The Daily Kos has the article Chris Matthews schooled by Elizabeth Warren on politics and the Democratic message.

This video seems to start a little before the video in my previous post. See Thoughts On Handling A Bully On TV. However, this video has been edited to cut out a lot of the Matthews blather and give more time to Elizabeth Warren’s response.

As I suspected even when I posted that previous post, there may be more to the story than what I saw. Neither video alone is an accurate picture of what happened in the interview. I guess one of the answers to handling a bully is to have your own video editor. Since I haven’t wasted my time watching the whole interview, I don’t know how Elizabeth Warren ever got Matthews to shut up for a moment so she could talk.

The Rachel Maddow Show blog has the article Cheney doesn’t want to talk about ‘what happened 11 or 12 years ago’.

In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” there’s a scene in which John Cleese’s Sir Lancelot, certain he’s doing the right thing in behalf of a damsel in distress, storms into a castle during a wedding party, indiscriminately slaughtering most of the guests with his sword. The castle owner, eager to curry favor with Lancelot, urges the survivors to let bygones be bygones.

I thought that seeing the scene would have to be better than reading about it.

Maybe here is a case where a picture is not worth a thousand words.

Here is a really silly exchange that explains why I don’t watch MSNBC.

I was thinking of ways that Elizabeth Warren could have handled this. My first thought was that she could have sat still until he finished his rant and then said “There, there, do you feel better now? Can we proceed to having a discussion?”

My second thought is that she should have come prepared with a book that she could have visibly held up while starting to read to herself from it, until he stopped. The title of the book could have been “How To Handle A Bully”.

What do you think would be an effective way to handle situations like this? If guests come prepared, perhaps we can put a stop to this behavior. It might work with O’Reilley.

The idea of privatizing as many government services as possible has turned out to be a very bad idea with consequences unanticipated when most of us first heard the idea. Reversing this trend by starting at the Post Office, is a very good idea.

What we may not have realized is that after the unions were decimated by concerted actions of the oligarchs, government employment was one of the last things that kept up employment standards from a race to the bottom. Naturally, this last bastion would be a prime target of the oligarchs trying to gain complete control of the terms of employment for workers. Anybody who has been around for a number of years but has not had the good fortune to retire like I did in 2006, knows how much working conditions in this country have deteriorated.

It is time to put 2 and 2 together to see how this deterioration has come from a concerted attack by the forces who would gain advantages from the situation. Instead of some workers trying to reduce the benefits of other workers like their own benefits have been reduced, we should be striving to re-elevate all worker benefits.

The Daily Show has an interview with former Permanent Representative of Iraq to the United Nations Hamid Al-Bayati describes the political crisis emerging in Iraq.

The interview is in three parts which The Daily Show makes very difficult to find. I have finally found the three parts and embed them all below.

There are some interesting threads of discussion started in this interview. Unfortunately, Jon Stewart keeps interrupting the threads just as they get interesting. It would be nice to know if Hamid Al-Bayati has a coherent plan or even ideas to resolve this problem. He hinted at it, but as I have pointed out a number of times on this blog, it is much easier to analyze the causes of a problem than it is to suggest solutions. It is worthwhile to hear the analysis, but we should learn to overcome our disappointment at not hearing solutions. It will take some truly exceptional people to be able to figure out how to solve the problem. These people don’t pop up every day.

We need another Nelson Mandella to come along. Although we have to realize that it took over 30 years before Mandella was able to actually bring the problem in South Africa to a really new beginning.

WBUR conducted a debate among the three remaining Democratic candidates for Governor of Massachusetts. The article on the web site is Democrats Seek To Distinguish Themselves In WBUR Debate.

 Four days after the state Democratic party trimmed the group of candidates for Massachusetts governor down to three, the remaining Democrats — who’ve often echoed one another on policy — are beginning to sound unique.

This is a very well conducted debate, with good questions, a pretty even handed moderator, and candidates willing to discuss important issues in an intelligent way.

The only glitch of note is that the video cuts off in the middle of Don Berwick’s closing remarks.

If we could have more debates like this one, then I think voters would get as fair a chance as possible to choose the candidate that they think can do the job best.

Truth Out has the story WikiLeaks Reveals Global Trade Deal Kept More Secret Than the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“This agreement is all about making it easier for corporations to make profits and operate with impunity across borders,” said PSI General Secretary Rosa Pavanelli in response to the leak. “The aim of public services should not be to make profits for large multinational corporations. Ensuring that failed privatizations can never be reversed is free-market ideology gone mad.”
.
.
.
The secrecy of the TISA negotiations “exceeds even the controversial Trans-Pacific Partner Agreement (TPPA) and runs counter to moves in the WTO towards greater openness,” wrote Jane Kelsey, a law professor at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who analyzed the leaked documents on behalf of Wikileaks, which leaked portions of the TPPA in the past.
.
.
.
Kelsey’s analysis also confirms the concerns of trade unions like PSI that the TISA agreement would lock governments into and extend their current levels of deregulation and trade liberalization, thus preventing governments from returning public services into public hands when privatizations fail and establishing greater regulations to protect the environment and workers safety.

It is the antithesis of free markets to write rules that lock you into one way to provide a service even if the provider is a failure.  If people can get together to provide a service more cheaply and/or with better quality than another group of people, why should we have a treaty to prevent the first group from competing?  That first group of people might be in the form of a government entity.  Why are people trying to foist their ideology on us that all work must be done in the private sector?  Because they make money when they can trick us that way, obviously.

If people were really committed to actual “free markets” they wouldn’t be biased toward organizing those “free markets” in one particular way as opposed to another.  Why not chose the method of organization for what works best in each individual case?  Or at least let people freely choose to try any method they want.

Democracy Now has the interview Juan Cole: Mass Sunni Uprising Forces Iraq to Confront Sectarian Blowback of 2003 U.S. Invasion.

ARON MATÉ: And, Juan Cole, how would you characterize this conflict right now? When we talk about ISIS, it’s generally referred to as this monolithic force, but of course there are many militant groups that comprise this pushback against the Iraqi government. So, your assessment of the overall picture right now?

JUAN COLE: I don’t believe that we can think about the—what has happened in Iraq as a series of military conquests. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria is a small group, a few thousand fighters. It doesn’t have formations or brigades. And I think what really happened was that they have cells on the ground in the Sunni Arab cities, and they coordinated with other groups, including secular and socialist groups, like ex-Baathists, to stage urban uprisings against the al-Maliki regime and its security forces. So, I think that this is a very complex phenomenon and an expression of popular discontent, and not just a series of military advances.
.
.
.
JUAN COLE: Well, the Bush administration very explicitly sided with the Shiites and wanted to create a Shiite-dominated government and enthusiastically cooperated in the de-Baathification or the firing of thousands and thousands of Sunni bureaucrats and teachers from their jobs. So this—this was a policy of the Bush administration, and it is, in some large part, responsible for the current crisis.

Here is the link  to Juan Cole’s blog Informed Comment that is mentioned several times in the video.

Thanks to Marden Seavey’s posting this on his Facebook wall.

The UK Telegraph has the article Saudi Arabia: ‘This is Iraq’s problem and they must sort it out themselves’ by Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf Al Saud, Ambassador to the UK of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

There are three things that the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia strives for above all others: peace, stability and security, for the international community, for our region, and for our country and our people, whether they are old or young, men or women, Sunni or Shia. These are the cornerstones of our government and at the foundation of our thinking.

The escalating and alarming situation in Iraq is of serious concern to us. These are our neighbours, our friends, and we watch with distress as this terrible situation escalates next to us.

As our Foreign Minister HRH Prince Saud al Faisal told the Islamic Conference of regional leaders meeting in Jeddah this week: “This grave situation carries with it signs of civil war that has implications for the region we cannot fathom.”
.
.
.
So where do we stand? Despite the false allegations of the Iraqi Ministerial Cabinet, whose exclusionary policies have fomented this current crisis, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia supports the preservation of Iraq’s sovereignty, its unity and territorial integrity.

We oppose all foreign intervention and interference. There must be no meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs, not by us or by the US, the UK or by any other government. This is Iraq’s problem and they must sort it out themselves. Any government that meddles in Iraq’s affairs runs the risk of escalating the situation, creating greater mistrust between the people of Iraq – both Sunni and Shia.

Instead, we urge all the people of Iraq, whatever their religious denominations, to unite to overcome the current threats and challenges facing the country.

Perhaps this may appear to be just a bit self-serving and hard to believe.  Perhaps it is a case of one hand in Saudi Arabia not knowing what the other hand is doing.  Perhaps it is actually true.

Surely, the Saudi government has told this directly to the Obama administration.  I wonder if any of this will give the Obama administration even a moment of pause before they head down the destructive path that they seem hell bent on following.  What do McCain and Graham know about this?  Will they listen?