Every time I tease some leftie with the closing: 'FOUR MORE YEARS!' It's also with a sense of pride and the knowledge that we have that additional time to take full advantage of the extraordinary gifts of people like our Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. She's wowed audiences across the globe with her poise, her pleasant manner and her intellect. Yet few people have the pleasure of enjoying her other accomplished cultural gifts (see below).
Dr. Rice is mentioned as a possible Presidential candidate for 2008. There's even a rumor that President Bush refers to her in private as '44,' the future 44th President. Former New York Senator Alphonse D'Amato (for whom I worked when I was at Columbia) thought she would make a dream ticket as a possible V.P. candidate.
Secretary of State Rice Performing at the Kennedy Center
As you might imagine, the blog world is a buzz over Condi. See Blogs for Condi or Americans For Rice for frequent Condi updates.
Of course you know our pals on the socialist side of the aisle don't care much for Condi. Anyone who dares to stray off the plantation where fear, hate and resentment are preferred tools for attaining political power becomes a target of that machine.
It was open season on her during her confirmation hearing. Deomcrat Senators tried to hang the "lied about weapons of mass destruction" millstone around her neck conveniently forgetting that many of them had made similar statements just years before. And of course the left could rely on old hack Senator Boxer to suggest that somehow we "needed more time" to study the nomination thus denying President Bush the privilege of having his Secretary of State sworn in before his inauguration. (see post from that time here)
We don't even need to mention the offensive racial caricatures of socialist cartoonists at that time. I don't feel the need to repeat all that since we had an example of racial divisiveness only last week from the Chairman of the Democratic Party.
That's why every time we see a shining example of Secretary of State Rice's performance in office, or performance on the piano, those who voted for President Bush can be proud that he continues to surround himself with people who serve our nation with competence, caring and civility.
From Yahoo News AP wire: WASHINGTON - A musician long before she became an academic and then a world-famous diplomat, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took to the Kennedy Center concert stage Saturday to accompany a young soprano battling an often-fatal disease.
Rice's rare and unpublicized appearance at the piano marked a striking departure from her routine as America's No. 1 diplomat. A pianist from the age of 3 she played a half-dozen selections to accompany Charity Sunshine, a 21-year-old singer who was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension a little more than a year ago. The soprano is a granddaughter of Rep. Tom Lantos D-Calif., and his wife Annette, who Rice has known for years.
The Pulmonary Hypertension Association, formed in 1990, presented the concert to draw attention to the disease from which more than 100,000 people are known to suffer.
Rice, whose first name is a variation on the Italian musical term "con dolcezza," which is a direction to play with sweetness, learned to read music at the age of 3. As a child she performed, won piano competitions and planned a career as a a concert pianist. But she switched her field of interest to international relations in her junior year at the University of Colorado and went on to be provost at Stanford University, then President Bush's assistant for national security, and now secretary of state.
Despite her busy schedule, Rice finds time to enjoy classical music and plays occasionally and privately with friends in a string quartet.
She must be one smart cookie learning to read music when she was three. I was at least five before I learned.
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