here in the US.

And this is not just happening in English speaking countries either.

Sign at protest in Paris, France.

There are protests happening around the world against Donald Trump and his Muslim ban.

Let's face it, the man is REALLY bringing the world together.

Against him.

Donald Trump removes any doubt that his immigration ban is based on Islamophobia.

Our country needs strong borders and extreme vetting, NOW. Look what is happening all over Europe and, indeed, the world - a horrible mess!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

Christians in the Middle-East have been executed in large numbers. We cannot allow this horror to continue!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

It would seem clear to me that Trump is justifying the ban not only by citing terrorist attacks here in America but also attacks against Christians in the Middle East.

And while the killing of Christians based on their religious beliefs is indeed disgusting and inhuman, it is also true that in the Middle East Muslims kill their fellow Muslims due to differing religious beliefs in far, far greater numbers.

The way the tweet is worded it makes is sound as if Trump is using the ban to keep the evil Muslims from killing the saintly Christians in this country, which is a pitfall that even the clumsy Bush administration was able to avoid.

Which is once again quite ironic considering that it is this so-called Christian nation that has been dropping tons of bombs on predominately Muslim countries for the last 16 years.

Trump is also ramping up the "War on Terror" which surely means American troops on the ground in Islamic countries, and an increase in civilian causalities. 

In other words, Trump has just openly started a very public religious war in the name of Christianity on a number of Muslim countries.

And this is how he is responding to those criticizing him for it.

The joint statement of former presidential candidates John McCain & Lindsey Graham is wrong - they are sadly weak on immigration. The two...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

...Senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

Yeah, I don't think THEY'RE the ones looking to start World War III.

Of course all of this only gives even more credibility to this Twitter account:

Attempts to get POTUS to work on policy failed. Retreats to residence, skulking over McCain/Lindsey announcement and public protests.

— Rogue POTUS Staff (@RoguePOTUSStaff) January 29, 2017

There is a reason why you only put smart sane people into the White House.

Does everybody get why now?

Yesterday we mourned, today we protest. Update!

THIS IS WHAT a plane full of women who are ready to resist the Trump agenda LOOKS LIKE pic.twitter.com/jqLPNE9VOh

— ann friedman (@annfriedman) January 20, 2017

Courtesy of Vox:

The Women’s March on Washington on Saturday is set to be huge, drawing more charter bus permit applications than the actual Inauguration Day — of President Donald Trump — it’s protesting and more than 220,000 committing to going on Facebook. 

In fact, the protests look to be so big that currently airplanes full of women are flying to Washington, DC, to join the demonstrations.

Estimates are that the number of anti-Trump protesters today are going to far outnumber the people who showed up for yesterday's inauguration.

Speaking of yesterday's inauguration, get a load of this:

#Inauguration crowd size? The difference in pictures. pic.twitter.com/SulfzccOyc

— Dan Gross (@DanJGross) January 20, 2017

Trump is so embarrassed by this that he has ordered the Interior Department (Who provided the side by side comparison.) to stop tweeting.

By the way these "Sister Marches," as they have been named , are already underway here in America and in other places like Europe, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Big cheers on 7th street at the enormous crowd gets its first look down the hill at the even bigger crowd in the mall. #WomensMarch pic.twitter.com/aXGZRlOL7s

— James West (@jameswest2010) January 21, 2017

Up here in Alaska we have several of these planned all OVER the state, with the one in Anchorage starting around 10"30 AM our time.

 People have been asking what they can do, well this is a great start.

In fact I worked all of yesterday to find a way to attend the Anchorage march myself, but work responsibilities are unfortunately going to keep me close to home.

However I will continue to cover today's protests and to spread the word for this and other protests to come.

Remember, they might be able to stifle the Interior Department, but they can't shut us all up.

And they have only just begun to hear our voices raised in protest.

P.S. By the way, men are perfectly welcome to these "Sister Marches" as well, as the great Nick Offerman explains quite eloquently to jerkwad extreme Piers Morgan.

Update: Take a look at this.

Per @womensmarch organizers, they're increasing today's turnout estimates to 500,000 participants. Be patient & kind! #WomensMarch

— Deputy Mayor Donahue (@SafeDC) January 21, 2017

I have not yet seen reliable estimates on the inauguration crowd size but I would not at all be surprised if this march had already exceeded it.

And that does not even count the marches happening around the world.

Update 2: Another woman offers her support.

Thanks for standing, speaking & marching for our values @womensmarch. Important as ever. I truly believe we're always Stronger Together.

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 21, 2017

The People's President.

Update 3: Women's March in Anchorage.

#WomensMarch in #Alaska pic.twitter.com/bspvBvZMAr

— Julia O'Malley (@julia_omalley) January 21, 2017

That is a damn fine turnout considering the weather.

But what can I say? You just can't keep strong women down, now can you?

Brexit explained in one video. (Well more or less.)

Actually since this video was made David Cameron has stated publicly that he is stepping down as Prime Minister.

There is also talk over here of this giving Donald Trump a certain bump in the polls, since an anti-immigration stance is also what drove much of this vote to leave the EU in Britain.

Though considering that the markets are now in free fall it is hard to imagine that being much of a bump. 

These are certainly interesting times we are living in right now. 

You know sometimes you cannot be sure something is a bad thing until Sarah Palin likes it, and then you know.

Courtesy of the international moron's Facebook page:  

Time out between kids soccer games to tune in to good news of UK voting to leave the European Union - choosing independence from global special interests and affirming status that controls its own borders and protects its own people. Happy Brexit prevails! 

I have to admit that I was only vaguely paying attention to all of this drama in Britain (Kinda got my own drama gong on.), so when the vote came down I started to Google it to find out more about it.

Well as it turns out it's bad, really bad.

But then I really did not need to do any of that googling.

All I had to do is wait for Sarah Palin to weigh in.

So without a doubt we now know that it was a terrible decision.

And people say she's not good for anything anymore.

E.O. Wilson: "What's dragging us down is religious faith."

Courtesy of International Business Times:

Renowned biologist E. O. Wilson has said we should eliminate religions for the sake of human progress, as they are "dragging us down". 

In an interview with New Scientist, Wilson was speaking about his latest book The Meaning of Human Existence, in which he questions religion, how humanity looks for common cause, our behaviour and our impact on the environment. 

He said his next book, in which he plans to deal with where we are going as a species, looks at how we have been destroying Earth in a way that people have not fully realised "like the death of a thousand cuts". Wilson said we ignore cues from science about the damage we are doing because of our "tribal structure". 

"All the ideologies and religions have their own answers for the big questions, but these are usually bound as a dogma to some kind of tribe. Religions in particular feature supernatural elements that other tribes – other faiths – cannot accept ... And every tribe, no matter how generous, benign, loving and charitable, nonetheless looks down on all other tribes. What's dragging us down is religious faith." 

He said that he is not an atheist or agnostic, instead explains "I'm a scientist".

I would suggest that tribalism played a very important, and possibly necessary role in mankind's rise from prey to predator, and ultimately to becoming the dominant species on the planet.

However I would also argue that what served as a benefit during more primitive times has now become an impediment to our progress toward becoming more enlightened beings.

Today it is not so much our gender, or ethnicity, that builds walls between us but rather our religious faith. Or lack thereof.

Just the other day my daughter and I were musing on the fact that thousands of years ago Italy, Spain, and France, which are geographically only a handful of miles apart, could develop different languages and cultures, while today we are closer to becoming a global community then ever before.

In fact these very words will be read by visitors from as far away as Hong Kong, Belgium, and Germany, and they will both be able to understand what I say, as well as respond to what is written without ever having to leave their house, much less their continent.

In other words thanks to technology we now know more, and understand more, about each other than at any other time in the history of mankind.

The final hurdle to overcome, the wall that still stands in our way, is religion.

Eradicating it, and the antiquated ideas it promotes, should be priority one for all of us.

Well at least I cannot be accused of not doing my part.

Is America crazy?

Courtesy of Common Dreams:  

Americans who live abroad -- more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) -- often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States. Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world.

In my long nomadic life, I’ve had the good fortune to live, work, or travel in all but a handful of countries on this planet. I’ve been to both poles and a great many places in between, and nosy as I am, I’ve talked with people all along the way. I still remember a time when to be an American was to be envied. The country where I grew up after World War II seemed to be respected and admired around the world for way too many reasons to go into here. 

That’s changed, of course. Even after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I still met people -- in the Middle East, no less -- willing to withhold judgment on the U.S. Many thought that the Supreme Court’s installation of George W. Bush as president was a blunder American voters would correct in the election of 2004. His return to office truly spelled the end of America as the world had known it. Bush had started a war, opposed by the entire world, because he wanted to and he could. A majority of Americans supported him. And that was when all the uncomfortable questions really began.

Yeah you know after the election of 2004 I too thought that we must be crazy.

Here are a few of the questions that the author, Ann Jones, has been asked over the years:

• Why can’t you Americans stop interfering with women’s health care? 
• Why can’t you understand science? 
• How can you still be so blind to the reality of climate change? 
• How can you speak of the rule of law when your presidents break international laws to make war whenever they want? 
• How can you hand over the power to blow up the planet to one lone, ordinary man? 
• How can you throw away the Geneva Conventions and your principles to advocate torture? 
• Why do you Americans like guns so much? Why do you kill each other at such a rate? 
• To many, the most baffling and important question of all is: Why do you send your military all over the world to stir up more and more trouble for all of us?

You know in our defense I would like to suggest that America is not so much crazy, as it is schizophrenic. In many ways we are quite a reasonable, intelligent, progressive nation.

However sometimes we hear voices whispering in the dark. And those voices are not quite as reasonable, intelligent, nor progressive.

I call those voices "Republicans," and it seems to be that more and more these days they act like the Joker in "The Dark Knight" movie. And by that I mean, as Alfred Pennyworth explains, some men just want to watch the world burn.

So is America crazy?

Not always. But sometimes, yes most definitely.

42% of Americans believe in Creationism. I am surrounded by idiots.

Courtesy of Gallup: 

More than four in 10 Americans continue to believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago, a view that has changed little over the past three decades. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, with the majority of these saying God guided the evolutionary process. However, the percentage who say God was not involved is rising.

This latest update is from Gallup's Values and Beliefs survey conducted May 8-11. Gallup first asked the three-part question about human origins in 1982. 

The percentage of the U.S. population choosing the creationist perspective as closest to their own view has fluctuated in a narrow range between 40% and 47% since the question's inception. There is little indication of a sustained downward trend in the proportion of the U.S. population who hold a creationist view of human origins. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who adhere to a strict secularist viewpoint -- that humans evolved over time, with God having no part in this process -- has doubled since 1999.

Okay well that last part is good news at least, but 42%? Seriously?

That means that when I am out in public almost half of the people I come into contact with are intellectually inferior to almost ALL of the people in Europe. That's right, even France!

And these are not just the people who bag my groceries, mow my lawn, or go door to door selling meat. There are actually professional people in the world who are just as ignorant.

Perhaps you have met them. They call themselves Republicans. 

In my opinion this is a national emergency and should be addressed as aggressively as making sure that children are inoculated against Measles and Polio. We could call it the "inoculation against ignorance."

Of course in the long run it probably won't help with conservatives, who think education is a commie plot, and that the only book worth reading is the Bible, which of course is considered so difficult that they must go to a building every Sunday to have it explained to them.

And people wonder why the rest of the world is losing respect for America.

Sarah Palin's token black friend, Star Parker, claims that President Obama is turning us all into pro-gay European zombies. Because there's nothing crazy about THAT.

So Parker appeared in the above video being interviewed by Joseph Farah, founder of the batshit crazy World Net Daily, and said some rather insane things.

Here let Raw Story fill you in:  

Parker, author of the books Pimps, whores and welfare brats and Uncle Sam’s Plantation, is the founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), a Christian ministry. She told Farah that dark times are coming under Obama administration. 

Parker said that “if young people start to distrust each other, we’re going to see more division. We’re going to see ourselves get separated and segregated again, not just when it comes to our ethnicity, but when it comes to our religion.” 

“I mean, what this president has done to damage the Christian community to where — and the laws,” Parker ranted, “that are coming out of places like the state of California and others, you know, in California where you’ve got the boy going into the girls’ bathroom.” 

“But the laws, um, the laws that are pushing homosexuality out into society,” said Parker, “when, when, when you have this type of vileness exalted, the wicked go on the prowl. That’s what the Proverbs says, is that if the wicked can now go on the prowl, people with the resources will now pull away, and so they become much more private.” 

She concluded, “So while you have ill activity now in the public square, you have those decent people and quiet communities becoming much more, you know, refined, and more closed. And that’s not healthy for us as a society because when you go start walking out in the public square and nobody talks to each other, that’s what they do in Europe. They’re just a bunch of zombies and we don’t want that as Americans.”

Damn that is some Sarah Palin worthy word salad!

So to be clear, and that is almost impossible considering the subject matter, what Parker is suggesting is that President Obama's attempts to create a less racially divided, less homophobic society, is destroying the country, because "decent" more "refined" people, ie Fundamentalist Christians, are feeling closed off.

At least I THINK that's what she is saying.

And my carefully considered response to that is, "About fucking time!"

I hope that having a more openly diverse population makes the bigots and religious hypocrites run into their little cookie cutter houses, close themselves off from the rest of us, and stay out of the public square permanently! 

Personally I can hardly WAIT until that happens, and we can take back our country from the judgmental religious bullies that have for too long made the majority of us feel unwelcome to participate in politics or have a voice in the direction of OUR nation.

It simply cannot happen fast enough in my opinion.