Playwright, artist, commercial clammer, international banker, linguist ..... self proclaimed social psychologist and political commentator..."Creative and Inciteful"...always "Original"
Labels: appeasement, Baker, Bush, cognitorex blogspot, Hannity, McCain, negotiating, Syria
: November 10, 2012 7:17 AM 
From published letters to editors and blogging I have been recognized as "insightful" by a Presidential campaign, three Pulitzer recipients and also two most prestigious national magazines. Years ago I had a prescient political play on teaching the Ten Commandments in a public school setting produced by a Tony recipient director to a nightly full house at the Berkshire Theater Festival's Unicorn Theater. Arthur Miller attended the closing party and was nicely laudatory. I've also had a few letters-to-editors published, both politically serious letters and more creatively whimsical letters, for which I receive some friendly local attention. In a past life as a young hippy who signed on for the first employment I was offered in NYC, I inexplicably end up as a ultra fast track international investment banker. I negotiated on the order of two billion dollars in loans to companies and governments, East and West, and the oil industry learning much from being in the 'belly of the beast', as they say. There I also met quite a number of finance and politics house hold names, both Kings and knaves in the process.
The original reporting of the Baker Hannity discussion on negotiating and appeasement report is attributable to Craig Johnson aka cognitorex, that's me, right here, how fun to get a scoop, on Op-Ed News October 2006 and his blog cognitorex dot blogspot dot com (Baker flummoxes Hannity). It was also first ressurected/reported in this cycle in Talking Points Memo (TPM Cafe) on Monday May 18 at 7:00 am)See below original report:
TPM Cafe link, which went around net on various sites is:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/profile/co...
October 6, 2006 at 09:03:14
BAKER FLUMMOXES HANNITY: RIPS BUSH FOREIGN POLICY
by (link=): http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_craig_j...)
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James Baker, the globally accomplished diplomat and former GOP Secretary of State under Reagan totally flummoxed the cartoonish GOP bagman, Sean Hannity.
Point blank, Baker said that given the choice between waging a war or a foreign policy solely restricted to establishing a new democracy in the Mid-east or alternatively pursuing policies of stabilizing the region, policies of stabilization were preferable.
Hannity tried to parry this heretical bashing of Bush's core foreign policy talking point with the usual GOP gobbledygook propaganda such as "this is "World War III" and "this is a fight against Islamo Fascists." Baker seemed uninterested in Sean's offer of GOP red meat talking points and he continued.
Paraphrased as best I can, Baker said, "Given the choice between engaging America's forces based on a principle (i.e. 'democracy') or based on establishing stability, stability is, all things considered, the superior objective.
Not yet finished shredding the inept Bush, Rice, Cheney foreign policy, Baker continued by basically saying that not engaging in talks with America's enemies was nuts and sophomoric (my words). He recounted that he personally visited Syria almost twenty times and on his next visit Syria abandoned their twenty-year-old policy towards Israel and agreed to sit with Israel in negotiations, de facto recognizing their existence.
(The original reporting by me came from simply switching to Fox during "Brittany/Paris" gossip type reporting on MSNBC then me having my mouth drop open as Hannity was dosed and flummoxed with non GOP red meat talking points by Baker.)
Op-Ed news took it as an 'Article" and it received 40,000 hits world wide.)
PS This a sloppy post because my Mother is/was in critical condition and home is now a nursing home. I am biz-ee.