George Bush is taking his clown act on the road.

This should strike Americans as one thing: A colossal waste of taxpayers' hard earned dollars.

President George W. Bush's diplomatic passport will acquire a slew of new country stamps during his final year in office as he tries to rebuild the U.S.'s international standing and create a foreign-policy legacy beyond Iraq.

*Choke* The same guy who destroyed the U.S.'s international standing is about to go out and try to salvage it? That just strikes me as perverted in a bishopric kind of way.

The president plans trips to the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America, which would make 2008 his busiest year abroad. While his major domestic initiatives may get stalled by a Democratic majority in Congress and the gridlock caused by election-year politics, he still has an opportunity to exert his influence overseas.

In short, he's screwed at home, so he might as well go out and see what a shit-awful mess he's made of things.

Influence? What friggin' influence? He doesn't have any. Hopefully the leaders of the countries he visits laugh him right back onto Air Force One.

While the president will strive to strengthen alliances, it won't come at the expense of continuing to prosecute the war on terror, said Jim Jeffrey, the deputy White House national security adviser. "We want to be well-perceived in the world,'' Jeffrey said in an interview.

Perhaps, (and, geez, this is only a mild observation) you should have thought of that before you fingered the UN, ignored international complaints, invaded countries which had not threatened you, invented "intelligence", tortured prisoners (including those known to be mentally ill), engaged in extraordinary rendition, derailed international attempts to combat global warming, hijacked NATO for your own purposes and bungled every opportunity to capture the one person who actually did do harm to the United States.

Do you still wish for a pony, Mr. Jeffry?

The U.S. is not well-perceived in the world and it isn't going to be until the people get rid of that gang of shallow-thinking shitheads which form the current presidential administration. Take the Bush doctrine, AKA the Project for the New American Century and destroy it.

A Pew study of public opinion in 47 nations found ``extensive'' anti-Americanism and ``increasing disapproval'' of the cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy.

A perception that Washington acts unilaterally was shared by 89 percent of the French, 83 percent of Canadians and 74 percent of Britons. America's image in most Muslim nations is ``abysmal,'' Pew said.

The exception, Pew found, is Africa, where the U.S. image remains positive, especially in Ethiopia and Kenya.

Given such results, ``going around the world won't make things necessarily worse'' because ``it's difficult to see how they could be any worse,'' said Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former national security council aide in the Clinton administration.

Yes, well, remember, this is George Bush we're talking about here. Just when you don't things can get any worse, he always finds a way to screw the pooch a little harder.