I have dreaded this topic, because I hate the revolting Jimmy Carter more than anything. The only good thing Jimmy Carter did was give back the Panama Canal and make me a flaming Reagan Revolutionary. In other words, he’s a perfect example of a stopped clock being right exactly twice a day. Everything else Carter ever did was not only bad, it was PROFOUNDLY bad. He’s a textbook example of what not, what never, to do.

That’s why his Carter Center’s coming back into the news is so utterly repellent.

But come back he is. He’s sent his emissaries back to Caracas, ahead of the December election. He got a $10 million new grant for some kind of electoral observation activities from the U.S. Aid office. Who the hell and how the hell that happened is beyond me. This guy ought never be allowed near another election. He breaks everything he touches. Carter is the human garbage who certified Hugo Chavez’s fraudulent recall referendum, paving the way for his consolidation of total power, his total unaccountability and his growing human rights violations. Caracas is awash in crime, drug dealers are growing ever more powerful, people are dead, Castro’s men run several Venezuelan ministries, there’s no future for young people, and there is no way to dislodge Hugo Chavez from power.

Anyway, Miguel has written up some recall referendum studies, showing just how flawed that 2004 vote – which gullible Carter announced was all ‘free and fair’ – really was. It’s technical but worth reading. And look at it this way: Carter is incapable of understanding it, so that’s why we need to.

Read it (link corrected!) here.