Please, help me figure this out - and hold the smart aleck replies....

[HardWorkingDem]

I just can't figure something out -

How can Condi Rice, a black woman, go around the world and get away with telling the world the US does not torture, when we were caught doing just that?

How can a country that brags it is the leading promoter of democracy in the world not see the hypocrisy of what it preaches to the world when we have been caught doing the things that we have been caught doing?

How can Bill Frist say that Alito deserves an up or down vote and if the Dems don't give it to him and filibuster, then it's the nuclear option, when his own party sabotaged Miers?

How can a politician (Cunningham) of a party that screams of law and order get away with taking millions in bribes and live way beyond his means and no one catches it except for a "local" reporter?

My point in this is, what can explain how people and governments act like they did nothing wrong when they get caught with their pants down? I just don't understand what the hell is going on and how this crap can continue to go on and on with out any apparent repercussions.

I just don't get it. And please, lay off the smart aleck responses and that the media is owned by the right wing. There is more to this than all that.

[StClone]

1. It is for American consumption!

They know the foreigners know we torture...but Aunt Betsy and Freepers see Condi lying as to the U.S.'s innocent concerning torture and the Propaganda cycle is complete.

Betsy and the Freeps say "gee if Condi can get out in the world and state our innocent well it must be true." African Americans can not rest easy knowing that the most powerful black in the world is a tool. This is so sad but that's BushCo!

[TallahasseeGrannie]

5. Loopholes

"We" don't do it; we have it done. Or we didn't MEAN to do it...somebody did is when we weren't looking...yada yada yada

And maybe she really believes it. who knows?

[HardWorkingDem]

16. After you mentioned this....

I recalled a book I read named "Weapons of Mass Deception" where the author pointed out that so much PR work done overseas is for the viewing of the American people more so than for the world.

But at the base of it all, I just don't get it and can't figure it out (and this is even after seeing Carlin's recent special on HBO where he rants about how those that own the world depend on an uninformed populace and even perpetuate such a thing).

[Richardo]

2. I'm confused. What do Rice's race and gender have to do with it?

The question remains even if she were NOT a 'black woman'.

...what can explain how people and governments act like they did nothing wrong when they get caught with their pants down? I just don't understand what the hell is going on and how this crap can continue to go on and on with out any apparent repercussions.


What's the big mystery? Every human (and human institution) spins their own actions to the good, and hardly anyone anywhere at anytime will voluntarily admit they are wrong.

[HardWorkingDem]

9. What it means is....

here we have a person, especially an American, of a race and gender who should be very concerned with human rights issues. That if any person should be in tune to human rights issues, it should be a woman and a person of color. But instead she is shilling for an Administration that apparently cares little for either. I mean, how can an Administration not come out and hammer people like Bill Bennett for his idiotic abortion comments. Or not even apparently care about NO and Katrina's devastation.

Guess I should have clarified the race and gender part.

[Webster Green]

3. Well, if it makes you feel any better...nobody was buying any of it,

Condi always lies, and everyone knows it.

Well, almost everyone.

[Sparkman]

4. money and power interests say anything, then do what it takes to get more.

There is nothing off limits when aquiring the wealth of others' labor or possessions, natural resources, etc. And that includes lying or hypocracy or embarrasing one's associates and one's past proclimations. Image is only a luxury, and the taint of hypocracy or illegality is just another cost in the process of keeping all their power and wealth. imo

[CrazyOrangeCat]

6. You're right . . .

. . . there is much more to it than that. (Although Rove's manipulation of the media is STRAIGHT from Joseph Goebbels' playbook.)

IMHO, there has been an anti-intellectual current running stronger and stronger since the beginning of the Reagan era. That's twenty-five years. It is no longer cool to be involved. Restating Marx's old saw, "Big-screen TV, Nascar, and mega-churches have become the opiate of the masses." Much easier to be stupid. And half of this country is stupid, and proud of it, just like Chimpy.

So, I guess us thoughtful people better step up to the plate pretty damned soon . . .

[Democrats_win]

11. Odd thing is, Condi IS an intellectual!

There´s just no way around that fact. But the 9-11 widows point out that she is either an idiot or a liar for her comments that no one could have imagined someone hijacking.... you know the rest.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

13. An intellectual to a certain degree . . .

. . . but a sycophant, first and foremost. Her background in Birmingham AL during the fifties and sixties, is a very strange and almost schizophrenic tale. Her father was a minister who actually opposed Martin Luther King Jr.'s peaceful attempts to right the terrible wrongs inflicted upon his people. She strikes me as very smart . . . but very strange and lonely. I would pity her, but I stop short of that. She has become a mouthpiece for terror.

[populistdriven]

7. ok but what does black have to do with it?

[HardWorkingDem]

10. see no. 9....

nt

[butterfly77]

14. because she is black and a woman ...

the world believes she is for human rights and civil rights because of what blacks have endured in this country. Bush uses her to make it look like blacks in america agree with his policies, a small minority do because they usually don't relate to the majority of the black communtity, condi lives in another world her skin is black but she dosen't relate because she dosen't have to. She is happy to be used by bush, Colin powell had enough so he left.

[GrpCaptMandrake]

8. Part 1:

European leaders were looking for political "cover." When Kindasleazy Rice said "We don't torture," she gave them that.

Part 2: "the leading promoter of democracy" has been a leading promoter of torture since about 1637 and has proceeded unabated ever since. Colombia, Vietnam, Nicargua, Haiti, the Phillipines, the entire nineteenth, eighteenth and seventeenth centuries with the Native Americans. Thinking we're so freakin' moral is a palliative sap we self-administer to give ourselves moral "cover."

Cunningham didn't "get away with it." He's entered a guilty plea. The better, larger question is why we let the rest of Congress "get away with it." Why is capital punishment OK for a poor black man who murders a white man, but not for a rich white one who murders democracy?

None of this behavior would be countenanced in a democracy. This isn't a democracy and never has been. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was modelled on and significantly resembled the ancient Roman republic. That came to a screeching halt after the Civil War with the rise of the administrative state.

Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush have simply put the final nails in the Republic's very tight coffin. And that's the undercurrent of discontent that you feel.

The transition to fascism is always uncomfortable for those who see it and recognize it.

I hope nothing I've said is taken as being a smart aleck. It was not intended in such fashion.

[butterfly77]

12. Because they aren't Dems...

and repugs are evil, lying, thieving, hypocrites.

[Joe Chi Minh]

15. Being totally shameless

must be an absolute prerequisite. The only possible alternative reactions to such ethical insouciance would be to laugh uncontrollably at their own gall, or to cry, to lament uncontollably, in however figurative a manner.

[TheFarseer]

17. Words speak louder than actions for these people

They think they can say anything and people won't notice what they are really doing. Furthermore, they think they can just smear anyone that calls attention to what they are doing. Basically, I'm saying they think they can get away with it and even if they are caught, no one will do anything.