birdog1960

how bout this chief: i've seen you throw out "circular reasoning" as a counter argument multiple times. is that the concept they taught the one day you actually made your intro logic class? there are limits to tolerance and i don't know anyone including liberals who argue otherwise. for instance, no society that i'm aware of openly tolerates murder or rape. some tolerate racism and discrimination based on religon but i would argue that most americans don't.

and all of this has exactly what to do with a "newsman" advancing stereotypes? it would be true for many to say that they are fearful when they step on public transport and they are the only white person there but it wouldn't smart, right nor tolerated even on fox.

how would people feel if williams said "i feel uncomfortable and worried every time i see a group of jews on a plane in their garb". i'll bet the reaction would be very different and he'd have a lot less defenders. in fact, something similar recently occurred at cnn involving antisemitic remarks and we didn't see a general revolt against that network. i think they were both wrong in their remarks and cnn and npr were justified in their responses. this type of "commentary" has no place at a serious news network. at fox, it's business as usual...so williams ended where he belonged.

couldn't disagree more. wilson has treated bills fans with contempt for most of 50 years, selling false hope to desperate gullible fans. some have wised up. some haven't

the suggestion in the comments to this piece; that the bottom 2 teams in the upper league drop to the lower league and vice versa (like european soccer) is brilliant. that's probably what it would take to inspire the bills fo to actually improve the product. there really needs to be a bigger disincentive to prolonged sucking in the nfl.

agree completely. was expecting a little of that in the last interview with wilson but he seems a sacred cow to much of the media. i'm sure it would be an interesting story full of outrageous revelations....maybe a book or expose will come out off the keyboard of some brave writer but he/she shouldn't expect any support for it from most of the posters here.

mightn't those few players improve the bills? what's stopping any nfl team from signing them if not money?

and you continue to miss the point (intentionally or not). the ufl has exposed the fact that teams like the bills could have veterans on the squad that would likely improve the product but they don't, due solely to cost..not cap space, but the bottom line. and remember that it was once considered ridiculous to put forth the possibility of an afl team beating an nfl team. look what those hypotheticals lead to...

yes and espn has much more say in the matter than wilson

the article mentions nfl franchises saving veterans high minimum salaries for reserve positions filled with cheaper, younger players. the bills appear to have extended this to starters. this is an important point, seemingly ignored by most posting on this thread.

wow. there yall go again....machine gunning the messenger. these hypotheticals have always interested sports fans. the article is well written and researched. i especially like the part on the financial calculus involved in nfl decision making that allows recognizable veteran names to be present all over ufl rosters. it supports the argument that winning is less important than the bottom line to some nfl franchises which is an idea oft refuted on this board. wilson is a ufl quality owner with a ufl quality team. he's the one you should be aiming your vitriol at.

are you able to set up dfa (dimensional) investments (these are the index funds started by the u of chicago economists, correct)? i looked at these a couple years ago but found i couldn't get into them without an advisor setting up an account (and charging a fee). has this changed?

like all the co resorts listed but no one mentioned aspen which is my fav and has 4 very different mountains on one daily pass. telluride is also awesome but hard to get to. we've gone to tahoe the last couple years and love it. heavenly is....well, heavenly and the smaller resorts like kirkwood and homewood are awesome too. the only problem is that the place is crawling with californians yelling "dude" all over the place . i've seen gambling junkets to reno with free airfare from which you could access tahoe and rose mt in reno but it never fit my schedule. would be an great deal if it worked for you. btw, there's gambling on the nv side of tahoe if you're into that. now see several mentions of aspen...to each his own. i think it's excelllent

there are always "outliers", that's how the myth propagates. btw, there's a great book by that name that addresses the issue of circumstance vs hard work/talent. great reading.

couldn't see the nyt article but check out www.payscale.com that ranks roi for colleges. the lowest cost school in the top 15 with over $1 mil roi is $180000 for a degree. i trust you will concede most attendees would generally be considered from priviledged backgrounds by any definition of "priviledged". from personal experience, college classmates from wealthy backgrounds (about 30% of my class were prep school grads) had a much greater likelihood of achieving top 1% net worth status (and this is the group i think of as "multimillionaires") than those who did not. the womb lottery is alive and well and actually becoming more predictive than ever. to argue otherwise is to be in a state of denial.

have any references to support that contention? most that i've met/know come from priviledged backgrounds...best schools, best contacts, inheritance,trust funds, family businesses etc... no denying that there are self made multimillionaires, i'm just not sure they are the majority, much less the vast majority.

not sure if i'd be using france as the shining star...but i think wealth concentration is destroying the middle class in the us at an alarming rate and i also see that as a failure of the system. some of the blame lies with our graduates and education system, however. american students, on average, fare poorly in many objective academic measures when compared to international competition which is detrimental to the grads and the nation in this global economy.

some people get dealt a bad hand...hell if we had to pay off every intellectually challenged american, the country would go broke...oh, wait...

no. there are plenty of folks with ailments as or more debilitating than seizures or autism who don't receive damages for their fate. if they qualify for disability they get the same benefits as anyone else. where do you get the 75% number? firstly, the number is dependent on the effectiveness of the vaccine (not all immunizations result in adequate antibody production and therefore immunity). the current guidelines call for 90% vaccination rate goal but no one would argue that 100% would yield a yet lower incidence of vaccine preventable diseases in the "herd".

agreed but i still feel this is a bigger issue. even if a link was found, i would still argue that the vaccinations were given on the best available evidence and that public health officials calculated the risk benefit analysis and recommended proceeding with mass immunization. despite due diligence and careful consideration of available data, there will always be some bad outcomes. unless there's been negligence or suppression of bad data on the part of the agency or manufacturer i don't see why either should be culpable. a similar argument can be made throughout health care and in many other fields. bad outcomes are not necessarily someones fault.

this case My link illustrates a basic cause of the high cost of health care in the US. americans seem unwilling to accept that there are inherent risks in any health related endeavor and continue to insist that someone must pay when things go wrong. most refuse to accept that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few which is clearly the case in the area of immunizations. until this is accepted and made policy, we will continue to see skyrocketing healthcare costs. hopefully scotus will rule for wyeth but unfortunately that won't effectively change the mindset of the populace. comments?

the reason we know little to nothing about the inner workings of one bills drive is that no one informs us. in the same way that the public clamors for inside info on a presidentialn administration, bills fans clamor for it regarding the bills fo. but even the most straightforward, salient questions don't get asked, answewred or both. it's likely that the causes of prolonged failure and dysfunction over 50 years would make for a very interesting and entertaining story. based on this wilson interview, we'll probably never know.

i am extremely interested in this and suspect that this could be very important to bills fans in assessing the future chances of success for the franchise. i really hope that you gave or could give some insight into your subjective impressions of wilson's cognitive state during the interview. it is a legitimate concern for any 90+ yo in a position of responsibility and you are in a unique (albeit imperfect) position to assess it. for example, does he have facility with language (as one would expect a lawyer to)?, do questions need to be repeated and/or explained? is he able to concentrate on questions or does he drift? i think the context and accuracy of the article are dependent on these questions.

won't do any good. the bills will have to pay significantly more for upper talent free agents than just about anybody given the widely known sorry state of the franchise, the feeble, meddling owner and the uncertain future of the team. what could they possibly say that would help? how could they honestly say anything good?

yet it might not be as closed a club as you believe. the recent SCOTUS American Needle ruling suggests that the NFL is 32 separate businesses, not a single business. based on this ruling, a challenge to the leagues control over ownership issues might be possible. any legal scholars wanna weigh in? btw, if they see wilson's plan for what it is and the nfl as a single entity has this much control, why not force him out?