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PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter's in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter's path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That's a very narrow way of assessing them," Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn't suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he'd be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter's tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter's lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor's race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival's endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King's daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters' early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan's presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan's Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.
NoneDrama surrounds final three F1 races of season
Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Highly-anticipated video game The Witcher 4 has entered "full-scale production" at CD Projekt Red. Studio VP and game director Sebastian Kalemba confirmed the news Tuesday on social media following the CD Projekt Q3 financial update presentation.
Treysen Eaglestaff scores 19 as North Dakota cruises past Waldorf College 97-57Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president, has died at 100Elden Ring Nightreign’s trailer left out the juiciest details on how it actually works
Australian High Commissioner calls on EDB Chief to boost trade tiesThe Rick Campbell era has ended while the Ryan Rigmaiden era has begun. The B.C. Lions introduced Rigmaiden as the football club’s new general manager at a press conference at the team’s Surrey practice facility on Wednesday, and at the same time, announced that they had parted ways with head coach Rick Campbell after four seasons and that Neil McEvoy was moving from the co-GM position that he shared with Campbell to the newly-created title of Vice President of Football Operations. As , the club moved quickly to elevate Rigmaiden from his previous role of Assistant General Manager and Director of U.S. Scouting in an effort to retain the 45-year-old native of Spokane, Washington. Rigmaiden was the Lions Director of U.S. Scouting from 2013 to 2017 before leaving to join the Winnipeg Blue Bombers organization. He returned in 2020 and has been responsible for bringing in import talent such as Sione Teuhema, Josh Banks, Alexander Hollins, Manny Rugamba, Jarell Broxton, Josh Woods and Kent Perkins to the Lions. His first task as general manager will be to find a new head coach. “The head coaching search is going to start immediately. There are several coaches that are currently unemployed that we are going to talk to. We also have several here internally that we will interview as well and then get permission (from other teams) for a handful of others,” said Rigmaiden, who becomes the 17th general manager in club history. There are approximately “eight to 10” candidates that the club will interview via ZOOM calls over the next week to 10 days, with that number being whittled down to three or four finalists who will then be interviewed in person. The front-runner for the head coaching position is former Lions quarterback Buck Pierce, who has been with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers organization since 2014 in various coaching capacities and has held the title of offensive coordinator since 2020. Other candidates include former Hamilton head coach Orlondo Steinauer, former Winnipeg and Ottawa head coach Paul LaPolice, former B.C. and Hamilton defensive coordinator Mark Washington and former Calgary special teams coordinator Mark Kilam as well as internal candidates that include offensive coordinator Jordan Maksymic and defensive coordinator Ryan Phillips, who is the only assistant from last year’s staff still under contract. The organization has no timeline in terms of naming a head coach and both Rigmaiden and McEvoy stressed that this will not be a rushed decision. That being said, there has to be some urgency as the new head coach will need time to assemble his own staff moving forward. Rigmaiden has set out three criteria that his hire will have to meet. “Leadership, accountability and toughness. I think those are essential for any head coach no matter what sport you are talking about. That’s going to be something that we emphasize,” replied Rigmaiden when queried on the subject. Rigmaiden hopes the new coach will be able to get the Lions to play with some edge. “The biggest thing I see is our lack of ability to overcome adversity on the field. There is a lack of mental toughness on this team. Internally, we have all been discussing that after last season. There are a variety of reasons why that happens. Instilling a new head coach with some different ideas and different values is going to be the biggest part of that,” said Rigmaiden. Another pressing item on his agenda will be trading quarterback Vernon Adams Jr. and there has already been an organizational shift in philosophy in how that will be dealt with moving forward. “He (Adams Jr.) will not have a say in this process. We are going to do what’s best for the club but we are going to be in constant communication with him,” said Rigmaiden, walking back a promise that Campbell made as co-gm that Adams Jr. would be consulted in trade talks. Rigmaiden added that it was strictly a business call, referring to his solid relationship with Adams Jr. going back to the time when Adams Jr. was a 19-year-old at Eastern Washington University, and that the process would begin immediately by “calling two or three teams” on Monday night. * The natural landing spot for Campbell is Edmonton. As we mentioned last week, new Edmonton owner Larry Thompson wants to reconnect the Elks to the history and tradition of the Eskimos. He already has hired Chris Morris as the Elks president and then followed that up by signing Ed Hervey as the Elks general manager. Morris played 14 years for the Eskimos while Hervey suited up for eight seasons with the green and gold. Hiring Campbell would be a natural fit seeing how his father Hugh coached the Eskimos to five straight Grey Cups from 1978 to 1982. Hervey also hired Campbell in B.C. during his stint as the Lions general manager. * As for the Lions assistant coaches, Phillips could be reunited with former teammate Dave Dickenson as the defensive coordinator for the Calgary Stampeders if things don’t work out in B.C. Meanwhile, Edmonton has asked the Lions for permission to speak to Maksymic about their head coaching vacancy. In other news, linebackers coach Travis Brown has interviewed for the defensive coordinators position in Ottawa but could follow Campbell to Edmonton if the Ottawa job falls through as the two have history together going back to Brown’s playing days as a RedBlack. * With Hervey leaving as Tiger-Cats general manager, former Lions quarterback Danny McManus becomes the leading candidate to replace him in Hamilton. McManus, who led the Leos to a Grey Cup in 1994, has been with Winnipeg since 2013 as the club’s assistant general manager and director of U.S. scouting. McManus was also the quarterback for Hamilton when they last won the Grey Cup in 1999 and is revered in The Hammer. Other candidates include former UBC head coach Ted Goveia, who is the Bombers assistant GM and director of player personnel and a pair of Canadians working as scouts in the NFL in Vince Magri (Buffalo) and Chris Rossetti (New York Giants). Magri and Rossetti both spent time with the Toronto organization before going south.Meta Platforms Inc META shares have been treading water for the better part of the past month. The company reported earnings at the end of October. Here’s a look at what you need to know . What To Know: Meta shares have struggled to move higher since the company reported third-quarter financial results last month. Although Meta beat analyst estimates on the top and bottom lines as revenue jumped 19% and daily actives climbed 5%, the stock faced selling pressure due to spending concerns. Meta raised its full-year 2024 capital expenditures outlook by $1 billion and said it continues to expect operating losses to “increase meaningfully” year-over-year for Reality Labs. It’s worth noting that insiders have been selling Meta shares in recent months. CEO Mark Zuckerberg , CFO Susan Li and COO Javier Olivan all sold shares in November under trading plans, with Olivan most recently selling shares on Monday, according to Benzinga data . On a positive note, Axios reported Wednesday that Meta’s Threads has added 35 million new users on the platform since Nov. 1. Micro-blogging startup Bluesky has seen users flock to the platform since Election Day, suggesting users are leaving X because of Elon Musk’s political views. Meta also appears to be a beneficiary. Check This Out: Meta, OpenAI, Orange Join Forces To Build AI Models For African Languages On the earnings call last month, Zuckerberg said Threads had over 275 million monthly active users. That number appears to be growing rapidly with Axios reporting that the app has seen more than one million daily sign-ups for three months straight. Meta aims to capitalize on the momentum. Zuckerberg on Monday said Threads is testing a new feature that will allow users to choose what they see when they open the app. Previously, Threads directed users to a default feed, but users can now choose to only see posts from accounts they follow. Meta is also set to head to trial in April after Judge James Boasberg rejected Meta’s attempted dismissal of the case and set a court date earlier this week. The Facebook parent company will face U.S. Federal Trade Commission allegations that it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to stifle competition in the social media space. META Price Action: Meta shares closed Wednesday down 0.76% at $569.20, according to Benzinga Pro . Photo: Shutterstock. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
No. 7 Tennessee dispatches UT Martin to remain undefeated