Thank you very much b.
Probably is the key word there. I am afraid we now know he was very much like Obama or Trump, a puppet who had bouts of consciousness and who was there to play a role. There was no Internet there and we were naive, but not the bosses, they were not, just like nowadays.

Posted by: biochar | Dec 30 2024 15:23 utc | 3

Turning down fabulous riches to actually help people, never mind his major accomplishments for global peace, and few can be stirred to even remember it?
President Carter was clearly motivated by ethics more than popularity. Which is good, because a normal person knowing about such “allies” would simply choose to take the money.

Posted by: They Call Me Mister | Dec 30 2024 15:33 utc | 5

With the power of hindsight one can see that the dipshit Americans voted for over Jimmy supports my theory that ‘murica always gets the president it deserves.

Posted by: comrade simba | Dec 30 2024 15:45 utc | 7

From time to time
In every heart
The earth’s Great Thought
Shudders
Then stands unmoved.
Thank you, b, for remembering Jimmy Carter. He was a good man, and a better President than many.

Posted by: juliania | Dec 30 2024 15:53 utc | 9

@Chaka Khagan #6
Carter reminisces about his relationship with “Zbig” on the occasion of the latter’s passing.
https://news.virginia.edu/content/miller-center-interview-carter-recalls-relationship-zbigniew-brzezinski
“we were together four or five times every day. I started off my days meeting with Zbig”
“He was my primary foreign policy advisor all the time I was running for President. He met me in San Francisco when I debated Ford in the second debate on foreign policy and defense. Zbig and I had breakfast that morning and Zbig cross-examined me on foreign policy issues just before I went into the debate with Jerry Ford.”
Carter claimed in the interview that he ended up rejecting most of the ideas Brzezinski presented to him, but with that level of contact I would assume that Carter could be worn down over time, especially as he admitted knowing little about the USSR and Eastern Europe and the history of the region. An ideal placement for a well-educated credentialed man with an agenda.

Posted by: Billb | Dec 30 2024 15:58 utc | 11

On the way to on of my degrees in the 80’s I read everything Brzezinski and Ulam. Here is a joke one of my Professors told, 1981 vintage:
Jimmy Carter died and went to heaven, where he met Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt said, “I don’t pay much attention to what happens on Earth, so tell me, how did your Presidency go?”
Jimmy said, “Well we had some challenges. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan …”
Roosevelt interrupted, “Did you send in the Marines?”
Carter said, “No, we imposed economic sanctions and boycotted the Olympics.”
Teddy: “Oooh … what else?”
Jimmy: “Well, some students in Iran captured the American Embassy and took hostages.”
Teddy: “Did you send the Marines?”
Jimmy: “No, we sent some Army helicopters that crashed in the desert, and the hostages were released after I lost the election.”
Teddy said sarcastically, “I guess now you’re going to tell me you sold the Panama Canal!”

Posted by: frithguild | Dec 30 2024 16:04 utc | 13

‘He meant well. Probably.’ — b
Yes. And the road to [Isra]hell is paved with good intentions.
Jimmy Carter’s ill-fated middle eastern ‘peace deal’ has cost hapless Americlowns a cumulative quarter trillion dollars. What did we get for this colossal sum? Two oppressive dictatorships and a genocidal apartheid colony.
We can best honor Jimmy Carter’s memory by saying ‘enough’ to his destructive peace deal, and cutting off the scheming middle eastern leeches that pick our pockets.
Israel is our misfortune.

Posted by: Jim H | Dec 30 2024 16:20 utc | 15

He WAS a personally decent man … his post presidency proves that. The best ex-president we have had in modern times. However,
– allowed the Nat Sec state to begin the Gulf Salafi disruption and chaos generation in the ME, in support of Israel and the Gulf dictatorships … Afghan terrorist support and madrassas in Pakistan as primary elements;
– The Khmer Rouge support to get back at Vietnam;
– Allowed the Nat Sec state to reform after the embarrassing disclosures of ’76 which should have led to the dismemberment of the counter democratic secret state and release of past secrets like Kennedy, MLK, etc.;
So, a man who was a good man by many measures, but who was simply too vision-less and small for the role demanded of a good man at a critical turning point in history from some semblance of democratic socialism to the neoliberalism we have seen since.

Posted by: Caliman | Dec 30 2024 16:24 utc | 17

A good man

Posted by: A.z | Dec 30 2024 16:37 utc | 19

Back in the 70s I considered myself a person who paid attention to current events. We didn’t have the internet, so I read a daily newspaper and Newsweek. Now I realize how I was manipulated by them, and why our overlords look back at those days with fond regard, and call for censorship to bring back their top-down control of the narrative.
The conditioning lasts. I see multiple people bringing up the hostages in Iran. I remember that also. The media made it a Big Thing. I didn’t watch TV news, but I did know that every single night the news anchors gave the number of days it had been since the students took the embassy employees hostage. There was never before, and never since, so much attention paid to hostages.
Carter was leading in the polls, but after that campaign he lost the election. And then minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the Iranians released the hostages. Why did they do that? I wondered. It seemed strange, but the media didn’t bother to investigate, or even note the oddity.
Now I know that Casey made a deal with the Iranians to hold the hostages, while the news media collaborated to elevate the situation above all else. I know that the Iranians were rewarded with weapons, passed to them by the Israelis, in a guns-for-drugs operation run by Oliver North out of the White House basement.
I know that the rescue attempt was sabotaged by the neocons, by taking the sand screens out of the helicopters.
Do I know any of this from the media? No. I learned all of this from alternative media, including the internet, once it came along.
And now I look at the Nixon removal with different eyes as well. That also was a coordinated media event, fed by the Deep State through Bernstein and Woodward, and then amplified by all other outlets.
I’m still not sure why they got rid of him, but I know it wasn’t the break-in or the coverup, as we were told.
The media still does their wall-to-wall propaganda, but now we have the internet to instantly check it. Our overlords are propagandizing to suppress and censor it, but there is resistance from those of us who believe in free speech and like having actual facts to consider.
Get ready for bird flu, by the way. I can smell a campaign coming now. It’s going to be as pervasive as the covid campaign, or the time they made fun of Jimmy Carter being attacked by a rabbit.
That’s how they do.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Dec 30 2024 16:46 utc | 21

Carter did have a conscience. His many good works after leaving D.C. were quite probably forms of atonement for the evil which was done by the likes of Kissinger and Brzezinski during his administration. The infusion of evil entities into his “assistants” was engineered from “above”. Could be he was shown the portion of the Zapruder film which told the true story of JFK’s assassination. As a former ranking naval officer, Carter knew everything about taking orders.
May he Rest In Peace.

Posted by: aristodemos | Dec 30 2024 16:51 utc | 23

Chaka Khagan@1540 Dec 30
Brzezinski’s identity was not Polish you say? A Ukie Jew? Better have some backup for that statement.
What we do know is that that powerful tool was an agent for the Rottenfeller Crime Clan, then under the leadership of the fortunately late, David Rottenfeller, who did live 101 years. That ripened age makes me suspicious as to what kind of “treatments” he was receiving. In any event, that man achieved a status very close to pure evil.

Posted by: aristodemos | Dec 30 2024 16:57 utc | 25

That Biden is attempting to reap political capital upon his death reeks, the stench going global.
Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 30 2024 15:52 utc | 8
I have no idea what makes some people seek “political capital” long after they lose the ability to spend it. But absolutely, “Team Decency” infects both halves of the Uniparty, and it’s usually populated by absolute degenerates. Truly decent men should never allow themselves to be used as cover by such people.

Posted by: They Call Me Mister | Dec 30 2024 17:05 utc | 27

thanks wagelaborer.
that interim with Ford and whatever gains GHWB managed
(head of CIA, and they never hearda him)
was a terrible short term.
Nostalgia for Nixon is a thing.
Carter was assailed from two directions by Bush and Kennedy.
significant to me. those dynasties were in the same business.
Dynasties.

Posted by: Not Ewe | Dec 30 2024 17:06 utc | 29

What does it mean – a personally decent man, who did a long list of terrible things costing the American citizens tons of money and other many lives to this day.
Decent men do not do indecent things, let alone willingly cause death, misery and destruction all over the world.
It is high time to dispense with the nonsense – decent man, who caused a lot of harm.
Many “decent men” in history and to this day caused the catastrophies that have led to the collapse of humanity we are witnessing today.
These “decent men”, responsible for monstrous deeds, were nice to their lovers, were loving and tender husbands and fathers, kind to their next of kin or neighbors, could sing or play instruments, were charming to their foreign guests and patrons, had talents etc.
Does that absolve them of their crimes? What characterises them – their “decency” or their criminality?
Until humans learn to be honest and consistently critical so that they can, without fear or favor, discern between “decent men” and criminals, nothing will change.

Posted by: JB | Dec 30 2024 17:24 utc | 31

That Biden is attempting to reap political capital upon his death reeks, the stench going global.
Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 30 2024 15:52 utc | 8
It is Biden being Biden. He never rises above partisan concerns with no apparent interest in the overall outcome. I would suppose that right now he has two interests. One is some anger over being pushed of center stage by Harris, and the other is reputation.
My impression of Carter at the time was that (as b said) he meant well. He seamed to lack any overall method in dealing with the Washington establishment, and was too indecisive to push through an agenda.

Posted by: Jmaas | Dec 30 2024 17:34 utc | 33

On January 21, 1971, Carter’s first day in office, he signed Proclamation 4483, granting asylum to tens of thousands draft evaders…which probably influenced the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn that same year Muhammad(‘I Ain’t Got No Quarrel With Them Vietcong’)Ali’s conviction for said crime.
Jimmy Carter…
‘We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war’

Posted by: john | Dec 30 2024 18:01 utc | 35

Posted by: frithguild | Dec 30 2024 16:04 utc | 13
Your post loses all impact when we consider that Teddy Roosevelt was an imperialist and MAGA shit and warmonger of the first order.

Posted by: Jams O’Donnell | Dec 30 2024 18:24 utc | 37

Chris Hedges has an excellent essay on Carter’s legacy. He was no less bloody than other Presidents, but he was able to compensate with environmental policy…which was immediately dismantled.
Hedges rightly points out that the Presidency is just a figurehead for a deep state of sociopaths, like Zbigniew Brzezinski who steered Carter into the usual Cold War brinkmanship. Carter may have tried to be moral–we really don’t know–but there is ample blood on his hands. I hate writing that as Carter was the first President I remember, and he was certainly better than all that followed. But the nature of a system is what it does. Carter would’ve gotten JFK’ed if he’d really stood up to the monsters.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/dont-deify-jimmy-carter

Posted by: D | Dec 30 2024 18:27 utc | 39

No such thing as a descent human being president. There exists NO democracy. NO president / PM himself has any real power. This has been the case from the day that democracy was invented. Sock puppets, all of them. This system was designed to keep the SAME people in power, forever, while the gullible fools fight over choice A, B, or C. Real power is never ever shown on TV, or on your tiktok feed.
Democracy, like free press, are beautiful utopia concepts that only work in theory. On micro scale like a classroom, perfectly demonstrable. Any scale up from there, it becomes oxymoronically impossible and extremely exploitable.
This root understanding is crucial in understanding any of the things going on..
much love

Posted by: OneStone | Dec 30 2024 18:43 utc | 41

The commentariat brings up Zbigniew Brzezinski whose mentor was the orientalist Bernard Lewis and Lewis as it seems to me was the real mastermind of the anglosaxon empires implementing of the Mackinder plan by encouraging radical cults as battering rams.
But that isnt just about muslims used in this manner but also various leftist groups.
One of which was the Sandinistas. All independent programs in the interest of internal improvements are to be crushed. By letting the leftists take over the next step is sanctions. If Somosa had been allowed to develop the country after the american model as it appeared to many reformers worldwide, it would have become a good example. But not in the eyes of the imperialists. To them such a good example is bad.
I agree that Carter meant well. But I dont think he knew enough about what was really going on.
Most americans still dont know.

Posted by: petergrfstrm | Dec 30 2024 18:48 utc | 43

Carter started the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Posted by: Keme | Dec 30 2024 18:59 utc | 45

Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Dec 30 2024 15:40 utc | 6
Brzezinski was a Polish Catholic born in Warsaw…he was neither Ukrainian or Jewish. However, history has shown that the other things you wrote about him are most likely correct.

Posted by: Victor Scarpia | Dec 30 2024 19:22 utc | 47

Adolph “Spike” Dubs was a career Foreign Service Officer and noted Soviet expert. From 1973-74, he served as Chargé d’Affaires at Embassy Moscow, and in 1978, he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan.
https://diplomacy.state.gov/the-assassination-of-ambassador-dubs/

Although the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated the former course, Carter supported the Department of State’s advocacy of recognition. Shortly after the revolution, Washington recognized the new government and soon named Adolph Dubs its Ambassador to Afghanistan.

Assassination of US Ambassador Dubs in Kabul – Feb 1979.
https://thediplomat.com/2024/02/a-murdered-ambassador-a-closed-embassy-the-tragic-history-of-us-diplomacy-in-afghanistan/
Regional challenge rooted in the UK-US coup d’état of Mossadeq in 1953 under Eisenhower. Facing blowback from Islamic revolution in Iran 🇮🇷
Pact of Baghdad – CENTO

Posted by: Oui | Dec 30 2024 19:44 utc | 49

” it’s that coherent and realistic political analysis, a world view that can accept that capitalism is an obsolete system whose death throes threaten to trample the world, matters. ”
Posted by: steven t johnson | Dec 30 2024 17:41 utc | 34
The collapse into the dark “medieval ages” will come. The “elites” are on their way, so to say.

Posted by: MorePain4Cakes | Dec 30 2024 20:06 utc | 51

Carter played his part in helping to remove Gough Whitlam – a democratically elected Australian PM.
“As a journalist at ABC @4corners I tried to get former US President Carter to fess up the detail of what he described as the ‘US interference in Australian politics’.
You see, he had apologised to couped Prime Minister Gough Whitlam for the “interference” — the sort of thing that is the CIA’s clandestine work.
For ever loyal to the US deep empire, he didn’t spell out what the interference was, but he did secretly apologise. It was secret until Gough wrote of it in his memoir book.
Carter’s words passed to Whitlam:
“The US administration would never again interfere in the domestic political processes of Australia.”
An apology—from a US president, to a national leader two years after his removal in a bloodless coup—for interfering in the politics of the country.
Carter refused to answer my questions put to him in writing—and Carter’s archive people refused to assist.
They refused to provide minutes of meetings or notes of discussions Carter may have had with his messenger US Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher. ”

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Dec 30 2024 20:11 utc | 53

In 1980, a prominent Republican sought to sabotage then-President Jimmy Carter’s re-election by asking Middle Eastern leaders to get a message to the Iranians; keep the American hostages until after the election and Reagan will give you a better deal. 
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/new-claim-about-iran-hostage-crisis-sabotage-may-change-narrative-of-carter-presidency

Posted by: Apollyon | Dec 30 2024 20:22 utc | 55

Carter teve seus podres (Afeganistão por exemplo). Mesmo assim foi o homem mais descente que passou pela Whitehouse nos últimos 140 anos.
Descanse em paz,como homem justo

Posted by: Soviético | Dec 30 2024 20:23 utc | 57

Carter was president during the energy crisis ’70’s. In 1979, he made a speech proposing how to achieve energy independence with a program supporting improved efficiency, extraction, limits on imports of oil, and development of solar technologies. He first pointed out Americans were losing their way, that they no longer had faith in the future of their government, and issued a call to action.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next 5 years will be worse than the past 5 years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world.

It became known as the ‘national malaise’ speech. Rather than engage in the introspection he was asking for, and taking his energy proposals seriously, the media and Republicans absolutely pilloried him for being negative on America. Well I guess we Americans don’t really do introspection, or any kind of personal sacrifice. Pointing out American’s ‘self-indulgence and consumption’ was an absolute red line never to be crossed. In retrospect, he never really had a chance to change anything. Best you can say, he was able to put a human face on a presidency that had long ago been taken under control by the neoliberal imperialist deep state.

Posted by: Mike R | Dec 30 2024 20:28 utc | 59

Jimmy Carter had more wisdom and humanity than all current US politicians put together.
https://youtube.com/shorts/QacMwLvIlXQ?si=Kywo0UD7XVruO4dD

Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Dec 30 2024 20:41 utc | 61

“By their fruits, you will know them.”
Jimmy Carter created the Senior Executive Service (SES) in 1978 when he signed the Civil Service Reform Act into law. The SES effectively made the Deep State ‘Blob’ independent of the Executive by making it virtually impossible for the sitting President to fire Federal bureaucrats.
Thanks, Jimmy.

Posted by: Monos | Dec 30 2024 20:49 utc | 63

the Carter bootlicking and revisioninsm has gotten even more insane in the comments.
Now with added religious nutbags!
Sickening.

Posted by: Ed Bernays | Dec 30 2024 21:09 utc | 65

Jimmy Carter had more wisdom and humanity than all current US politicians put together.
Posted by: Andrew Sarchus | Dec 30 2024 20:41 utc | 61
______
0.1 > 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 …

Posted by: malenkov | Dec 30 2024 21:20 utc | 67

Lysias @ 58:
Kevin Rudd was not really that much more pro-China than yr average Oz politician despite being able to speak Mandarin. If anything, he advocated a more aggressive and pro-active stance against China than Washington DC had at the time under Barack Obama. The US govt was clearly not used to taking any requests or warnings from its Canberra vassal which was expected to meekly take its orders, and that was one reason why Rudd had to go.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Dec 30 2024 21:33 utc | 69

Jimmy Carter came in and gutted the CIA of most of its older wild ass players who promply took jobs in the private military securty complex. Carters era was preceeded by a serious questioning of the CIA’s activities. There were several powerful and influential Congressmen very sceptical of the CIA in the wake of the Kennedy assassination which was heavily questioned by many on the fringes of the power bases of that era. Not to mention a myriad of other questionable things going on like MKULTRA.
These Congressmen were slow to catch up to the overall CIA activities up to that point and were proposing legislation to try to reing it in. Leo Ryan, who was murdered at Jonestown during an investigation was one. There were several committees working on various issues trying to reign in the CIA. It was mission impossble but they did try.
Another move he made was the Camp David Peace accord where he locked up Begin and Sadat in Camp David. The Zionist did not have the level of grip they have now on Congress. Sadat was murdered shortly thereafter and I do remember that day and the preceding week where I had some contact with some of Egypts military officials at an event showing off US equipment.
Another mission impossible, trying to make peace in the region.
The “loss of Iran” was blamed on Carter as most of the CIA operatives holding things together were fired. That was the narrative at the time but the truth goes much deeper. I remmember the hostage rescue mission and it was an absurd attempt destined to fail and the narritive was something along these lines “we attempted to conduct an Israeli style raid”
If you dig into the details you would be assured that raid had no chance of success and I am sure there were many Israeli advisors in on the planning. Iran released the hostages the day of Reagan taking office. That “showed they were afraid of Reagen” as the narritive went. The reality was Carter was set up probably at the hands of people putting together a mission that had no chance of success. Reagan came in, and so did the fundamentalist Zionist Christians full force. What followed was a heavily Zionized politcal establishment in the US.
At the raids failure special operations forces took much more of a prominence at the DOD. That is, building and training these types of units in greater numbers and greater lethality.
As has been mentioned under his administration started the focus on funding building of Islamic militancy prior to Russian occupation of Afganistan in order to “fight the communist influence” in that country.
I could go on but one can note much of what is going on today came out of his era. There is no peace, no security, no success for many. I always like Carter and grew up in that era but I can also understand the forces arayed against him were way more powerful than one mere man at the helm of the US.

Posted by: circumspect | Dec 30 2024 21:41 utc | 71

Chaka Khagan @ 6, Victor Scarpia @ 47:
Zbigniew Brzezinski may have been born in Warsaw but his father’s family was originally from a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire that is now part of northwest Ukraine.
Albeit in Brzezinski’s youth, this area was dominated by Poles, and heavily Polonised by the inter-war Polish govt, that led to the rise of the ultranational movement among Ukrainians and paved the way for Stepan Bandera to assume leadership of one of that movement’s factions and the faction’s later collaboration with Nazi Germany in slaughtering both Pokes and Jews.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Dec 30 2024 21:48 utc | 73

If only American presidents would follow John Quincy Adams’ advice and stay home. But no — they’re addicted to exceptionalism, know little about the outside world and easily manipulated by foreigners with an ax to grind.
That’s what I think of Carter as.

Posted by: HELMHOLTZ SMITH | Dec 30 2024 21:57 utc | 75

“The decision to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the USSR’s blundering military campaign in Afghanistan was a deeply unserious way for a great power to conduct itself—not least because it was the actions of the Carter administration that precipitated the Soviet invasion.”
History never repeats itself, though it often rhymes.

Posted by: nwwoods | Dec 30 2024 22:06 utc | 77

Sorry b I’m going to be contrary.
@Posted by: wagelaborer | Dec 30 2024 16:46 utc | 21
Thanks for these reminders.
@Posted by: aristodemos | Dec 30 2024 17:05 utc | 28
Ditto
@ Posted by: Chaka Khagan | Dec 30 2024 17:22 utc | 30
Yup plenty of paper clip vibes.
@ Posted by: OneStone | Dec 30 2024 18:43 utc | 41
Exactly!
@ Posted by: Ed Bernays | Dec 30 2024 20:05 utc | 50
Well! Don’t sit on the fence😆
@Posted by: Republicofscotland | Dec 30 2024 20:11 utc | 53
Ditto
@ Posted by: Apollyon | Dec 30 2024 20:22 utc | 55
And he let that blatant treachery stand. Almost as if he was part of the October Surprise.
@ Posted by: Monos | Dec 30 2024 20:49 utc | 63
Doesn’t that say it all about saint Jimmy?
Ok – my tuppence.
He was the choreographed transition from Nixon’s treacherous neocons to the Bush and Clinton era neocons. (All the exact same ziofascist shits)
The lily-white, clean skin to wash away their sins of their Nixon era, so that they could get on with their plans of Domination and End of History. Nixon didn’t stop them and was black washed with ‘Gate’.
When it comes down to it, the obits today reveal the DS nature of the planned one term Carter sinecure.
They are all about Foreign Policy. Imperialsm unbound.
There is not much about domestic policy- except what he teed up for the Raygun Spring Time in America …
So what made him emerge?
Was he an equal to the Bush CIA, Kissinger and Zionazis era of liberalisation and fiat money resource grab?
Nah – he was a follower of their orders and a good naval special ops operator. Part of the Company.
His meanderings as some roving peacemaker ( failed in every single task) Africa and West Asia especially especially – the Road Map with the equally discharged from people ‘duty’, Blair and other such ‘grandees’. The soft power tweedle dumbs to their hard power ‘colleagues’.
Anyone remember Ritter’s tweet shortly before he was first ‘cancelled’?
Carter being a heroic naval officer in stopping the first ever nuclear meltdown! Long before Chernobyl and three mile island.
Anyone seen that in any of his obits?
I guess he deserved a governorship for that! And got a potus stint as the fresh faced farmer Carter to make Americans feel better about their politics.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Dec 30 2024 22:22 utc | 79

Correction – under FRANKLIN Roosevelt.

Posted by: frithguild | Dec 30 2024 22:25 utc | 81

Unless anyone forgets….
President Ford identified inflation as the #1 issue in his short tenure.
He made up WIN buttons – Whip Inflation Now. The press howled and mocked him to no end, even cartoonists of the day made light of the WIN buttons.
So when Carter took over, he had his banking buddy from Georgia come in as Treasury Secretary, Bert Lance. Being a Democrat, Carter needed to spend other peoples money, (for all the social welfare programs he agreed to to win the election) forgetting that the post Vietnam depression was still on-going. Ol’Bert cranked up the money printing presses, and the country went into hyper-inflation.
By the end of his term, loan rates were 15% and higher. Prices more than doubled on many items. Because of the Iran problems and inflation, gas went from 50 cents to over a dollar in about a year.
The term rust belt came into usage, as industries laid off thousands at a time, and production started shifting to Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Instead of a slow recovery, the nation went even further into recession.
The exodus from northern states to southern began as the industries shut down, and those states had more taxation added to the federal taxes, which at the highest were over 50%. Even modest incomes back then were 35% and higher. You literally could earn $3,000 more per year, and only take home $1,500 depending on which state you lived in. (recall that $20,000 per year was considered an above avg wage)
Organized crime was attractive to many because of their focus on not paying taxes on any of their activities. The Mafia and Costra Nostra had their heydays and influenced a whole new generation of wise guys.
Carter endorsed big energy thru big nuclear projects, then 3 Mile Island happened. His admin never did recover from that incident, even with him as a former nuclear engineer. Instead his own party turned on him and on nukes, leaving the coal and gas industries as power brokers. Nukes running today are all from the 70’s, and have few problems.
The whole Iran situation did him in. 90% of Americans could care less about Egypt – Israel deal, the Saudis still controlled the oil market, and did what they wanted on prices.
Carter didn’t profit much as an ex-president, because no one, even his own party thought much of him for many years. He was viewed as the worst president of all time, and is probably 2nd, only to the current still breathing Biden carcass.

Posted by: BroncoBilly | Dec 30 2024 22:57 utc | 83

@83 Carter was the best President in my lifetime maybe aside from Kennedy. Biden and Bush Jr on the bottom of the pile. Not sure what list you were looking at.

Posted by: Thurl | Dec 30 2024 23:42 utc | 85

My main interest today is in the way the media manipulates public opinion, because if we can’t get a handle on that, we are doomed.
I named some examples above, but Mike R brings up another one.
“It became known as the ‘national malaise’ speech. Rather than engage in the introspection he was asking for, and taking his energy proposals seriously, the media and Republicans absolutely pilloried him for being negative on America.”
Posted by: Mike R | Dec 30 2024 20:28
Yes, the media did pillory him mercilessly, but polls showed that most Americans did not take offense. Remember that the adults back then had gone through the Depression, and putting on a sweater when it’s cold did not seem like the End Of America to them, it seemed like common sense.
The media told us for the next 8 years that “We all love Reagan”, even while dubbing him the “Teflon President”, a back-handed way of excusing his blatant anti-worker policies and war mongering criminality, and telling us that we also ignored it.
No, we did not “all” love Reagan. I was very young and very poor at the time, and lived in the slums, and I knew absolutely no one who even liked Reagan, let alone loved him. But you still hear that bullshit being slung to this day, because media narratives die hard.
I am watching Mike Benz, talk with Joe Rogan. He is a font of important and useful information. I am only up to the first hour of a 2 hr. 43 min. show, but he has already gone through a lot of important information.
Someone above mentioned that the CIA was disliked in the 70s. Mike Benz says that when Carter fired 30% of the Company in the Halloween Massacre, they came up with another way to do their dirty deeds. The NED was founded under Reagan, and it runs a lot of dirty deeds to this day.
If people are interested in how the government is working with the “private sector” in maximizing and stream-lining world-wide censorship, using what they call “Whole of Society” framework, I highly recommended the Joe Rogan interview with Mike Benz.

Posted by: wagelaborer | Dec 31 2024 0:49 utc | 87

[Note: i am only read up to # 69 so if yhe trilateral commission has already been introduced to the conversation, this is redundant and so pardon.]
john above mentioned Carter’s Jan 21, 1977 pardon of conscientious objectors. Carter was a good man; may he rest in peace. A typo in j’s post said the pardon occurred 1971.
That year, 1971, helps explain why Carter, a christian with moral consciousness and a leader from small-town Georgia USA, was allowed to assume office.
In August 1971 Nixon removed the USD from the gold standard at the urging of banker Paul Volcker. War spending had ruined the US balance of payments scoresheet. In 1973, just before Carter assumed office, the switchiroo to fiat currency was finalized. The globalists were in ascension. Weaponization of the USD proceeded apace for the anglozionist empire as did democracy suppression.
Who then takes charge of the economy and stagflation management in the new Carter administration? The same financier, Paul Volcker, who engineered fist currency. Volcker sacrificed so-called third world economies and domestic farmers and other debtors to debtor hell by raising interest rates to over 20% pm across the board —no mercy for homeowners as shown in Russia today, or for farmers. He foretold of this move previous to said action in a speech in London. Heartless.
Then there’s that Polish guy Bzig. Do you remember that old ethnic joke, “who of significance ever comes from Poland?”— dear god. Well, being agnostic, that plea is aimed at the greater powers of our collective being togetherness reality. I used to reply Marie Curie but now we have a litany of villians as well.
~~~
The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality
Noam Chomsky
Excerpted from Radical Priorities, 1981

Perhaps the most striking feature of the new Administration is the role played in it by the Trilateral Commission. The mass media had little to say about this matter during the Presidential campaign — in fact, the connection of the Carter group to the Commission was recently selected as “the best censored news story of 1976” — and it has not received the attention that it might have since the Administration took office. All of the top positions in the government — the office of President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, Defense and Treasury — are held by members of the Trilateral Commission, and the National Security Advisor was its director. Many lesser officials also came from this group. It is rare for such an easily identified private group to play such a prominent role in an American Administration.
The Trilateral Commission was founded at the initiative of David Rockefeller in 1973. Its members are drawn from the three components of the world of capitalist democracy: the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. Among them are the heads of major corporations and banks, partners in corporate law firms, Senators, Professors of international affairs — the familiar mix in extra-governmental groupings. Along with the 1940s project of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), directed by a committed “trilateralist” and with numerous links to the Commission, the project constitutes the first major effort at global planning since the War-Peace Studies program of the CFR during World War II.
The new “trilateralism” reflects the realization that the international system now requires “a truly common management,” as the Commission reports indicate. The trilateral powers must order their internal relations and face both the Russian bloc, now conceded to be beyond the reach of Grand Area planning, and the Third World.
In this collective management, the United States will continue to play the decisive role. As Kissinger has explained, other powers have only “regional interests” while the United States must be “concerned more with the overall framework of order than with the management of every regional enterprise.”
https://chomsky.info/priorities01/

Posted by: suzan | Dec 31 2024 1:07 utc | 89

From Caliban to Taliban, it’s all part of the white man’s plan. Some call it a burden, others a dream, in any case it’s enough to make you scream or eventually fall head first into that psychotropic carnivorous trap called AI (a nightmare that’s only just beginning to flower). Magna Carter, petit Trump, or vice versa, the point is to reach the Red Planet by going nowhere fast, i.e. imperially spinning our wheels until everything’s twisted and humanity has become one by losing itself in the hallucinogenic image, i.e. one with the mirror, both simultaneously living and drowned in it (trapped in the psychological and phenomenological amber of AI as it were), time and time again; every time taking the same path…infinitely of course. The end of history is when the Capitalist Spirit (via conspiracy) actively awakens, when it literally acquires a mind of its own as it were.

Posted by: Ludovic | Dec 31 2024 1:45 utc | 91

Jimmy Carter is remembered in Guyana for ensuring fair and free elections in Guyana in 1992 which enabled the great Cheddi Jagan to return to power after being robbed continuosly by a dictatorship fully backed by the US govt(even with Carter at the US helm).
Jagan was first deposed by Churchill in 1953 and then by the US in 1964. He must have been ‘something’

Posted by: Cuffy | Dec 31 2024 1:59 utc | 93

Posted by: Thurl | Dec 30 2024 23:42 utc | 85
I was in college at the time. The campus was very excited when Carter won. Don’t forget his main behind the scenes campaign strategy was that Ford pardoned Nixon. College campuses were programmed to hate Nixon, from top professor to the lowest janitor.
Four years later, few students cared if Carter won. The lines to get into the interviews for the few companies who maybe had a few jobs were very long. Most companies had very specific jobs (today we would say STEM) which many degrees had no chance of getting. Economic reality bites after 4 or 5 years.
I knew two people who graduated a year before me, and came back to campus as they were furloughed for 2 months, and these were engineers.
Taking any job (my first post college job pay was slightly higher than my wages at a summer job working in a warehouse) was paramount.
Because of hyper inflation, the college budgets were suddenly running in the red. Grad TA’s were used more vs full professors, much cheaper and no future tenure.
As a student, the Carter years were ok, as a working person in the real world, they sucked.

Posted by: BroncoBilly | Dec 31 2024 3:09 utc | 95

0.1 > 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 …
Posted by: malenkov | Dec 30 2024 21:20 utc | 67
————————————
A true statement.
The one thing for sure I could say about him is that, for all they claimed to be men of faith, in the last 60 years of US presidents, Carter was the only one who actually meant it.
He, like all of them, did monstrous things with his power. But alone among them, only Jimmy lived the rest of his life as if he knew he was going to hell for what he had done. Not all of the good deeds he attempted over the decades turned out to be good, but his panicked sincerity in taking them on never failed to be evident. He was a man who knew he could not be forgiven for the magnitude of his sins.
Since him (and probably before him, for the large part) it has been nothing but smug, self-satisfied sociopaths. Carter was a human being. May the eternal flames burn him lightly.

Posted by: ДжММ | Dec 31 2024 5:06 utc | 97

Posted by: Ed Bernays | Dec 30 2024 20:05 utc | 50
Aren’t you an angry little cockroach.
Posted by: Screwdriver | Dec 31 2024 5:12 utc | 98
–––––––––––
No, seemingly honest and conscientious man.

Posted by: burak | Dec 31 2024 5:55 utc | 99