How the World is Handling the GOP Candidates

In a word, very badly.

What with mistaking the continent of Africa as a country, and Herman Cain not knowing what is going on in Libya (but does know that the Taliban are running things), and Michelle Bachmann saying that the pseudoscientific claptrap that is "Intelligent Design" is actually teachable scientific fact, the figures the various candidates for the Republican field are cutting are sorry ones indeed.

But how does the rest of the world view these shenanigans?

In a word ... well, you get the idea.

Marc Pitzke, reporting for Der Spiegel, writes a very damning look at the people running for the leadership of the free world. A few lines will give you the flavor of the article, and how the Germans feel about things:

Yet just like any freakshow, this one would be unthinkable without a stage (in this case, the media, strangling itself with all its misunderstood "political correctness" and "objectivity") and an audience (the party base, which this year seems to have suffered a political lobotomy).

We're losing (if we haven't already lost) what credibility we still had in the world, and quite frankly the rest of the planet's getting pants-shittingly scared of what might happen next year when the election comes on November 6th (and NOT November 12, as Rick Perry said recently).

Here's another example, courtesy of Hospodarske noviny, from the Czech Republic:

The world is divided into two halves: the “right” one, where the desired condition has been achieved, and the one where it must be fought for by any means necessary. There’s not a lot of room for commentary on the “right of nations to self-determination” here. And then America is sincerely surprised that it doesn’t just have friends everywhere.