Almost forgot to remind everyone of an important anniversary....

[Spitfire of ATJ]

March 26th 1979 was the signing of the peace treaty negotiated by Jimmy Carter between Egypt and Israel that has held to this very day.

I was reminded when I found my old bronze commemorative coin.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Thank you for reminding us, my dear Spitfire of ATJ!

That was so long ago...

It almost seems as though it hadn't happened.

*sigh*

[Thespian2]

2. In the current environment

I find it difficult to remember important times that, at least, made peace a possibility...

[ErikJ]

3. Carter got a huge bump from that. But then the oil embargo and Iranian Hostage Crisis

later that year and the hostage rescue failure sealed his fate for re-election.

[d_legendary1]

4. Peace!

We need more of that stuff to go around.

[Iwillnevergiveup]

5. Amen to that!

K&R Thanks for remembering, Spitfire.

[DrBulldog]

6. Yes, Jimmy was such an awful President. Making boring peace deals everywhere. Geeez.

And not a single soldier died in combat during his Presidency. Wotta wimp!

[malaise]

7. K & R

for Jimmy Carter

[lastlib]

8. Every GOP presidential candidate since then.....

...ADDED TOGETHER wouldn't have Jimmy Carter's class, grace, and humanity! Hell, you'd still have room for their VP candidates too!

[forest444]

9. A great moment in history which unfortunately set the GOP sabotage machine in motion

Carter's approval ratings, which had declined steadily from this first summer in office (mainly due to the Panama Canal Treaty), bounced back in late 1978 and early 1979 and as the Egypt-Israeli Peace Treaty materialized. This made the pundits, which had largely written Carter's reelection chances off, reconsider.

That's when Bush allegedly used his many CIA contacts to make an arrangement with Amerada Hess, which at the time owned the largest refinery in the non-Communist world (in the Virgin Islands). Hess announced an unscheduled and near-total shutdown of its refinery, triggering a domino effect that led to the infamous gas shortages in the first week of May 1979.

These shortages, of course, doomed Carter's reelection chances. Bush declared his candidacy for President the very same week.

[senz]

21. Wow, thanks forest444

It felt like something was going on behind the scenes, and of course we later learned that Bush is suspected to have played a part in delaying the hostage release, but this, so devious -- well, now it seems much more plausible, even normal, after all we've learned since then.

The Bushes do not play even remotely fair; they treat the electoral process like a game. And to think: the Clintons are good friends with them.

Poor Carter, so well-meaning. Thanks for remembering and sharing this.

[forest444]

25. You're welcome, senz. It's an interesting, but much-ignored, story.

The Carter White House was able to put the kibosh on that scheme by suing the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America (of which Hess was the leading member) for conniving to not only shut down refinery output, but to illegally stockpile the gas itself as well.

The political damage was done though (to this day, whenever you mention Carter most Republicans will spit back: "gas lines!&quot . The suit was still ongoing, bogged down in the courts, when Reagan withdrew it shortly after taking office.

[senz]

28. Well, anyone who has read your account now has a comebck to that.

They also disliked Carter because he made peace and didn't swagger. There's a huge "little boy" contingent in the Republican party.

Bernie's a much of a peacenik as Carter, but I have a feeling he could talk back to them more assertively if they started in on his opposition to U.S. hegemony abroad.

[forest444]

29. There you go. Like Carter, but with chutzpah!

[beltanefauve]

32. When Carter was running

He looked square into the camera and said, "I will never lie to you." And he meant it. There was a genuine quality to him, much like Bernie today. The election was close and he beat Ford, who was a place holder after Nixon. Unfortunately, the Reagan revolution began only 6 years after Watergate.

Republicans were mad as hell after Watergate, and sometimes it looks like many are STILL trying to seek revenge for that.

[Kip Humphrey]

10. The last time we had a foreign policy of peace. Thank you, President Carter.

[JDPriestly]

11. K&R.

[oldandhappy]

12. Thank you lots for posting this.

[libtodeath]

13. President Carter really should be on Mt Rushmore.

If only the country had listened to him.

[Rhiannon12866]

14. K&R! Thank you so much for the reminder!

I'm currently listening to the audio book of President Carter's autobiography, "A Full Life," read by the author himself and recommend it highly! It certainly has been! It's fascinating, from his childhood in rural Georgia to his Navy career, to his first campaigns for elective office. I think I'm on disc #5 and he's just become president, LOL. There is so much that I never knew, good and bad, but it's certainly never dull, and his determination is extraordinary!

[tomm2thumbs]

15. a genuine statesmen looking for peace in the world and achieving it

thanks for the reminder

[Dont call me Shirley]

16. Thank you President Carter...

[Octafish]

17. Shalom and Saalam!

Peace to All!

[Hiraeth]

18. such a great man, President Carter. Thank you! K&R

[SoLeftIAmRight]

19. this was the last straw for many

the right went to war against him - bush worked with his Saudi friends were behind the oil price increase and the right coordinated with the federal reserve and drove up interest rates

to ensure victory bush arranged for the hostages to be held until raygun was in power

and - they have continued to denigrate a very good man

conspiracy? I think so

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. The Right was also pissed because Carter reminded America that Jesus wasn't a kickass dude.

[SoLeftIAmRight]

22. and - he wanted us to be "conservative" in engery use

36 years later we have been given another chance

Please america - don't let this chance slip away

[senz]

31. Well, global warming is now hitting us upside the head

so it should get easier to get people to adopt wise energy use.

I suppose we've all heard that Carter put solar panels on the WH and Reagan had them taken down. Perfect symbolism for where we were going. Reagan pretty much killed this country. He made the Third Way, and all it entails and implies for us, possible.

[senz]

23. Yes, and I don't think they ever recognized Carter's real, genuine Chrisitanity.

They don't recognize the real thing; they are constitutionally opposed to it.

In case you haven't seen Al Franken's Supply Side Jesus, it's pretty telling (and it's still true):

http://www.beliefnet.com/News/2003/09/The-Gospel-Of-Supply-Side-Jesus.aspx

[senz]

24. Thanks, Spitfire, for the remnder of a more hopeful, optimistic time.

[richmark950]

26. for carter

for Jimmy Carter

[lark]

27. It's an auspicious day indeed.

I take every chance I can get to celebrate Jimmy Carter, the best man to have been president in my lifetime. He didn't sell out (TPP, NAFTA) like the last 2 Dems did, stayed true to his convictions even after he retired.

Thanks for posting.

[Rex]

30. Carter was making the neo-cons jealous...gee why does that remind me of Clinton and Obama?

The damage done by RWing media is immeasurable when taken in it's entirety.

[Major Hogwash]

33. There was a coin made for this??

Nobody tells me anything!!

Damn!

[Spitfire of ATJ]

34. It came in gold silver and bronze....

I have the bronze version.

Here's what the reverse side looks like:



It's big too, 2 3/8" in diameter.

[senz]

35. It's beautiful. Great design.

I love the mountains and sun on the front, suggests the desert climate, not sure which mountain. The back has all three languages. The word "Peace" is Hebrew over Arabic over English? So the "P" is the same in English and Arabic? Not sure I'm reading it correctly.

Is a coin like that used for money or only for commemoration? How did you get it?

[Spitfire of ATJ]

36. The other two are read right to left.

[senz]

37. Ah, so they both start with a letter that resembles our "W."

Very clever of the coin designer to find a way to combine them so aesthetically and holistically. Symbolic, too. Shared peace.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

38. Back when the US wanted peace in the world instead of conquering the world.

[senz]

39. Yes, after Carter's presidency the rules changed. The country changed.

I don't how old you were but I was old enough to notice that things around me and in the broader nation were changing in ways that felt like a gradual coarsening and commercialization of everything around us -- what was on television, what was in the news, what was happening in business districts of towns and cities, work life. The rules had changed. Reagan changed the business rules and Clinton extended those changes. Bush I & II changed the foreign relations rules in terrible ways. We're not the same country any more. People born in the 80s and beyond don't even remember what it used to be like. It breaks my heart because they have been denied the life that my generation took for granted, denied their birthright as U.S. citizens -- by Republicans and Third Way Democrats.

I wonder what Carter thinks of all this. He keeps busy doing good as he can.

Now we know the importance of the laws set by those we elect to office in Washington. They affect our lives in ways we can't even imagine. They change the world for those to come.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

40. It was all part of an agenda to shift the media to the Right....

Republicans blamed the media for the fall of Nixon and the loss of the Vietnam War.

They got the fairness doctrine rescinded so they could get unequal time. It didn't stop there. They shifted entertainment to the Right. We used to have shows about courtroom dramas where the hero was a defense attorney proving their client innocent. That shifted to courtroom dramas about district attorneys trying to put away the guilty and the defense attorney is a weasel.

Keep in mind that a lot of Republicans came out of the DAs office where they ran on their "tough on crime" conviction rates.

This is also why some Democrats sound like those accident attorneys on TV saying, "I'll fight for you".

[senz]

41. Certainly the media was part of it.

Republicans became media sophisticates long before Democrats knew what was happening. What I noticed in the 80s was a shift from "people next door" programs to stuff like "Dallas" and "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," the increasing glamorization of wealth and materialism. Around the same time I began to notice pronounced anti-government and anti-liberal attitudes in coworkers who listened to rightwing talk radio, and their numbers grew as did the medium and its influence.

On another level, conservatives like Reagan and Clinton allowed progressive relaxation of FCC regulations on media ownership that resulted in more and more media outlets (TV networks, broadcast stations, cable media, commercial radio stations like Clear Channel, movie studios, book publishers, magazine and newspaper publishers) being owned by fewer and fewer conglomerates until we reached what we have now, a huge, tight, media monopoly. There used to be independent media operations all over the country; now, there are five central owners of all major media, megacorporations that decide what the American people are allowed to know. The saying in media studies is that "They don't tell you what to think; they tell you what to think about."

So of course the media is on the Right because they are by definition corporate. There is also the fact of interlocking directorates in which people sit on multiple corporate boards of directors, resulting in a big cozy mutually protective class of powerful individuals.

Media is extremely important, but there's more to what Reagan, Clinton, and Bush started -- deregulation permitting mergers, acquisitions and takeovers that changed the face of American business and the outlook for working people, the disappearance of Main Street and millions of small local businesses with the spread of huge national chain retail outlets, the consolidation of entire industries, the appearance of new health insurance creatures like HMOs, and trade agreements with other countries that permitted "American" manufacturing to outsource its production to places with very cheap labor and no environmental regulations.

And more. It really is a different world now. Life for the American people is much harder than it used to be, and it was all done via legislation on the part of our elected representatives.

Which means it can be undone. Which takes us back to: Go Bernie!!

[senz]

42. Apologies for the verbosity.

I don't know how to be concise.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

43. That was pretty concise for 40 years of a diminishing America.

[senz]

44. Thanks.

Very kind of you. Also quite a compliment coming from a master of concision.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

45. You'd think I invented Tweeting.

[senz]

46. Oh I hope you do Tweet.

It's perfect for you. It's a great way to get memes out into cyberspace. Plus, you can be very funny, something the world needs more of. Tweet, Spitfire, Tweet!

[Blue_Tires]

47. k+r