Palinesque (the she, NOT he)

According to this, Bliar never asked the questions that needed to be ask about the post war reconstruction of Iraq. Instead, he assumed the Americans would take care of things and left it at that. For a supposedly intelligent man (I couldn't possibly comment!!), he's decision to bury his head in the sand is Palinesque. What's more, he did a hatchet job on anyone who had the temerity to pursue that line of questioning.

Master bullshitters

Americans have perfected the art of bullshitting confidently. I discovered that when I worked for an American company and use to attend meetings where American colleagues would take up the time to talk about nothing and do it with such conviction that sometimes I had to pinch myself just to be sure I wasn't daydreaming. Interestingly, nobody would challenge said individual because of the confidence they exuded. However later on around the water cooler, there would be discussions about what was actually said and a unanimous consensus would be reached that the colleague had said much ado about nothing.

Later on, when I lived in the States I realised that bullshitting confidently is part of the American DNA. An unedifying consequence of this is the inability to tell it like it is - there's a tendency to put a positive spin on everything for example, when a well known fast food chain announced they were opening more outlets, the subsequent job creation was labelled manufacturing instead of service. The Republican nominee for Vice President spun her foreign policy experience to include trips to Iraq, Ireland and Russia whereas the actuality was she can see Russia from Alaska and she could see Iraq when she visited the Alaskan National Guard at a border crossing in Kuwait. Her so called trip to Ireland was no more than a refueling stopover. The White House likes to talk of victory in Iraq despite the widely respected General Petraeus' opinions to the contrary. And who can forget Dubya's premature Iraq Mission Accomplished proclamation on the deck of US carrier in May 2003.

The problem with specs

As someone of the four-eyed persuasion, I have often been told that my spectacles make me look serious/studious and there's no doubting that people tend to think that those who are sight-challenged are intelligent and yet I haven't come across any empirical evidence to support this assertion. Spectacle wearers are expected to engage in intelligent discourse and impart pearls of wisdom - I expect many people had a reality check once Sarah Palin, the Republican Party's nominee for Vice President, opened her mouth.