It’s very important that the Secretary of State gives piano recitals in Malaysia during international crises like these.

And no one ever calls her on her bullshit – this has been going on for how many years now?

Timmah actually did a decent job of hammering her today. He kept quoting former Bush administration officials like Armitage and Haas who think Bush is nuts.

The neo con’s won’t let her play and her husbands clearing brush in texas. Give her a break, she’s doing the best she can.

Condi: doyenne of the bat-shit crazy administration.

Condi was unhinged, and Lanny Davis was near apoplectic in his support for Holy Joe. Don’t damn him on the basis of one kiss?

Are you fucking kidding me? After the Tipper stuff, after saying – “raped? just jump in a cab!”

Spare me.

Brad,

I saw it and couldn’t help thinking that the Bushies have just given up (they’ve quit). They don’t even care if they make sense anymore. I had read others’ comments that they were just gonna run the clock out for the last 2 1/2 years and didn’t put much stock in it. This performance has caused me to rethink that position. She was just blathering. I’ve seen witnesses in ct. behave this way. After being exposed as liars or completely self-contradictory they just keep repeating the contradictions secure in the knowledge that the questioning is going to end sooner or later.

Maybe it’s reverse psychology. Like if the bad guys think we like all the violence and arson and killing, then maybe they’ll stop it all and start actin’ all peaceful-like.

She’s just trying to make Rumsfeld look good, in comparison

She’s just trying to make Rumsfeld look good, in comparison

And Hercules thought he had it tough, shoveling all the crap out of the Augean stables.

Is Rice the worst Secretary of State that we have ever had? Her performance in Lebanon has destroyed any creditibility we may have had in the region.

I didn’t see this particular Meet the Press, but when I have seen her, I can never get over how programmed she comes across. It’s like she spent the entire night before rehearsing her answers, and if the interviewer tosses her a curveball, she sputters like her brain is saying “This does not compute!” She doesn’t come across as someone who has studied these issues all of her life, more like she has just crammed for her oral exam.

Jeezus, talk about someone drinking the kool-aid! Back in the nineties she was Provost at Stanford University and as such was in the local papers regularly, either on specific issues or every now and then a profile of her career. I was completely smitten. Attractive, brilliant, funny, a bit acerbic – she was my dream girl. Most of my family hadn’t heard of her yet, so I had this ongoing joke that she was my girlfriend. When I came to family events I would tell them that she was just to busy to come with me, but she wished she could have been there. By the way, let me mention that that ongoing joke has come back to haunt me BIG TIME!!

Now I can’t even stand to listen to her. Her careful, robotic E NUN CI ATION of ridiculous, irrational nonsense is just painful. And yet, honestly, I have the impression that she is the closest thing in the inner circle to a voice of moderation. It sure appears to me that the more murderous members of the cabal (cheney, rumsfeld, perle etc) are attempting to marginalize her. I think they sense there’s just not a lot of time left to drag Syria into the conflict, and she’s part of the “problem”…

mikey

“Is Rice the worst Secretary of State that we have ever had? ”

Well, the neocons want to replace her with John Bolton, so if she is the worst, she won’t hold the record for long. Actually, I’m all over Bolton becoming SoS. I figure we’re fucked no matter what. We may as well get as much humor out of the situation as we can.

The one thing I keep asking myself is whether Condi IS making sense when she says the increase in violence is a sign the president’s plan is working. What if violence IS the plan? Countries engaged in civil wars can’t trouble the US internationally. Maybe the idea is to reduce the entire Middle East (outside Israel, of course) to a cauldron of seething violence that can never get organized enough to block Bush’s ambitions?

She’s in over her head. She may be a voice of moderation, but I think that’s all she is a voice, irrelevant. I think the inner circle ignores her as much as anyone else world-wide ignores her.

You might think this sounds superficial and stupid, but I think she made a big big error when she allowed herself to have her public image “burnished” by the reports on her clothes (the dominatrix boots!) and her exercise work-out video. This is not what a serious states-person does! I think all this stuff was probably personally flattering to her, so she allowed it to happen and even participated in it – but she lost gravitas in the world.

I also wonder about the participation of Rove/Hughes in managing her image. I can’t imagine that any of this was done haphazardly; I think it was deliberately managed. They thought they’d make her into a celebrity – a little glamor, please – to groom her domestically for some future elective office.

And it might have worked; m ake her sexy and more accessible and attractive. The only problem is that this kind of this damages her standing as a serious diplomat who can interact productively with other serious diplomats.

I think she’s totally ineffective as a Sec’y of State in terms of her ability, but her image-management strategy has made her even more ineffective.

It’s always interesting to make note of the jokes that become identified with people – her shoe thing and the speculations about an affair with or crush on George have painted an image of her that is completely at odds with her mission. It paints her as being vain, and as being sort of naively romantic.

It’s funny, though; mikey, as you say about her standing while at Stanford — it’s true that she had a very impressive image at that time; with far more gravitas than she has now. who would have thought that that woman would now have people joke about her shoe-buying habits? Funny how the world changes.

She was an extraordinarily young Provost, without a particularly oustanding C.V. compared to other people I’ve known of with comparable gigs. I guess she did a great job tacking back and forth between government, foundations, and academia along the way. But I *just* *cannot* see her making tough administrative decisions in that capacity. She doesn’t get out in front of, well, anything.

(mikey, for a similar case of public-figure-crushes gone awry, I have an in-law who I’m told was always talking up Ross Perot as Presidential material in the early 1980s.)

It is the defense’s contention; your Honor, that our client is a blithering idiot and cannot be held accountable for the decisions she made that resulted in the deaths of Tens of Thousands of Iraqi and Lebanese civilians.

Well of course she’s been promoted beyond her competence. The neocons running the show hate the State Department. Why do you need diplomats when you intend to do everything unilaterally? They want a wider war, and with this hapless woman running around, they’ll get it.

Shargash,

I agree with you. The plan was, and is, total chaos.

That’s why Rumsfeld was so nonchalant before Congress this week; he could care less about the situation in Iraq.

I can hear Rumsfeld saying to himself: “Do you mean they believed us when we said we were interested in democracy? They’re dumber than I thought, and I thought they were pretty dumb.”

Ever notice how when she speaks on TV, her voice sounds just like Mary Tyler Moore? “Oh, Mr. Grant!”

“It’s like she spent the entire night before rehearsing her answers”…I think it’s more than just ‘like’ that.

You all are ignoring the most basic tenant of the administration, which applies-literally!-to everything: Any News, About Anything, Is Good For The Administration And Shows That Their Policy(s) Is Workingâ„¢. That’s right–jobs go down? Their Policy Is Workingâ„¢! Jobs go up? Their Policy Is Workingâ„¢! Peace breaks out in the Middle East? Their Policy Is Workingâ„¢! More war in the ME? Their Policy Is Workingâ„¢! It’s elegantly simple.

Of course increasing violence in the Middle East means the president’s policies are working. The president’s policies are designed to keep just over half the nation so scared that it ignores the administration’s breathtaking incompetence, corruption and lawbreaking . It seems to be working pretty well so far.