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Jimmy Carter Calls It Quits At 100 - The Monday AM Quickie 12/30/24

By Jacob Silverman —

Who will break the grim news to the smiling peanut? -Jacob

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THE BIG NEWS

President Jimmy Carter Calls It Quits At 100

James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived president of the United States, died at the glorious old age of 100 yesterday. He had been in hospice care for so long that his impending death had become a regular Onion joke. He even outlived one of the writers of his New York Times obituary.

Long cast as the model ex-president, a humble, religiously devout humanitarian who spent more time volunteering and teaching Sunday school than cashing in on the lecture circuit, Carter presided over a single middling term during the late 70s stagflation years. He lost the 1980 election at least in part because a prolonged hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran was prolonged even further by a secret Reagan campaign operation to scuttle negotiations – an event that gave us the term October Surprise.

A liberal southern Democrat who posthumously restored Jefferson Davis' US citizenship, Carter helped inaugurate the deregulatory, neoliberal era that his Republican successor, Ronald Reagan, is often credited with jumpstarting. He also clandestinely challenged the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, negotiated the Camp David Peace Accords, and proclaimed the Carter Doctrine, a promise to "defend American interests" in the Middle East that presaged decades of American imperial intervention in the region.

Of all the post-WWII occupants of the Oval Office, Carter may have been the most decent. Certainly his willingness to call out Israeli apartheid by name was unique for someone of his position. But he was still an American president, where enormous moral hazard is inherent to the office. Carter was more restrained than some of his peers in his appetite for violence – now it's called "power projection" – but he was an early co-author of our present age of boundless warfare and neoliberal decay. He also built some houses. For that, RIP.

Fiery South Korean Airliner Crash Landing Kills 179 People

On Saturday, a Boeing 737-800 flying for South Korea's Jeju Air landed roughly on its belly before crashing into a barrier, creating a large fireball that was caught on video. All 179 passengers on the plane died. Two crew members were rescued and taken to a hospital. The plane was traveling between Bangkok, Thailand, and South Korea's Muan Airport. It's the world's deadliest aviation accident since 2018.

Putin Sort Of Apologizes About A Different Plane Crash

In a call with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he was sorry "for the fact that [a] tragic incident occurred in Russian airspace," referring to an Azerbaijan Airlines plane that was likely shot down by Russian air defenses on Christmas Day. Thirty-eight people died. In a statement, the Russian government said that it was conducting an investigation and blamed Ukrainian drone attacks in the area for activating Russian countermeasures.

QUICKEST QUICKIES

  • Netanyahu Has Prostate Cancer, Deserves More Israeli Prime Minister and lead genocidaire Benjamin Netanyahu will have his prostate removed this week under full sedation, a procedure that will put him in the hospital for a few days. The surgery will allow the wanted war criminal to avoid being questioned in a domestic corruption trial, at least for a week. via ABC News.
  • Trump Sides With Musk In Bickering With Racist Allies Over Foreign Workers Over the weekend, an online skirmish broke out between the tech right – Musk, Ramaswamy, Andreessen, et al – and MAGA luminaries – Laura Loomer, Steve Bannon – over the issue of "skilled immigration" and H1B visas. The social media fracas threatened to deepen a rift between the racist right and the even more racist right. President-elect Trump stepped in to affirm his support of the H1B visa program, which he has used to hire immigrant workers. via WaPo.
  • Israel Detains Gaza Hospital Director While It Depopulates Northern Gaza Israeli forces issued another set of evacuation orders to residents of Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, as the IDF continues to ethnically cleanse the Gaza strip. The IDF also raided and partially destroyed Kamal Adwan Hospital and detained its director, Hussam Abu Safiya. via AP News, The Guardian, and The Guardian.
  • Paid-Off Trump Tries To Save TikTok President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to pause an impending ban on the enormously popular (and dangerously foreign!) video sharing app TikTok. Trump once cast TikTok as a dangerous Chinese weapon but changed his mind about the site after his campaign and his media company received cash infusions from Republican megadonor Jeffrey Yass, a major investor in TikTok's parent company. via NYT and NYT.

SOME NUMBER

18.1 percent

That's how much homelessness increased in the United States in the last year, according to new federal data, continuing a multi-year trend driven by the high cost of housing, environmental disasters, and a lack of social assistance.

ON THE SHOW TODAY

12/30: It's Day 5 of the Majority Report Best Of 2024! Today you'll hear from Brad Onishi, writer, co-host of the Straight White American Jesus podcast, and founder of Axis Mundi Media, to discuss his recent book Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – And What Comes Next.

DON'T MISS MR CLIPS‌

Trump Declares War On The US Post Office

Everything decent and useful left in the government must submit to MAGA mismanagement and privatization.

Trump's Power Hungry Cabinet Could Actually Be A Good Thing

A band of venal, corrupt, dumb, world-historically incompetent executive officials could kneecap the next Trump administration. Maybe.

PARTING WORDS

"This act is the capstone of my efforts over the past 4 years to get the Federal Government off the backs of private industry by removing needless, burdensome regulation which benefits no one and harms us all. We have deregulated the airlines, a step that restored competitive forces to the airline industry and allowed new, innovative services. We have freed the trucking industry from archaic and inflationary regulations, an action that will allow the startup of new companies, encourage price competition, and improve service. We have deregulated financial institutions"

-- From a statement by President Jimmy Carter when he signed the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, which helped deregulate the US railroad industry. As friend of the show Jeet Heer noted, Carter "started the neoliberalism turn, which meant he had a greater shadow than any president since FDR."

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