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My Jimmy Carter confessional

James Earl Carter at 100

The 39th president turns 100 today. So it’s time for my Jimmy Carter confessional. I never voted for James Earl Carter when he ran for president, either in the primaries or in the general elections in 1976 and 1980.

In 1976, I believe I voted for progressive Fred Harris in the primary.

I was wary of Carter. As this 2023 NYT article discusses, he was a “white politician from the South who once supported segregationist policies [who] eventually won the enduring support of Black voters.”

During the campaign, he debated President Gerald Ford in three televised debates, the first since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. During the middle event on October 6, Ford declared, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” That hurt Jerry greatly.

But I was uncomfortable with Jimmy’s Playboy interview that autumn. As this 2023 Daily Kos piece noted, “The centerfold was not the topic of discussion [among the writer’s associates.]. It was the interview with Jimmy Carter. The ‘peanut farming hick’ and ‘goody two-shoes Sunday school teacher’ (their words, not mine) had actually admitted, in a national publication with a readership of millions, to having committed adultery in his heart. Many times in fact.” It may have made others take him less seriously, especially compared with the 45th president, who NEVER apologizes.

Ultimately, I was very disturbed by the weird machinations of the Carter people in New York, who kept Eugene McCarthy, the firebrand who ran against Lyndon Johnson in 1968, off the NYS primary ballot. He wouldn’t get the nomination; the primary challengers were Mo Udall, Henry Jackson, and Jerry Brown. Still, I was annoyed so much that in the general election, I voted for McCarthy as a write-in.

In office

Jimmy Carter’s Presidency is reflected by the National Archives’ description of something else that happened on this date. “Opened on October 1, 1986, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta holds 27 million pages of records, half a million photographs, and hundreds of hours of film, audio, and video from the Carter administration. Records cover the wide-ranging topics of the administration including the energy crisis, SALT II, Panama Canal Treaty, Camp David Summit and the Camp David Accords, Deng Xiaoping’s visit to Washington, establishment of the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, Iran Hostage Crisis, and more. “

Ah, Iran hostage. The daily count of 52 Americans held for 444 days. The failed rescue mission.

“During his term, Jimmy Carter took 12 international trips and visited 25 countries. He was the first president to visit Nigeria (and sub-Saharan Africa) and Guadeloupe.”

A recent Associated Press story suggested that Carter’s real problem was that “he faced two barriers: the congressional leaders did not view him as one of them, and the national media approached him with a regional bias against the South. Long after leaving office, he still bemoaned the political cartoon published around his inauguration that depicted his family approaching the White House with his mother, Miss Lillian, chewing on a hayseed.”

1980

When the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries came, I didn’t vote for Jimmy Carter. Nor did I choose Ted Kennedy because I was afraid he would be assassinated like his brothers. Also, in an interview with Roger Mudd in 1979, EMK could not articulate why he wanted to be president. I probably wrote in Jerry Brown.

I certainly wasn’t going to vote for Reagan in the general election. He was terrible, but how effective could he be? As it turns out, big tax cuts for the rich, gutting unions, and ignoring AIDS. So awful, much worse than I had imagined. I didn’t vote for Carter or third-party candidate John Anderson. Instead, I voted for environmentalist Barry Commoner, who wrote the 1971 book The Closing Circle, which I had read. It would not be the last time I voted for a minor-party candidate.

Best ex-President ever

After licking his wounds, “Mr. Carter has championed humanitarian causes and engaged in conflict mediation through the non-partisan and non-profit Carter Center [founded in 1982]. He found sustained success working on issues like global democracy, human rights advocacy, and the eradication of disease. In 2002, his efforts were recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize. He was only the third U.S. President to be awarded this prize” at the time.

The former President and his late wife, Rosalynn, were well-known Habitat for Humanity volunteers. He also regularly taught Sunday school at his church.

Jimmy has defied expectations in his hospice care in Plains, GA, which he entered in February 2023. “Electing hospice care signals a person is nearing the end of life, where care focuses on comfort rather than continued treatment. One study found 93% of hospice patients pass away within six months.” He even attended the funeral of his wife, Rosalynn Carter, in November 2023.

Jimmy recovered in 2015 from a melanoma diagnosis that spread to his brain and liver.

Facts

The National Archives had some interesting facts, written a year ago and updated.

Jimmy Carter holds several interesting records as president. At 100, he is our longest-lived president… In 2012, he surpassed Herbert Hoover’s record for the longest-retired president. He and his wife Rosalynn had the longest presidential marriage at over 77 years.

Additionally, Carter holds many presidential firsts, including the first president born in a hospital. On October 1, 1924, he was born at the Wise Sanitarium, where his mother worked as a nurse. He’s also the only president to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Jimmy Carter Stopped a Nuclear Reactor From Destroying Ottawa.

How do we not get djt 47?

a movement

I need your help. Please explain to me how we do not get djt 47. I do not see how this doesn’t happen on January 20, 2025. I’m certainly not happy about it.

Despite some successes (the infrastructure bill et al.), Joe Biden does not engender the necessary enthusiasm. The expected recession of 2023 did not take place. The inflation rate is down, but especially without those stimulus checks, it “feels” worse. (Frank S. Robinson explains “the big misunderstanding.”)

In 2011/2012, even when he seemed to be trailing in the polls, Obama could share his Spotify playlist and show how relatable he was. Joe is… Joe, grandfatherly, a policy wonk without the requisite swagger despite the aviator glasses.

October 7, the start of the Israel-Hamas war, has been a losing issue for Biden. Those who support Palestine feel betrayed by him. Specifically, Arabs and Muslims in places like Michigan have openly indicated that they will not vote for him in 2024 as they did in 2020. The Biden administration is navigating both support for Israel and the desire that the Israelis work to minimize Palestinian casualties. As someone said at a recent book talk, Joe is schmoozing. The problem is that neither position is palatable to a wide swath of voters.

Likewise, Foreign Policy magazine indicates that Biden has no good options in Yemen. “The decision to bomb the Houthis was likely the administration’s least bad path.”

The border crisis affects not just the border states but those cities where the migrants have been shipped to. Yet djt wants to scuttle bipartisan legislation to address the issue, and House Republicans might just fall in line to do just that.

Demographic slump

According to the polls, Biden’s job approval rating is down among black voters, especially the younger ones, even more than he’s losing Hispanic and non-Hispanic white voters.

It’s not that he’s too old to do the job, but he’s an old-generation public service guy who has been prone to malaprops for a very long time. An editorial in The Hill suggests that perhaps the President is a superager, “someone generally older than 80 who has cognitive and physical function higher than their peers, more akin to people decades younger — and argued that framing Biden in particular as “too old” is both ageist and politically motivated.

Meanwhile

Nothing that happens with djt seems to affect his core supporters. His presidency has been “defined by corruption, self-dealing, and abuse of power.” He fomented violent insurrection against democracy and called the criminals convicted for their actions on January 6, 2021, “hostages.”

His legal difficulties are part of his campaign. He uses the cases as “proof” that Joe and his allies are engaging in “election interference.” He’s practically begging judges to find him in contempt – see, “they’re denying me my right to participate in my defense.” A convicted sexual predator, also guilty of defamation of character, can win a caucus and a primary.

Maybe he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in NYC, and it wouldn’t affect his voters, as he said eight years ago.

So, in some bizarre way, it seems consistent that his attorney would speak before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals regarding djt’s claims of absolute immunity. He posited that “a President could order the assassination of his political rival and not ever face prosecution unless the House successfully impeached him and the Senate convicted him for that crime.”

As Major Garrett of CBS News noted, djt can and does run simultaneously as an incumbent, an outsider, and a victim. djt support is a movement. If he is elected again, he’ll abuse the office of the presidency and has promised to use the government to punish his enemies.

Hope?

Joe’s only positives are negatives: djt is an existential threat to democracy. djt put those three SCOTUS justices on the court to gut abortion rights and women’s health. Is that enough? I see 2000/2016 again.

If djt isn’t convicted of something criminal by November 5, I fear the outcome of January 6, 2025. If djt didn’t think he should have had to leave office on January 20, 2021, his supporters would think he should be reinstated four years later.

So tell me, how don’t we get the return of the Orange? Please tell me how I’m wrong. I’d LOVE to be wrong.

Not entirely unrelated, here’s the trailer for a new movie called Civil War. i have no plans to watch the film.

Two years of Joe Biden

“Who dares to mock Dark Brandon now?”

After two years of Joe Biden as President, a few things are rather clear.

His accomplishments will be underestimated and probably underreported. As Salon noted, “Who dares to mock Dark Brandon now? Joe Biden keeps rolling up the wins.” Moreover, “Republicans badly underestimated [him] — and in his first two years in the White House, he’s driven them nuts.”

From gun control to the CHIPS Act to respecting marriage, he’s getting things done. Under Biden, more jobs were created than the last three GOP Presidents Combined. He signed a bill to end profiteering from prisoners’ calls to loved ones. If his infrastructure bill is insufficient, it’s because Presidents and Congresses have kicked the issue down the road for decades.

January 6

I’m pleased that he marked “the second anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by awarding the Presidential Citizens Medal to 12 individuals associated with that day and the 2020 presidential election.” This signals he takes the assault on our democracy seriously, unlike others.

The medals were given to seven affiliated with the Capitol Police or D.C. Police departments: Harry Dunn, Caroline Edwards, Aquilino Gonell, Eugene Goodman, Michael Fanone, Daniel Hodges, and the late Brian Sicknick.

Politicians who “refused to buckle to pressure to overturn the presidential election results in their states” were Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, departing Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, and Al Schmidt, former city commissioner on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections.

“The final two recipients, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, were election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, who reportedly endured threats and harassment after the election. Freeman and Moss have been accused by former President Donald Trump and some of his allies of election fraud by including fake ballots in Georgia’s election total. All of the recipients were mentioned in the final report by the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot.

The House GOP

The Republicans in the House of Representatives will try to make his life miserable. For instance, “the powerful Oversight Committee Chairman is pushing a baseless narrative that Biden is ‘compromised.’”

U.S. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky “has promoted the false theory of fraud in the 2020 election, blaming alleged “troubling reports of irregularities and improprieties” on Democrats,” for which he has been regularly criticized. If it’s not Joe’s fault, it’s his son Hunter’s doing.

When Jim Jordan tried to jump the gun on oversight requests, the Biden White House rightly told him to wait his turn. Expect retaliation for that.

Even when Joe Biden errs, he’s measured by a different standard. The AP conducted a side-by-side look at the Trump and Biden classified documents issue. Yet many Republicans, starting with former Veep Mike Pence, make a false equivalence.

Add to that the narrative of him as a “bumbler” – the rightwing media is rife with it. They also mislead.

Will anything happen this year?

Joe Biden’s disapproval rate will be high, in part because progressives want him to do MORE in the areas of housing, healthcare, tax reform, criminal-justice reform, prison reform, and most notably, climate change mitigation. Of course, politics is the art of the possible, and I don’t know what will be possible with the clown car in the House.

There’s a lot of conversation about whether Joe Biden will run again for President. Here’s my thought: I don’t care yet. Moreover, if he’s NOT running, as soon as he announces that, he becomes a lame duck. I realize the 2024 election cycle has begun already, but he could wait until May Day to decide, and the earth will not fall off its axis.

Minor parties in the 2020 Prez race

Princess Khadijah M. Pres Jacob-Fambro

Saturday afternoon, after the Associated Press declared Joe Biden the winner of the race, I came to a realization. When I voted eight days before Election Day, I never even looked at who the other choices were.

In New York, it was the two major party guys, but each was also on a second line. The Democrat received 51%, but on the Working Families line got an additional 4.41%. The Republican netted 38.71% on that line but an additional 3.35% under the Conservative banner.

51

Jo Jorgensen was the Libertarian candidate, the only other person to appear on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In New York, she got only 0.72% of the vote but reached 1.2% nationally. Part of her plan “is to turn America into one giant Switzerland, armed and neutral.” She ran with Spike Cohen.

“On Day One of a Jorgensen administration, I will pardon all 80,000 non-violent people imprisoned on federal drug charges. The War on Drugs has been a disaster and has been used to target the poor and people of color, and to ruin lives that could have been salvaged… I will also use my pardon power to free whistleblowers who risked their liberty to expose corruption and abuse by government agencies.” Actually, I’m good with that part.

At this writing, Jo Jorgenson’s vote count percentage is greater than the Dem/GOP difference in AZ (11 Electoral Votes, 1.5 v 0.7), GA (16 EV, 1.2 v 0.2), PA (20 EV 1.1 v 0.6), and WI (10 EV, 1.2 v 0.7), all in Biden’s favor.

Georgia hasn’t been called, but assuming 290 Biden votes, the loss of those three other states would have brought him down to 249. His chief opponent would go up to 255, with NC’s 15 EV likely to go to the GOP. That’s 270 and re-election.

So is Jo Jorgensen a “spoiler”?

Being Green

Howie Hawkins was on the ballot as the Green Party candidate. He received 0.35% of the vote in New York and about 2% of the vote nationally, running in 30 states. I have actually voted for Howie in the past. In 2010, 2014, and 2018, he ran for governor of my state. The latter two times I supported him against Andrew Cuomo and a Republican who frankly was sure to lose. His running mate in 2020 was Angela Nicole Walker.

Incidentally, the Green Party candidate in Alaska was former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, running with Cynthia McKinney. They got 0.8% of the votes in that state.

Roque De La Fuente got on the ballot for The Alliance Party in 16 states – not NY – but did not get more than 0.3% of the vote in any state, and that in California. In 2018, he was a 2018 Republican candidate who sought election to the U.S. Senate from nine different states! He had multiple running mates.

Gloria La Riva also had different running mates in her quest running on the Party for Socialism and Liberation. You thought Joe Biden was a socialist? Like De La Fuente, her highest percentage on the 15 ballots she appeared on was in California, with 0.3% of the vote. Not on the NY ballot.

Oh, yeah, THOSE guys

Independent Kanye West was running in a dozen states, but not mine. He got as much as 0.4% of the vote in Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah. The theory was that he might take votes away from Biden, but that did not materialize. He ran with Wyoming preacher Michelle Tidball.

Don Blankenship of the Constitution Party is one of my least favorite people. He “was the chief executive of Massey Energy Co., the leading producer of coal in Appalachia, from 2000 to 2010. He resigned following the Upper Big Branch mine explosion in April 2010 that killed 29 miners.” Blankenship “was convicted of conspiring to willfully violate safety standards and served one year in prison for the misdemeanor,” and should have served longer.

He made it onto 20 state ballots, not NY, and got 0.4% of the vote in Alaska and Utah. His running mate was William Mohr. All the people listed so far got at least 50,000 votes nationally.

The last name on the New York State ballot was Brock Pierce. The Blockchain technology and digital currency guy got over 40,000 votes. He appeared on 15 state ballots and got 0.3% of the vote in Idaho and New York, 0.4% in Alaska, and a staggering 0.8% of the vote in Wyoming.

From his campaign website: “Sustainability is essential at every level, starting with each of us as individuals and growing to encompass the whole that is our collective social organism, whether in the form of our country, our species, or our planet.” His running mate was Karla Ballard.

Literally, the also-rans

Brian T. Carroll/Amar Patel (American Solidarity Party) received over 20,000 in eight states, 0.2% in Illinois and Wisconsin. Then there’s a huge dropoff. Alyson Kennedy/Malcolm Jarrett (Socialist Workers Party) at over 6,000 in six states, never exceeding 0.1%. Now we’re talking about the minor parties.

Fun names. Dawn Neptune Adams for VP on the Progressive Party line. Phil Collins for prez on the Prohibition Party; no, not THAT guy. The Grumpy Old Patriots party got over 1000 votes.

Genealogy Know Your Family History Party received over 550. The independent ticket of Princess Khadijah M. Pres Jacob-Fambro and Khadijah Maryam Jacob Sr.snagged 450 ballots. The Boiling Frog party won 135 supporters.

See the data dump on the topic I posted here and the chart (it slides on the bottom) I created here.

“Hey, Maybe We Should Postpone The Election”

A crony running USPS

postpone the election.Abe Lincoln Just the other day, I was kvetching to my wife. I said, “You know, I’d rather NOT write about him. But then he keeps doing worse crap.” To wit, suggesting, on Twitter, naturally, that perhaps the United States should postpone the election of November 3 until we can get everyone to the polls safely.

This was so egregiously wrong that Steven Calabresi called for a second impeachment inquiry into him. He is the co-founder of the conservative Federalist Society, This was in a New York Times opinion piece in late July, “where he falsely characterized mail-in voting and proposed the delay of the 2020 presidential election in November, which the executive branch cannot enact.”

Please understand the weight of the complainant. Calabresi has “he’s voted Republican in the presidential election since 1980.” He also “opposed the investigation into Russian election interference by Robert Mueller and was against the impeachment into Trump regarding withholding aid to Ukraine.

As for the Federalist Society, it is “a right-wing organization with 60,000 lawyers, law students and scholars.” It has been “characterized as a ‘conservative pipeline to the Supreme Court'” by the Atlantic. Recently confirmed judge Brett Kavanaugh joined the group while at Yale.

Calabresi wrote, “Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic. And it is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.” Which won’t happen, mind you.

Preciscient?

Ed Morrissey in Red State: “Good grief. For months, Donald Trump’s allies and even a few of his critics have blasted Democrats and a handful of media figures for their baseless theories that the president would cancel or delay the national election. [Presumptive Democratic candidate Joe] Biden got ridiculed for saying that in April. ‘Mark my words: I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,’ even though the law and the constitution are clear that presidents can’t do that.

“And then…

“The best that could be said for this tweet is that Trump’s just spitballing, but even that’s an indictment of its own. No president should just be spitballing a suggestion like this, not in public and not even in private, where it would leak to the press quickly enough anyway. The US held an election in the middle of its Civil War in 1864. We can hold an election in the middle of a pandemic, especially when the president himself keeps insisting we can and should reopen for business.

“Rather than recognize those [Constitutional] impossibilities and leave it as a paranoid-conspiracy theory for the Left, he has essentially vindicated Biden and the paranoids. And for what purpose? Trump can’t do what he’s suggesting, Congress wouldn’t entertain the thought for one hot second… and it won’t work anyway. What could possibly be gained from tweeting out this absurd idea, other than perhaps distracting from the bad GDP report everyone was more or less expecting anyway?”

Of course, the tweet was sent the same day it was announced that the U.S. gross domestic product dropped at an annual rate of 32.9%. Reports of polling putting Biden far ahead of him in the November election.

Properly, securely and safely vote

The argument for delaying has to do with people being able to get to the polls without risking their lives. During this primary season, we’ve seen people standing in long lines during a pandemic. Of course, those were almost always DEMOCRATIC primaries, so it didn’t seem to matter to IMPOTUS.

A real problem, even prior to COVID-19, but certainly exacerbated by it, is a dearth of poll workers. There is a national effort to recruit more poll workers. These are healthy people “to ensure that those workers most susceptible to the coronavirus are given the space to take care of their health, while still keeping polling sites open and available for efficient in-person voting.”

“We can also demand change from our local officials, who in most cases can take needed steps without waiting for the federal government to help. New voting technologies, training standards, polling place opening and closing hours, and poll worker recruitment practices are all decided at the state or local levels.

“State legislatures and state secretaries can expand, rather than shrink, the number of polling places, reversing the harmful trend of polling-place closures in recent years. They can also invest in more early voting sites, and keep them open for longer, reducing the number of voters who cast ballots on Election Day itself.”

Undermining the Postal Service

Meanwhile, the US Postal Service is experiencing days-long backlogs of mail across the country. It is after a top djt donor running the agency put in place new procedures “described as cost-cutting efforts, alarming postal workers who warn that the policies could undermine their ability to deliver ballots on time for the November election…

“Postal employees and union officials say the changes implemented by the Trump fund-raiser-turned-postmaster general Louis DeJoy are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting.”

One recent study found mail-in voting doesn’t benefit one party over another.

Still, since every state has its own deadline for when you need to request an absentee or mail-in ballot, start looking into the options now. Verify that you’re registered to vote and if you’re not, do so right away.

With more voting options this year, the US Postal Service is encouraging voters to plan ahead. If you wait until the last minute to decide how to vote, you could be cutting it close, or even become disenfranchised. We’re now less than 90 days away from the election – time to make a game plan.

Finally, since IMPOTUS’ bogus call for postponing the election took place on the same day as John Lewis’ funeral, tell your members of Congress to support The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. For it is voter suppression that is the real threat to democracy in the United States.