Carter Returns Nobel Peace Prize

[birdgirl73]

I thought you wanted to bury the hatchet.

Is that an "insult" to Native Americans?

That one made me laugh out loud!!!

OK, it's really buried now. I'm too tickled for it not to be! Thank you for the comic relief!

[medicinal]

And back to the subject. If ever a president deserved a peace prize it was and is Jimmy Carter. As bird girl said, he has done more to help humanity than any president I've known in my 66 years on this planet. He's in his 80s and still swings a hammer at "Habitants for humanity". He might have been in over his head as a president, but that was mainly due to the nature of the man, a peaceful caring man that couldn't comprehend the evil inherent in the world of politics. If you want to talk about failed presidencys, lets talk Nixon and G.W.Bush, the absolute two worst since I've been alive. I can only hope that Dubya gets whats coming to him as Nixon did, a large dose of disgrace!

[Breukelen advocaat]

[COLOR="Green"]And back to the subject. If ever a president deserved a peace prize it was and is Jimmy Carter. As bird girl said, he has done more to help humanity than any president I've known in my 66 years on this planet. He's in his 80s and still swings a hammer at "Habitants for humanity". COLOR]

Speaking of Habitat for Humanity (sounds like a zoo for people), I get letters from Jimmuh Cahtuh, as he calls himself, asking me to contribute time and/or money. I do not own any real property, my address has a number in apartment building in the inner city, and I wound never in a trillion years be considered eligible for their housing.


Hereâ??s a good one, from Casino Magazine's website, and not a joke like the first post in this thread. Perfect location!


Gambling News

Habitat For Humanity Proposes Affordable Housing Near Casino
Mar 12, 2007

Habitat for Humanity is proposing to build a five (m) million dollar affordable housing development in Bethlehem. It would be near a new casino and the new Bethlehem Commerce Center, allowing residents to walk to work as people in the area did when the Bethlehem Steel blast furnaces were running.

Habitat is proposing a 17-acre neighborhood on the slopes of South Mountain, with 27 homes near the bottom of the hill and a 12-acre park above them. Mayor John Callahan says the project would provide people who earn a working wage the ability to obtain homeownership.

In contrast with high-end housing planned for the area, Christopher Bennick, the executive director of Habitat's Lehigh Valley chapter, says his group's proposal features homes that would normally sell for 225-thousand dollars, but would be affordable for a mother of three who makes 11 dollars an hour.

Prices are held down through use of volunteer labor and support from sponsors. Habitat also requires the future homeowner to contribute so-called "sweat equity hours" to the house, and Habitat holds the mortgage so the homeowner receives a zero percent interest rate.

Habitat For Humanity Proposes Affordable Housing Near Casino

[birdgirl73]

I don't see what's curious or funny about that, although I do see that you're trying to make a tie between a "gamble" and a Carter project into a sarcastic joke.

I don't know Bethlehem very well and didn't even know it had casino gambling, but it makes sense that a housing development for lower income people might be put up near a casino. In all the cities other than top-end parts of Vegas and Atlantic City, where mega-billlion real estate surrounds the fancy casino areas, many of the neighborhoods surrounding casinos are rather urban and bleak. It seems like it'd fit to put up decent, modest housing in a place near where folks who're trying to work their way out of poverty might live or work now (or work in the future at, perhaps, the casino). And it'd be a boon to the area by improving the surrounding neighborhood through a single-family-zoned development instead of letting pawn shops and soon-to-be empty, vandalized storefronts creep in.

[Breukelen advocaat]

It's just ironic - the Casinos are all owned by Indian tribes, the single mothers of three getting quarter of a million dollar houses from a self-described "Christian" organization, Carter's peanut farm is inherited from his grandparents who were among the largest slaveholding families in Georgia, etc. I may be mistaken, but it looks to me a bit like there's some guilt trips happening.

[bobthenuker]

anyone else think that carter looks like mermaid man.

[Breukelen advocaat]

anyone else think that carter looks like mermaid man.

If there was ever an actor born to play Carter, it would have been the late Don "Deputy Barney Fife" Knotts. After leaving a successful TV role with the Andy Griffith Show in the 1960's, Knotts went on to star in such movies as The Incredible Mr. Limpet (about a man who turns into a fish), and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

[birdgirl73]

It's just ironic - the Casinos are all owned by Indian tribes. . . .

Guess you've never heard of Steve Wynn. Or Kirk Kekorian. Or Donald Trump. The most interesting thing about the Indian casinos is that they're increasingly owned by Asian (mostly Malaysian) owners/investors and then they pay the tribes a fee. I just read about that last week in the NYTimes and on Bloomberg. Go ahead and put the guilt spin on billionaires, both American and Malaysian.

The single mothers of three getting quarter of a million dollar houses from a self-described "Christian" organization.

From that article you posted, the figure was a quarter million, not three-quarters. I did a quick check on Bethlehem real estate prices, and in that city that's a modest price. Heck, in your city, that's peanuts. And what does Christianity even have to do with that? Christian charities and organizations provide all sorts of services.

Carter's peanut farm is inherited from his grandparents who were among the largest slaveholding families in Georgia, etc. I may be mistaken, but it looks to me a bit like there's some guilt trips happening.

Why would you assume guilt trips? Why not just a concern for humanity in general borne of his caring about people who are less fortunate, having grown up during the Depression and seen the level of poverty he did in the Deep South? If you'd ever bothered to do anything other than criticize him, you could easily find out he actually cares. You had ancestors who were no doubt slave owners, especially if some of them were among the first to land on Plymouth. I did, too. So does a quarter of America. Your comments, as is so frequently the case, don't make sense.

[Breukelen advocaat]

Guess you've never heard of Steve Wynn. Or Kirk Kekorian. Or Donald Trump. The most interesting thing about the Indian casinos is that they're increasingly owned by Asian (mostly Malaysian) owners/investors and then they pay the tribes a fee. I just read about that last week in the NYTimes and on Bloomberg. Go ahead and put the guilt spin on billionaires, both American and Malaysian.

The key is the "fee". Casinos also help create poverty.


From that article you posted, the figure was a quarter million, not three-quarters. I did a quick check on Bethlehem real estate prices, and in that city that's a modest price. Heck, in your city, that's peanuts. And what does Christianity even have to do with that? Christian charities and organizations provide all sorts of services.
Carter is a "Born Again" type - one of the first of the modern politicians to bring that up. That alone was enough to make him look bad.



Why would you assume guilt trips? Why not just a concern for humanity in general borne of his caring about people who are less fortunate, having grown up during the Depression
Carter was in the upper class in the deep south, where Blacks had to use separate bathrooms, eat in separate restaurand, and suffer other indignities -many of which were much worse. His money has the blood of those people on it.

and seen the level of poverty he did in the Deep South?
Did he actually experience poverty for himself?
If you'd ever bothered to do anything other than criticize him,
I like to laugh at him, actually, to keep it in perspective.
you could easily find out he actually cares. You had ancestors who were no doubt slave owners, especially if some of them were among the first to land on Plymouth.
None of The Mayflower passengers owned Slaves. In fact, John Howland, one of my ancestors that came on the Mayflower, was an indentured servant to the man who was to be the Governor. I have in my possession numerous census records from the 18th and 19th century, and none of my ancestors listed on them owned slaves. There is a column for that, and the spaces were all blank. Many of my New England ancestors in Martha's Vineyard were Quakers, who were among the first to oppose slavery. Even if they hadn't opposed slavery, I didn't inherit any property, but Jimmy Carter is still a rich man living off his family's legacy of profit from the enslavement of human beings.
I did, too. So does a quarter of America. Your comments, as is so frequently the case, don't make sense.

Make sense now? If not, sorry.

[Dave Byrd]

Casinos certainly do create poverty. That's for sure. We went to Oklahoma a couple of weekends ago to meet some friends and met up with them at a Choctaw-owned casino across the border so they could lead the rest of the way to the restaurant. It was sad to see all the folks who could least afford it standing there, pouring money down the drain of a slot machine.

From what I've read in Carter's books, money was very tight during the Depression for that family just like it was for everyone else. They were certainly less poor than the rock-bottom door-to-door meal beggars, but they were not rich. His father was not a wealthy farmer by any means. Wealthy in comparison to the poorest of Plains, yes. You ought to come down here sometime, BA, and let us take you to Louisiana where Bird's father and two previous generations of ancestors are from and look around at the vestiges of the same sort of history Carter came from. Might be interesting for you. It'd give you insight into why she's such a Carter fan, too, and a Clinton one. People love to say that line about Clinton having been our first black president. The truth was the first one was Jimmy Carter.