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.