John Adams

Jesus. The analytics department is not for predicting pass vs run on 3rd and 1 in the snow. It's a cap and player management tool. This is not really a priority when you just hired a new coach, new GM, and were preparing for the draft. If it's not in place before the next off season, call me.

It's great. You don't need a complicated offense to win. You need the right offense. Fitz could run a complicated offense. Where did that get them? The players are more important.

I am at my desk next to Garner's Modern American Usage, so I'll quote it--excuse the typos and assume they are mine. Garner goes on for pages on split infinitives. His one warning against splitting is stylistic: He advises against wide splits that place the preposition too far from the verb. His other warning is to avoid splitting if you cannot distinguish the difference between say, "to flatly state" and "to state flatly." Otherwise, his entry is full of examples of why it is proper.

I don't knock people's grammar here. Most try for good grammar and people like me don't review much of what we post here, so we all make mistakes. This thread just happened to turn into a grammar theory discussion and I am a stickler to people putting out bad information on usage. You can choose not to agree about conjunctions but you'd be wrong. As a writing teacher, I challenge you to find a modern usage dictionary (Garner, Fowler's) that states that starting a sentence with a conjunction is poor grammar. The most widely read and edited (by the most anal sticklers for grammar rules in the world) pages in journalism are the Wall Street Journal and New York Times editorial pages. Go to them now and highlight every instance of a sentence that starts with a conjunction. You will find many. I hope you revise your thinking after doing some research on this. It will help your students' writing. http://www.nytimes.c...nion/index.html The 3rd grade rule about not starting sentences with a conjunction was put in place to stop Jimmy from writing his Summer Vacation Essay like this. "I went to the pool. And then I went to the park. And then we went to Niagara Falls. And then..." This is stylistically poor but not bad grammar so a teacher told her students not to start sentences with conjunctions. That morphed into a "grammar rule" that does not exist. You can also choose not to agree with me on split infinitives. Again, you will not find this rule in any credible usage text. It depends on your stylistic context whether you want to split the infinitive. "To boldly go" or "to go boldly" are both proper adverb placements in English. One of my first edits in many things I read is ctrl-H ". " tab ". " enter. Doublespacing is nonsense leftover from the typewriter era but a lot of teachers don't get it.

We were talking about the steak of unaccountability in the White House. If it's any consolation, my first draft of a response congratulated you for taking 5 guesses at names before finally getting to Tenet. Still, in a thread about accountability, do you feel satisfied that the US fired one guy for the supposed primary reason it went to war, ie, WMDs? I'd think Powell alone would have been calling for heads to roll after his embarrassing UN testimony on WMDs. Go back and watch that sometime. Even he didn't believe it. "Look a flatbed. And disturbed earth. Therefore WMDs. QED"

Last I checked, the only realistic alternative to Obama in 2012 was Romney. My point was one I suspect you may agree with: Romney did not seem to be an agent of change and accountability. He would have been a much better choice than Obama. that was my only point. I realize we're in a debate here but you can't believe that's why we went to war in Iraq. It may have given cover for doing it but there was no cause and effect between Iraq violating treaties and the US invading. Do you think that one person's resignation--not that anyone in the admin ever admitted doing anything wrong RE WMDs--is adequate compensation for the Iraq war debacle?

Rumsfeld resigned over the Iraq failure of intelligence? Huh? Wolfiwitz's move from DoD to World Bank President was accountability? Come on. You can do better than that. No one took any fall for Iraq. No one. And Katrina was peanuts compared to Iraq.

It is 100% proper and you saying otherwise, even in jest, will lead the feeble minded to their doom. Starting a sentence with a conjunction is OK and is a way to help your writing flow. Anyone who says that you shouldn't do this is a moran. The rule against splitting infinitives is a grammar rule. In Latin. But not English. Bad teachers have been passing these bits of poppycock on for years.

You'll be happy to know that I did not read "the rest of the story" until later this morning. I did not know that he was already on his way out. So again, no one took the blame. Typical. It's funny to me that Brown resigned after Katrina, when I still remain baffled as to how people were upset at the Katrina response, which to me seemed pretty heroic. (1) Tell people to leave their homes before major storm. (2) People don't leave. People don't take precautions. (3) Giant hurricane hits and massive flooding ensues. (4) Small number of people are left without government-provided food and shelter for 2(!) days. (Other food and shelter abounds.) ergo, (5) Bush's fault. I'd rather the Bush admin stepped up for its intel failures and the Iraq war debacle.

It's not funny to spread nonsense like that and the split-infinitive "rule." Please don't even joke about this.

The head of the IRS resigned. That's pretty good and never happened when we went to war in Iraq over bad intel. As to change, who knows if Mitt would have been much different. He would certainly have been better but being the tall Lillipution isn't much.

My bad. I didn't realize that you were a crayonz/performer/hogboy troll poster. Good luck with that.

It's been a long time since we had a president with a pair, willing to accept responsibility for failings. This admin is just following precedent.

You win. You are the biggest d bag on this board. Congratulations, you had lots of competition but you're tops. Please hand this to the next cop that comes when you need help. You know what? He will probably still help you. For the record, number 3 is my favorite. The majority of guilty folks' confessions are actually guilty folks just answering the question, "What happened" and the guilty folk telling the truth. Your TV perception of the police and conspiracies is naive and Hollywood. How's the manifesto coming?

John is a real class guy. And still the police will be there the next time he needs help.

ACA didn't help but it's hardly the sole problem in this morass.

Thanks for making this a better board.

We are in the process of doing a comprehensive review of the plans we offer our employees. Among the most annoying questions that our broker (a large broker too) could not answer was "Which of these plans would be subject to the Cadillac penalty?" When he couldn't answer, we asked him to ask the insurance companies. He said that they had, and they didn't know either. So here we are, a company that offers a really good health insurance plan to our 110 employees, but what we don't know is whether the plan is subject to a giant penalty. Mind you that if we have to pay the penalty, we won't:; we will just give our employees a crappier plan (and we owners will get a bunch more money, but that is not our goal). Unlike Tom, I haven't read the ACA but I assume some smart guys at Blue Cross have, and they can't even decide what plans will be subject to the penalty. How opaque is this morass of legislation? By the way, in the last 9 years, our health insurance costs have increased less than 10% one year (last year was 7% somehow...this coming year it will be 12%). So I'm not someone saying the private insurance system is working all that well. But I am saying that the ACA is a cluster%^&k.

I see you like sleeping with bears. Most of us long suspected that.

I was just looking through the big budget movies for this Summer. Here is my prediction for flop/hit/even as relates to their cost to make. Thor: Free Loki to help with bad guy--what could go wrong? FLOP Fast and Furious 6: Can't ever get enough fury with my fastness. One of these nightmares finally FLOPs. Star Trek: save budget money by turning off all the lights and making it less fun. Huge HIT. Pacific Rim: Where giant robots use battleships as baseball bats. FLOP Man of Steel: Because you can't reboot a franchise enough times. FLOP After Earth: Will Smith gets to show off that he can run like an athlete, this time with his son. EVEN. The Lone Ranger: Starring a pirate turned Native Ameri--oh screw it--Indian. FLOP Oblivion: Maverick travels to Earth. EVEN. Iron Man 3: More iron men but as always with sequels, more darkness. HIT Despicable Me 2: Lemmings and more lemmings. Huge HIT Monsters University: It's not fun, it's not funny. HIT World War Z: Speedy zobmies: HIT Percy Jackson, Sea of Monsters: More of gods who text: EVEN The Wolverine: Broadway meets cigar. EVEN The Hangover Part III: Time for AA. EVEN...one too many trips to the well The Great Gatsby: Jay Gatsby Moulin Rogue style: huge HIT.

First, don't confuse my shorthand explanation of warrantless search exceptions as endorsing their application in this case. I know very little about what was going on in that video. All I saw were police going in, and young men coming out and running away. I didn't hear much besides a few "get your hands up" shouts. I don't know what happened there. Did someone tip the police off? Did they have a warrant? Did the people in the house give consent? Had they seen something in a window that made them encircle the house? It sure seemed like more than just the average door-to-door search for that home. John in Jax has is panties in a bunch about this. All I know is that I saw a video of police officers acting in a super tense situation. Maybe they made a mistake and went over the search and seizure reasonableness line, maybe not. If they went over the line,maybe they will be disciplined or one of the tenants will sue them for some BS reason. That seems like an OK outcome to me. That's the system working.

Exigency circumstances and sweeps for dangerous circumstances are legal. Also maybe they took the chance that any evidence they found would be in admissible. Ad do you know there was no warrant? As to rushing people to safety as they left, seriously? Dust settles. Smoke clears. Get the cliches right.

On EJ, it makes me wonder if he's better with the film study than his under-center reading of defenses. If that's the issue, the good news is that he'll have lots of support helping him get over a hurdle like that. That's a lot of reps under center showing him different looks until his brain gets used to joining up his visual cues with what he already knows from watching tape.

Kiper: Mark Sanchez's selection made this team's draft because he's a franchise-maker. JaMarcus Russell was a no-brainer because he has the chance to be a franchise quarterback. Aaron Maybin was the pass-rusher this team needed to anchor the defensive line. The Cardinals' QB of the future, Matt Leinart, fell into their lap at No. 10 (I had Leinart as the third best player in the draft). I would have taken Leinart, but Vince Young will be a very good quarterback. The Bills traded their 2005 first-round pick in the JP Losman deal but got a steal when receiver Roscoe Parrish fell to the late second round.

Mark Sanchez's selection made this team's draft because he's a franchise-maker.