I’m sorry, but despite all the horrors going on in the world the past few days, I still couldn’t resist sharing this photo. I laughed for a good five minutes after first seeing it.

Demorats:

The party of the Little Guy.

The party of:

Al Franken:

Oh, wait.

Except for Al Franken.

The hypocrite.

The liar.

The betrayer.

“You, the little people,” Al says, “need to obey the rules. The rules are not for me.”

Read:

(AP) The state of New York fined the personal corporation of Democratic Senate candidate Al Franken $25,000 for not carrying workers’ compensation insurance for almost three years.

The New York Workers’ Compensation Board levied the fine against Alan Franken Inc. in August 2006 for failure to carry the insurance from June 2002 to March 2005.

Al Franken is running against Republican Norm Coleman’s Minnesota US Senate seat.

The first exposure of this massive abrogation occurred here.

And from the PowerLine blog on Wednesday:

We noted after the death of the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone that this famous champion of the little guy, scourge of corporate interests, illegally failed to procure workers’ compensation insurance for his campaign’s employees. The four employees who perished in the airplane crash along with Wellstone and his wife were therefore uninsured.

The Wellstone campaign subsequently reached a “settlement” with the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, whereby the campaign agreed to pay $400,000 and the remaining amount due — estimated at around $600,000 — was to be picked up by the taxpayers, courtesy of a fund for employees whose employers break the law by failing to obtain the required coverage or to properly self-insure.

Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken is a guy who casts himself as being in the Wellstone mold, and he may be, at least in this one respect. It now
turns out that Franken owes a $25,000 penalty to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board for failing to carry workers’ compensation insurance for employees of his namesake corporation (Alan Franken Inc.) from 2002 to 2005. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, New York officials have made numerous attempts to contact Franken about the matter since April 2005 but have gotten no reply.

I’m sorry, but one reason I’ll never be quoted or promoted or accepted on any number of other blogs, or hosts, or host agencies, aggregators, etc., will include this quite heartfelt and honest comment:

Fuck you, Al Franken, you hypocritical piece of shit. You, as with the bulk of your elitist kind, continuously seek to hold yourselves above the law. There exist The Groundlings, and then exist The Intellectuals, to include yourself because, apparently, you and your Demorat elitist kind are so much better than Us Groundlings.

And, oh, of course, the standard limp-wristed, politically impotent response:

If there’s a mistake by the Frankens it was an inadvertent mistake as opposed to trying to evade the law,” (campaign spokesman Andy) Barr said.

An “inadvertent mistake.”

Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, at age 38, announced on Tuesday that:

I know I can still play,” Favre told ESPN’s Chris Mortensen. “But it’s like I told my wife, I’m just tired mentally. I’m just tired.”

Some persons, myself included, are wondering how serious he is and crossing our fingers that he, well, might be hedging his bet in some fashion. From the San Jose Mercury News:

Instead, he has called it quits after a season in which he proved he is still among the elite quarterbacks. A season when his team was one overtime interception (as much a part of the Favre legacy as the thrills) away from the Super Bowl. He created a uniquely Favre memory in the playoffs, throwing a snowball as the clock wound down in the blizzard at Seattle. He didn’t look like a guy ready to retire.

Perhaps I’m being greedy or selfish; alright, I know I am, I concede. Because when Favre retires that’s simply another acknowledgement that I’m getting older and more things around me are disappearing, retiring, dying, going away, changing, evolving. Mortality. Finalism. And on some days I’d simply rather not cogitate much about all that.

Favre holds any number of Green Bay and NFL records. And once Vinnie Testaverde recently retired Favre became the oldest starting player in the NFL.

Favre also holds, after 17 seasons (in 2007), the record for passing TDs (442), passing yards (61,655) and wins by a starting QB (160) and interceptions (288). Including the playoffs, he played in 275 consecutive games.

A surefire first-ballot Hall of Famer, Favre put the Packers back among the NFL’s elite. He retires with 5,377 career completions in 8,758 attempts for 61,655 yards, 442 touchdowns and 288 interceptions, passing Dan Marino’s touchdown mark last season.

I don’t believe there was another player in the entire NFL who took more sheer joy in playing the game, who still played like a kid and showed his enthusiasm and exuberation like a kid when his team was hot during a game.

You could tell that, along with his remarkable talent, he just loved to play the game of football.

ESPN’s Wright Thompson has a great column about Favre’s retirement here, writing in part:

I’ll miss believing anything is possible. That’s why watching a football game he played in was fun. You just never knew what he might do, either brilliant or idiotic, and you got the sense he didn’t really know either. A lot of people, me included, will tell you pro football is boring. It’s predictable and balanced and risk-averse. But there was always one guy who played the pro game like he was still in Hattiesburg at Southern Mississippi. We will all miss that.

We certainly will. Myself included.

Take care Brett Favre, the True Gentleman of Football — and a man I’d hold for any youngster to emulate. There are so damned few in sports.

P.S.

Another great article here.

So, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is at it again, this time burning three new homes in the Seattle area:

WOODINVILLE, Wash. – Three seven-figure dream homes went up in flames early Monday in a Seattle suburb, apparently set by eco-terrorists who left a sign mocking the builders’ claims that the 4,000-plus-square-foot houses were environmentally friendly.

The sign — a sheet marked with spray paint — bore the initials ELF, for Earth Liberation Front, a loose collection of radical environmentalists that has claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks since the 1990s.

Let’s see, just how many thousands of pounds of toxic materials and smoke were released into our very finite atmosphere at the behest of these terrorists?

The very hypocrisy is completely brain-glazing.

“Compromise,” he noted, consists (and I readily grant and acknowledge this!) of Republicans ONLY reaching across the aisle; Republicans ONLY acquiescing to Demorats and that, in truth, “compromise” consists ONLY of agreeing with Demorat bills and programs.

This is in essence, Mr. Limbaugh stated, no compromise at all but instead a party capitulation.

And I agree.

And I was shocked to hear it.

Rush Limbaugh, the quintessential Water Carrier of the GOP for, literally, many years, has now disavowed himself from John McCain, whom he believes is nothing close to a Conservative (as I documented in this post) and now, further, has removed himself from the disintegrating GOP.

Again, at the risk of redundancy, I am shocked.

The GOP has sunk this low — not news to some of my readers. But to hear it spoken by, likely, the greatest and strongest supporter the GOP has historically possessed? Quite frankly, I was stunned to hear his opinion in the open.

Additionally, Limbaugh asked: “Who will fight for us?” And he had no ready answer.

I concur, to a degree: this is a transition for Conservatives. And trust me, if the GOP somehow manages to stay its confused, tattered and capitulative course, it will hemorrhage members and power.

Because, trust me, Conservatives will always find an outlet for their philosophy.

In the meantime, Limbaugh espoused an interesting thought: he’s for Clinton staying in the race. He’s for Nader staying in the race. Anything, he says, to sow confusion, hate and disarray into the Demorats’ chamber.

Again, I agree. Because a Demorat House, Senate and White House has the capability to completely turn this nation into the worst of Third World countries.

And they aren’t called Third World countries for nothing.

Which is why, somehow, somewhere, some time, they must be defeated.