Well, I’m sorry to note the passing of James Earl Carter III, ‘Jimmy’ to you and me. Jimmy Carter was a VERY good man. He did many good things in his life and worked every day to make other people’s lives better. It turned out, he was not so good at politics on the national level – most especially the dirty politics of the Reagan campaign. But he spent the rest of his life proving he HAD been the right man for the job and if it hadn’t been for alleged machinations by the Reagan team, he might have had a more successful presidency.

His two biggest problems? Well, inflation was high. He worked to get it down but it was stubborn. Our society was reacting to the return of Vietnam soldiers and the new paradigm of women NOT returning to the home when the men returned from war. For a while, there were too many workers for too few jobs and only time can fix that. The One Percent used it as an excuse to pretend Keynesian economics was dead. THAT allowed them to introduce the new economic “idea,” so-called “Supply Side” economics.

It’s nonsense. The implementation of “supply side” economics in 1980 has led us directly to the economic struggles we all know and hate today. It’s a direct line. It set us on the road to the fascism we live under now. “Supply Side economics” has always been nonsense (George Bush, the elder, dubbed it “VooDoo economics” because the concept was so stupid), so the cons needed someone with charisma to bring the story to the masses. Enter Ronald Reagan. No one can say how Reagan would have fared in the election left to his own devices. All we know is that earlier attempts had failed. But then Reagan got lucky.

Some people, ‘college students,’ we were told at the time, seized the American embassy in Tehran, Iran, and held the embassy workers hostage. Carter tried mightily to secure the release of the hostages. He took every action he legally could as President of the United States. He even attempted a military intervention, though he was philosophically opposed to using the military to solve problems.

What he didn’t know – couldn’t have known – was that the Reagan team was allegedly working behind the scenes WITH the Iranian “college students.”
“Wait, you’re saying an American Presidential candidate was working WITH American adversaries AGAINST American interests in an effort to win an election?”
That’s the allegation. There was much evidence to support the charge, too, but, as we all know now, if you “win,” there ARE no charges. (Kind of, in this case.) “Keep the embassy workers hostage,” the ‘students’ were told, “and the US will provide you with weapons for your fight against Iraq if Reagan wins. You can let them go once Reagan is elected.”

And that’s what happened. Literally one half hour after Reagan’s election, the hostages were released. Of course, we were told it was because of Reagan’s awesome leadership and how the ‘students’ were afraid of Reagan because he was oh-so-tough. We didn’t know about the arms deal until it blew up on them during the administration.

See, Congress had refused to fund arms to Nicaraguan “Contras” due to human rights abuses, but Reagan supported their cause. AND, they had made a promise to Iran. It wouldn’t have looked good for the “students” to come out and describe the deal in detail, so the Reagan team did what they could. You remember, that was when the CIA started IMPORTING cocaine from Central America to the US (black neighborhoods only, please), then using the proceeds to secretly buy and ship weapons to Iran – AND send some of the money to the Contra rebel groups back in Nicaragua.

It’s known to history as the Iran/Contra scandal and it might have brought down the Reagan presidency if one Colonel Oliver North hadn’t fallen on his sword and taken the fall for the scheme. Everybody knew, at the time, North had acted under orders from the West Wing, but nobody could PROVE beyond a doubt that North had acted under orders from the West Wing so North took the fall himself.

He was convicted of three felonies but the convictions were later vacated because he had been given immunity to testify before Congress. He has since been handsomely rewarded for his role in the treasonous scheme by wealthy but low-profile supporters of extreme conservatism.

I sat down to write about Jimmy Carter and his presidency. It ended up being all about Reagan and his criminal maladministration. I almost did a re-write but then I realized, that WAS Carter’s presidency. It was undone and overshadowed by traitorous actions of a political opponent – and that’s what I meant by ‘…he was not so good at politics on the national level.’

Carter couldn’t beat the Reagan team at that game because Carter was too good of a man to play on that level. He would have had to stoop to the same underhanded politics the Reagan team was using and he wouldn’t do that. Reagan and his henchmen got rich – and then ended up in Hell. North should be joining them soon. But Jimmy? Jimmy got his wings…

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I read a piece from ‘The Hill’ that suggested that Democrats haven’t learned anything from their recent campaign loss – because the GOP released the House ethics report on Matt Gaetz. No, it doesn’t make sense (the piece was written by a con), but it DOES show you the direction MAGA is moving on this issue. I WANT to call it ‘Gaetz-gate,’ since every scandal since Watergate has had the ‘gate’ suffix attached to show it’s seriousness, but I suspect ‘Gaetz-gate’ jumps the shark on that practice, being redundant, as it is.

Look, we don’t know, for sure, if Matt Gaetz did or did not sleep with a 17-year-old high school junior when he was 34. We don’t know if he KNEW she was 17 when he did. Possibly, he would have been happy with an 18-year-old high school senior if she had been available. But we DO know he was using illegal drugs and paid tens of thousands of dollars to prostitutes. We also know he was showing photos around the House floor and bragging about his “conquests” – photos and descriptions other people, apparently, didn’t want to see or hear.

In this, um, ‘article,’ the writer wrote: “…the left’s non-stop bloodlust to sensationalize, embarrass, gloat or fundraise off the report demonstrates that not only did they learn nothing from the election results, which embarrassed their candidate and their party, but that they continue to drown out the voices of the two constituencies they were once most identified with protecting: the working class and the disenfranchised.”

Huh. WAS it the left that used poster-sized, revenge porn pictures on the floor of the House to “sensationalize, embarrass, gloat or fundraise?” No, wait a minute. If I remember correctly, that was the GOP using photos of Hunter Biden. Yeah, Hunter had a drug problem, too. But he didn’t – allegedly – hire high school juniors for sex. (I’ve already acknowledged we don’t know but the GOP-created ethics report suggests Gaetz did. Take it up with them.)

The writer also wrote: “it seems as if Democrats instantly went back to their kneejerk strategy of sliming and smearing Republicans…” Yeah, that’s the left. Sliming and smearing. See how it works? When a Republican makes up claims about someone from whole cloth or overstates the importance of some small issue, that’s just good, solid work. When a Democrat reports actual, verifiable facts that just happen to make a Republican look bad, that’s ‘sliming and smearing.’

Here’s how you’ll know it was all performative BS. Sooner or later, someone will find Gaetz’s form from when HE bought guns and we’ll ALL see the check mark in the ‘not using drugs’ box. You know, the one that Hunter checked that caused MAGA such outrage. You just watch how ho-hum MAGA pretends THAT is…

Cons won’t think twice about this. They’ve been conditioned to see the left as “angry and even hate-filled” and see themselves as merely “concerned.” So, revenge porn on a private citizen as a cheap mechanism to embarrass a sitting President was simply good work, but referring to ‘President-elect Thirty-Four Felonies’ is an out-of-bounds slur?

I’m not sure ‘righteous indignation’ is the right position for MAGA. It calls to mind Matthew 7:5, “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye…“