Ghost of BiB

I was trying to do my part with the kids. Might be a fun year.

Anyone besides us remember Briscoe?

Can I insult you now? I'd do it anyway, but I really don't care.

Gawd you're an ass. (Just playing along) Don't even know what you wrote, but it has to be wrong.

As an aside, I ran into a guy wearing an OJ Simpson jersey the other night. Told him I hadn't seen one in a while. He said he wears it for the controversy. (He thought he was "da man" anyway...women thought he was lame...) Honestly, I can't remember seeing an OJ jersey in many years. Anyone wear "way back" throwback jerseys regular? Maybe a Kemp, a Sestak or a Rolle? Rutkowski or Dubinion? I don't wear "colors" when I go to watch a game, but I might do it in the spirit of the legacy of what is really quite a remarkable franchise. As a ghost, maybe I'm thinking that we need to conjure history. Us ghosts think that way sometimes.

Bothered me. I realize it's game one, team looked really good - but there are going to be situations down the line where not getting but one TD out of 6 trips inside the 10 is going to hurt. Don't expect to get 4-5 turnovers every game. It's everyone's game one this week, yes it counts - but it's in a way the last week of pre-season. As mentioned in another thread. I go by the first quarter season. I think 3-1 is very possible. Maybe 4-0, I'll be happy with 2-2. Lot's of film will be watched this week across the league. Bills played great today, and a lot of that was preparation and game planning. Houston was the proverbial deer in the headlights today. Everytime I saw their coach his mouth was hanging open. Teams like New England aren't going to be that way.

Does this mean you don't love me anymore? Multi-tasking is so much more germane when you're doing something really important - like frying another batch of wings while watching the game and divoing 24 on A & E.

There's people using the alligators to beat out the fires right now. Everyone would like to see every contingency planned for, but there's a point where one just can't "plan" for eveything. There's just too many situations and too many scenarios. I won't put too much stock in any congressionals, they tend to become pretty partisan and political. The best analysis will probably come from everyone's internal lessons learned exercises. Contrary to what probably 90% here think, they tend to be pretty self critical and accurate, reason being - it's bad to make mistakes, but it's worse to make the same twice. I have about 20 written pages of "lessons learned" material I took down as it happened over the last week. Not all of it by any means is bad. Probably one of the biggest problem I saw from my perspective was communications. Not that there weren't any, more like there was too much. There were some unique things going on, and the "battle cells" (just a phrase) plus the ops centers simply did not have enough people to digest the info coming in (or verifying, sometimes it was contradictory) in the time required. Some of the situation reports from the field were as much as 50 pages long, and were received as little as 30 minutes before a scheduled VTC with Washington. By the end of the week, most other agencies surged people in to help with that, and additional military specialists were called in both AD and activated guard. One has to understand that for command and control, you need a different type of individual than you do going door to door, or handing out rations. It's very specialized work, you can't just stick "anybody" in a chair. You also have to assimilate them into the system - work stations, phones, accounts, etc.. Their parent agencies have to verify their level of access for security reasons, which in itself is sometimes difficult because different agencies have different security clearance requirements that don't necessarily match each other. For those of us who do interagency work on a regular basis, it's worked out but it takes time for someone cold to be cross checked. I know a lot of it sounds like red tape and whatever - and there is too much of it, but some of it is necessary. It's not a good idea to be able to just waive or drop many federal satutes because you want to, many of them are there by law to PROTECT citizens from too much government from above. I'm sure that is a very controversial thought in the emotion of all this, but it's the way things are. Something else that I learned is that there isn't necessarily a good understanding at the senior leader level in state and local government as to where and what federal authorities and limitations are. No doubt that people at the action level do, but at the pace and the confusion of the first 48 hours I don't know that they got heard. Anyhow, I'm not trying to make excuses when I say that there is just so much more to this than many people realize. I'm sure there is truth to LA NG units being deployed to Iraq being a factor. I also don't know what that brigade could have brought to the table in the conditions that resulted. I'm not saying anything other than I don't know. The area needed specialized response assets for SAR in the first 24 hours. Especially aviation support. A mechanized infantry unit isn't going to be able to accomplish much in 10 feet of water. An MP unit could be very, very useful for the security (that should not have been necessary if people all acted human) situations that surfaced. One still has to be able to deploy them and support them. Well, I'm going FFS again. Anyone wants to comment here, I'll respond.

I make it a rule never to post sober. It's the only way I can keep up sometimes.

Did you know there was a football game today Debbie? Or do you just sit around waiting for these moments?

I hope the red zone offense gets some work. This could have been a rout. Other than that, WOO HOO! OK, who has Lindell as their fantasy kicker? But, to be the !@#$ I am - let's see how things look after the first quarter. I think 3-1 is a good number. I'm really impressed with the game plan today, too. Houston was owned from a coaching standpoint.

That's sort of a disservice to the first responders. Think of them more as the EMT's at the accident site. Their job is to rescue and stabilize, so that the trauma ward (Federal) can do the heavy lifting. Most cities first responders are very well trained, very professional, very courageous and dedicated. They know they are the first line of defense, and fully expect to be on their own for 48 hours without help. This thing was just beyond the imaginations of a lot of people. When we designed the responses for a friggen NUCLEAR attack in a major city, it was never expected that the entire local response system would be essentially wiped out. Nor, would that be likely. Federal response plans are designed to augment and relieve the local responders, and gear up for intermediate and long term recovery. I'm not making any excuses for anyone, it's just the way it is. Had everything gone perfectly, it's probable more could have been on site in 24-36 hours. I'm sure that the lessons learned from this will address pre-positioning during warnings, and mix of forces to respond.

If he's not healed, I'd rather see him sit. Re-injuring a break will take that much longer to heal.

Do you scrub it after use with warm water and coarse salt? I'm kind of torn between ice tea and a Belvedere martini with a couple drops of cognac instead of vermouth.

Rob, you have a link to try to follow the game? Surely there has to be a war stoppage for opening day. We could trade them one free day for Ramadan.

In spite of myself, I think about it every time I'm in the Pentagon, especially the southwest part.

It was weird living in Hawaii - ordering pizza and drinking beer for a 7 AM kickoff. Superbowl at 1 PM was cool, though.

Yeah, but a 17 point Bills win makes them taste better, and smell sweeter.

We travel many of the same roads.

Funny, I thought most were at your eye level.

How did he get out of the chimney?

No, but I think I fixed a nice blonde engineer from Huntsville. Glad to be back. Thanks for the tips on Colorado Springs Sports bars. I'll definitely use them next time I'm out there.

I just thought I'd get it out of the way for everybody now. Let us drink beer, eat wings, fart, belch and cheer our boys to victory. Man, it's been a long off season.

You think you can get away with that because Scott's the only person you're taller than. Happy Birthday all. Here's to a Bills win AND beating the spread.

WAY Cool! Caught about a quarter at O Hare airport. Nice to see the Irish back in the game.