I was looking at the diplomacy rules just now, and that reminded me that my race's attitude towards other races has its Xenophobia sutracted off every year. So I thought I'd go look at my Xenophobia rating. Here's what I found:
Theme: US
Xenophobia: 90
Diplomacy: 89
Translation Skill: -27
...
Who said ugly americans are a cliche???
Leaving the Diplomacy rating aside (which I don't think does anything anyway), I guess this explains why I keep getting bad communication rolls and have yet to have a positive attitude towards an alien race!
John
PS - Disclaimer: I'm not trying to open discussion about real-life americans here - it's just a cute phrase for the way the dice seemed stacked against me in this game.