Baker Slams Netanyahu as Obstacle to Peace
Last edited Tue Mar 24, 2015, 03:55 PM - Edit history (1)
Former Secretary of State James Baker harshly criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, echoing White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough’s comments earlier in the day, Haaretz reports.
Baker acknowledged his disappointment with “the lack of progress regarding a lasting peace,” saying that the chances for a two-state solution diminished since Netanyahu’s reelection last week. Baker further slammed Netanyahu’s “diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship,” saying that the prime minister’s “actions have not matched his rhetoric.”
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http://p.feedblitz.com/r3.asp?l=103434369&f=17571&u=37190363&c=4915877
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Jim Baker’s Tart Message for Bibi at J Street
Lloyd Green
Bush 41’s secretary of state came out swinging at Israel yesterday. He hasn’t changed—but the Republican Party sure has.
Don’t expect James A. Baker 3d to be tapped for another stint at Foggy Bottom. On Monday night, at J Street’s fifth annual conference, Baker lit into Benjamin Netanyahu and his newly elected, Likud-led government. Never one to mince words, Baker told the crowd, “Frankly, I have been disappointed with the lack of progress regarding a lasting peace—and I have been for some time… in the aftermath of Netanyahu’s recent election victory, the chance of a two-state solution seems even slimmer, given his reversal on the issue.”
Tart as that message might have been, the 84-year-old Baker had gone there before. Baker, who served as George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state, as Ronald Reagan’s treasury secretary, and as White House chief of staff to both Presidents, had laid down a similar line in May 1989 to an earlier Likud prime minister. In a speech to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Baker told the folks in the room and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir to “lay aside once and for all the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel… reach out to Palestinians as neighbors who deserve political rights.”
Against this backdrop, Baker’s J Street Speech sounded like a stroll down memory lane, and it could have even been delivered by Denis McDonough, the Obama White House chief of staff—and indeed, it was. Earlier on Monday, and also before J Street, McDonough warned Israel against annexing the West Bank, and similarly upbraided Netanyahu for being Netanyahu.
Still, one place, however, where Baker’s words were unwelcome is the current iteration of the Republican Party. As conservative talk radio-host Mark Levin put it, “Jim Baker, much like Barack Obama, has always had a hate on for Israel.” Wow. Levin had lumped Baker in with Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s most famous congregant.
more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/24/jim-baker-s-tart-message-for-bibi-at-j-street.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
are dying off, while the TP (Tea Party or Toilet Paper, you decide 
) republicans are taking over.
He's a GREAT GUY who also said, "Fuck the Jews". What seems to be the problem around here?
just in case...
"Fuck the Jews. They didn't vote for us (Republicans) any way."
He said it in a Cabinet meeting and Jack Kemp who was the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development at the time dropped the dime on him ergo:
(Or that James Baker, his father's secretary of State and closest of friends, was famously quoted as saying, "Fuck the Jews; they didn't vote for us anyway."
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/citypolitic/4022/
A Considerable Speck
"A speck that would have been beneath my sight
On any but a paper sheet so white
Set off across what I had written there.
And I had idly poised my pen in air
To stop it with a period of ink
When something strange about it made me think,
This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
But unmistakably a living mite
With inclinations it could call its own.
It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
And then came racing wildly on again
To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
Then paused again and either drank or smelt--
With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
Yet must have had a set of them complete
To express how much it didn't want to die.
It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
Then in the middle of the open sheet
Cower down in desperation to accept
Whatever I accorded it of fate.
I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
Collectivistic regimenting love
With which the modern world is being swept.
But this poor microscopic item now!
Since it was nothing I knew evil of
I let it lie there till I hope it slept.
I have a mind myself and recognize
Mind when I meet with it in any guise
No one can know how glad I am to find
On any sheet the least display of mind."
Robert Frost
It really is good to see glimpses of sanity, even from surprising sources!
