FiredUpInCa has a Diary up confirming that the source for disseminating the now-infamous Romney video is none other than James Carter IV, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. In his Diary, FiredUpInCa asks
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the guy who takes such glee in denigrating the legacy of former President Jimmy Carter, has his political career ended by the literal legacy of Jimmy Carter?At 7:16 am this morning, we heard from former President Carter:
After emailing his grandfather the magazine’s story about the tape — under the subject, “Huge campaign news,” and calling it “my biggest story yet” — the former president wrote back at 7:16 am Tuesday: “James: This is extraordinary. Congratulations! Papa.”Jimmy Carter, probably the best ex-President who has ever graced our country, has served as a punching bag and punch line for Republicans for the last twenty years. Because he dared to tell the truth to Americans about the economic malaise that we were living through in the late 70’s, none of which was particularly his doing, and because he lost the 1980 election to a Republican icon, a man so bereft of personal character as to inform on his colleagues in the film industry and even enlist J. Edgar Hoover to spy on his own family, he has had to endure a constant stream of vituperation and smearing during the latter part of his extraordinary life.
The young Mr Carter is well aware of the opprobrium foisted on his grandfather’s shoulders by the same people who nearly destroyed the US Economy and deliberately sabotaged our current President’s attempts to resuscitate it.
So yes, FiredUpInCa, it is a delicious irony that we see the grandson of former President James Earl Carter effectively pulling the the switch on the trapdoor that Mitt Romney and the Republican Party have found themselves falling through right now.
1980: So the question for Progressives is…was it worth it?
(by TheBigPictureRT)
Please watch this video. ~Please~
| — | U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s Inaugural Address (via iamblairwolfe) |
“Recent legislation has made legal the president’s right to detain a person indefinitely on suspicion of affiliation with terrorist organizations or “associated forces,” a broad, vague power that can be abused without meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress (the law is currently being blocked by a federal judge). This law violates the right to freedom of expression and to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, two other rights enshrined in the declaration.
In addition to American citizens’ being targeted for assassination or indefinite detention, recent laws have canceled the restraints in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to allow unprecedented violations of our rights to privacy through warrantless wiretapping and government mining of our electronic communications. Popular state laws permit detaining individuals because of their appearance, where they worship or with whom they associate.
Despite an arbitrary rule that any man killed by drones is declared an enemy terrorist, the death of nearby innocent women and children is accepted as inevitable. After more than 30 airstrikes on civilian homes this year in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has demanded that such attacks end, but the practice continues in areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen that are not in any war zone. We don’t know how many hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in these attacks, each one approved by the highest authorities in Washington. This would have been unthinkable in previous times.
These policies clearly affect American foreign policy. Top intelligence and military officials, as well as rights defenders in targeted areas, affirm that the great escalation in drone attacks has turned aggrieved families toward terrorist organizations, aroused civilian populations against us and permitted repressive governments to cite such actions to justify their own despotic behavior.
Meanwhile, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, now houses 169 prisoners. About half have been cleared for release, yet have little prospect of ever obtaining their freedom. American authorities have revealed that, in order to obtain confessions, some of the few being tried (only in military courts) have been tortured by waterboarding more than 100 times or intimidated with semiautomatic weapons, power drills or threats to sexually assault their mothers. Astoundingly, these facts cannot be used as a defense by the accused, because the government claims they occurred under the cover of “national security.” Most of the other prisoners have no prospect of ever being charged or tried either.
At a time when popular revolutions are sweeping the globe, the United States should be strengthening, not weakening, basic rules of law and principles of justice enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But instead of making the world safer, America’s violation of international human rights abets our enemies and alienates our friends.”
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
not likely ..
If we had only listened to President Carter… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=injqO8nzCK0
LEOGANE, Haiti—Haiti hasn’t seen many homes built for the poor following a devastating earthquake almost two years ago, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said Monday.
In a 10-minute interview with The Associated Press, Carter said he noticed little housing reconstruction for struggling Haitians as he drove from the international airport to the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Port-au-Prince to Leogane, a coastal city 18 miles (29 kilometers) west of the capital that was largely flattened in the earthquake because of its proximity to the epicenter.
He added that there may be construction in other parts of Haiti but that he hadn’t seen it.
“We haven’t seen very much reconstruction of homes for low-income people,” Carter said with his wife Rosalynn seated at his side. “We have seen some the villas, some of the fancy homes along the beachfront being repaired. But there hasn’t been much evidence yet of reconstruction of the homes in Port-au-Prince.”
Rosalynn Carter weighed in with her own observations of the earthquake zone, her voice shaking: “I don’t think anybody on earth ought to have to live in situations like this.” […]
“We must make it clear that a platform of ‘I hate gay men and women’ is not a way to become president of the United States.”
—Jimmy Carter, relevant now more than ever. (via gaywrites)
| — | President Jimmy Carter (via vruz) |
