When Jimmy Carter offers guidance, any leader would be wise to pay attention. As just one example, Jimmy advised Yasser Arafat, and he remained a president for over ten years!

From the Associated Press:

Former President Jimmy Carter has some advice for Barack Obama as he gears up for the 2012 election: Don’t alienate voters with controversial positions.

The Georgia Democrat told The Associated Press on Tuesday that just about everything he did alienated voters, from sealing a treaty to hand over the Panama Canal to establishing diplomatic ties with China.

Carter said: “If your main goal is to get re-elected, avoid a controversial subject as much as you can in the first term.”

And most importantly, if you want a second term, don’t say things during your first term that might bring back memories of the “malaise speech.”

What? Oh, nevermind…

(h/t Dan Riehl)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

On the night Kim Jong-il’s death was reported, I wrote half-jokingly (or maybe quarter-jokingly) that Jimmy Carter had volunteered to lead a US delegation to the funeral. According to the state-run media in North Korea, Carter has done the next best thing:

Former President Jimmy Carter has sent North Korea a message of condolence over the death of Kim Jong-il and wished “every success” to the man expected to take over as dictator, according to the communist country’s state-run news agency.

A dispatch from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Mr. Carter sent the message to Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s son and heir apparent.

“In the message Jimmy Carter extended condolences to Kim Jong Un and the Korean people over the demise of leader Kim Jong Il. He wished Kim Jong Un every success as he assumes his new responsibility of leadership, looking forward to another visit to [North Korea] in the future,” the KCNA dispatch read.

When contacted by The Washington Times for comment, the Carter Center provided an email contact to a spokeswoman who is out of the office until the New Year.

If the report is true it’s possible that Carter is buttering up Kim Jong-un so he doesn’t snub him on his next visit like Un’s father did.

In announcing to the North Korean people the former US president’s letter of condolence, NK state media made a mistake in translation and inadvertently reported that Jimmy had been named Kim Jong-un’s chief economic adviser. The reaction on the streets of Pyongyang was immediate:

(h/t Drudge)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

By way of the Laura Ingraham Show — I think Obama’s speech writers might owe Carter’s speech writers some royalties:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il has starved his own people in various ways for a long time (while obviously eating very well himself). So, in order to do something about it, Jimmy Carter went to North Korea and later had some stern words… for the US and South Korea. Carter accused both the US and one of its allies of human rights violations. Yeah, that sounds about right:

(RTTNews) – Ex-US President Jimmy Carter has flayed the US and South Korea for withholding food aid to North Korea which he said amounted to violation of human rights, reports said on Thursday.

Briefing reporters in South Korean capital, Seoul, after wrapping up his three-day visit to Communist North, Carter said Pyongyang badly needed food imports.

“One of the most important human rights is to have food to eat, and for South Korea and the US and others to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people is really a human rights violation,” he said.

Leave it to Jimmy Carter to go to a place called “Communist North” and conclude the misery there is somebody else’s fault. Saddam Hussein had Baghdad Bob, so it’s only fair that Kim Jong Il has Pyongyang Jimmy. What’s even sadder is that Kim Jong Il refused to meet with Carter’s group, but that didn’t prevent Jimmy from shilling for the communist regime.

This is just embarrassing… even for Carter. Somewhere Billy is saying “and they called me the embarrassing one?”

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

What in the world has been going on that would make Chris Matthews get Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter mixed up?

Last summer Matthews called Obama “President O’Carter.” That would have been more fitting now, so close to St. Patrick’s Day and all.

Update: Maybe Tingles read this just before making his slip.

(h/t Instapundit)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The Chinese government isn’t too happy with the Nobel Peace Prize recipient this year:

Since Liu Xiaobo’s selection, China has vilified the 54-year-old democracy advocate, called the choice an effort by the West to contain its rise, disparaged his supporters as “clowns,” and launched a campaign to persuade countries not to attend Friday’s ceremony in Oslo. The government is also preventing Liu — who is serving an 11-year sentence for co-authoring a bold appeal for political reforms in the Communist country — and his family members from attending.

To retaliate against the unfairness, the country that is holding the Nobel Peace Prize winner in prison decided to offer their own peace prize — I’m calling it the “Golden Mao”:

Amid the flurry of action came a commentary published on Nov. 17 in a Communist Party-approved tabloid that suggested China create its own award the “Confucius Peace Prize” — to counter the choice of Liu.

Three weeks later, The Associated Press has learned, China is doing just that.
[...]
The first honoree is Lien Chan, Taiwan’s former vice president and the honorary chairman of its Nationalist Party, for having “built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan.”

Who were the other nominees for the Golden Mao (also affectionately referred to as the “Zedonger”)? Think “Nobel” any other year:

billionaire Bill Gates, former South African President Nelson Mandela, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Panchen Lama, the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

While China regularly disparages the Dalai Lama, the religion’s spiritual leader, the current Panchen Lama is a 20-year-old who was hand-picked by Beijing.

Somewhere out there, Al Gore is staring at his phone wondering why he didn’t get a phone call from Beijing this week.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Does Jimmy Carter offering advice to the Obama administration have a “1962 New York Mets mentoring the 2010 Pittsburgh Pirates” feel to it, or is it just me?

The topic was national security, so we can only hope that Carter stopped by to serve as an example of what not to do. But unfortunately, I doubt it:

Former President Jimmy Carter returned to the White House on Tuesday for the first time since President Obama took office.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Carter had come to meet with the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, and Mr. Obama asked him to drop by.

I feel safer already. The president who got a smooch from Leonid Brezhnev, was BFFs with Arafat, delivers FTD Pick-Me-Up Bouquets to Hamas and buddies up with Castro is bending White House ears on national security:

Carter no doubt left the White House having alerted Donilon to the real threat to freedom and civility in the world: Americans who disagree with Obama.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

President Obama is headed to New Orleans this weekend to mark the 5th anniversary of Katrina. The papers and airwaves will be clogged with all sorts of retrospectives. My column today reminds you of the ugly racial demagoguery by leading Democrats and “civil rights” leaders from Jimmy Carter to Charlie Rangel to Malik Zulu Shabazz. It’s a divide that has also deepened in Obama’s imaginary age of post-racialism.

Related from Charles Krauthammer: The last refuge of a liberal. “What’s a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that preempts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument. The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card.”

***

Hurricane Katrina and the race card: 5 years later
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

This weekend, on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, civil rights activists and hip-hop stars will hold what they call a “healing ceremony” to commemorate the disaster. President Obama will speak at a separate event in New Orleans on Sunday. But don’t expect any of these reconciliation-seeking leaders to confront the indelible stain of racial demagoguery left by the left in Katrina’s aftermath. Hating George W. Bush means never having to say you’re sorry.

The Olympic gold medal for racial grievance-mongering went to rapper Kanye West, who railed during a supposedly nonpolitical nationwide telethon that the government was shooting “us,” that “those are my people down there,” and that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people!” West’s vulgar exploitation of a charity drive — which was meant to unite America — left most viewers with the same aghast, frozen expression as the one on comedian Mike Myers’ face as he tried to rescue their fundraising segment from the sewage.

Not to be outdone, the Congressional Black Caucus convened a press conference to blast news reporters for describing Katrina victims as “refugees.” Yes, really. The Rev. Jesse Jackson echoed their complaint: “It is racist to call American citizens refugees.” Refugees are, by dictionary definition, “exiles who flee for safety.” How this could be construed as bigoted remains as much a mystery as the source of unhinged Huffington Post blogger and self-proclaimed “social justice advocate” Randall Robinson’s bogus claim “that black hurricane victims in New Orleans have begun eating corpses to survive.”

Robinson retracted the report, but did not apologize for spreading the black cannibalism tale around the world and using Katrina to vent his own anti-American venom about his country being a “monstrous fraud.” Nation of Islam race hustler-in-chief Louis Farrakhan trafficked in his own baseless conspiracy-mongering about “a 25-foot-deep crater under the levee breach” indicating that the levee “may have been blown up to destroy the black part of town and keep the white part dry.” Director Spike Lee stoked the levee truthers further, declaring, “If they can rig an election, they can do anything!”

New Black Panther Party head Malik Zulu Shabazz chimed in, calling the Katrina rescue and recovery operation a “racist occupation of subjugation rather than a relief effort,” and saying it was designed “to keep non-white people in a state of subjugation on all levels, and they are viewed as expendable in order to protect the interest of the system.” Donning her own tinfoil hat, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that Republican suppression of the black vote in 2000 and 2004 was to blame for the government’s botched Katrina response.

Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel drove the racial wedge in deeper by comparing President Bush to brutal Alabama segregationist Bull Connor. “If there’s one thing that George Bush has done that we should never forget,” Rangel spewed, “it’s that for us and for our children, he has shattered the myth of white supremacy once and for all.” At a House hearing, a Katrina witness testified unchallenged that black New Orleans residents were victims of “genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

The execrable Jimmy Carter waited a few months to unleash his own Bush-bashing bile — at the funeral of Coretta Scott King, no less — in February 2006. “We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans.”

Carter’s speech not only lacked basic decency. It lacked any grounding in reality. According to vital statistics released just months after the storm by the primary morgue that processed the bodies of the deceased, 48 percent of those who died in the natural disaster were black, 41 percent were white, with another 8 percent unknown and 2 percent Hispanic. Little-noted follow-up analysis confirmed those preliminary results and also debunked the myth that the poor were disproportionately affected by the storm.

Five years later, the same color-coded paranoia and political opportunism that poisoned the Hurricane Katrina recovery permeates every current conflict in the public square: Ground Zero Mosque opponents are all suspiciously funded bigots, according to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Tea Party movement is the new Bull Connor, according to every liberal New York Times columnist. President Obama’s critics hate black people, according to every major black Hollywood director and hip-hop mogul. As for the soul-fixing, Nobel Peace Prize-winning commander-in-chief whose election was supposed to heal the divide, I will guarantee you he won’t ever lift a finger to repudiate the cynical smear tactics against his unjustly accused predecessor.

Post-racial America, we never knew you.

The push to get taxpayers to pay for the upkeep of Jimmy Carter’s brother’s gas station and turn it into a national park (suggested name: “Mount Lushmore”) began last year, but it was dealt a blow yesterday:

The gas station of former President Jimmy Carter’s beer drinking brother will not become a national historic site paid for by taxpayers — at least, not yet.

Legislation that would expand the former president’s national historic site by 30 acres at a cost of $17 million over five years was pulled from consideration during a Senate committee meeting Thursday. Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming offered an amendment preventing the Billy Carter Service Station Museum from being included in the expansion, making the Georgia museum a national park. The House has already passed similar legislation.

I’d oppose $17 million a year for a shrine to Jimmy Carter, let alone his brother.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Brrrrrr.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions — and, apparently, the homes in the neighborhoods along that hellish path are built by Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity. The Times of London reports on one of the celebrity charity’s biggest showcase projects in Jacksonville, Florida, Fairway Oaks, where residents claim their houses are crumbling due to shoddy construction:

Residents of a model housing estate bankrolled by Hollywood celebrities and hand-built by Jimmy Carter, the former US president, are complaining that it is falling apart.

Fairway Oaks was built on northern Florida wasteland by 10,000 volunteers, including Carter, in a record 17-day “blitz” organised by the charity Habitat for Humanity.

Eight years later it is better known for cockroaches, mildew and mysterious skin rashes.

A forthcoming legal battle over Fairway Oaks threatens the reputation of a charity envied for the calibre of its celebrity supporters, who range from Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt to Colin Firth, Christian Bale and Helena Bonham Carter.

The case could challenge the bedrock philosophy behind Habitat for Humanity, claiming that using volunteers, rather than professional builders, is causing as many problems as it solves.

April Charney, a lawyer representing many of the 85 homeowners in Fairway Oaks, said she had no problems taking on Habitat for Humanity, despite its status as a “darling of liberal social activists”. She said the charity should have told people that part of the estate had been built on a rubbish dump.

More from the ToL here.

The battle has been brewing for some time. A quick Google search shows that the New York Times covered the story in June 2007:

Seven years later, Ms. Zeigler is one of more than 50 Fairway Oaks homeowners who have problems with their houses and say they fear that the blitz construction was shoddy and that their land, adjacent to two former town dumps, is unstable or contaminated.

“My pride is gone,” Ms. Zeigler said, pointing to cracks in her house’s ceiling and its concrete slab foundation. “I’ve got a 25-year mortgage, and I’ve got stuff that needs to be addressed or I’m just paying my mortgage in vain, because I won’t have a house in 25 years because it will be falling apart.”

The Fairway Oaks owners took their complaints to Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, and of 56 who answered a survey for Legal Aid, 41 reported cracked concrete slabs, 22 had cracked walls and 48 said their houses were infested with insects or rodents, presumably because of the cracks. Others reported mold or mildew, nails popping out of plasterboard and other problems. The Habitat for Humanity local affiliate, HabiJax, maintains that the land at Fairway Oaks is stable and that most problems there are housekeeping issues, not structural. City inspectors this month examined six houses and found no violations. But in a vulnerable population, the perceptions have a life of their own. A project built with sweat equity and good will has had unintended consequences, and costs.

All Jimmy Carter-bashing and schadenfreude aside, do the residents have a bona fide case or are these professional moochers trying to pin blame on others for their own lack of personal responsibility?

Probably a bit of both. A few of the houses seem to have been clearly uninhabitable. In 2005, the cracks in one foundation reportedly “became so severe that the house had to be lifted and settled on piers. Engineers hired by HabiJax found six feet of debris buried under the soil,” reports the NYT.

But was the entire project tainted?

Note this paragraph in the same NYT article:

In the early 1990s the land held a blighted public housing complex, built on land that had been used, in isolated pockets, as a dump. After complaints by residents, the Environmental Protection Agency tested the soil for contamination. The E.P.A. concluded that the land was safe but noted that two buildings had been demolished because of soil settling, possibly caused by debris decomposing under the soil. A later soil test found elevated levels of arsenic, but the Florida Department of Health determined there was no significant health risk.

Ronnie A. Ferguson, president of the Jacksonville Housing Authority, said the two buildings had been damaged by water runoff, not because of soil instability associated with buried debris.

I’ve watched enough of these “environmental justice” activists to know that they coach their clients to complain about vague ailments (“mysterious skin rashes”) that have no relation in reality to the environmental conditions they claim are the cause. These professional grievance-mongers have blocked countless private redevelopment and remediation projects — and milked tens of millions in settlements — based on bogus scientific and medical claims. Then there’s this:

Before October 2005, few knew how widely their complaints were shared. Then, Shirley Dempsey, president of the homeowners association, said she began having a series of dreams that she said were religious visions, leading her to discover problems in her house and others.

Uh-huh.

Other neighbors who didn’t share Dempsey’s “visions” have a more pragmatic take on the problems:

Some residents dismiss their neighbors’ complaints, attributing them to poor maintenance by first-time homeowners. “Lots of problems, people can take care of themselves,” said Dinelle Fields, 51. “Get a bleach bottle,” she said, referring to complaints about mildew.

In the end, I can’t say I feel too much sympathy for Jimmy Carter and his Hollywood partners. The Left has stoked both eco-zealotry and the entitlement culture with impunity. Perhaps they’ll feel a little less inclined to feed those beasts after getting bitten squarely in the ass.

***

The Democrats’ Jimmy Carter problem
Michelle Malkin
4/23/08
Copyright Creators Syndicate 2008

So much for Jimmy Carter’s triumphal peace mission in the Middle East. Like everything else he has done on foreign policy, the world’s biggest tool for jihad propaganda created yet another bloody mess. Quick review:

After proclaiming that Hamas terrorists were willing to accept Israel as a “neighbor next door,” Carter’s Hamas hug buddies flipped him the bird. They gladly accepted the diplomatic legitimacy Carter’s visit conferred upon them, while clinging bitterly to their insistence on the destruction of the Jewish state.

After laying a wreath in honor of the murderous Yasser Arafat, Carter dutifully agreed to deliver a letter from kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to his parents on behalf of the terrorists who are holding him hostage. Shalit’s father rightly jeered Carter as nothing more than a postman for Hamas.

After Carter asserted that the State Department never clearly opposed his trip, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointed out that she had explicitly warned him against meeting with Hamas. Not to mention all those bold-faced, unequivocal headlines before the trip announcing that “State Department opposes Carter meeting with Hamas chief” (USA Today) and “Rice Criticizes Carter for Reported Meeting Planned With Hamas” (Fox News).

What part of “Don’t meet with the Jew-hating killers, you idiot!” didn’t Carter understand?

Article 13 of the Hamas charter is also as clear as day: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

Jimmy Carter’s thick skull and moral myopia are an American embarrassment and an American problem. But more precisely: Jimmy Carter is a Democratic problem. He casts a long, feckless shadow over the party — and it will haunt the party through the Democratic National Convention in August and beyond.

Carter is a Democratic Party superdelegate who will undoubtedly seek a prominent role at the convention this August. But the party can ill afford a diarrhea-of-the-mouth moment from their elder terror apologist. The world is watching and listening.

Though he has not formally endorsed Barack Obama, Carter has made enough positive noise about the campaign to send Iranian TV into euphoria. The regime’s media arm led with an item earlier this week headlined, “Carter: Obama favorite worldwide.” The news item quoted Carter as saying that Obama is supported by “many people in Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal. … World opinion is strongly supportive of Obama, that’s all we hear.”

(Left off the list of legitimate world opinion, of course: Israel.)

Despite Obama’s milquetoast protestations of Carter’s visit and his technocratic disavowal of Hamas, Carter and Hamas are giving Obama two thumbs up. (Obama’s associations with anti-Semites like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Louis Farrakhan-cheerleading Rev. Michael Pfleger give him all the cred he needs.)

Conservatives have mobilized to protest Carter’s terrorist shilling. GOP Rep. Sue Myrick called for his passport to be revoked; Rep. Joe Knollenberg wants $19 million in taxpayer funding to be withdrawn from his Georgia-based scholarly institution. But the Sick-Of-Jimmy-Carter Coalition isn’t just a Republican club. The Jewish Daily Forward reports that “some liberal observers…worry that the elder statesman may create headaches for the party at its nominating convention in Denver.”

Their angst is well placed. The question is: Will exiling America’s top Hamas apologist from the convention podium be enough to dispel the shadow of surrender? Or, to paraphrase Obama, can the Democrats no more disown Carter than they can disown the softheaded liberalism at the party’s ideological core?

First Read has a video snippet of Barack Obama’s new question avoidance strategy: Stuffing his mouth with waffles. No signs of any arugula on the plate. But the waffles worked. He never did answer the question about his thoughts on jihadi postman Jimmy Carter meeting with Hamas. Mission accomplished!

***

Commenter BlameAmericaLast: “Hmmm….a waffle man. How fitting. But then again, I thought for sure SNOBama would have crepes!”

Allahpundit rises to the Obamessiah’s defense.

What a tool.

Carl in Jerusalem recommends this vid clip of Fox News’s Reena Ninan putting the dhimmi in his place.

Also making headlines: Carter’s virtual endorsement of Barack Obama.

Iranian TV is cheering:

Carter: Obama favorite worldwide
Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:41:23

Former US President, Jimmy Carter
Former US Pres. Jimmy Carter, has not openly endorsed Barack Obama, yet he says almost all in his family support the Democratic nominee.

Carter has not yet formally endorsed Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee and he is not seemingly to do so in a meeting with reporters Monday, according to AP.

The former president says many people in Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal, have selected Obama as their favorite.

“World opinion is strongly supportive of Obama, that’s all we hear,” he reiterated.

Sick of Jimmy Carter? Join the club.

Today, Rep. Sue Myrick (NC-9) called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to revoke former President Jimmy Carter’s passport. This is in response to the former President traveling to Syria to meet with Hamas, an organization officially designated by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“Former President Carter has acted in contradiction of international agreements to isolate Hamas. He has acted in defiance of both United States policy and international policy. His actions reward terrorists, lend support, and provide legitimacy to their belief that violence will eventually get them what they want,” said Rep. Myrick.

After Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections the Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) called on Hamas to renounce terror, recognize Israel and recognize the previous agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel as they seek an agreement to make peace. Hamas has categorically rejected these three conditions for more than two years.

Congress granted the Secretary of State the power to grant and verify passports. In 1981, the United States Supreme Court held in the case of Haig v. Agee that the Secretary of State has the implied power to revoke passports as well (453 U.S. 280).

If not that, how about a one-way ticket to Syria? That would do just fine, wouldn’t it?

On another front, GOP Rep. Joe Knollenberg is calling for taxpayer funding to be withdrawn from Carter’s academic organization:

A U.S. lawmaker introduced legislation Wednesday to strip former President Jimmy Carter’s Georgia-based scholarly institution of taxpayer support because of Carter’s plans to meet with the top leaders of the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

And a second lawmaker presented a non-binding resolution that would urge former presidents from “freelance diplomacy” in direct response to Carter’s visit.

Carter is set to set to meet Thursday with Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas leader with control over militants in the Gaza Strip, and he met Tuesday with a high-ranked Hamas politician.

But the heaviest criticism for Carter is coming over a planned meeting on Friday with Hamas’ exiled leader Khaled Meshal.

“America must speak with one voice against our terrorist enemies,” Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., said in a statement from his office. “It sends a fundamentally troubling message when an American dignitary is engaged in dialogue with terrorists. My legislation will make sure that taxpayer dollars are not being used to support discussions or negotiations with terrorist groups.”

Knollenberg said the Carter Center has received about $19 million in taxpayer funds since 2001. He named his bill the Coordinated American Response to Extreme Radicals Act — or CARTER Act, for short. The Carter Center is housed at Emory University in Atlanta.

Chickens coming home to roost, as they say.

Meanwhile, via The Forward, some Dems worry about the Carter factor at the Democrat National Convention this summer. More havoc to be wrought on the anarchy-filled agenda in Denver. It’s the can’t-miss moonbat-a-palooza of the year:

Former president Jimmy Carter’s controversial peace mission to the Middle East this week, which included high-profile visits with top leaders of the Islamist militant group Hamas, is causing some liberal observers to worry that the elder statesman may create headaches for the party at its nominating convention in Denver.

With the presidential campaign raising the stakes for Democrats this year, several party insiders told the Forward that finding the right role for the former president — a Nobel laureate who brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace accord three decades ago — at the August parley would likely require delicate maneuvering.

“I would say publicly dissing a former president of your party is a tricky and somewhat unpleasant thing to do,” said one Democratic campaign official. “My guess is if it came down to it, people would try to give him the respect that’s appropriate to a former president, without giving him a platform to say things that are difficult for the party or the nominee.”

The current dust-up is not the first time that Carter has complicated the political fortunes of fellow Democrats with his outspoken political activism. Two years ago, on the eve of mid-term elections in which his party regained control of Congress, the former president prepared to publish a controversial book, titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” which placed the bulk of the blame on Israel for its continuing conflict with the Palestinians. The book’s release provided considerable fodder to the GOP — the Republican Jewish Coalition placed advertisements featuring Carter in Jewish newspapers across the country — and consternation for the Democratic leaders, who publicly condemned the book.

“The Republicans would love to see Carter at the convention giving a speech,” said veteran Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “If he has a role at the convention, you can rest assured that it will wind up on film, in a television commercial or on YouTube, as a weapon against Democrats.”

***

More: Jimmy Carter lies in Cairo.

Allah’s got vid of Myrick.