10 May 2008 @ 11:44AM >> Politicians sometimes misspeak. George W. Bush is well-known for it. And if it had been the current president who claimed to have visited 57 states—with one more to go—you’d probably have heard a few dozen jokes about it by now.

Perhaps Obama is planning an imperialist presidency, and he accidentally let it slip that we’ll soon have a few more states. If so, then maybe he wouldn’t be the pushover president I worry he’d be.

I’m sure Barack Obama knows how many states there actually are. The coverage of this quote (or the lack thereof) is more telling about the media than anything else.

8 May 2008 @ 10:01PM >> The Associated Press reports:

A Malaysian Islamic court allowed a Muslim convert Thursday to return to her original faith of Buddhism, setting a precedent that could ease religious minorities’ worries about their legal rights.

Lawyers said the Shariah High Court’s verdict in the northern state of Penang was the first time in recent memory that a convert has been permitted to legally renounce Islam in this Muslim-majority nation.

A rising number of disputes about religious conversions has sparked anxiety among minorities — predominantly Buddhist, Christian and Hindu — because in the past courts virtually always ruled against people seeking to leave Islam.

Penang’s Shariah court, however, granted Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah’s request to be declared a non-Muslim. She embraced Islam in 1998 because she wanted to marry an Iranian, but claimed she never truly practiced the religion.

“I am very happy,” Siti, a 39-year-old ethnic Chinese cake seller, told The Associated Press by telephone. “I want to go to the temple to pray and give thanks.”

The Shariah court, which governs Muslims’ personal conduct and religious lives, ruled that Siti’s husband and Islamic authorities failed to give her proper religious advice.

“So you can’t blame her for her ignorance of the teachings and wanting to convert out,” said Ahmad Munawir Abdul Aziz, a lawyer for the Islamic Affairs Council in Penang.

5 May 2008 @ 9:20AM >> While food costs continue rise, the role of government is getting more attention:

With high food prices prompting grocery-store apologies to customers and raising fears of starvation in impoverished countries, Congress suddenly faces renewed pressure to cut subsidies to the wealthiest farmers and incentives for ethanol production.

The American farmer, long an untouchable political icon, has even become something of a political embarrassment on Capitol Hill, with President Bush earlier this week demanding an end to crop subsidies for “multimillionaire farmers.”

Congress just last year required that more ethanol be added to the gasoline supply. The mandate is now blamed for inflating the price of corn and other staples.

[...]

In Congress, some lawmakers are calling for changes in the nation’s commitment to ethanol as the biofuel of choice to replace oil. “This is a classic case of the law of unintended consequences. Congress surely did not intend to raise food prices by incentivizing ethanol, but that’s precisely what’s happened,” said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who introduced legislation this week that would end federal support for ethanol.

[...]

At the Santa Ana Food Market in Orange County, owner Ken Lau said he has had to raise his prices. Small tortillas that once sold for 69 cents for three dozen are now 99 cents. “We have lots of customers with low-paying jobs and they are struggling now just to make it,” he said. High food prices have inspired critics, including the president, to renew their attacks on subsidies for farmers. The nearly $300-billion, five-year farm bill, delayed for months, has become an easy target for opponents who cite a new outrage: Many farmers are making record incomes while consumers are shocked by dramatic price increases.

“They’re talking about continuing $25 billion in these subsidies over the next five years at a time of record commodity prices and food prices,” said Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin.

The Agriculture Department forecasts that the average farm household will earn more than $89,000 in 2008, up 6.3% from 2007. That’s a third higher than the average U.S. household income, which is projected to be $67,000.

Despite that, farm-bill negotiators are fighting to keep $5.2 billion in direct payments, which go to farmers regardless of how much they earn or whether they are growing a crop.

I wish I could get paid not to work. I guess I’m just in the wrong business.

1 May 2008 @ 9:11PM >> Get ready to start surrendering more of your rights to government. You knew the Nannycrats wouldn’t stop at smoking, fast food and foie gras. Now they’ve got their crosshairs zeroed in on that modern-day horror, the thing most of us dread and fear... you guessed it...

Plastic bags:

[Baltimore City Councilman James Kraft] equated using plastic bags with Nazi extermination tactics at a City Council meeting earlier this week.

“We don’t want to be criticized by future generations for not doing enough now as were those who dealt with the Germans then,” Kraft said.

So what follows? Should those who use plastic bags be charged with murder? Genocide?

No one can claim plastic bags help the environment. But he hurts his cause by outsizing their danger by orders of magnitude - especially when similar plans have failed throughout the rest of [Maryland].

Bills in both Anne Arundel County and the state legislature failed to make it into law in the past year. And studies show plastic bags are cheaper and require less energy to make than paper bags.

They are also much less environmentally-unfriendly than people like Councilman Kraft believe, according to the London Times:

Scientists and environmentalists have attacked a global campaign to ban plastic bags which they say is based on flawed science and exaggerated claims.

The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are false, experts have told The Times. They pose only a minimal threat to most marine species, including seals, whales, dolphins and seabirds.

[...]

Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.

They “don’t figure” in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. “Plastic bags don’t figure in entanglement,” he said. “The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag.”

[...]

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to “plastic bags”.

The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the “typo” remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing “plastic bags” with “plastic debris”.

Oops.

Nevertheless, knowledge of this error will not quell the Nannies’ desires to meddle more.

Bored people seeking the tingle of power are drawn to becoming Nannies because they get to feel morally superior while also controlling the behavior of others. It’s a win-win.

So I predict, the campaign against plastic bags will continue.