Video: How many continents are there? (funny, but also serious)

I thought there were 5 or 7. Apparently it's far worse than that. This video is surprisingly interesting.

Read the rest of this post...

Stop piling on Bill Daley

James Carville said recently that the President should fire a ton of stuff, including apparently White House chief of staff Bill Daley. Matt Bai makes an interesting argument for why the President should not fire Daley. NYT:

If administrations are to be judged solely on results, rather than in the context of the times, then Mr. Obama can’t possibly make a compelling argument for his own re-election — not when unemployment refuses to fall below 9 percent. But if he intends to argue that the data points of his presidency are simply beyond anyone’s control for the moment, and that good policy takes some time to work, then he can’t very well go around firing senior aides who have failed, in a matter of months, to stop the slide.

Or, rather, he can, but it would contradict his own appeal to the voters for their continued faith. He would be judging his top aides by exactly the criteria that he is asking the public to set aside.

The White House is either largely responsible for this prolonged economic misery and the ongoing dysfunction in Washington, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then there’s not much reason to bring the hammer down on those who run the place. If it is, then someone will indeed be held accountable.

Economy aside, I've never had a sense that this White House works terribly well in terms of how effectively it fights for things (legislation or otherwise). That problem existed before Daley arrived on the scene. And in part it might be a staff problem, but I can't help feeling that it's the President's who's constraining the staff in terms of how forcefully they fight. Read the rest of this post...

Copyright protesting Pirate party may win 9% in local elections in Berlin

Update: Preliminary results with 99% of the votes counted give the Pirate Party 8.9% which is above the 5% required to win seats.

Al Jazzera reports that Merkle's CDU is headed for a sixth straight defeat in local elections in Germany. Hardly a surprise given the mess that the Euro is in. Germany is far from blameless in the Euro mess, they never imagined that there might be a point where inflation might be the least worse policy option for Europe as a whole.

But what really caught my eye was the fact that the 'Pirate party' is polling at 9%. Its a protest party certainly, but it isn't the only protest option and 9% is a very large protest vote.

The Pirate party began in Sweden as a one-issue party formed around copyright reform. Like many fringe parties, there were plenty of people associated with it who could fairly be regarded as 'fringe' or 'flakes'.

Twenty years ago the Green party was in a similar situation. One of my friends at Oxford was Mike Woodin, who later went on to become Principal Speaker of the party. Mike was 'mad as a box of frogs' as one of the Tories put it. But twenty years later I live in a city that has just introduced a single stream recycling program, incandescent bulbs are being phased out and electric and hybrid cars may well become mainstream. There is already one wind turbine in the city and they are just building a second. When the price drops I will probably install solar. It is hard to know if the Green party was a cause or a consequence of the shift towards environmental thinking, but it did at the very least coincide with the change in attitudes.

I am pretty sure that the Pirate party program is not sustainable. If people want to watch blockbuster movies costing $100 million or more to make, somehow the producers have to be making at least $101 million back. But the rise of the Pirate party suggests that the continuous erosion of the public domain commons is not sustainable either. Read the rest of this post...

Tony Blair's disturbing links to Gaddafi

The good old Tony Blair that we all know and love. What kind of "peace envoy" would be involved in an oil-for-convicted terrorist deal? The Independent:

Tony Blair's shadowy links with Muammar Gaddafi were thrust into the spotlight again last night after it emerged that he met the former Libyan dictator twice for secret talks in the run-up to the release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

A collection of documents found in Tripoli have revealed that Mr Blair was flown to Libya twice on one of Colonel Gaddafi's private jets after he left office in the UK, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph. In the letters and emails, Mr Blair's private office repeatedly refers to Gaddafi as "The Leader".

The meetings, in 2008 and 2009, came at a time when Libya was threatening to cut all business links with the UK if Abdelbaset al-Megrahi stayed in a British jail.

Read the rest of this post...

Obama to push for new minimum tax on the wealthy

It's an interesting idea, and politically quite smart to put the Republicans on the defensive regarding tax increases on the wealthy. The public is for it. Make the Republicans show the American people just how extreme they really are. NYT:

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama's effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats' support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

I'm not how this somehow legitimizes cutting Medicare and Medicaid.

The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend. But by focusing on the wealthiest Americans, the president is sharpening the contrast between Republicans and Democrats with a theme he can carry into his bid for re-election in 2012.

At least it's a (good) sign that the President is interested in being more confrontational with the Republicans. A necessary evil if he wants to get anything accomplished, and if he wants to get re-elected. Read the rest of this post...