Dr. K

This assumes that, given the chance to tackle Wills, Deion would even try to get near him.

O-line play. It oculd be a fluke, but they looked like they knew what they were doing. Bledsoe actually helped by being relatively mobile for once. The second half they looked like a decent team.

It worked for the Chargers last weekend. Win one for.... Cookie Gilchrist! Wray Carlton! Jack Kemp! Daryl Lamonica! Elbert Dubenion! Billy Shaw! Tom Day! Tom Sestak! Butch Byrd! George Saimes! Harry Jacobs! Jim Dunaway! Paul Maguire! Pete Gogolak!

This is one of the funniest posts I have ever seen on the board and for it I forgive you all your wrongheaded political rants on the PPP board. You rock! B)

I have not been vocal in his defense, but I have been willing to wait with the hope that Bledsoe would get better. I am done with that now. It is possible tht the Bills or some other team with him at QB might win a few games, but he is no longer a first class quarterback. He needs too much help from the rest of the team, perfect blocking, a great game plan, sturdy defense to make up for miscues. Things that very few if any teams in the NFL can provide anymore, and that the Bills are not going to have. There is no upside to cintinuing to play Bledsoe and hoping that things will get better. There is no chance the Bills will make the playoffs with him in the backfield. There's not much chance the Bills will make the playoffs this season under any circumstances. If Losman were healthy I'd have him in there right away. The problem is that Bilsl are in a no-win situation with Bledsoe on this team. They are going to have to get rid of him anyway. Keeping him past this season woudl be a sign of hopelessness, or of terminally bad judgment. I don't think a change is going to materially affect their record this season, but the Bills should do it just to indicate that they no longer believe Bledsoe has a future on this team. There are lots of other problems on this team--I am not saying it all falls on Bledsoe's shoulders. But he is never going to take this or any other team to a super bowl, or likely even the playoffs. A guy like Brady is ten times the QB, and Belichek proved he knew what he was doing by cutting Bledsoe loose.

I don't think Shane Matthews offers any kind of upgrade, but at least he's a change, and this team needs something to shake them up. I don't know how quick a thinker Matthews is, but he can't be any slower than Drew. On the pass to the tight end that got the TE killed by R. Harrison, the TE was open long before Drew threw the ball. If he had flipped it to the guy as soon as he broke open over the middle, Harrison would not have been anywhere near him. This happens all too often with Bledsoe.

I'm with you. I will be there rooting for them next week, but I am doing this out of a sense of loyalty with little hope. When was the last time they played a good, complete game? Maybe aginst the Redskins last season, but I can hardly remember. It's painful to watch them screw up so predictably. Whenever they start a drive either on offense or defense, I expect them to do something bad on every third play. They are incapable of running 8-10 consecutive plays without committing a penalty, a blown coverage, running a wrong passing route, missing a block, throwing an interception or dropping a pass. It's not that the players are not without raw talent. But they make mental errors with awesome regularity. They have the mentality of losers, by that I mena that, even when they do something good, they do not really believe in themselves, and cannot rise to a challenge. This has been the story of Buffalo football, with the exception of the Polian/Levy years, throughout their history. They have never had the mental strength of a good football team.

Yup. Even I, a very patient fan, can see the guy just doesn't have it. How many scoring plays has he allowed in his career here? Run fakes that he bit on, wrong angles, inopportune penalties, etc? I am also sick of London Fletcher's hot-dogging and personal fouls. Throwing the receiver down after the pass was incomplete on the Pats' first drive was an auger of what was to come. The guy has no judgment. The next time he (or Spikes) celebrates after making a tackle on second down, someone in the stands should shoot him.

Drivin with Donald So we're ridin on down the road in our Cross Country Journey of Inner Discovery and Of Course the American Dream when Donald Rumsfeld hits a moose. "Maybe we should stop an get a tow truck," says me. "Gosh, that seems pretty excessive," says Donald Rumsfeld. "I mean, was a moose hit? Yes. Do the antlers sticking through the windshield make driving trickier? You bet. But should we just turn around and quit because the road got a little bumpy? I'd say no." One thing about Donald Rumsfeld that you have to give him credit for is he always cuts through the crap to tell it like it is in his no-nonsense style. I am reminded of this when we hit the second moose. "Moose happen," says Donald Rumsfeld. "There are moose, and we'll hit 'em. That's the way it goes. We've lost two tires and the brakes. That's life. I'm drunk, legally blind and have been charged with eight counts of vehicular manslaughter in the last three years. Gotta deal with it. Nothing's perfect." "If you think about it the more moose get hit by us, the fewer moose there are to get hit by us!" says me. "I like the way you think," says Donald Rumsfeld. Donald grabs a beer an misses a pedestrian. Hooray! One of the moose is still alive an kicks at the engine. "Bad moose," says me. "No beer until you stop." Donald Rumsfeld throws an open bottle a Coors at the back seat to put out the fire. "Are parts of the car on fire? Sure. Would we like them not to be? Of course. Have I gone insane from three decades of snorting military-grade rubber cement? Quite possibly. Do we need everything to be perfect for us to go out on the road? Well, that's absurd," says Donald Rumsfeld. "That's very true," says me. "We cannot make the perfect the enemy of the terrible." The bridge up ahead is either out or doesn't exist. But if we waited for everything to be perfect before we did stuff well then we'd never get anythin done! Forward, onward, downward, Donald Rumsfeld!

I've already said I thought the Bills will win. They will be ready for this game, and sky high to prove a point.

Anyone who wants to can pray all they want in school right now, and I am happy to see them do so. What I am against is state-sanctioned prayer in schools.

I think it's unfair to John Kerry to compare him to ICE. B)

Wow! Now THAT's an obscure movie. I thought I was the only person in the world who saw it.

Organizing for the Kerry/Edwards campaign in NC.

Let me say this once, in simple language: Not invading Iraq in March 2003 does not mean not defending America or fighting terrorism. In fact, invading Iraq has made the terrorist problem worse. Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11. In March 2003 Iraq had NO weapons that offered any threat to the U.S. Even if Iraq then had such weapons (which we now know they didn't), the UN had inspectors on the ground in Iraq who had found NOTHING when Bush decided to start the war. Whenever the US gave its best intelligence on where these phantom weapons were, inspectors found NOTHING at those sites. The cost of going to war has greatly exceeded the cost of continuing inspections and putting the diplomatic screws to Iraq. We have no easy way out of this mess now, no matter who is in the White House. The costs to the US (and to Iraq, and the rest of the world) of making the decision to go to war will not be calculated for years to come. I lived through the Vietnam War. What we have here is a second example of arraogant policymakers involving the US in a quagmire through their strategic delusions.

I heard a qhote from him on NPR yesterday. At a panel discussion in Boston, a woman accused Meyer of having a "breast fetish." Meyer replied, "That's only half of it."

I did not expect this to go smoothly. It was Bush and Perle and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld who said Iraqis would be throwing flowers at our feet, and who still insist everything is going according to plan. What plan? You're right about twenty years. But if Bush has made a twenty-year commitment to our presence in Iraq, he ought to come out and say it, and he can make his plans for moving back to his ranch in January. I said it was a mistake BEFORE it started. You talk about "hindsight"; I was one of the MILLIONS who predicted that this thing would turn sour. If the Bushies had listened to some of us liberals we wouldn't be in this mess in Iraq. Hell, if they had listened to their own Pentagon and state department we wouldn't be in this mess. We'll have to disagree about whose vision of the world is a fantasy. If you think Bush and the neocons are realistic in their assessment of Iraq and the Middle East, then I hope you'll pardon me if I snicker.

You are deliberately missing the point. This essay is in response to Bush's (and his administration's) assertion that things are going fine in Iraq right now, that they have a plan and it is working. That assertion is absurd; Bush and the neocons are either living in a fantasyland or lying outright. And I might say the same about your assertion of "the power of freedom and hope on the psychology of a society." Where do you see this power working in Iraq today? Richard Perle said a year ago that by this time the grateful citizens would have named a square in Baghdad after George Bush. Right. And monkeys are flying out of his ass.

From Juan Cole, professor of history at U. Michigan: http://www.juancole.com/2004_09_01_juancol...582366638394688 Wednesday, September 22, 2004 If America were Iraq, What would it be Like? President Bush said Tuesday that the Iraqis are refuting the pessimists and implied that things are improving in that country. What would America look like if it were in Iraq's current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number. Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll. And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco? What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria? What if all the reporters for all the major television and print media were trapped in five-star hotels in Washington, DC and New York, unable to move more than a few blocks safely, and dependent on stringers to know what was happening in Oklahoma City and St. Louis? What if the only time they ventured into the Midwest was if they could be embedded in Army or National Guard units? There are estimated to be some 25,000 guerrillas in Iraq engaged in concerted acts of violence. What if there were private armies totalling 275,000 men, armed with machine guns, assault rifles (legal again!), rocket-propelled grenades, and mortar launchers, hiding out in dangerous urban areas of cities all over the country? What if they completely controlled Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Denver and Omaha, such that local police and Federal troops could not go into those cities? What if, during the past year, the Secretary of State (Aqilah Hashemi), the President (Izzedine Salim), and the Attorney General (Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) had all been assassinated? What if all the cities in the US were wracked by a crime wave, with thousands of murders, kidnappings, burglaries, and carjackings in every major city every year? What if the Air Force routinely (I mean daily or weekly) bombed Billings, Montana, Flint, Michigan, Watts in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Anacostia in Washington, DC, and other urban areas, attempting to target "safe houses" of "criminal gangs", but inevitably killing a lot of children and little old ladies? What if, from time to time, the US Army besieged Virginia Beach, killing hundreds of armed members of the Christian Soldiers? What if entire platoons of the Christian Soldiers militia holed up in Arlington National Cemetery, and were bombarded by US Air Force warplanes daily, destroying thousands of graves and even pulverizing the Vietnam Memorial over on the Mall? What if the National Council of Churches had to call for a popular march of thousands of believers to converge on the National Cathedral to stop the US Army from demolishing it to get at a rogue band of the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Brigades? What if there were virtually no commercial air traffic in the country? What if many roads were highly dangerous, especially Interstate 95 from Richmond to Washington, DC, and I-95 and I-91 up to Boston? If you got on I-95 anywhere along that over 500-mile stretch, you would risk being carjacked, kidnapped, or having your car sprayed with machine gun fire. What if no one had electricity for much more than 10 hours a day, and often less? What if it went off at unpredictable times, causing factories to grind to a halt and air conditioning to fail in the middle of the summer in Houston and Miami? What if the Alaska pipeline were bombed and disabled at least monthly? What if unemployment hovered around 40%? What if veterans of militia actions at Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing were brought in to run the government on the theory that you need a tough guy in these times of crisis? What if municipal elections were cancelled and cliques close to the new "president" quietly installed in the statehouses as "governors?" What if several of these governors (especially of Montana and Wyoming) were assassinated soon after taking office or resigned when their children were taken hostage by guerrillas? What if the leader of the European Union maintained that the citizens of the United States are, under these conditions, refuting pessimism and that freedom and democracy are just around the corner? posted by Juan @ 9/22/2004 06:53:26 AM

I'll make a friendly two-dollar bet with you on it. Bills to beat the Pats, straight up. You can buy yourself an ice cream cone to cheer yourself up if you win the bet.

At least you might see how a QB with a different set of skills might work out. Matthews is supposed to like the short passing game. Maybe that might make a difference. I rather doubt it. I don't think the Bills have any quick fixes for their current situation.

You are EXACTLY right. And anyone who said after the Bills won two such ugly games that the Bills were a great team would be just as wrong as those who are saying now, after they lost those two games, that the Bills are hopeless. We DON'T KNOW how good or bad this team is going to be in a month. We know they are 0-2 and have played poorly on offense, but that doesn't tell the whole story. We must wait and see.

You guys all have my official permission to stop watching the team. The bitching here is reaching suicidal proportions. You all act like you have cancer and your hair is on fire. If I were Bledsoe, i would wear kevlar body armor before I took to the streets of Western New York. The Bills offense played like crap and yet the team was still are only a couple of plays away from being 2-0. I'm not guaranteeing they will turn it around, but I'm waiting until mid-season before I throw up my hands and say the team is a total loss. And even then I will still be a Bills fan, watching the games and rooting for them to win.

You read it here first.

You guys need to chill. It didn't "all go wrong." There is cause for frustration and worry and more work. Some things have gone wrong, some things aren't going right yet. But even so, we are two dumb plays from being 2-0 right now. I think prescriptions of prozac ought to be handed out with Bills' season tickets.