UConn James

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?

OK, I'm going to cowboy up and admit it. I am one of those people. What of it? I've written in previous threads comparing the Bills franchise to a dilapidated house in the neighborhood with Old Man Wilson living in a once-glorious Victorian that now has peeling paint, rusted gates, and a stove with only one working burner. I'll relate another here. There was an old farmer in this area of CT who, time out of mind would let his corn wither in the field until it was dry as dust. He would literally cut it in November. He would let his cut hay sit out in the rain. He wouldn't clean his barns well, so it stank and his cows had **** all over them. Well, evidently, his farm has totally new management this year. The cows are clean, the air smells much better, the hay was baled in fine fashion, the corn was chopped when it still had nutritive value. Same tools, same everything else. But 180-degree difference in results. Not saying that I would enjoy the sadness Ralph's death would bring upon those who are closely connected to him. And I'm not saying that I'd piss on RW's grave. It's just that the utter waste of precious resources --- of what could be, but isn't, b/c of one man and one mindset --- is also lamentable. I wish that Ralph will finally realize that he just doesn't have it anymore, if he ever did, and step aside. Whatever is going to happen with this franchise, I wish it would just happen. The limbo / purgatory sucks. And I say this as much for myself as for people who care so much about the team that they actually have heart attacks on game Sundays.

Well, Simon, you're perpetually picking your nose here on TBD. That's how the flu gets in, you know.

I'm not a fan of any other football team (and, hell, I'm not much of a fan of the Bills right now) but I am following a couple of storylines with some interest. Among them: Brett Favre looking to deliver some comeuppance. Some people don't like his retirement drama, but I don't really give a ****. Lots of guys have wavered on when to hang 'em up, only they didn't/don't have E$PN/media in their crotch 24/7. Favre is also able to make fun of the situation himself (the Samsung commercial was amusing). New Orleans Saints. I think a lot of people in the country have quietly pulled for them since Katrina.

Column A and Column B. Just about everything a good owner does, Ralph doesn't do. Sad to say, but the situation will not improve until he goes.

I think he may be most pissed that he couldn't have his HOF ring ceremony b/c his handlers / propagandists didn't want footage of him being booed by almost the whole stadium. They'll probably be doing it tomorrow at the called 9 a.m. presser in the confines of the media room. And they'll probably blame the weather or something.

I don't see that happening, but then again, stupider things have happened. At such a point, the ire would get turned full-on to Ralph... and I would suspect that season-ticket sales would slump miserably. And if unicorns started galloping down the clouds and farting rainbows, we'd have world peace.

Great topic, Lori. There's a lot of different conditions along the spectrum of fandom. There are those who will "drink the Kool-Aid" no matter what a team does or how badly it's performing. Some still watch/attend, but hate what they see --- think Randy Quaid's character in "Major League" (Wild Thing I think I looooo-athe you!!"). Some fans still love their team but can't stand to watch. Some are actively rooting for losses to make even a blind, cheap-o owner finally see that something substantive must be done --- this is a kind of "for the greater good" situation. I guess I fall into this last category. As I wrote in a previous topic, to me there is a metaphor to this in medicine. Say, in surgery, some further pain must be inflicted in order for the problem to be removed and proper healing to start. The common string among these is that they still want their team to win. Some fans take their view in the microcosm / short term of one game. Others who are "rooting against" the team are looking at the macrocosm and seeing what kind of situation it will take to precipitate the kind of changes needed, and desiring that --- if it takes several losses to get the ship's compass off of a "Winning is hard. I need more DBs!" heading and pointed toward the Super Bowl, so be it. Right now, the Bills need someone like Bill Ford, Jr. to speak out and say something's rotten. There's no one in that position, really, in the Bills organization or the Wilson family. I think the closest person to that would be Jim Kelly himself, and he's rightly stepping carefully on these issues (in public at least) to avoid stepping on any toes. Let's hope he has a talk with Ralph in private and urges a more coherent FO strategy and coach decision.

At this point, I'm in line with the original poster. I think the comparison is like losing = chemotherapy. It's not fun. You're not smiling. It's just something that needs to happen for the cancer (in the Bills' case, the cancer is DJ and a stupid FO hierarchy) to go away. I want it to take as little time (losses) as possible to get things moving in the right direction again. I wish Ralph wouldn't have waited for the cancer to get this freaking bad. He just doesn't have it in him to run a franchise successfully... and IMO, Ralph himself is a cancer to this team. Whatever's going to happen with the Bills, I hope it happens soon. And sadly, that means I'm hoping for RW to either die (I really don't mean to sound totally heartless here, but there you have it) or realize that the time has come to step aside.

All I know is, if I'm installing a power switch panel and the main switch to connect to power from the street is broken, you replace that first. Until then, you have no idea what's working in the panel. It's really sad to see the complete disarray this organization is in at the top levels.

To go with pink day in the NFL, DJ should be given a pink slip after this total !@#$ing abomination.