When last we heard from the worst president of the twentieth century, Jimmy Carter was accusing the nation he once led of human rights violations:

Carter also used his trip to North Korea to observe the country’s food rationing system. That the United States and South Korea have chosen “to deliberately withhold food aid to the North Korean people because of political or military issues not related is really indeed a human rights violation,” he said.

Carter had traveled to North Korea to meet with Communist Party leader Kim Jong-il, but that meeting did not take place as he had hoped.  Instead, he met with regime functionaries and came back to the West convinced of their good will.

Guess Jimmy wasn’t aware that the regime has a practice of siphoning off Western food aid to “to support Kim’s military forces.“ Commenting on the Democrat’s visit to North Korea, the editors of the Wall Street Journal mince no wordst:

So let’s see. Kim Jong Il runs a dungeon of a nation whose policies cause repeated famines, but the U.S. and South Korea are morally obliged to alleviate the consequences of those policies even if this means helping the dungeon masters maintain control so they can cause more famines.

Wouldn’t it make more moral sense to try to depose the dungeon masters, or at least speak out against them? But Mr. Carter says he can’t do anything about the North Koreans, so he denounces his own country in sharper language than he dares to use against a regime that murders and imprisons its own people.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported something that a champion of human rights would clearly denounce: “North Korea’s work farms and prison factories” considered by “human rights experts” to “the world’s most notorious” are “massive and growing”:

New satellite images and firsthand accounts from former political prisoners and former jailers in North Korea have confirmed the enormous scale and bleak conditions of the penal system in the secretive North, according to a report released Wednesday by the human rights group Amnesty International. (more…)

First, watch a clip of the immediate past President of the United States.  Note how that good man praises two men his successor will be tapping for key national security positions, including Leon Panetta, who was a leading member of the Democratic congressional caucus when serving in the legislature and a top official in the Clinton and Obama administrations when serving in the executive branch:

(Via Breitbart.tv via a newly trentagenarian reader.) Note further this Republican former president refrains from criticizing the policies of the Democratic incumbent.

Now watch this clip of another former U.S. president.  And read this report:

Wrapping up his visit this week to Pyongyang, former President Jimmy Carter says relations between North Korea and South Korea are “currently at rock bottom.” Nonetheless, he said he believes the North is committed to getting talks underway. . . .

Carter said Thursday at a press conference in Seoul that North Korean officials had “expressed deep regret … for the loss of life” from two military attacks against South Korean targets in late 2010. But they did not apologize and suggested that they wouldn’t, the former president said.

Why does this man always take the enemies of the United States at their word?  Has any other former U.S. President so criticized his country on foreign soil?  Why hasn’t Mr. Carter focused on the real source of the starvation in North Korea, the economic system its Communist leaders have forced into place through their ideological zeal and kept in place with military might and barbaric means, including forced labor, imprisonment and torture? (more…)

As he began the most welcome speech of his political career, then-President Jimmy Carter, conceding the 1980 presidential election, said that in his 1976 bid for the White House, he had promised the American people that he “would never lie to you“.  Seems that his promises like those of another Democrat to whom he is often compared have an expiration date.

Well, perhaps, Mr. Carter assumed that when he left the White House, he no longer needed to keep the promises he once made on the campaign trail.  The former president is being sued for “falsehoods“:

A $5 million lawsuit filed in federal court in New York on Tuesday against former US President Jimmy Carter and publisher Simon & Schuster alleges that Carter’s 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid contains false information and was intended to deceive the public and promote an anti-Israel agenda. . . .

By claiming to be a Middle East expert, the suit claims, Carter and, by extension, his publisher, intentionally presented inaccurate information that was highly critical of Israel and therefore violated a New York law that makes it illegal to “engage in deceptive acts in the course of conducting business.”

Jimmy Carter, Middle East expert?  Is that like calling the guy who regularly burns your toast an expert chef?

Looks like Jimmy Carter may have won his own eponymous contest again.  Back in 2007, we awarded Dan Rather the 1st James Earl Carter Bitter Old Man Award (JEC BOMA):

Named in honor of the nation’s thirty-ninth president, the JEC BOMA honors those men over 70 who, in their dotage, by the very bitterness of their manner, follow in the footsteps of the nation’s worst president.

We have selected Mr. Carter’s name to go on the (yet to be designed trophy) for his nearly twenty-seven years of sour grapes. Having not gotten over his 1980 landslide loss to Ronald Reagan, Carter has become a perpetual critic of his successors . . . . Through the better part of his public actions since voters in 44 states rejected him, this sourpuss has helped redefine the term Bitter Old Man.

He’s still whining about the Gipper’s victory.

Hey, Jimmah, in 1980, Reagan may have got fewer than 51% of the vote; actually he had 50.75% of the popular vote, even with a third candidate in the race, a little higher share that he 50.08% you attracted in 1976 — without a third party candidate in the race. And no, John Anderson didn’t announce at the last minute.

(H/t:  Pat Dollard via Bruce’s twitter feed.)

Help Mick Mulvaney GET RID of John Spratt and Nancy Pelosi.  DONATE NOW!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE:  I just found this post that is nearly a year old.  It still seems to fit (even MORE so now, perhaps). 

Take the very worst personal and leadership traits of these Presidents:

Combine the Socialist, statist and world-view philosophy of this one:

And add the big-spending ways of this one:

And you get this big mess:

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Looks like Barney is now doing his best impression of Marie Antoinette.

The Boston Globe’s Names Blog, an online gossip column, reports that Rep. Barney Frank found himself in an impromptu town-hall meeting on a flight from Los Angeles to Boston. A pair of ophthalmologist sisters wanted to air their grievances about ObamaCare, but Frank was having none of it:

“They wanted to talk to me, but I apologized and said I like to read and watch on planes,” Frank told us today. “They began to talk louder and that’s when Jimmy (Ready) [Frank's domestic partner] said, ‘If you’re trying to be bitchy, you’re doing a good job.’ ”Needless to say, the women didn’t appreciate the remark, and things got heated. (Attempts to locate or ID the women were unsuccessful.) [Passenger Brooke] Sexton, who’s an HR director for the UK-based retailer All Saints Spitalfields, said flight attendants weren’t working hard enough to defuse the situation, so she got involved.

“The women had been drinking, and they were crying and shouting,” Sexton said. “They were clearly the antagonizers, and Mr. Frank was kind of minding his own business.” (She said Ready also upset another passenger, calling him “Santa Claus.“) Finally, the parties calmed down and remained quiet for the rest of the flight. (Sexton was offered some complementary [sic] wine for her trouble.)

Barney Frank: Oh yeah, those annoying constituents are such buzzkills.  Especially those damn doctors who have to implement ObamaCare.  Just a bunch of drunk Tea Partiers, I tell you.  Now away with you while my partner Jimmy annoys other people on the plane — like having me here isn’t bad enough!

Keep it classy, Jimmy.  It is not a good idea to insult your Sugar Daddy’s constituents.

Guess what Barney: This is part of your job.  Take Harry Truman’s advice.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

RING, RING.

ME: Hello?

INTRUDER BY PHONE: “Hi, first I want to thank you for your previous contributions to Senator John McCain and for being such a strong supporter.”

ME:  HAHAHAHA.  Um, what?  I am NOT a supporter.

IBP: Oh, I sense frustrations, may I ask why you…

ME: IMMIGRATION!  DUH!

IBP:  Well, you will be happy to know that Senator McCain is working to…

ME:  DON’T CALL ME AGAIN.

CLICK.

Writing about an article in the Washington Post on Attorney General Eric Holder’s attempts to cover himself on CIA prosecutions, Michael Barone makes an interesting observation about the letter that seven former CIA directors wrote to the President, urging him “to call off Holder’s investigation“:

That [letter]’s mentioned, briefly, in the second and third paragraphs. And the article mentions as well that the seven directors served under presidents of both parties, but it denies the reader the information that the seven include all living former CIA directors except the nonagenarian Stansfield Turner and former President George H. W. Bush. Turner may be in no position to sign such a letter, while Bush, like living former presidents of both parties except for Jimmy Carter, can be presumed to be adhering to a policy of not criticizing the current incumbent.

Recall, how back in March, H.W.’s son refused to criticize the incumbent President, his successor, saying he “deserves my silence.”   Like Jimmy Carter, H.W. was voted out of office by a decisive majority (62.5% ) even greater than the percentage rejecting Jimmy (59%) and yet he managed to befriend his successor.

Why is it the Georgian, alone among ex-presidents, has continued to nurse his sour grapes.  It’s like a child throwing an extended temper tantrum . . . but for 28 years?

Well, Jimmy’s petulance does have some precedent.  Achilles refused to fight in the Trojan War for some time, nursing his grudge against Agamemnon.  But, in depicting the great warrior’s childish behavior, Homer means him to look petty, sulking while his fellows suffer and died.  The poet is setting his hero up for his ultimate transformation at the end of the epic (The Iliad).  Perhaps, Mr. Carter will experience a similar metamorphosis.

But, to do so, he must first see the folly of his ways.   Perhaps, were he not such a bitter man, filled with bile against Jews, he could learn from what we do this time of year, engaging in T’shuvah, reviewing our deeds, atoning for our faults, our sins and taking action to better ourselves.

Glenn Reynolds:

It seems to me that President Carter has earned his place as if not the worst president in history, the worst president of the 20th Century.