Fake-Fat Sunny

So I think this shows it wasn't racism it was jist flat-out incompetence.

As long as we are on the track of who is to blame (a track which it is fine for those of us on the internet to be on because what we say really makes little difference but I hope those who are really doing something on this even the broadcast media folk are on a life-saving before blame casting track) I think the following are to blame and should not get a pass: 1. The Mayor is the primary municipal officials and has the on the ground responsibility to advocate action and spending to avoid worst cases and also to deal with worst cases with well planned activities when they occur. The Mayor did not show fundamental leadership in addressing cases which were not predictable as to when they would occur but were forseeable that they one day likely would. Despite his past total failure, his current actions actually do serve a useful purpose as while his whining does not absolve him from correctly being blamed for folks dying, others at higher levels of government have failed horribly as well and the Mayors whining increases the pressure to get something done for people who ar dying right now. 2. The Governor also has primary responsiblity to make sure the Mayor of a major munipality has reasonable plans and has taken useful steps and she has failed completely to do this. In addition, the government has the state;s national guard and a primary law enforcement duty and they have not been pre-positioned or used adequately here at all. Her own whining abput "shoot-to-kill" when there is no such order from the federal troops makes their work more difficult and is not helpful for municpal officers on the ground. It appears motivated by the politics of shifting responsibilithy for law and order both up and down the chain from her. 3. The buck stops with the President and the failure of state and local government to do a good enough job comes homes to roost in FEMA not being able to do an adequate job when the two levels of government below them have failed. In retrospect the obviousness of the problem where this town was going to get flooded when a cat 5 came near extends up to the Feds dropping the ball big time on this one. Many outside factors such as the distraction Iraq provides from the war on bin Laden and on a disaster like this also brings some real blame to the Prez. This real blame is different than the false vacation issue which I do not think was a factor.

Again as long as folks don't assume because the Democratic part is screwed up and gets many things wrong that this means the GOP is correct then they are closer to understanding what may be correct in reality. It seems odd to me and not consistent with reality that you seem to feel that the Democratic mouthpieces are blowing things faster after 9/11 when the Democrats are not running the government and in control or in the majority in any of the three branches. The Prez's job is not win debating points or simply be right on the issues, the Prez's job is to produce good results even if he is leading a bunch of idiots (I don't think he is as I do not think that America is made up of a bunch of idiots). Regardless of how one feels about the positions he takes on issues, I think it is hard to reasonably argue that the Prez had provided leadership which has allowed for 60%+ of the body politics to generally be on the same page or feel good about the direction the country is going in as was done under the leadership (flawed as it was in many ways) or Reagan or Clinton or even that of George Bush the elder though he had the advantage of the US being united against Saddam and his invasion of Kuwait. The prinmary failing of this Administration is that it responded to the horror of 9/11 by starting out well by resisting the idiots like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell when he told them to shut when their first reaction was to spew idiocy about who was at fault, then to wait 30+ days and let us get our act together to rock and roll in Afghanistan rather than ineffectively immediately hurl some cruise missles their way as Clinton had done, but instead strike an effective blow against the Taliban and Al Quaeda. The Prez really screwed up by taking this moment in time where 90%+ of Americans agreed and the world sense of synpathy and honor for the US was at its highest and use this capital to focus on Iraq because he judged it as a slam-dunk that it was a threat to the US. The reality is that our leader has failed to produce even majority support todayfor his policies and has produced leadership which unlike his predecessors has resulted in a starkly divided American public. I guess he did accomplish a goal in that he did get a majority of the vote in 2004, but the country seems to be paying for this result in the lives of our troops and in the lack of effective leadership in these times of crisis events. On can choose to blame the 48% of Democratic Party voters for being idiots, but I don't think one should fail to also acknowledge the failure of the current Prez ro unite the idiots with his base the way the Reagan, Clinton and even his Dad did. The Prez will be a real success when he leads and inspires the idiots. Others did well at this and he has failed dramatically.

I think staying in your local community is a good option but I would go if I was her because it seems like a good teachable moment for your kids. This is the largest natural (the hurricane) and man-made (the collapse of the levee system and flooding) in US history and the moment it creates for your wife to give hands on help and for you to work to teach valuable lessons to your kids about taking risks to help your fellow human beings (even when in many cases they stupidly did not evacuate- just because people do not deserve help does not mean that the best of people do not help them). This is really a great opportunity for you and your family. The breakdown in communications is one of the big issues there and actually getting your own communications capability which can foster connections between your wife on the scene and your kids (thorugh the moderating influence of yourself) really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Certsinly my college career was defined by my realizing that I was much more interested in getting educated than I was in my academics. After an academically challenging first semester (where I got the first and ony D I had ever gotten) I buckled down and got an A- average in my second semester. However, having proven to myself that I could do the academic work, I then treated my academics as a means to get the education I wanted and needed rather than an end in and of itself. This was a great move for me and I am pleased as all get out that I got the education I needed without being too hindered by college academics. I do regret not getting as much out of the academics offered as I could, but hindsight is 20/20 and it would not have been worth sacrificing my true education received in college if i had instead focused on academic work.

The facts seem to be that there can actually be two completely different and dramtically opposed occurences at the same location or even from the same response. One person can end up having a life-saving interaction with the a hospital or with FEMA and another person can be blown off by the same folks who simply have more to deal with than they can handle. The real mistake here is that some seem to keep insisting that there is a one size fits all response to this situation which if only these fools in charge would take it all problems will be solved, Unfortunately this is not the reality. Huge miscalculations regarding an event which was not predictable but was forseeable (and actually forseen by Nature Magazine in prints a few years back) were made and communication and control have broken down because of it. Getting folks out as a part of getting the situation stabilized appears to be the best thing to do right now.

Good thought on the opportunity for matches from your employer. Thanks!

The natural disaster here is the Hurricane but the manmade disaster here is the flooding from the busted levees which was not only forsseable but forseen in Nature magazine two or three years ago, The Mayor of NO, the Governor of LA, and the President of the USA all took the responsibility to deal with these types of situations as best they can and the best that any of three can do has been pretty bad. 1. It was not predictable but forseeable that a cat 5 hurricane would hit the area and a system was not put in place to force the evacuation of everyone in danger of flooding and a system was not put into place to get ths basics of food and water to those idiots who choose or had to stay. Without these basics some folks horribly have taken advantage of the situation and bad things are happening. 2. The governor seems pretty overwhelmed and the media has focus on statements from here which emphasize the law and order foul-ups which she has limited direct control over since she is not the Mayor and limited resources to deal with since she has only the national guard and not the US military. 3. The Prez caught a bad break on the timing as he was just finishing up a lengthy "vacation" and the minions at FEMA with direct authority over the federal response have proved unable to be effective given the mistakes of the local politiciams in preparing for this situation. How on earth were they supposed to deal with this? 1. The Mayor needed to exercise leadership in not letting NO invest in a process where they were going to get flooded out by a cat 5 hit. 2. The Governor needs to calm down a bit and suck it up and not pass the ball to the feds providing public safety order the locals failed to do by calling for troops to come in and shoot to kill. 3. its hard to say what the Prez should do because he has led by exerting leadership which has divided the country over Iraq. I think we will have to do the bes we can until we get a more effective leader in the Presidency though this will be several years.

Darn, I think Reed stays and I have not even gotten any crack for it. My sense of the WRs (barring the reality of tonight where I think we will not see performance change this but injury can). 1. Moulds- still the current go-to guy 2. Evans- the future go-to guy 3. Parrish- will add a lot when he can play because he makes 1st 2 harder to cover for DC but he is out for now 4. Reed- Handled the #3 job as a rookie and M/E creates possiblilty to recreate M/P where Reed prospered. Reed has been not great (a TD catch did not happen) but good enough (caught a couple of short ones a got a couple of FDs) as a WR. He retains arep as a good downfield blocker and WM running is important and will become even more so with our run first approach and without Parrish for a while. 5. Haddad- Most impressive WR in terms of production this pre-season catching most everything thrown his way and some balls not even thrown to him. He has really produced as a PR guy which allows him to credibly back-up Clements which is a need since it will be a load for Parrish to work his way back in at WR much less use his PR talents. 6. Aiken- Has not yet grabbed the position and made it his own with production in terms of long catches so I think he stays as Parrish can't play and we need 5 WR possibilities 7. Smith- Good PR production last year, but since Clements is #1 we need a credible back-up here who can contribute to the team on the field. Fast freddy has been too mecurial to do this and Haddad shows more as a WR who can both run routes and back-up Clements. 8. Wilson- Good but a PS guy at best.

It appears that politiciams from the Mayor, to the Governor to the President are ducking and covering as best they can to save their political hides here. 1. The Mayor really screwed up by not putting in place a better response plan to a situation which was not predictable at all and came about in a shorttime (4-5 days from a Cat 1 storm skirting FLA to a cat 5 down NO's throat which particularly at the end of summer is limited time to communicate effectively an evacuation order) but despite being not predictable was forseeable and a better plan should have been in place. The Mayor has the most direct reponsibility for this. However, having screwed up big time, those who are there are in utter desperation as their ability to move has been pretty much cut-off in Lake Orleans. The response has been so ineffective by those with greater resources above the Mayor in the foodchain that whining does seem to be the most effective way to get help right here right now (ex. NPR pinned the FEMA Director about the dead body of a woman in a wheelchair being eaten by a rat at the Convention Center -or something similar related to this- and Brown knew nothing about the several thousand people who gathered at that site and were there several days without food. Within 45 minutes of this pinioning water and MREs ineffectively arrived at the site. The folks there should have heeded the mandatory evacuation order but whining did get some food there). The Mayor screwed up bady and people died and now he is dealing as best he can with the horrible situation he in significant part helped create. 2. The Governor is clearly overwhelmed by the huge area of devastation she must manage and the complete breakdown of events and leadership at the local level. She has fell back to ineffective musings about the military coming in with shoot-to-kill orders as she tries to shift/share blame with the Fed as the local officials have screwed up. 3. The Prez has unfortunately run into this hit coming while he was still officially on vacation and this makes dealing with Cindy Sheehans wails look like a walk in the park for him. He correctly booted action and frontline responsiblity to FEMA which is in position to acutally do stuff. However, given the screw-ups of the locals dealing with this non predictablee but forseeable local situation he is incapable of doing anything effective here for the moment. It's bad.

I think people keep disagreeing with some of what you say because they have made a judgment that rather than everyone there deserving the same type of response and treatment that there are in fact a range of situations from children who are not at fault to idiots who shoot at choppers who we would be better off if they were dead. The problem is that our command and control infrastructure (for a range of reasons ranging from the short time and unprecedented nature of the problem to some really poor preparation for a forseeable though not predictable set of problems) has broken down and their is limited capability to even rescue or help those who are in harms way much less sorting out how to deliver an appropriate response for an appropriate unfortunate circumstance or set of dumb decisions. I think folks fail to embrace or even understand a one-size fits all simple response to this because one size simply does not fit all the situations here or a good human response to it.

OK, there are several things an individual can usefully do to help out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast, To donate: Info on how to do this can be found at: > http://www.redcross.org/donate/donate.html < 1. I assume since you are reading this that you have a computer and this site lets you know how you can give cash over the computer, by snail-mail or through other mechanisms. Giving a cash donation is a small thing in terms of really helping them and in my view does not mean the giver has done much or all that a human being should do to feel good ab=out himself. However, this is what I have done and like the rest of life I just live with its meaning. 2. Cash is fungible and they can direct it where it needs to go to the extent they do that well. The Red Cross is also happy to accept donations of goods and items also, but these donation best go to your own locatlity and will almost certainly not get to folks in the Gulf Coast. One of the reasons that cash is far better than goods (water bottles, blankes, clothes from your closet) is not that they are not desperately needed there but that those items take time, effort and energy to move them there and time and energy are short right now. By all means if you have no cash but have goods to spare, give them to the Red Cross, but know that these items are best used and kept locally and if you want to remotely help on Katrina, cash is a good way to do it. B. Volunteering In general DO NOT COME TO THE GULF. Two of the problems right now are co-ordination and communication. Volunteering your time and effort are a great thing and folks should do that. However, the best way top volunteer your time to relieving the plight of the sick and homeless is in your own community. If you go down to volunteer there is a good chance that you will actually be part of the problem as you are another person to cooridinate and communicate with. If you do go down then the best thing an individual can do is to go there within a program where your efforts will be coordinated with ongoing efforts and a communication system is set up for your to find out what is happening (which is quite unclear in terms of the specifc level of helping out in many cases). If you are in the military follow your orders. If you are not in the military you might contact a religious group and ask them what they are doing and fit in there (and actually follow their orders which they will probably tell you come from God). Generally going there on your own to volunteer will not be helpful and may be harmful. C. Talk it up on th Net. Generally this effort is pretty meaningless in terms of doing anything real. Hpweer, i think that chatter actually creates some moral weight that gets folks who can really do something to do it and may act as a check and a balance to get them to do it well. It's not easy as I think many of the lack of good coordination and communication issues may stem from the fear of getting blamed for screwing up which many politicians feel because they have never dealt with a cat 5 Hurricane that led to an American City being flooded but such is life. The folks who stayed and rode out the storm did so for a variety of reasons which range from they were tourists who could not get out, to they were sick or had folks close to them who were sick and they could not get out, to they were poor and had a variety of challeneges from lack of transport to lack of intelligence so they could or did not get out, to thrill seekers who thought this would be a challenge and screwed up their estimate of how much help they would need, to evil people who are taking advantage of the situation to do bad things and I wish they dead. Who knows about the motivations of a particular in idividual and who cares about a broad brush assessment which falsely pretends that all the motivations described above were the same and deserve the same response. My only suggestion to those (including myself) who have a lot to say on the Internet about this is that we always consideer when we are spouting off about this as stupid as we think others may be here are we also saying that I have full knowledge and I am totally correct about this. I think not.

why?

I totally aggree with this thought and its why I think that for the Bills to win right here and right now the key for us is that decision of who statts at QB will make little difference in whether we make the playoffs or not. I definitely think JP should start for the Bills. I fully expect him to perform like any NFL QB (including RoboQB for Pitts last year) which is that this will be a learning year for him with both its ups and downs. I have no problem with MM deciding to bench JP if he judges that there are too many downs and it will cost us a shot at the playoffs. It will be tough for JPs development if he gets benched but so be it. He should not be forced to sit as soon as he makes a mistake and thus he should not be so gunshy that he so fears making any errors he does not do his best. However, MM should not have infinite patience if he makes recurrent critical errors and if he produced the same 0-4 start that Bledsoe had I would likely sit him for Holcomb. Look TB gave up on both Steve Young and Favre and traded them both. Brad Johnson was released by two teams and yet all three came back to QB SB winners. If JP sucks he will need to be a big boy and deal with getting benched if it comes to that. I expect JP to have a good year for us, but my sense is that a good year forthis young QB will actually see him producing a QB rating not all that different from what Bledsoe produced for us last year. What I judge is good for a first year starting QB is actually a bad result for a 9 year vet QB even if the results are basically the same. How can this be? The answer is that even with an inadequate performance for Bledsoe this team would have made the playoffs last year if the D had performed as well against the Pitts scrubs as well as they did against the teams they destroued in the win streak. We would have made the playoffs last year if the ST didn;t feature Lindell missing a chip shot FG or Nate Clements laying a PR on the carpet. Bledsoe was an inadequate QB who could not overcome outages from the D and ST. I do not expect this first year starting QB to be good enough to do this either (who knows maybe he will surprise) but the key for us is for this D and our ST to not require out QB to be more than a clone of Trent Dilfer.

My understanding from watching the 24/7 cable news folks (not necessarily a source of truth based on their past retractions and incorrect basic facts) is that apparently a law is on the books in NO or La that actually says that it is legal to loot in certain circumstances. Specifically. if it is a question of life and death (the lack of water and food seems to qualify) it is actually legal to loot for goods like food and water. I'm not sure whether this also extends to the fellow who showed his surgical scar and the Depends he had stolen from a Rite Aid for his incontinence, however it seems to be the case that if one is going to shoot to kill then one needs to distinguish between the idiots who stayed and are looting for Air Jordans and the idiots who stayed are looting for water and food. One might make the case that due to the evacuation order all bets are off, but the idiots who stayed clearly includes a significant number of folks whose airline flights were canceled and who could not get a rental car. One might also make the case that it is martial law and all bets are off. However, I heard a LA National Guard officer emphasize that they were coming in purely to support local law enforcement and that MARTIAL LAW HAS NOT BEEN DECLARED. This does not describe me because declaring Martial Law is serious business in a democracy and the military does not like it at all (in fact the one's who join for ideological reasons as most seem to join for the educational opportunities and work join to protect the freedoms of Americans to not have to lick the boots of any king or government). Finally, one wonders whether those who cavalierly declare that we should have hunter/sniper teams out there to kill idiots stealing Air Jordans really understand that most people including those in the military do not take ending someone's life lightly. The studies seem to indicate that it takes a lot to get a person to kill another person even when that person is trying to kill you. Many who post on TSW may be just the type to kill someone stealing a toaster, but most people aren' like that (even peace officers). I would be reluctant to go in the direction of sniper killing of looters not out of concern for the looters, but actually out of concern for what many ordered to serve in that role would have to deal with later.

As an explanation (and not an excuse) of their thinking, those who stayed actually made a correct judgment that they could ride out the storm (they did ride it out because like most hurricanes it did not go into NO as predicted vearing east and wiping out MS). Where they screwed up was that folks did not believe that an indirect hit from a caat 5 hurricane would cause the Levee system to fail and that the town would get wiped out by water (except for the high ground of the French Quarter among few places. They were incorrect on that after making a correct guess on the storn and are paying a price for that. I think they also figured that if the government screwed up so badly in their building of the Levee that it would at least save their arses by having a post-storm evacuation plan in place or at least be able to drop the same MREs and water on them from the air that we do in foreign countries. They also screwed up in counting on their government. As the tourist areas in the French Quarter are high and dry and actually pretty well policed, the folks likely lost were in the poorest sections of the city which are in the lowlands covered by the Lake. Too bad for folks they made the wrong decisions and counted upon good decision-making from folks when they failed to make the correct decisions to protect themselves.

Don't assume that because the Democratic Party is bad that this means the GOP is OK.

Hate to say it amidst all the trauma but it looks very much like an urban legend to me.

It seems to me that this situatiion can be worked out with a lot of folks sharing the pain so no one ends up bearing an intolerable or unacceptable amount of the load because lots of folks are taking a bit of the pain caused by a hurricane which no one controlled. If folks insist on meeting some principle here rather than making an accomodation then someone gets screwed somewhere and unfortnately it is likely to be those who have the least power to protect themselves because the storm put a hurting on them. Should the hotels make an effort even if it costs them some money to take care of some of the refugees? Yes. Should some of the refugees attempt to stay with family and friends rather than stay at a hotel? Yes. Should the Red Cross set-up a tent city or attempt to find some donated accomodations for refugees? Yes. Should the schools ask their students to volunteer some of their dorm space to put up refugees on their floors for the weekend or even longer if it works for most? Yes. Should some FLA boat cruise company donate on of their boats as temporary housing which they can pull up to some FLA port? Sure if they can. Maybe they can afford to donate an empty boat. maybe FEMA can rent one of their boats. Who knows. The bottomline to me if somone insists on some principle (which actually probably just gives them an excuse to make some bucks) then it will be harder to deal with a situtation which no one created.

Folks are right that the key is the commute. If you enjoy spending 4 hours per day in your car this is doable and a good deal but if you do this you will miss out on one of the primary benefits of living in Buffalo which is the Buffalo folks (generally good people but your neighbor may be a jerk anywhere you go) and enjoying the cheaper cost of a market-basket in Buffalo. Though it is probably not worthwhile for a daily commute, if you can create a world in which you do commutes where you stay in Toronto several days and then stay in Buffalo for several days you should be able to make this work if you can command a Toronto wage while you do this. I was able to live life this way for nearly a decade working for a DC wage but living in Buffalo. Particularly as I often could arrage for my DC costs to be paid for by clients or as part of work and lived for a pttance when I wanted at my god-daughter's in DC things can be dome where you find a nice middle.

I want him to catch just one long one in s game even if it turns out to be just dumb luck cause if he presents a threat of making the catch the opposing DC will have to cover his wheels and if they assign their quickest DB to him then Evans gets a slower guy and Moulds get their third slowest guy. Even if he is not back for a few weeks as long as the opponents have o gameplan based on the possibility he will play that's a great thing and that's my guess as to why April "dropped" the word he will play.

Cliff notes begin: The Billls should have better performance from an improved MW (after last year's near debacle and a young player entering his prime) and an upgrade over Smith at LG. Teague we hope will be able to do a whole season. Villarial we hope will be steady. The move from Jj tp Gandy will likely be a drop-off but given JJ did not start or left early in 4 games and Gandy has impressed so far the drop-off should not be huge. Add to that more mobility from Losman versus Bledsoe and JMac getting his first full year without the penalty of Vinky and Ruel I have little doubt that the OL will be much better even though JJ is gone and may well be in the top 10 if TC/MM calls a good game with WM. Cliff notes end Like it says in the post you inaccurately responded tto, Jj was neither the worst OL player in the NFL or even on the Bills last year. However, I think he clearly did not perform as well as Vilarial (who did have a less sensitive position with more help around him at RG), nor did he perform as well as MW (who did get off to a horrendous start in mini-camps but got his act together such that he was awarded a gameball at one point though again he had outside help from the TE JJ didn't). Of his four OL mates, JJ missed all or part of 4 games (CV missd 1 and MW 1 or 2) which puts him at about the same level as Teague who I think had a more difficult job than JJ as he not only blocked for passing with help but had to make the linecalls. He was clearly better than Smith and also a bit better than Tucker though i think one must give Tucker props for his flexibility. The one thing I think that speaks to JJ being good is the market. However, i think that almost all Bills fans judge the market as having made a big mistake in the payment he got from SF. Will the Bills OL be better iin 05 than in 04? I dunno, its part of the reason they play the game. However, even with the uncertainties in the Bills OL this year the answer is probably yes: RT- Likely upgrade as MW is moving into his peak years as a player and will not be suffering from the penalty of last off-season where he was headed toward being a bust as him reacting unprofessionally to the death of the grandma that raised him caused his weight to balloon. All reports are of him being downright buff for a big boy this year and the article is correct in judging this a make or break year for him. RG- Villarial has been solid though unspectacular as a player though after the Pacillo/Sullivan years this was a huge upgrade over their play. If CV turns in another year like last year that would be great though the injury he suffered late last season does make me hope that was not a sign of wear and tear. C- Clearly the most improved of the Bills OL players as he simply had problems putting it all together doing the line calls AND delivering the snap (particularly shotguns) AND blocking behemoth DTs at the same time. However, his game has improved by most observations. He seemed to recover nicely from the injury which cost him 4 games last year but injuries remain a big issue. LG- The Bills got lucky (or JMac was better even than advertised) as Pacillo proved incapable of making the switch and we somehow found a Ravens PS guy capable of credibly starting for our team. Smith was marginally credible, but he was oddly more effective as a pass blocker than as a road grater for the run (usally the run blocking is easier to master than the pass blocking) and he was horrible in the red zone and the endzone attack was better with Adams and Bannan than with Smith. In the end, Tuckers did a stand-out job filling in for Teague as we began our streak and he became a still judged to be inadequate but better LG than Smith. The move to Anderson should be an upgrade (if only because the LG performance was adeqaute at best with Tucker) but so far this pre-season Anderson has been called for too many penalties. On the upside the main rap about him was that though he was a big boy he had not shown good movement in space or the ability to be a pullling guard. However, his movement has looked pretty good so far, however he needs to not get flagged so much or this no upgrade. LT- This has been the big area of uncertainty as we had a failed player for the Bears slotted to fill in for JJ. Ironically, the general review of Gandy has been that he hasn;t looked bad at all at LT. It remains to be seen how he does against tiop quality LDEs in real games, but so far so good and there really is no drop-off yet from JJ (particularly if you factor him being knocked down by injury in a quarter of games and performance hiccups like the one against Abrahams last year. Beyond the starting 5 performance I think you can reasonably add a big plus in that Losman has far more mobility and escapability than Bledsoe and JMac having a second year is such a huge upgade over Vinky and Ruel that this should have a tangible effect. The other real life fact that one needs to take into account when compafing the '04 Bills OL performance to the prospects for '05 is that last year is most intelligently judged as two seasons. it was simply a different world when they operated with Henry versus how they operated with McGahee. The theory that some have that this is due to WM being a stud at blitz pick-up while TH wasa stiff at this part of his game simply makes no sense to me.Bltiz pick-up is an after the fact reactive issue and even if it was better this does not explain the better run production. The real explanations it seems to be are: 1. WM is simply a better runner than Henry. Saying WM is good does not mean Henry is bad, it simply means WM is good. Particularly given his greater speed and his powerful stiff arm which forced Ds to cheat to the outside, his running ability simply stopped Ds from commiting totally to the blitz. 2. TC/MM really established their offense and their tendencies. The flea flickers they ran where the runner pitched back to Bledsoe and their even having no fear of running Bledsoe with the delayed draw simply stopped blitzers frome selling out to blitz. They did not establish this offense and tendency until mid-season. i expect this to be there from the start this year and an 05 Bills OL should perform more like the second half of the season than the first half. The bottom line is that answering your question of whether this OL wlll be much better without JJ. I think the answer is almost certainly yes. I think it would also have been good with JJ as the impovements should come from better play by the RT and LG, a full season from the C, a steady state at RG and a dro[p-off but not a severe one at LT.

Did you know that Buffalo is the Solar Capital of the NE or several months of the year? Buffalo gets more sunshine than any other City in the NE US for several months out of the year and actually even gets more sunshine than most cities in the so-called Sunbelt for part of the year. This is true fact for a couple of reasons: 1. Alasks is called the Land of the Midnight Sun on the summer solstice of June 21st because the Earth is tilted on its axis such that in the winter the northern climes of the US get more sun and have longer days than southern locations. Buffalo is actually one of the furthest north locations in the US that also qualifies a city so thus we get more sunlight on June 21st than Sunbelt locations in Florida, the Carolinas or other places. 2. In addition to getting more raw sunlight, the same climatological factors which cause huge Lake Effect snowfalls reverses in warmer weather and actually breals up cloud cover around the Lakes. Specifically, there is a temperature differential between the water of the Great Lakes and the land. In the winter the Lakes get no colder than about 32 degrees as the water freezes but the land gets much colder. Air picks up moisture from the lakes, blows over the much colder land and drops this mosture as snow. In the summer, the land can actually get warmer than the water which moves and chops around as waves. Though this effect is way too small to impact large air masses and cloud cover like those making up Tropical Depression Katrina or clouds from the west, as clouds are formed by mositure from the Great Lakes they tend to break up once they get over the warmer land. Not only does Buffalo get more sunshine than many sunbelt cities approaching and moving away from the solstice but more of this gets through to the ground. If you refuse to believe me then take the word or observe these actions by non-Buffalo residents. Buffalo enviros and solar activists were able to convince the colleges which hold an international solar power watercraft contest called SolarSplash to come to Buffalo and hold their event with the help of the US Weather Service which monitors these types of things that in fact Buffalo did get more sunshine on June 21st than Sunbelt locations like Orlando, FL, and New Orleans, Dont believe me but believe the measurable numbers collected by the US Weather Service. The second point is that not only was SolarSplash brought to Buffalo > http://www.solarsplash.com/ < but they came back an unprecedented 5 straight years because of the great sun location, the super volunteer team which helped them hold it here and the hospitality of local folks. The numbers vary from year to year with the cloud cover, but for several months out of the year, Buffalo is a very sunny place to be and actually given how intolerably hot many of these places are and lil things like Hurricanes, Buffalo simply has some the best weather conditions in the country. If one wondered why folks put up with the blizzards here which are bad, its because 2 months of weather terror, and 4-5 months of it being too gray here are really balanced by having a high temperature that maxes out in the 70s and a low that does not go below 50 for the other 7 months of the year.

Jennings, our best OL player? I don't think so. I'd put him at about Teague level in the middle of the OL pack for us (Teague completely missed 4 games while JJ only completely missed 2 and signficant parts of 2 others due to a concussion and shoulder problem. Teague had a more complex job at C than JJ at LT though they both shouldered similar amounts of responsibility with Teague having many jobs and JJ guarding Bledsoe's blindside). I'd rank Villarial as a better player than JJ (CV had less responsibility but I think gets a lot of credit for MW's improvement. I also would rank MW as finally becoming a better player than JJ as his injury record was better and he showed more mobility in the end. I think you have to rank LG as our weakest link and JJ was much better than Smith, but given Tucker giving a stand-up performance in relief of Teague there is even a credible argument that Tucker was more productive than JJ last year, though LT is such an important job one has to give the nod to JJ over him as a player (despite the fact Abrahams did beat JJ like a drum in one game. All in all I think it really pushes reality to call JJ our best OL player last year.

I actually disagree with the sentiment expressed by JSP and others that other countries should offer or give aid for our disaster equaling the aid we gave for the Tsunami or that our future aid offers should be pegged to how much they offered or gsve to us for Katrina. Personally, I was more than willing to help out by supporting the Red Cross Tsunami relief efforts not because of some sense of commerce driven equity but because my spiritual guidance has taught me to help virtually anyone in need. My small donation was a mere pittance for me so I deserve no credit for it and I think people are at their best when the give we no expectation of return. While Democracy is not a suicide pact and giving to people that will use the funds to kill us should not be done, I think that most people are people and simply are surviving and I am glad that I am in a position to help. I think we actually belittle ourselves when we are so afraid that someone may hurt us we do not risk that by helping those who seem as though they can use help.