Good morning kids. On this penultimate day of 2024, a year of mixed blessings for many of us, it is with a heavy heart that I report the passing of . . . Linda Lavin.
The accomplished actress of stage and screen (big and small) leaves the world a better place for her artistic contributions that helped enrich our culture. I have no idea what her politics were, but that said she should be admired for keeping it to herself. Insofar as I cannot recall anything she said or posted that would put her among the usual braindead fools of the entertainment industry, that's good enough for me that I can mention her passing without the need for snark or quoting some horrid opinion she might have had in the past.
And so, while "Alice" may not live here anymore, sadly MALICE still has much of the world by the throat as we prepare to ring out 2024. And one of Malice's greatest exponents has finally, and mercifully, at the age of 100, drawn his last breath.
The curtain has finally come down on one of the longest acts in American history: after lingering in hospice care for nearly two years, Jimmy Carter is dead at the age of 100. Now, as we all learned in Latin class, de mortuis nisi bonum, that is, only say good things about the dead, and by most accounts, Jimmy Carter was a decent fellow who tried to do the right thing by his lights. There is no Latin maxim, however, about not speaking ill of a dead president’s time in the Oval Office, and on that score, a great deal can and should be said about Jimmy Carter.
Although Carter was the longest-lived president of the United States ever, it is a shame that he didn’t live even longer. The second Trump administration promises to put an end to the long, slow decline of the United States and the now well-established habit of betraying our allies that Carter did so much to initiate, and it’s too bad that Carter won’t be around to witness America’s resurgence — if, that is, the late president’s friends and ideological kin don’t manage to block any such rebound.
. . . As president, Jimmy Carter was as sanctimonious as he was inept. America is still paying the price for the damage he wrought during his presidency. It is a shame that he will not see efforts to reverse the effects of his disastrous legacy.
I have an outstanding 10-part series from IBD editorials about Carter's legacy that was published back in 2007, during the run up to as the lamented Rush Limbaugh of blessed memory called it "the Immaculation" of Barack Obama, to counter the the campaign to slime Dubya as the worst president in US history. IBD no longer exists, as it is now Issues & Insights but the editorial is no longer available. I have a PDF that I shall try and post in the sidebar or otherwise make available to anyone who wants to download it.
It's entitled "Profile In Incompetence, A 10-Part Series on the Worst President in American History." You can find it posted in excerpts here and there, on some websites that we try to avoid as you will likely discover. Here are the intros to each section for a nice taste.
Part 1: So Jimmy Carter calls the Bush administration "the worst in history." This from the man who wrecked the world's greatest economy and made a nuclear Iran and North Korea possible.
Part 2: When it comes to economic performance, there's no contest: Apart from the early years of the Depression, Jimmy Carter's brief tenure as president was the worst in the 20th century.
Part 3: After being told over and over by President Jimmy Carter that America's ability to influence world events was "very limited," the Soviet Union believed him and invaded Afghanistan. And al-Qaida was born.
Part 4: In the name of human rights, Jimmy Carter gave rise to one of the worst rights violators in history — the Ayatollah Khomeini. And now Khomeini's successor is preparing for nuclear war with Israel and the West.
Part 5: resident Jimmy Carter's watch, more territory was lost to tyranny than at any other time since Yalta. And he'd have us return to those thrilling days of yesteryear.
Parat 6: When men of strength are presented with difficult problems, their responses are firm and decisive. Jimmy Carter spent four years as president of the United States responding with weakness.
Part 7: In foreign policy, Jimmy Carter proved his presidency the worst ever by subordinating U.S. interests to his vague "human rights" policy. All he did was enable dictators to take him to the cleaners.
Part 8: It's often asserted that while Jimmy Carter's presidency was marred by error and incompetence, the peace deal he brokered at Camp David was an unmitigated triumph. Time to pop that bubble, too.
Part 9: Of all the errors Jimmy Carter committed, none has earned him more well-justified scorn than his handling of the 1970s energy crisis. True enough, he didn't cause it. But he did make it much, much worse.
Part 10: n 1976, Americans thought they were sending an outsider to the White House. Today, the same policies so thoroughly discredited by Jimmy Carter's disastrous presidency define the Democratic Party.
In light of that last sentence, I give you this:
It took a brutal electoral beating, but non-delusional Democrats are finally recognizing the putrid stink coming off their party.
But will the left let them do anything about it?
In an interview with The New York Times’ Frank Bruni, former Pete Buttigieg adviser Lis Smith, a veteran of New York politics, put it vividly: “The Democratic brand is in the toilet.”
Yes: Between the obsessive demonization of President-elect Trump and his supporters, the rank incompetence of the Biden administration and the constant push toward race-and-gender-war lunacy, Democrats have transformed their party into a soup of hazardous sludge.
Americans now associate Dems with high crime, high prices, migrant gangs taking over cities and biological men in women’s sports — which has about as much appeal as expired milk.
Yet the trouncing of Kamala Harris proved that their favorite distraction tactic — screaming “Trump is Hitler” and his supporters are vile rubes — is a massive dud.
As lefty Timesman Ezra Klein put it on his podcast to a listener complaining that he platforms Trump allies, The Donald “has been elected or almost elected president three times now,” so “Don’t expect this show to be a resistance show.”
The Democrats’ way back starts with a return to common sense.
One such leader is Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who spent the last year loudly supporting Israel and denouncing the Hamas-lovers; back in June, the lifelong man of the left announced he no longer claimed to be a “progressive,” saying “that label left me.”
He made it clear after Trump’s win that he’s “not rooting against” the incoming administration and told his hysterical fellow Democrats to “chill out.”
Progressive extremism — insane energy policies, inflation-goosing spending sprees, pro-crime “justice reforms,” divisive and hate-fueling “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” nonsense and so on — is now the face of the Democratic Party and will remain so until leading Dems unmistakably reject every bit of it and show they mean it.
That likely means actively seeking parts of the Trump agenda they can support in the face of the hard left’s fury.
If Democrats don’t move rapidly toward the center, they’re looking at decades in the wilderness.
Emphasis mine, because it's not about messaging, not about having fossilized coprolite octogenarians as your political leaders or that Trump is literally Hitler. It's about policies that provably turn the stomachs of normal people – that is those who have been labeled as EVIL. If the Democrats want to win and actually did in fact will have to become the mythical leopard that changes its spots. That is reject and abandon everything they believe in and have done for the past 200-plus years in their quest for absolute power and control. That and beg our forgiveness. Plus WE THE PEOPLE demand REPARATIONS!!!!!
It's why when the estimable Robert Spencer states about Carter "by most accounts, Jimmy Carter was a decent fellow who tried to do the right thing by his lights." I cannot disagree strenuously enough. Were he decent he never would've believed nor advocated the things and policies that resulted in rivers of blood and destruction. For me, Carter was an horrendous anti-Semite and did everything he could to dismantle the State of Israel. In later years, he wrote one of the most notorious anti-israel screeds of all time entitled "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" which lefty Jew-haters masturbated over for years. And no doubt still do.
For that alone, he should be consigned to the infernal reaches.
Lastly, a quick shout-out and thank you for your continued support in hitting our tip jar. It truly is appreciated more than you can know. Have a great weekend!