Remember Wm. Safire and don't forget Jimmy Carter

****William Safire was a most erudite, insightful and entertaining writer whose columns and books remain worth reading and re-reading.He was so expert in the use of English that he fearlessly wrote columns and criticism of the writing of others and writing in general without being caught out for errors of his own ( there weren't any.)***
http://tinyurl.com/ycv2ll8
...Author Eric Alterman, in his 1999 book "Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy," called Safire an institution unto himself.
"Few insiders doubt that William Safire is the most influential and respected pundit alive," Alterman wrote.
Safire's scathing columns on the Carter White House budget director Bert Lance's financial affairs won him the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978; in 1995 Safire was named to the Pulitzer board...//
from Google:
Lance was a close adviser to Jimmy Carter during Carter's successful 1976 campaign. He had developed ties with Carter during the former's time as Governor of Georgia.****Lance's bank made loans to Carter's peanut farm.**** ...After Carter's victory over President Gerald Ford, Lance was named director of the Office of Management and the Budget (OMB). According to former OMB officials, it was well-known in the department that Bert Lance and President Carter prayed together every morning. Within six months, questions were raised by the press and Congress about mismanagement and corruption when Lance was Chairman of the Board of Calhoun National Bank of Calhoun, Georgia. William Safire's article written during this time, Carter's Broken Lance, later earned a Pulitzer Prize. This embarrassment to Carter's administration, particularly as it came in the wake of the Watergate scandal and an election victory over Richard Nixon's pardoner, led to Lance resigning as OMB director on September 21, 1977...In 1988 Lance was a close advisor to Jesse Jackson during Jackson's presidential campaign. ...BCCI scandal: Lance was implicated in the BCCI scandal of the 1980s and early 1990s. He was involved in deals with notable BCCI luminaries Agha Hasan Abedi, Mochtar Riady and Ghaith Pharaon[4] and with BCCI's largest borrower, P. S. Prasad[5], and joined with Arkansas-based power investor Jackson Stephens in facilitating BCCI's takeover of Financial General Bankshares. Lance and Stephens made millions in the wake of BCCI's collapse.[6]//
We Heard . . . THAT according to the Shah of Iran's widow, one American is responsible for many of the nation's problems in recent decades: Jimmy Carter.**** Every objective observer says the same thing.***
Empress Farah Pahlavi told Avenue magazine that if President Carter hadn't let the Sha be overthrown in 1979, "there wouldn't be this problem in Afghanistan, nor would there have been the Iran-Iraq war.
"Iraq would never have dared to even send a plane over our country. The Gulf War wouldn't have happened, nor would any of the problems of the past 30 years, including the exporting of religious fanaticism."