The United States…

“She has no clue what’s going on,” Hali says. “It might be like maybe soccer to her. Maybe I can relate it to soccer a little bit, but … it’s going to be very drastic for her. Because she’s going to go from living in a hut to maybe living in a nice home that’s she’s never lived in before.”
. . . Tamba Hali in USA Today — DE > Kansas City Chiefs (1st Rd from Penn State).

Now that Tamba Hali has been picked to be an instant millionaire he’s ready to move ahead with his next priority: Getting his mother out of war-torn Liberia.

USA Today
Hali’s inner drive fueled by more than football
Updated 4/20/2006

Whenever Tamba Hali finally is able to help bring his mother to the USA, she won’t just be arriving in a foreign country. It might as well be a whole new world.

She will watch her son get rich for playing a game she doesn’t yet understand and try to earn praise from fans for reasons that might seem a bit unusual. The NFL’s reach has not extended to Hali’s native Liberia, a country until recently torn by civil war, and Tamba’s mother, Rachel Keita, has not seen her son play in person.

The journey will be a long one and the differences striking, but the constant will be Hali, who should be a high draft pick out of Penn State as a defensive end.

…

“I was just overwhelmed with not only his story, but the way he told it,” Giants GM Ernie Accorsi said then. “He’s such a thoughtful, intellectual, moving person. … I tell you what, you could hear a pin drop in our interview room when he was done telling us a story. … That was one of the most impressive interviews I’ve ever been around.”

… » USA Today: Tamba Hali

And, think of this:
Hali’s mother will arrive in the U.S. LEGALLY… Not through the backdoor like George Bush prefers. AND Bush will get no credit on the IOUs he holds from his business buds because she will not be a lettuce picker, a chicken plucker, nor a Wal-Mart floor waxer.

Reference:
Pittsburg Post-Gazette: Hali is ready to sprinkle his talent

Penn State U. sports Website: Tamba Hali

NFL Draft Tracker: Prospect Profile: Tamba Hali

UPDATE Bernard @ A Certain Slant of Light writes that not all players are so dedicated: “OF BALLROOM DANCING AND LIVING IN BALLROOMS”?

As most people know by now, newly installed N.J. Gov. Corzine filled his vacant Senate seat with a political clone, nutcase Rep. Bob Menendez (D-NJ).

Menendez is running for the seat in his own right this November, so he’s trying to make an immediate impression. The problem is, like Scarecrow he has no brain, so his utterances are somewhat perplexing and often ridiculous. Here’s an example:

NewsMax.com
Democrat Gas Tax ‘Holiday’ Hikes Taxes
April 28, 2006

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, has come up with a solution to skyrocketing pump prices: He wants to suspend the federal tax on gasoline, saving motorists 18.4 cents a gallon.

But there’s a catch. Democrats want to raise taxes on the big oil companies by an equal amount — a cost they’d inevitably pass along to the consumer.

The Menendez “gas tax holiday” would reduce the cost of regular gas as well as diesel, but it which would last just 60 days. Still, the move could save consumers $100 million dollars per day for as long as it lasts.

But according to the liberal web site Raw Story: “Democrats say the money will be made up by cutting six billion dollars in tax breaks to oil firms.”

If the oil companies pass their new costs along without any carrying charges, it would cancel out all the savings to consumers under the Menendez plan.

If “Big Oil” wants to maintain the same profit margin, however, the companies would have to hike pump prices even further — and the Democrats’ plan could actually end up costing motorists.

… » NewsMax.com: Democrat Gas Tax ‘Holiday’…

To simplify, here’s a recap:

Sen. Bob Menendez’s “gas tax holiday” plan
• Gas tax holiday for 60 days; cost to government coffers: $6 billion.
• Replenish government coffers by eliminating “big oil” tax credits: $6 billion
• To recover, “big oil” adds amount of lost tax breaks to operating cost: $6 billion
• Shareholders demand that “big oil” make 10% net profit on operating revenue: ergo, new prices set to generate $600 million in new profit.

NET RESULT: Consumers would pay $600 million more at pump.

Another example of Democrat wizardry?

UPDATE: Republicans are determined to prove they’re bigger dumbasses than Democrats and it looks like they might succeed … They suggested a plan to buy some votes for their side by sending taxpayers $100 checks, courtesy of THE TAXPAYERS.

Remember when Bill Clinton tried to impress his overseas buddies by selling U.S. space technology to China? Remember, we could hardly wait to get a Republican in the White House to stop the treason?

Remember when we thought Dubya was on our side? Remember the myth that he would reverse Bubba’s course and actually fight terrorism?

The Bristol Press
Bush OKs sale of defense contractor to Dubai group
04/29/2006

WASHINGTON – President Bush approved the sale of Connecticut-based Pentagon supplier Doncasters Group, Ltd., Friday to a company based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Doncasters Group, Ltd., is currently British-owned, but its U.S. operations are based in Farmington, Conn., where it owns New England Airfoil Products.

The Connecticut subsidiary manufactures turbine blades for U.S. defense contractors including Pratt & Whitney, which builds engines in Middletown, conducting maintenance in Cheshire and elsewhere around the state.

Doncasters also manufactures turbine blades in the U.S. for General Dynamics’ M1A1 Abrams, the main battle tank for the Army and Marine Corps.

Pratt & Whitney officials have characterized their amount of subcontracting to New England Airfoil as minimal.

In February, the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved the ill-fated sale of six major U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World, a company that is owned by the emirate’s government.

… » The Bristol Press: Bush OKs sale…

The Dems are right… Impeach the mindless drunk.

To raise poll numbers and win re-election, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has shamelessly abandoned the principles that got him elected the first time. His latest flip-flop proves he has about as much class as John Kerry. Acting out a scene from the Gray Davis days, he now says that California and the federal government should not impose workable solutions to slow down and regulate border crossings but should instead use methods preferred by Vicente Fox and U.S. based communist-socialist front, La Raza.

FOXNews.com
Gov. Schwarzenegger Shifts Views on Immigration Issues
April 28, 2006

LOS ANGELES — Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backed a federal plan to build a border fence between San Diego and Tijuana. This week, he said walling off hundreds of miles of the California-Mexico border is a strategy from the Stone Age.

It is not the only example of his complex — and sometimes shifting — views on illegal immigration, an issue that has become especially volatile in recent weeks with mass protests around the country by immigrants.

Schwarzenegger’s complicated stand reflects both California’s immigration politics and his own political vulnerability, as he seeks a second term with his approval ratings in the cellar.

Where California’s governor stands on immigration is closely watched, both because the Austrian-born movie star is the best-known immigrant in U.S. politics, and because California has more illegal immigrants than any other state — an estimated 2.4 million, more than the entire population of Nebraska.

In the 1990s, Schwarzenegger supported a ballot measure to deny illegal immigrants many basic services, including public schooling and non-emergency health care. Today, Schwarzenegger says the fight over illegal immigration is at the borders, “not in our schools and not in our hospitals.”

Recently he stressed that the economy needs “a free flow of people” to thrive; he also embraces the Minuteman border-patrol movement, which warns of a nation “plundered by the menace of tens of millions of invading illegal aliens.”

… » FOXNews.com: Schizophrenic Schwarzenegger

How can unprincipled scumbags like Schwarzenegger sleep at night?

Why is Deborah surprised that Tyson Foods is closing for the illegal alien protest day on Monday?

Tyson, Wal-Mart, and other Arkansas based companies are big employers of illegals, thanks to slave-trade enabler, Gov. Mike Huckabee.

I wonder why Americans don’t pay attention to this stuff.

UPDATE: Read this from the archives of the Arkansas News to see why Tyson’s and Wal-Mart’s imported slaves are protected by Congress.

In Maine, home of Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, a blogger is being persecuted by the state and it’s tourism advertising agency for reporting the facts.

It started when Lance Dutson @ Maine Web Report ran a story about Maine’s Office of Tourism (MOT). He said that MOT had shelled out a lot of money for advertising and some of it had been spent on useless in-state Web ads.

But the real kerfuffle erupted when Lance published links to an ad “…pulled from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development website, that features a phone sex number instead of the real number to call for Maine tourism information.”

Being a conscientious blogger as well as a concerned citizen, Lance cached the ad, dialed the phone sex number, recorded the sweet talk, and posted the results.

Soon thereafter the ad was removed from the DECD website and the ad agency ordered Lance to delete his posts, links, and the recordings from his site. Lance refused because he believes the ad is in the public domain. The single .gif image in question is not marked with a copyright notice and was clipped from a MOT Power Point presentation (by the ad agency) that was created with public funds. His refusal has provoked an interesting result and Lance writes:

Warren Kremer Paino Advertising has filed a 3 count multi-million dollar federal lawsuit against me for the reporting I’ve done in this blog. They are claiming defamation, libel, and copyright infringement.

Getting the sheriff to deliver the suit to me, in front of my kids and neighbors, is the latest freaked-out situation this Office of Tourism has put me in. I have to say this has disrupted the Dutson household a bit, that’s what happens when someone files a crushing lawsuit that, if successful, would utterly destroy my life.

So here I am, one man against the state and its contractors, put in the position of shutting up or being pounded by their deep pockets and a wild misconception of what the court system is supposed to be used for. One person who has exposed a cavalcade of incompetence and who has to choose to allow it, or face an onslaught of personal attack and legal action.

…

Here is a link to a summary of this story, if you’re interested in catching up on all the details: (link)

Here is a link to the ads, and the audio from the phone sex numbers they featured on the state website: (link)

Here is a copy of the full lawsuit, filed in federal court against me: (link)

… » Maine Web Report: State Contractor Files Federal Lawsuit Against Me

… except at OPEC.

Complaints about gas prices are getting a little worn.

Since Hurricane Katrina we’ve heard rantings about, “big oil,” “price gouging” and “windfall profits” from TV reporters, disingenuous pundits, and other nitwits.

“Big oil” is a political term cooked up by Communist-socialist and adopted by Democrats to denigrate free enterprise and capitalism. Democrats use the phrase over and over to deprecate the image of Republicans in the mind’s-eye of voters. The aim is to convince voters that Republicans hang out at gas pumps to help oil companies pick the pockets of motorist.

Oil as a business group is not the biggest industry. When compared to banks, financial services, general merchandise retailers, and home construction industry, oil ranks well down the list. (Ever heard a Democrat say “big housing?”)

The MSM is so locked into the Democrat’s cause that they can’t utter the word “oil” without saying “big” first. Tha’s an indication that the Democrat’s strategy has been effective on feeble-minded TV anchors and pundits, but at election time voters show they haven’t been duped.

But I digress: I’ll repeat, there are no “big oil” windfall profits. There are, however, trillions in federal and state windfall taxes collected from pump prices under the guise of raising funds for better roads. For years those “big taxes” have been diverted to pet projects of “big spenders” in state houses and on Capitol Hill.

It’s difficult to get exact per-gallon figures for gasoline profits because accounting records aren’t designed to show per-gallon results. “Big oil” companies are involved in businesses other than gasoline — e.g., exploration, drilling, refinery, distribution — and the per-gallon profit at the pump is not on management’s priority lists. However, some studies have been conducted in an attempt to figure it out.

ConocoPhillips reports on one study:

What do oil companies make on a gallon of gasoline?

An industry-wide study in the late 1990s showed that oil industry profits amounted to an estimated 7.3 cents on each gallon sold. More recently, ConocoPhillips reported that during the third quarter of 2005 earnings from its U.S. refining and marketing operations amounted to 9 cents per gallon. This compares with a national average retail price of $2.60 per gallon during the third quarter, the period of highest gasoline prices in 2005.

» ConocoPhillips

There are websites with more recent estimates for per-gallon profits. One site guessed 14 cents, another said ‘about 17 cents,’ and another had 18 cents. I think all of those estimates are way too high: that somebody made the boob-headed error of dividing the number of gallons dispensed into the total profits of the parent company. But that really isn’t important because 45 states take more in taxes from the price of a gallon of gas than any oil company takes in profit, even if a possible miscalculation is ignored. Additionally, the federal government takes 18.4 cents from the price of every gallon that goes into every gas guzzler in America. (When was the last time you heard a Democrat or TV reporter say “big government?”)

Alaska has the lowest gas tax at 8 cents per gallon but because the state is a huge oil producer it refunds that and more in the form of “oil royalties.” Five other states, Missouri-17.6, Oklahoma-17.0, South Carolina-16.8, New Jersey-14.5, and Wyoming-14.0, tax a gallon of gas at less than 18 cents per gallon. That makes a minimum of 45 states and the federal government bigger hogs at the trough than any “big oil” company.

Want cheaper gas. Fire the governments.

Or at a minimum, let’s put some “price controls” on the amount of taxes “big government” can skim off the top of “big oil.”

Releated:
– Federal and State Gas Taxes by Tax Rates
– Federal and State Gas Taxes State

Charles Krauthammer says the same thing in fewer words.
Washington Post: Demand is up: supply is down

Rasmussen Reports
Election 2008: Democrats by 12
Survey of 1,000 Adults — April 25-26, 2006

Democrats currently hold a 12-point advantage over Republicans on a generic 2008 Presidential ballot. However, a third-party candidate focusing on immigration enforcement issues could fundamentally alter those political dynamics.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national opinion survey finds that 44% of Americans say they would vote for a Democrat if the Presidential Election were held today. Just 32% would vote for a Republican. Those figures are likely a reflection of unhappiness with the Bush Administration rather than a commentary on prospective candidates from either party.

The survey also asked respondents how they would vote if “a third party candidate ran in 2008 and promised to build a barrier along the Mexican border and make enforcement of immigration law his top priority.”

With that option, support fell sharply for both major parties. The Democrats still come out on top with support from 31% of Americans. The third party candidate moved into a virtual tie at 30% while the GOP fell to 21%.

… » Rasmussen: Election 2008

But Americans are not…

Jose Can You See:

The Eagle Forum
The Ripoff of American Workers and Taxpayers
Phyllis Schlafly — Apr. 26, 2006

…

An employment service in Mobile, Alabama recently received an “urgent request” to fill 270 job openings from contractors who were hired to rebuild and clear areas of Alabama devastated by Hurricane Katrina. The agency immediately sent 70 laborers and construction workers to three job sites.

After two weeks on the job, the men were fired by employers who told them “the Mexicans had arrived” and were willing to work for lower wages. The Americans had been promised $10 an hour, but the employers preferred Mexicans who would work for less.

Employment agency manager Linda Swope told The Washington Times, “When they told the guys they would not be needed, they actually cried … and we cried with them. This is a shame.”

Ms. Swope said that employment agencies throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi all face similar problems because an estimated 30,000 men from Mexico and Central and South America, many in crowded buses and trucks, came into those three states after Hurricane Katrina, willing to work for less than whatever was paid to American citizens.

…

If the Internal Revenue Service collected all the taxes that should be paid by the underground economy, our current budget deficit would disappear overnight, according to the Bear Stearns study released last year. The Americans who pay taxes are giving a free ride to those who are not paying taxes, and a 7-cent increase in the price of lettuce should not be on our worry list.

Full story… » The Eagle Forum

Have prices at the pump put you in a funk?

If you’re ready for new wheels, help is on the way.

Free Republic
04/27/2006
Honda’s Natural Gas-Powered 2006 Civic GX and home refuelling appliance for New York market

April 26, 2006 Honda will begin retailing its compressed natural gas (CNG) Civic GX to New York state customers [and] in the northern hemisphere [this] autumn. The Civic GX uses lower-cost CNG as an alternative to gasoline, producing near zero emissions, making owners eligible for significant [ongoing] tax credits [up to $5,000 the first year], enabling them to drive in the car pool lane and most significantly, enabling them to conveniently refuel at home using a natural gas refueling appliance.

Significant advantages are available from the system as natural gas is 25 percent cheaper than gas at a refueling station, and 50 percent cheaper from a home refueling appliance. The “Phill” natural gas home refueling appliance is manufactured by FuelMaker and can be mounted to a wall either indoors or outdoors, and allows the GX to refuel overnight directly from a homeowner’s existing natural gas supply line. It is designed to offer ease of operation with simple “start” and “stop” buttons, and automatically shuts off when the tank is full. Civic GX owners who do not wish to purchase Phill can refuel at commercial natural gas refueling stations.

… » More… Free Republic

Honda Civic GX — About the same price as Honda and Toyota hybrids:

Honda Civic Hybrid — $22,150 MSRP

Toyota Prius Hybrid — $21,725 MSRP

Related information

Ask.com

How does six bucks for a full tank of gas grab you? Granted, that tank takes you 200 miles in urban driving, vs. the 350 or so you get from most cars, but it’s still about a third of the cost of running a family sedan and about half as expensive as a hybrid. The Civic GX is powered by compressed natural gas (CNG), which is clean, plentiful (piped to millions of homes and businesses) and safe (would you heat your home or cook your food with gasoline?). A new device called the PHILL even lets you fuel at home. Imagine never visiting a gas station again! The GX’s shorter range and limited trunk space (that’s where the cylindrical CNG tank lives) are only minor drawbacks. The GX costs about the same as a Honda or Toyota hybrid, and the owner is eligivle for all sorts of tax breaks and incentives.

… Ask.com: Five fuel-efficient cars to ease the strain on your wallet

I wonder where GM, Ford and Chrysler are hiding.