Jimmy Carter @ MindSay 
Yesterday, all five living US Presidents met at The White House for lunch, creating the historic photo-opp seen here. In the comments, post your own caption for the photo. We'll pick the best one and insert it into the headline
Update (1/15): We've updated the caption with one submitted by decisiontime. Not sure if it was the best, but they submitted at least 30 different captions in the comments so we figured they should get at least one featured! Here are a few honorable mentions:
- "Who said there were only Three Stooges?" rv1501
- "Fail, FTW, Epic Fail, Epic Win, Meh" Padresmokey
- "how many presidents does it take to screw in a light bulb" blueeyedtawni
- "Jim Henson's predecessors are so talented...you'd never see the strings..." underground1986
- "3 Wise Men and 2 Donkeys Try to Save the World" jksheppard
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Date Line May 20, 2007
You just have to love this Whitehouse. Now former President Jimmy Carter has been branded "increasingly irrelevant" for his outspoken continued opposition to the invasion of Iraq.
As President, Carter had much going against him. Much of it was of his own making. After all, he was the first born-again president, and the first (before our current incompetent) person elected to that high office based on evangelical support.
Oh! Some might point to Reagan as the product of evangelical action, but that was not a matter of evangelicals promoting one of their own; to the contrary, it was evangelicals turning on their own.
Carter was the promoter of evangelical ideology, and he managed to seriously hurt the American economy; Reagan was a continuation of anti-communist McCarthyism, and, as such, managed to ring-up debt at a rate unsurpassed in American history (that is, until the current administration).
George W, like Jimmy, was brought into office by the evangelicals. It is worthy to note that the evangelicals would later claim Reagan as one of theirs.
Why "worthy to note"? Why because of Reagan's poor handling of fiscal matters; something which marked the Carter and current Bush administrations. Incompetent foreign policy was also a hallmark of both Carter and Bush practices.
Fortunately, we who have the eyes to see, are getting a real kick out of their self-destructive policies. Back in the days of Vietnam, warnings were made. But this evangelical group simply lacks the ears to hear.
Shall we believe the Whitehouse? Shall we accept that Jimmy Carter is now "increasingly irrelevant"? Remember!
Remember, this is the same Whitehouse, the same President, who declared a few years ago that Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were completely "irrelevant" in any of American dealings abroad, or at home.
This is the same Whitehouse which declared global warming a myth; and it is the same Whitehouse which hold evolution to be a myth, and not supported by science, anthropology, archaeology, or geology. It is, in their view, not even supported by DNA evidence of evolutionary mutations which are ongoing and demonstrative.
Well children, I must accept the administration and its belief in the Biblical. Revelation and other sources declared that the evil nations would see plagues of locus. Thus, the Whitehouse has shown it is the evil foretold.
As I write this, plagues of locus, or what we call cicadas, are emerging in the Midwest. Billions will soon swarm the skies in a display of divine wrath and retribution. That is the Biblical, the evangelical, the Right-wing mandated interpretation of natural cycles and evolution!
Isn't it?
AIDS was denounced as typical of the divine wrath response to the homosexuals. Since it started in Africa, there must be a special divine hatred for black homosexuality. And since it is spreading in many Asian nations, there must be a divine hatred of those people.
But since Buddhist Temples survived the Tsunami while churches were totally destroyed, the divine hatred is not toward Buddhists.
Come to think of it, whenever there is an earthquake, churches are the most damaged. There we have it, evangelical
pronouncement, there is a divine hatred for everything Christian; and America is a Christian nation, so we can expect major destruction here. Cheer Divine wrath!
The evangelicals gave us Carter and Bush; they want to claim Reagan as one of their own; they love depriving the poor of medical care, depriving the poor of food, they love denouncing the least among us and rewarding the wealthiest and most powerful; they serve Caesar at every opportunity; they gave us Falwell, Robertson and Dobson.
Wonder what might really be becoming "increasingly irrelevant"? 
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Horowitz exposes Carter for the Left Wing liar that he is. Carter’s Book – Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid – portrays Israel as a government of racists and oppressors.
Horowitz is so livid that he writes the true story of Modern Israel. The real oppressors are the Middle Eastern Mohammedans that have attempted to destroy the Jewish Homeland from the day of its inception.
When Carter marches around America pushing his pack of lies bound in a book, he is pushing the Mohammedan agenda that Mohammedan children are taught from the day they are able to comprehend the language of their forefathers. These lies are the propaganda machine radical Mohammedanism intently spread in their anti-Semitic agenda.
This is part of the arrogance of Mohammedanism in the delusion that their creed is superior and all other creeds are inferior. A superiority complex is fine and dandy, however a Mohammedan superiority complex implies the inferior must join the cult or die.
Kenneth Stein resigned as Executive Director of the Carter Center’s Middle East program. Why? Because there are outright errors in Carter’s book. When will Leftists in Europe and America wake up that the primary goal of Mohammedanism is to force the globe to submit to Mohammed’s Allah by hook or by crook?
You might recall my mentioning on 23 November the Jerusalem Post’s report on the new Human Rights Watch report accusing Palestinians of war crimes for protecting individual houses with ‘human shields’. Then, on 29 November, Norman Finkelstein (reprinted immediately on CounterPunch) came out against the report and called for letters to HRW demanding a retraction. This morning there was a press release from the International Solidarity Movement citing the relevant sections of the Geneva Conventions and establishing quite convincingly that HRW’s accusation was completely groundless, in their own terms. Finkelstein’s page provides links for those who want to write to Kenneth Roth and Sarah Whitson, which I encourage you to do. There are also letters from other readers on that page.
Now, Jonathan Cook has also made an impressive contribution to the discussion of the issue, which you should read in full. Among his observations,
Women volunteering to surround a mosque become the equivalent of the notorious incident in January 2003 when 21-year-old Samer Sharif was handcuffed to the hood of an army Jeep and driven towards stone-throwing youngsters in Nablus as Israeli soldiers fired their guns from behind his head.
A few days ago I wrote that Gaza residents traumatized by projectiles falling on their homes didn’t have the option of fleeing because ‘of course departure is not an option for them’. A correspondent has written casting doubt on this assertion, ‘From what I've read, it seems that Israel is perfectly willing to let Palestinians leave for other countries. If that is true, that means departure is an option’. On reflection, I wrote, ‘I have heard that, too. In fact I think foundations exist, possibly run out of Yisrael Beitenu, that will pay their way and even give them a little grant. But I'm not real sure how it works and frankly, I can't imagine anyone in Gaza being able to avail themselves of such an opportunity, as there are no Israeli officials there to entertain an application and the borders are closed.’ If you can shed any light in the issue, please let me know and I’ll post an update.
Hot on the heels of their recent military intervention in Tonga to protect the monarchy from prodemocracy ‘rioters’, in the interests of stability and democracy, Ha’aretz reports that New Zealand has now humiliated itself again by withdrawing a warrant for the arrest of Moshe Ya’alon for war crimes.
The warrant names Ya'alon for ordering an Israel Air Force attack on the home of senior Hamas official Salah Shehada in the Gaza Strip in 2002. Shahada, the founder of Hamas' military wing, and one of his aides were killed in the attack along with 13 civilians.
This morning’s mail also brought an interesting ‘cogitation’ from MediaLens’s David Edwards, where he discusses some of the mechanisms that the educational system deploys in turning us into compliant ‘responsible’ members of society, regardless of considerations of what I think he would call ‘compassion’, and I would call ‘solidarity’. Among the specific ploys that teacher John Taylor Gatto mentions in his book Dumbing Us Down,
The point is that a child who accepts the label ‘not very bright’ will, in his or her own mind, deem risible the notion that he or she might seek to understand the world, much less to challenge the assumptions accepted by the society by which he or she has been labelled. For a ’failure’ who has been successfully undermined in this way, to reject the labelling system itself will seem like the most obvious and wretched sour grapes. How can this one individual be right against a whole world of opinion? And from where can we gain the confidence that has been stripped away from us by the very system we are presuming to challenge?
On the other hand, the ‘bright’ child will feel a sense of affirmation and belonging that will make him or her disinclined to challenge the fundamental legitimacy and wisdom of the source of his or her own self-esteem. These are the ’winners’ who populate our public [i.e. private] schools, Oxbridge universities and corporate media offices.
Edwards also points out that ‘a lot of ’dim’ children are too ’bright’, or at least too true to themselves, to tolerate the trivia imposed on them as ’education’. To be indifferent to what is of minimal human significance is not a sign of stupidity.’
When I was a kid, maybe 6 or 7 years old, my grandmother took me to see a western and after some gripping scene I discovered to my horror that M&Ms actually do melt in your hand. This was a seminal event in my life, to which I attribute my low tolerance for bullshit. My mother recently reminded me of it out of the blue, so I’m pretty sure it’s not just my fevered imagination. Nevertheless, I did well in school until I dropped out in grade 10 - a decision I have never had cause to regret. I wish I’d been allowed to do it earlier. One of the many advantages was that they never got around to teaching me to hate Shakespeare.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how disappointed I was not to have run into the socialists at the secularism rally I attended. Well, I finally found them yesterday selling papers in Kızılay. I anticipate that this is going to have a significant positive impact on my energy level and my motivation to learn Turkish. It’s also possible that it will also impact on the time available for my cyberlife.
I’m going to post this before it gets too long, but I’m currently writing something about Jimmy Carter’s speech broadcast Thursday, Democracy Now!, and the DN interview with Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunimah. I may post it later today.
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