UConn James

America is obsessed with crime and punishment. And for all that, we keep making the same choices. Release offenders to burgle, rape, diddle children and murder once more. Ninety percent of crime is committed by 10 percent of the population. As it currently functions, it's a big revolving door. If you were to lock up the 10 percent permanent-like, lawyers and judges will not have many clients left. With ordinary catch-and-release keeping so many judges and lawyers in a job / in high demand, imagine what this has the potential to do! Also, make it illegal for anyone to defend themselves. (Don't have too much further to go in this regard). I hate what this country is fast becoming.

The Randy Quaid character in that movie is very much where I am as a fan of this team.

It's mine. As for the corroborating proof, I can tell you there's a picture of Abraham Lincoln on it.

Have to say that if I were the owner of an establishment approached by Pizza Hut, Domino's, etc. to film them substituting their food for my recipes within my own walls, it would have to be an exorbitant check, such that I could move to Bermuda for the rest of my life. Any establishment that would do that to their customers has no pride and no class.

I long ago went through all of the steps, but decided to go back and hang out in Anger for a while.

The more time passes, the more my personal respect for MM has grown. Not especially talking about his play-calling / gadget plays... but given the meager givens of Ralph Wilson (and TD giving him about 2 inches of leash), he didn't do that horribly for someone who had no experience. Now he's gone on to success in Atlanta. When brought in, he tried to ignore the dump that OBD is, thought if he could just clean up a bit at a time, it would get better. But old man Wilson kept piling up dishes, shitting the bed, and refusing to pay for some new paint and a refrigerator that works. I've seen the Bills through this metaphor for a while now... it's like Dickens' "Little Dorrit." Ralph is that old guy on the street that used to have a nice well-groomed Victorian, that quickly went into disrepair through lack of will to maintain it. Any time now, it'll be ready to fall over. Brandon is just the latest who wanted a job/title badly enough to want to stay in said dump. I don't really blame him. In fact, it seems that for the first time in a while for this club, he's addressing the lines within the means that he's given. He showed some backbone in the JP holdouts. He can adequately run the business/COO side. As for your list, might think a bit about Nix. He was brought in very shortly (I think it was a few weeks) before the draft. As such, the sheer tonnage of what has accumulated post-Wade should not fall on him. And that may have been the very first signal of changes to come. As ever, Ralph likes to promote from within, and Nix is now within. From the things I've read, Nix has a good reputation --- ran the drafts in SD which produced Tomlinson, Merriman, etc. that built them into a winner. Promoting Nix to be the de-facto GM wouldn't be a terrible move. The issue will be whether he gets an adequate amount of control.

And Julia Roberts used to make pizza there when she was younger.

And yet, with his amount of roster control/management after 4 seasons, DJ should be expected to have built a team close to what he wants/needs to run his scheme. DJ's scheme is Uninspired / Second Half Collapse. That is part of the head coach's job description --- to gather players, use in a combination of their abilities and your plan. He's totally failed in that regard.

We don't even deserve a garbage-time score.

The last two games only prove that the Bills can eek out victories against teams/QBs that gift-wrap the football and give them away as presents.

For any non-violent/non-libelous speech, I would mostly agree, if you're talking about "get in trouble" meaning being jailed by the gov't or sued for pure opinion. In the first case, the First Amendment is our protection against being jailed for speech / writings; in the second, the courts settle it out. But if you mean that there should never be real-world effects for speech, I sincerely disagree. Even though a lot of people understand it that way, that's not exactly the gist of the First Amendment (I realize you did not invoke the FA, but allow me to draw out an argument). As Garrison Keillor wrote, "Freedom of speech is like the freedom to jump off your roof and fly. You can try it, but there will be consequences." There is no protection against being fired, being ostracized, or other such societal and business consequences. In the same way that Goodell has suspended players for legal problems in the interest of promoting the league's image, this is a slap in the face against 10% of the NFL's possible fan base. Whatever its true $ impact is, the speech can do nothing but hurt the business as a whole. Let's say the CEO (or, hell, a plant worker) of a Fortune 500 company goes on the Today Show and says that all women are stupid, crazy c---s. He insults 50% of the population and he should not "get in trouble" with the company b/c of what he said!!?? No way. There will --- and there ought to --- be consequences. For ordinary persons, think and say what you want on your own time and your own dime. For public personalities, think what you want, but disparaging remarks that have a reasonable means of being publicized (like a Twitter account) are fair game for the role you're paid handsomely by a company to fill..

Even the "judgment calls" like pass interference, etc. should be reviewable. Other than for verbal taunting and even that should use sound replays --- directly referencing Andre Reed's penalty in the '99 Miami playoff game. As long as it remains non-reviewable, it's a free pass for shenanigans. Whether that's jobbing one team as personal/league payback, helping out the home team, 'sympathy !@#$' situations ala Marino's final year, favoring a high-ranked team to preserve legitimacy of the Bull-Chit Bowl Championship Series, refs throwing a game (as much as they'll all deny, deny, deny, this does happen), helping to make it a 'more competitive game' to keep viewership up, etc. There's all kinds of pressures and they come from a lot of different sources. The state of officiating in all leagues is horrendous. Back in the day, the call was as the call was, no matter how mad anyone got about it or how obvious it was wrong. It's the advent of quality video replay that allows for more nearly accurate officiating and to remove bias from games. Until nearly everything is reviewable, the system is suspect.

No. If you did, Sharpton and Jackson would say you're a racist.

You know, I don't want to touch this case specifically b/c it's about as clear as the water in the Charles River.... But I will say that this phenomenon of accusation - recanting/proved hoax has happened time out of mind. Some really didn't happen, but for some victims, PTSD can do strange things to the brain. The guilty pleas aren't surprising. That's how the justice system works. Too many times, people who didn't do something they're accused of plead guilty for lesser sentences to avoid prosecution and putting their lives in the balance with, as DC Tom says, "12 people who were stupid enough to not know how to get out of jury duty" and with much bigger sentences. This is not even to speak of the phenomenon of people who are perfectly innocent confessing after being in the interrogation room --- some people just crack and come to believe that they actually did whatever they're being charged with. It's weird but it happens. Last point, twenty'll get you one that hate-mongers Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson won't have anything to say. Maybe a high-pitched, "That's different!"

I am at the point where I realize that I have to take my medicine and it's going to taste really bad. That medicine is Bills losses. But, it is to cure the disease that infects OBD. You swallow it to get better in the long run.

The hammer hit the nail. But the intimation of that last sentence will get a lot of posters up your snit and snizzle. Suggesting that things will get better after Ralph dies (barring a change from previous statements that he will hold the reigns until the bitter end) is like touching the third rail on TBD. You 'bout get accused of everything from being a 'Death Panel' administrator, that you're cheering for an old man's death with glee, and getting placed on then terrorist watch list.

Wasn't there something oh... it's gotta be ~15 years now... where Emmitt Smith was wearing a Houston Oilers hat on the sideline? Cue Lori to tell me I'm absolutely, horribly wrong in 5, 4, 3.... Pretty ballsy of Fisher, tho. At this point, he's resorting to PsyOps to try and motivate his team.

Don't misread what was said. Obama is against capping damage awards. The article is talking about something pretty different. Independent experts would determine facts vs. allegations in cases. And lo and behold doctors will magically stop ordering test after test after test that probably isn't needed, but they do it to cover their asses. I.e. I went to an ENT doctor a couple of years ago with a case of glue ear (otitis media with effusion). He had me back to his office three times for a hearing test, and on the third wanted to do an MRI to look for a neuroma, a benign brain growth/tumor, which is diagnosed in ~2,000 people per year in the whole country. This is out-of-pocket for me. So I canceled. A few weeks later, there was a small pop in the Eustachian tube and voila, fine --- it was glue ear. The course of treatment is often wait-and-see or, in my case where it had gone on for several months --- they should do an experimental cut in the eardrum to equalize the pressure b/w the outer and middle ear, and in chronic cases, a step further with tympanostomy tubes. But this f--ker wanted to do test after test and treat me like I'm a money pinata. The article calls it "defensive medicine." I'm a little dubious about whether it will actually reduce the number of tests --- and therefore costs to the tune of $54B --- simply b/c most doctors I've seen are more interested in filling their appointment books than actually curing people. If they cure you, they lose a customer.

Thought this was interesting. A small step in the right direction, but there's still quite a gap. I just don't get why if "there's 80 percent agreement on what needs to happen" --- they can't pass legislation that fixes that 80 percent of the problem, and then see how that goes. As the axiom goes, the opposite of 'Good' is not 'Bad.' The opposite of 'Good' is 'Perfect.' Link

Hmm. Pete has a pretty good list. I suspect that knowing Neil deGrasse-Tyson must be a blast. But, Pete, you'd figure that NDT would have studied Einstein's theories pretty thoroughly, so I don't think Albert brings anything much different to the show. 1. Stephen Mather (first director of the National Park system, and seeing Ken Burns' series, an intriguing personality) 2. Torn b/w Roy Orbison and Jeff Buckley 3. Stephen Crane stuckincincy, "Meeting of [the] Minds" would be an awesome show to try to resurrect. I would refrain from having only/mostly giant historical names on it, tho. Imagine what they could do with something like that these days. And it'd be pretty inexpensive to produce.

Keeping him for pure marketing reasons, rather than b/c he can contribute to this offense? Yeah, I can buy that.

Twenty to 1 says that Parrish is released, the Pats pick him up, and he makes a decent career out of it ala Welker. Mind-boggling how this team hasn't been able to use him.

I was just reading some quotes in the Sunday paper from after yesterday's game. No words. Unbelievable. They used to call it Snorrs in my days there. Despite a few incidents, it's still a really quiet campus. Probably why this is so shocking.

This from a man who said, 'When you first get an inkling of making a change, you should make the change.' I'm just flummoxed that DJ doesn't apply this rule to himself and resign while he can still save some face. I realize that even with a cheap owner, he makes good coin (from a real world POV), but I would be ashamed to cash that paycheck every week. How many bad decisions does he need to re-correct from before RW finally gets that the root of the problems is Jauron and an absolutely stupid FO hierarchy? How much until RW finally says, 'This is too much for me anymore' and cedes control to someone who has an idea of what a football organization is supposed to look like?