Rosalynn Carter (1927-2023)

Rosalynn Carter has died at the age of 96. She was one of the more influential First Ladies – ranking behind just Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton.

Rosalynn Carter, the wife of former President Jimmy Carter and a longtime mental health advocate and humanitarian, died on Sunday in her home in Plains, Ga., surrounded by family, according to the Carter Center. She was 96. The Carter Center announced Rosalynn Carter was in hospice care on Friday. Her family said earlier this year that she was diagnosed with dementia. Jimmy Carter, who is 99, has been in hospice care since February. "Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished," the former president said in a statement. "She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me." Rosalynn Carter was first lady from 1977 to 1981 and was dubbed the "Steel Magnolia" by the press during her years in the White House for the toughness she exhibited behind the gentle persona she outwardly embraced. Throughout Jimmy Carter's time in public office, she was her husband's closest political adviser. She also revolutionized and professionalized the first lady role by expanding the office beyond hostess duties. [ ... ] After her husband was elected president, Carter ushered in a new era as first lady. She attended Cabinet meetings and was only the second first lady to testify before Congress. According to Brower, she took a professional approach to the role, exemplified by the fact that she was the first presidential spouse to carry a briefcase to the office on a daily basis. "I think Rosalynn was a feminist and somebody who wanted to be a true partner to her husband," Brower said. "And she didn't see any reason why she shouldn't be allowed to do that."

She had been an advocate for mental health long before she came to Washington.

As first lady of Georgia, Carter encouraged her husband to establish a governor's commission on mental health, which outlined an influential plan to shift treatment from large institutions to community centers. "She really began the effort in this country to modernize mental health care," Cade said. "And the mental health care system that we have today in many ways reflects her 50 years of advocacy." Carter was also an early advocate for reducing the stigma around mental illness and, in speeches, often framed mental health care as "a basic human right." In 1980, President Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act, which provided grants for community mental health clinics, one of many achievements credited, at least in part, to his wife's advocacy in the U.S. and globally.

Mental health as a basic human right is one of Rosalyn Carter's legacies.

On the subject of mental health, Mrs. Carter took part in a forum at the JFK Presidential Library in November of 2010.

ROSALYNN CARTER ON THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS | JFK Library

Former President Jimmy Carter, who at 98 years old is the longest-lived American president, has entered home hospice care in Plains, Georgia, a statement from The Carter Center confirmed Saturday.

After a series of short hospital stays, the statement said, Carter “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”

The statement said the 39th president has the full support of his medical team and family, which “asks for privacy at this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.”

Carter was a little-known Georgia Governor when he began his bid for the presidency ahead of the 1976 election. He went on to defeat then-President Gerald R. Ford, capitalizing as a Washington outsider in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

Carter served a single, tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, a landslide loss that ultimately paved the way for his decades of global advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights via The Carter Center.

The former president and his wife, Rosalynn, 95, opened the center in 1982. His work there garnered a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Jason Carter, the couple’s grandson who now chairs The Carter Center governing board, said Saturday in a tweet that he “saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and — as always — their home is full of love.”

Carter, who has lived most of his life in Plains, traveled extensively into his 80s and early 90s, including annual trips to build homes with Habitat for Humanity and frequent trips abroad as part of the Carter Center’s election monitoring and its effort to eradicate the Guinea worm parasite in developing countries. But the former president’s health has declined over his 10th decade of life, especially as the coronavirus pandemic limited his public appearances, including at his beloved Maranatha Baptist Church where he taught Sunday School lessons for decades before standing-room-only crowds of visitors.

In August 2015, Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. The following year, Carter announced that he needed no further treatment, as an experimental drug had eliminated any sign of cancer.

Carter celebrated his most recent birthday in October with family and friends in Plains, the tiny town where he and his wife, Rosalynn, were born in the years between World War I and The Great Depression.

The Carter Center last year marked 40 years of promoting its human rights agenda. The Center has been a pioneer of election observation, monitoring at least 113 elections in Africa, Latin America, and Asia since 1989.

In perhaps its most widely hailed public health effort, the organization recently announced that only 14 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported in all of 2021, the result of years of public health campaigns to improve access to safe drinking water in Africa. That’s a staggering drop from when The Carter Center began leading the global eradication effort in 1986, when the parasitic disease infected 3.5 million people. Carter once said he hoped to live longer than the last Guinea worm parasite.

Carter was born Oct. 1, 1924, to a prominent family in rural south Georgia. He went on to the U.S. Naval Academy during World War II and pursued a career as a Cold War Naval officer before returning to Plains, Georgia, with Rosalynn and their young family to take over the family peanut business after Earl Carter’s death in the 1950s.

A moderate Democrat, the younger Carter rapidly climbed from the local school board to the state Senate and then the Georgia Governor’s office. He began his White House bid as an underdog with outspoken Baptist mores and technocratic plans reflecting his education as an engineer. He connected with many Americans because of his promise not to deceive the American people after Nixon’s disgrace and U.S. defeat in southeast Asia.

“If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your President,” Carter said often as he campaigned.

Carter, who came of age politically during the civil rights movement, was the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South, before the region shifted quickly to Reagan and the Republicans in subsequent elections. He governed amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval over racism, women’s rights and America’s global role.

Carter’s foreign policy wins included brokering Mideast peace by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at the bargaining table for 13 days in 1978. That Camp David experience inspired the post-presidential center where Carter would establish so much of his legacy. Carter also built on Nixon’s opening with China, and though he tolerated autocrats in Asia, pushed Latin America from dictatorships to democracy.

At home, Carter partially deregulated the airline, railroad and trucking industries and established the departments of Education and Energy, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He designated millions of acres in Alaska as national parks or wildlife refuges. He appointed a then-record number of women and non-whites to federal posts. He never had a Supreme Court nomination, but he elevated civil rights attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the nation’s second-highest court, positioning her for a promotion in 1993.

Yet Carter’s electoral coalition splintered under double-digit inflation, gasoline lines and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His bleakest hour came when eight Americans died in a failed hostage rescue in April 1980, helping to ensure his landslide defeat.

For years after his loss, Carter largely receded from electoral politics. Democrats were hesitant to embrace him. Republicans made him a punchline, caricaturing him as a hapless liberal. In reality, Carter governed more as a technocrat, more progressive on race and gender equality than he had campaigned but a budget hawk who often angered more liberal Democrats, including Ted Kennedy, the Massachusetts Senator who waged a damaging primary battle against the sitting President in 1980.

Carter said after leaving office that he had underestimated the importance of dealing with Washington power brokers, including the media and lobbying forces anchored in the nation’s capital. But he insisted his overall approach was sound and that he achieved his primary objectives — to “protect our nation’s security and interests peacefully” and “enhance human rights here and abroad” — even if he fell spectacularly short of a second term.

And years later, upon his cancer diagnosis as a nonagenarian, he expressed satisfaction with his long life.

“I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” he said in 2015. “I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence.”

Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter is in hospice care. I rank him at the top of U.S. Presidents for what they have accomplished since leaving the White House.

I have always admired Jimmy Carter. He probably doesn’t make the top 10 American Presidents list but I rank him #1 for what he has accomplished since leaving the White House. I have followed him and his work and have been a supporter of The Carter Center. Founded, in partnership with Emory University, on a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering, the Center…

View On WordPress

It was great to catch up today with an old friend who is now with The Carter Center (Atlanta), Dr. Carol Daniel-Kasbari, Senior Associate Director, Conflict Resolution Program. We covered a lot of ground over one meal and the focus was on action, which is why it is always a pleasure to engage with Carol.

CCP ELECTION INTEGRITY?

CCP ‘UNITED FRONT’ MAGIC WEAPON OVER ELECTION DEMOCRACY

to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing.”

Chinese Communist Party-Tied Group [The Carter Center] To Run Midterm ‘Election Observer’ Program In Swing States

By NATALIE WINTERS

THE CARTER CENTER, which is partnered with several Chinese Communist Party-funded foreign influence groups, is dispatching “nonpartisan” election observers and sponsoring initiatives to combat election “misinformation” for the Nov. 8 midterms.

The Carter Center’s ample ties to Beijing have been repeatedly flagged by U.S. lawmakers, as it has worked with several groups operating under China’s “United Front.”

A multi-billion-dollar political warfare operation, the United Front has been described by former CCP Chairman Mao Zedong as a “magic weapon” to ensure communism’s victory over democracy. American officials have also identified the effort as working to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing.”

READ MORE

https://warroom.org/2022/10/24/exclusive-chinese-communist-party-tied-group-to-run-midterm-election-observer-program-in-swing-states/

i do think that neverafter has played it way too safe to be a consistent horror narrative, and a big part of that is the princesses -- we've had one single conversation that acknowledges the presence of sexual violence in princess tales, and even then, they were only alluding to it in very general terms. you can really feel them straining to avoid it in the last episode. that conversation between snow white, sleeping beauty, and cinderella tried so hard to acknowledge the pain of existing within all princess tales and the horror of knowing what happens in the older versions, but there is a hole in the center of the conversation, which is looking at what has been done to you. saying it out loud. and i think that's where the players' ability to outright reject the princesses comes from -- i dont think that some of them have actually recognized what HAPPENS to princesses, and no one who knows wants to say it.

1962.

Jack Carter and the Jack Carter Revue plays Toronto.

day 12: performance

you got everything you want, and even still, no matter how hard you try, you can't let go the one who didn't

@crazysnor1ax

Freddy Carter breaking character as Kaz and becoming Kazzle Dazzle is the only thing that's keeping me going.

chaos theory — trauma center (derang) edition

inspired by ER!!

share 9 of your fictional crushes and let everyone guess your type

i dont get crushes so much as fixations but these are most the characters ive actually crushed on at some point. most are several years old lmao

tagged by @bisexualnatalies thank u !!

@boldlyintodarkness @hypnosofastar @magicmumu2 @ anyone who wants to do their own idk im bad at remembering @s

Top 10 Moments of 2023: Day 8

Both of Hailey’s BD performances. Love to see her doing a ballroom esque solo (s/o to Carter Williams for choreo) and made me so happy to see her wearing Jenna’s costume from her winning BD solo in 2012

Any episode of Person Of Interest can make you cry if you think hard enough about it

One of the first bills floated by the new House GOP majority aims to get rid of the income tax and swap in a national consumption tax instead. It's a proposal that's attracted ridicule from President Joe Biden, and is highly unlikely to ever move forward.

Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana, particularly wants to make sure it never happens.

"Montana has no sales tax and we don't need the federal government imposing one on us," Tester wrote in a Thursday tweet. "House Republicans' plan to tack a 30% national sales tax on every good from gas to groceries would skyrocket costs for Montana's working families. I will defeat this awful plan."

Under Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter's Fair Tax Act, the income tax, alongside the payroll tax and estate tax, would be replaced by a 23% consumption tax on gross payments — and the IRS would be abolished.

"Armed, unelected bureaucrats should not have more power over your paycheck than you do," Carter said in a release.

A national sales tax would likely be more regressive than the current income tax, hitting lower- and middle-income Americans harder. As the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center notes, lower-income households spend a larger share of that income than higher-income households, so they'd be disproportionately shouldering the burden of a level tax.

It would also fall harder on the shoulders of parents. As the Tax Policy Center notes, "at any given income level, families with children have higher consumption requirements than those without, so switching to a consumption tax would present an inherent disadvantage for families with kids."

The Biden administration has essentially laughed off the GOP proposals, with the President saying he'd veto any legislation like it. White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said that it would "shift the federal tax burden onto the American middle class and working people."

And Biden, when asked about the sales tax proposal, said: "Go home and tell your moms, they're going to be really excited about that."