a semi-puff piece on the sec state came out today. it is a good recap of her year
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01081.html

Rice warned the European Union not to lift an arms embargo on China, telling diplomats they would rue the day if U.S. troops ever faced European-armed Chinese soldiers across the Taiwan straits. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who then held the rotating European Union presidency, was so startled by her tough talk that he spilled his coffee in the lap of European foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

"The Europeans sent delegation after delegation saying, 'Please be more flexible.' She did not yield," Burns said. "She told them, 'You've united the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress. That's not an easy thing to do.' " The Europeans ultimately shelved their plan.

that to me is not crap.

I agree with Brad here. Condi Rice is not a "genius." Karl Rove is not a "genius." The kind of intelligence that is denoted by the word "genius" is capable of inventing new concepts that are completely unanticipated and totally unrecognizable with respect to existing vocabularies. Moreover, the genius does not require confirmation from existing quarters of the truth of that which s/he speaks; such work is wholly original and reshapes existing knowledge.

Condi Rice and those of her ilk are hell-bent on twisting facts and opinions according to the shape of the ideological edifice to which they owe their allegiances. They are very, very good at it. But it does not make them geniuses; they are mere worker bees of a highly specialized type.

Crap.

I dont know, doesnt genius have to do with IQ? Something tells me she has a very high IQ, what with all the extraneous shit she does on the side.

She seems very intelligent but she has definitely f'd up. The best was when she didn't want to testify at the 911 hearings. That made her look foolish. Then the Bush administration made her go ahead and testify at them anyway. Also foolish. Watching those hearings was great for anyone who wanted to watch her squirm. The administration f'd up and she's trying to spin it as if they had no fault. It'd be nice to hear one politician say......Yeah we screwed up, we're going to fix this, but you never do......


crap sandwich

BRW addressed this well.
Genius is a word that doesn't apply to many people, and definitely not to this fuckup.
There are a lot of people who have a pathological dedication to personal achievement. They study and work while other people are celebrating. They study and work while other people are making love. They study and work while other people are sleeping. They study and work relentlessly because that is how they define themselves -- what their CV says about them is everything.
A decent number of these people are fools, and no amount of diligence and academic achievement can change that. I think Rice is one of these people. She holds the position she holds now because she is a good soldier and never deviates from the party line, not because she is particularly good at anything her job might entail.
If you had to be good at your job to hold onto it under the leadership of GW Bush, Rumsfeld would have lost his at least 2 years ago.

You can be smart at one thing at not another. There's the (possibly apocryphal) old saw about how Einstein couldn't tie his own shoes. Apologists say it's because he was smart enough to get *others* to do it for him.
Right, this cat has to get over to Princeton to work on the thoery of relativity all day and he's gonna dilly-dally until he can find some sucker to tie his Keds. No, he just sucked at a few rudimentary skills.

Condi must be smart to do all of the things she can do. "Talented" surely comes to mind. However, the super-smart UNC prof. who taught me the nuances of the many religions of the world will never, ever put his hands under the hood of my car.

It takes that extra thought step to realize that "smart" doesn't mean "smart in regard to everything."
Hell, if most people were really good at even one thing it would be impressive, so she should be proud of what she actually does well.
However, the misapplied "genius" sobriquet that often gets dropped on Condi brings to mind a liner quote from Pavement: just a dick sucking fool at pussy licking school.

Plus, my dad, who's a prof., and always went by his first name, told me to regard with suspicion any academic who insists on going by "Dr." anything. The really good ones, he said, will hip you to their credentials in other ways.

...and she will henceforth be known as "Crapdoleeza Rice".
I mean DR. Crapdoleeza Rice.

...and who can forget this "made for tv" moment?

Lazybones wrote:

...and who can forget this "made for tv" moment?

Well, there goes masturbating. Thanks man.

You've got me confused, I thought that in the Bush version of government the more you fuck-up your job the higher you climb thru the ranks? I assume this is the same form of affirmative action that actually got Bush the job in the first place. You just wait, Rove's next job will be a promotion.