Nobel Peace Prize for Jimmy Carter

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/12/jimmy-carter-womens-rights-equality

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when th e convention's leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be "subservient" to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief - confirmed in the holy scriptures - that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

I guess it's cool that Carter's being the liberal he never was as president.

lol at this:

i loved the part about how its a pastime among people who know him to brainstorm for ideas on what his ideal job should've been - supreme court justice, pope, dictator, st. peter

― weed hitler poop fart obama (Princess TamTam),

after six decades

Dems been kinda quiet on JC calling Mittens competent:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/04/jimmy-carter-a-democrat-who-likes-mitt-romney-video.php

i've been reading morris berman's 'why america failed.' he's got some interesting thoughts on carter's 'malaise' speech. it was actually initially well-received by the public and looked like it'd rejuvenate his presidency, but carter instantly blew it by firing his whole cabinet, which made him look like a flake. what could've been...

and by 'what could've been...' i mean 'no reagan,' which whatever you think of carter is a pretty major difference.

I don't think calling romney competent is that big a scandal, he is probably competent by most definitions of the word, it just also doesn't matter cause he's more than willing to act otherwise for political gain

anyway jimmy carter is a tree falling in a forest unless he's talking about israel

no use for him but RIP

I read this a couple of months ago, and it made the same point as above about the malaise speech--Carter's approval shot up (to 60% or so) in the immediate aftermath of the speech. (As I remember the book, he also--and this is a little weird--took some of the speech's pessimistic tone from a White House screening of Manhattan.)

http://cjrarchive.org/img/posts/mattson1.jpg

Slamming the current Nobel Peace Prize prez in a NYT OpEd:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/opinion/americas-shameful-human-rights-record.html

Fuck Jimmy Carter, he has no room to criticize Obama's record on human rights.

not much... but some.

least bad pres since FDR, surely?

I don't have an algorithm for that, but sad if true.

He has competition from Poppy.

symbolic or not, i'm thinking this was one of the worst things carter did in office:

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/10/the-pardon-of-jefferson-davis-and-the-14th-amendment/

Carter had the bad luck to be president in the late 70s and took the blame for a lot of shit that he had no control over, like the effects of OPEC and the oil shocks, the inflation hangover from the Vietnam War, and the first wave of job losses to globalization. Far from being the worst president of the 20th century, as Reagan Republicans love to classify him, Carter was just a mildly inept president caught in unusually trying times, much like Herbert Hoover.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/10/america_as_the_no_1_warmonger_president_jimmy_carter_talks_to_salon_about_race_cable_news_slut_shaming_and_more/

I can only hope I'm that well-spoken at 89.

So the former GA governor Carl Sanders, who lost to Carter in the 1970 Democratic gub primary, just died. (He was considered "moderate" in the late '60s though he called mixed-race marriage an abomination.) Apparently Carter ran a pretty race-baity campaign against him, praising Lester Maddox etc, even tho he didn't carry this over to governing when he won. Anyone have a good source/summary on this? Online info I can find comes mostly from assorted wingnuts and/or transparent racists.

Randy Sanders. " 'The Sad Duty of Politics': Jimmy Carter and the Issue of Race in His 1970 Gubernatorial Campaign"
The Georgia Historical Quarterly. Vol. 76, No. 3, Fall 1992, 612-628

Well worth finding. JSTOR access, if that helps. Wish I could upload some of the images, esp. this one cartoon that has not been posted to the www

I'll check the NYPL sometime, thanks.

upthread:

removing (saddam) hussein will do more for peace than anything carter ever did.

― keith (keithmcl), Friday, October 11, 2002

^^another failed prophecy by a random googler

removing hussein will do more for peace than anything carter ever did.

― keith (keithmcl), Friday, October 11, 2002 6:18 PM (12 years ago)

heehee

weird thread, though, especially the discussion in late oct 2007. morbs pointing out that carter made some terrible decisions that led to many people dying was immediately criticized because a) other presidents' decisions have led to people dying, b) he didn't offer solutions to rectify carter's mistakes (??), c) since presidents' decisions affect many more people, they must be judged on a different scale of morality, d) he's morbs.

pointing out that something bad happened, with or without including possible solutions or suggestions to how the problem could have been avoided, is fine in my book. the vast majority of people have no clue that jimmy carter did terrible things. there's a value in pointing it out, even if you don't have a supplementary alternative history policy recommendation paper to accompany the post. a segment of the ILX politics cohort may be well aware of carter's more regrettable actions, but it's ridiculous to think that many others do. jimmy carter was a peanut farmer. jimmy carter is an exceedingly nice man that i met in an airplane a few years ago (he shook everyone's hand!). jimmy carter told everyone to turn down the ragodammned heat and put a sweater on for crissake, and installed solar panels on the white house roof. jimmy carter's administration strongly advised actions that led to the biggest massacre in south korea since the korean war. the fact that he was in the most powerful position on earth does not mean that it's pointless to cite terrible things that he did. the fact that very powerful people are sometimes put in situations where a decision could lead to the death of innocents doesn't mean that it's pointless to criticize the decision.

(it may annoy people if a particular poster frequently focuses on the terrible things that a president did, but if that's the case, why not criticize the poster on those grounds rather trying to make some sort of argument that the poster shouldn't be allowed to talk about the terrible things at all?)

anyway, lighten up 2007 ILX

this deserves a longer answer, but i guess i've come to feel, after growing up on the hard left's interpretation of recent u.s. history and later reading more in-depth books about those subjects, that i don't find the kind of critiques that cockburn specialized in to be especially convincing or interesting anymore. cockburn lists a lot of things that sound pretty bad, but he doesn't give us a lot of context or any detailed analysis of why those things happened, so carter's actual role in those events. like, did carter specifically sign off on the massacre in south korea? how did he justify supporting the regime in indonesia? i'd like to know the answer, but i don't feel like the cockburn/chomsky 'all presidents are war criminals' line is terribly useful in terms of understanding recent history, since it seems to attribute everything bad that happens to the personal character flaws of a person who can be kicked out of office every four years, as opposed to (say) the more-or-less permanent power of the CIA, the pentagon, and the other institutions that are actually responsible for the "continuity in empire" and atrocities that cockburn talks about.

it seems to attribute everything bad that happens to the personal character flaws of a person who can be kicked out of office every four years

yeah, I don't see it this way at all. "Personal character flaws" really don't seem to enter into it all that much since presumably 'different' personalities like Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Dubya, Obama do remarkably similar things, cuz they've all chosen to put on the executioner's hood that goes with the job.

Some of the tortured prose employed above in 2007 v reminiscent of Buck Turgidson's "We have two regrettable but nevertheless distinguishable scenarios..."

not a fan of most of those guys, but imo there is a clear difference between the attitudes that carter and (say) reagan had toward foreign policy and the national security state. this piece by mark ames has a lot of details about the differences between the two administrations that i haven't seen anywhere else (the carter stuff starts near the middle, but the entire piece is indispensable reading imo):

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/assassinations/

haha, probably not going to be able to check out that link at work

haha, ironically i think almost everything on that site is actually safe for work, unless maybe you work for the defense department or something

yeah i'm sure it's fine but a lot of URLs are screened for their titles alone so i'm sure it's blocked. anyway i'll check it out when i get home!

When are the military exploits and collateral foreign carnage brought by Bush II, Bush I, Reagan, Nixon excused via the more-or-less permanent power of the CIA, the pentagon, etc.?

This rationalization is offered solely to deflect discussions of the actual Obama, Clinton, Carter admins.

i'm not rationalizing it, and i'm not trying to 'deflect' any discussions. i'm interested in the actual political history that cockburn smugly elides with his "they're all the same, those bums!" routine.

The best book about the CIA in Central America and its involvement in the October Surprise (which looks more credible every year) is Robert Parry's Secrets and Privilege. He's the AP reporter who uncovered the CIA assassination manual in Central America, among other horrors.

wait, which year's October Surprise is that?

"They're all the same" is one routine. Another routine is "the Republicans like to do it, the Democrats only do it because [some excuse]." The first routine only sounds the most cynical; the latter routine is so much worse.

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2015/08/12/jimmy-carter-i-have-cancer/

This is a man who has lived a good, long, rich and decent life, and who has been slandered in history by people not morally fit to tie his shoes.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a37130/jimmy-carter-has-cancer-ronald-reagan-iran

:(

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/20/former-president-jimmy-carter-says-cancer-has-spread-to-his-brain/

since he appears to have become a much better person since he was president, i expect he'll handle this with dignity and courage.

hmm seems like hes fucked

said Reagan in 1980

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/every-single-movie-that-jimmy-carter-watched-at-the-whi-1728538092

The Island of Allah (1956) and Herbie Rides Again (1974) - May 21, 1977

I've never heard of 'The Island of Allah' - does it make a good double feature with 'Herbie Rides Again' or did Carter just give up on the former after the first ten minutes and decide to put a Herbie film on instead?

we both saw The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu in summer 1980

he did not watch Airplane! until the week after he lost to Reagan.

This is almost like Barry Bonds setting a new HR record only three years after McGwire--too soon, Jimmy, too soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/us/politics/how-old-is-jimmy-carter.html

(But congratulations anyway.)

didn't he beat stage 3 brain cancer or something like that?