Jimmy Carter

On Tuesday, President Trump dropped a bomb – not a bunker-buster but the F-bomb. Talking to the press about Israel and Iran, he said, “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” There is a lot to say about this statement – starting with the implied moral equivalence between the two countries. But let’s focus on the F-bomb. Has a president ever before used this word in public? Used it deliberately, in a public statement? Trump seems to have recorded a first. Plenty of presidents have had salty tongues. You may know a story about Harry and Bess Truman. It is quaint now. There are several versions of this story, but, essentially, it goes like this. Mr.

Past, present and president-elect presidents, along with their wives — and current and former veeps — put on brave faces at the funeral of President Jimmy Carter Thursday. Not so much because they were in mourning, but because, Cockburn suspects, they had to interact with one another. The solemn event made for some interesting viewing: smooshed together in the front pews of the Washington National Cathedral were all five living presidents. President Joe Biden buffered himself from his predecessor/successor, President-elect Donald Trump, with First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff in between. Next came Trump and First Lady Melania. In the second row were President Bill and First Lady (is that what we call her?

Jimmy Carter will be remembered as a decent, honorable man of faith, who lived a productive life according to those high standards, both publicly and privately.  He was an outlier in his forging of a productive life after leaving office. Instead of grifting and selling access to policymakers, like so many former politicians do today, he had a distinguished second career promoting and monitoring democratic elections around the world. That legacy will live on in the work of the Carter Center in Atlanta. So will his work with Habitats for Humanity, building homes for the poor.  He will be remembered, too, for his long, loving marriage to Rosalynn, whom he married in 1946, when he was a young naval officer. She died only a year ago.  It was a remarkable life.

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday gave his first rally speech since winning the 2024 presidential election, delivering the keynote address at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference for young conservatives. The former and future president spoke for more than an hour and made plenty of headlines with his suggestion that the United States take back control of the Panama Canal, a rejection of the Democrat attack that he is a shadow puppet of billionaire Elon Musk, and a renewed promise of his second-term priorities.

Jimmy Carter is commonly depicted as one of America’s worst presidents. His four-year tenure is said to be a mishmash of screw-ups, from high energy prices and even higher inflation to low economic growth and a very public, very embarrassing hostage rescue attempt in Iran. His signature achievement, the 1978 Camp David Accords, which codified peace and normalized diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel, is treated as a small stretch of fresh pavement in an otherwise potholed road. Fair or not, that’s the perception.

Congress on Thursday approved a bill that gives the White House power to enact price controls on gasoline. The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act lets the Federal Trade Commission treat so-called price gouging as a deceptive trade practice. Congress specifically directs the FTC to prioritize cases “concerning companies with total United States wholesale or retail sales of consumer fuels in excess of $500,000,000 per year.” In other words, all the major suppliers of oil and gas to the United States. “This is a major exploitation of the consumer, because this is a product the consumer must have,” droned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose love of fuel price gouging legislation dates to 2005.

The media are abuzz these days about a purported “return to the 1970s.” Generally speaking, such chatter is not intended kindly, for many today would likely agree with the sardonic assessment of the Seventies made by the editors of New West magazine as that decade wound down: “It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.” And not just because of the popularity of bell-bottom pants, platform shoes, and disco music. In the Seventies, we had problems far more troubling — more troubling even than the pop group ABBA. For starters, we saw a quadrupling of real oil prices between 1973 and 1979. We suffered high rates of both inflation and unemployment, which hitherto varied inversely, leading to the creation of the portmanteau “stagflation.

The word malaise, a general feeling of uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify, is creeping into discussions. It's a politically loaded word, following its use by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 to describe the country he could not figure out to how lead. Carter's specific use of the term focused on the energy crisis, when OPEC monkeyed with America's oil supply. But Carter saw that something much deeper was wrong. There wasn't just an oil shortage to manage, but a recession of hope, a crisis of confidence that someone would have to lead America out of. He perceived that we were tired, worn down, unable to come together in common purpose and fix something. It would be interesting to hear what Carter thinks about 2021, when things once again don't work well.

Breaking news from off the wires this morning. Apparently the guy who almost punched out a Detroit factory worker on the campaign trail may not be our most adept of presidents. That Joe Biden's administration is flailing has suddenly dawned on our establishment as though a miraculous epiphany. Think a kind of political Fatima, only instead of the sun moving across the sky it's just that TikTok influencer with the long nails prancing about the clear blue. How bad has it gotten for the White House? Even Chuck Todd thinks Biden has a 'pretty big credibility crisis on his hands.' And Chuck Todd once let Dr Fauci interview him. The abruptness of this realization does seem weird.

Every president is criticized, sooner or later, for taking too many days off, for lounging around when we’ve hired him to work. Since the media hates Republicans, that criticism is usually directed at them, but even some liberal publications have noticed that — shock! — Democratic presidents play golf, too. That criticism, most recently in Amber Athey’s article in The Spectator, is wrong. It misses the bigger, more important issues — and not just because our country would be well served if most presidents did less, not more. It’s fun to compare the President with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but there are three problems with criticizing presidents for escaping to their beach house in Delaware or their ranch in Texas or California.

They’ve finally found a way to make Joe Biden look young and vigorous: put him next to a Jimmy Carter doll. It’s elder abuse, though I’m not sure who’s being abused here. I had thought that the most alarming image of this year would be the one of the QAnon shaman at the Speaker’s desk in the Capitol Building. But the photo of Joe and Dr Jill with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter really is a riot. The Bidens look like ventriloquists, dropping by a seniors’ center to cheer up the inmates. The Carters look like dolls, awaiting the insertion of their owners’ hands so that they can jump into jerky life. This is the official photo, selected by the Carter Center. We have to wonder what obscenities are contained in the outtakes.