billsfan89

He might have won the Mack trade depending on how long Mack plays at a high level and what Gruden does with those picks.

Dam that's a steep price for a good but not elite receiver. I would have thought a 2nd was a bit high but a 1st is bananas. The Raiders will have 3 first round picks in the 2019 draft. They could easily have a top 5 pick plus 2 additional picks within the top 20.

I don't know what he is thinking either. It's not like KB is a locker room saint. I think Jurrah is looking for a cheaper alternative to DT, Parker, and Amari Cooper. KB probably could be had for a 5th or 6th round pick and he is an expiring contract so there isn't any significant cap ramifications to acquiring KB where as DT, Parker,and Cooper are under contract for significant money in 2019.

I would pass on DT, he has a 17.5 million dollar cap hit for 2019. Unless you can restructure DT's deals to make it more palatable then I would outright pass. Amari Cooper I would consider for a 4th round pick and not much else. Initially I thought Cooper would need more to get it done but that was before Gruden put him out on the market which intimidately drops his value.

I would take a 6th for KB and be very happy. He isn't a positive for the team at the moment and if you can get a pick for him that's solid.

PFF and football analytics in general has its use but it also has its limitations. For example the person watching and grading the player on a particular play does not know what the assignment of the player is. Football analytics won't ever rise to the prominence that baseball analytics have. There are just too many variables and too many unknowns.

Pryor had been having a decent season before he got the injury. The Bills should be aggressive in pursuing him as he would be the teams best receiver upon debuting.

Hyde has been decent but he is only averaging 3.4 yards per carry (Granted he is a short yardage back which might be deflating his ypc) and he is only on a one year deal. Chubb is a young player getting buried behind a OK veteran RB. The Browns can sign another bruising back to backup Chubb, sure the quality won't be as good but it won't be a drastic step down. The Browns could sign Mike Gillislee, Christine Michael, or Thomas Rawls to backup Chubb in the early down role. The Jags are desperate at RB probably preferring Yeldon to be a third down back and I think that the Jags also want to send a message to the locker room by adding talent to their team. The Browns got a decent pick for a player that was a rental anyway.

Hyde wasn't exactly killing it either. He only average 3.4 yards per carry, granted he was used a lot in short yardage situations and such which will deflate ypc but Hyde is a 28 year old back on a 1 year deal playing OK. If you have a high potential young player like Chubb behind him you can definitely justify getting a pick for the veteran player.

I made no such appeal to moral relativism other than to say that you can apply the Socratic method to any appeal to religion/God as the source of morality and you can come up with a level of human subjectivity and interpretation the same as you would with empathy. Once again the underpinning and moral priori that I am appealing to is empathy. That is what makes all those things wrong by any measure of common empathy. You made a point to say that empathy was subjective and thus couldn't be the source of morality but I ask why isn't religion and God equally as subjective? There are many religions, many Gods, many interpretations of God and the holy books, and many holy books are filled with subjective teachings and contradictions? To me it seems to be equally as subjective as using empathy as a measure of reason and morality.

Unless the case is argued poorly (Which is entirely possible) I think the Civil Rights Act will uphold the right of people to access a service offered to the public. The fact that the custom service is offered to the general public sinks the case of it being a participatory artistic endeavor. A florist offering custom arrangements couldn't refuse a black or inter-faith wedding because they found it obscene under their religious beliefs. It is clearly defined that the grounds to which you can deny a service can't be solely on the fact that you find people in a protected class obscene simply for their status of being in a protected class. The religious argument will not hold water as that precedent has been set with other protected classes. I would also argue that the Supreme Court hasn't been activist in a long time. The Supreme Court has made so many pro-business pro-establishment rulings that I would not be shocked to see them side with business owners who want to use their religion as a means to discriminate. In the Hobby Lobby Case I believe it was Scalia (I think) who stated that their religious objections didn't even have to have scientific merit to be valid (Referencing the fact that the morning after pill and birth control in general is not an act of abortion but as long as the business sincerely thinks it is their claim is valid.)

Sexual Orientation is a protected class, it was added to the Civil Rights Act in 1998. So the same protections afforded to nation or origin/race are afforded to sexual orientation.

Unless the NBA team was consistently very good like the Spurs I just don't see the NBA working in Buffalo. NBA players aren't attracted to cold weather cities (Outside of NYC) and small markets like Buffalo. A Buffalo NBA team would have a very hard time being competitive on a consistent basis and for a city that might have a limited fanbase to being with it probably is hard to build if there isn't consistent success. Overall I think Seattle and International expansion are much more likely places for the NBA to go. The NBA D-League is actually expanding to be a 1 to 1 farm system for the NBA, there is already 27 teams and they are expanding to 30. I could see something like that working in Buffalo as a cheap winter sports alternative.

The Civil Rights Act says that you can't discriminate against a protected class even if it violates your closely-held religious beliefs, there was a case in the late 1960's where a southern BBQ joint tried to argue its right to be whites only based off of religious belief and they lost. So your religious beliefs even if closely and sincerely held does not get you out of the civil rights act. The nuance of participating in a ceremony isn't valid (In my opinion and based off of other cases where people tried this discrimination based on racial and religious grounds when offering custom services on the same grounds of participation) because a custom service you offer to every member of the public is a service that falls under the civil rights act. You can't withhold a service based off of finding a protected class obscene. Everything is subject to subjectivity and human interpretation if you go in deep enough. We could go really abstract and say that everything is relative to human experience and interpretation if break it down to baseline. Even if you want to bring it back to God as a starting clause God is still something that is up to human interpretation. Which God are you talking about? Which version of that God? How do you interpret the holy books? Considering that most if not all religious books are filled with many contraindications and rules that we no longer as a society follow there are many ways God can be interpreted. People tried to use the bible as a justification for slavery and segregation. Basing morality off of Empathy is as valid an underpinning for morality as God or religion, it is all based off of subjectivity and interpretation. I think we are getting lost in this conversation of wither or not the Civil Rights Act is a form of slavery. Can you please answer my baseline question of if any business that is forced to do something it doesn't want to do by law or regulation is a slave?

Did I say anything about the minimum wage? Although I will agree that it isn't a great definition since its not something that can be defined well in a soundbite without conveying the nuance of the word.

Slavery to me is at its most basic form being forced to do labor without proper compensation. It's not exactly a word that comes with one simple definition. I do believe it is wrong simply because it is a violation of human rights to compel labor without proper compensation. These are only baseline definitions as the term is loaded and ripe with many different terms forms and uses. As far as moral priority I can only reference what is right based off of empathy and human decency. I don't believe in God so I can't rightfully use God or religion as my moral arbiter (If God is good then does that mean there is a standard of good that exists above God, is that not the standard to which we should live type big questions?)

I am going to ask a baseline question, is any restriction on how a business owner may operate their business slavery? First off stop inferring things that I never said. I understand the history of human slavery is universal and not confined to one race over another. Stop projecting that I am implying otherwise please. Your semantic argument of Nazi imagery isn't valid because Nazi is not a protected class of people as defined in the civil rights act. The semantics of what is and isn't a protected class is well defined in the civil rights act, its amendments, and various court cases that have challenge the civil rights act or parts of the civil rights act. So please do not act like these aren't well defined terms. And I have repeatedly answered the question yes a bakery can refuse to bake a Nazi cake because it is obscene. Nazi is not a protected class of people (Nazi does not equal German and any lawyer familiar with civil rights law will tell you that, it is well defined.) A bakery can't refuse to bake a cake for a gay wedding simply because they find gay people getting married obscene. It is the same reason they can't refuse to bake a cake for an inter-religious wedding ceremony that they find goes against their values. If it is a service they would offer to anyone (A custom cake) then they can't refuse that service solely based off of someone falling into a protected class. As far as my comparison to race I make that comparison because under the civil rights act Race and Sexual Orientation are both protected classes. In the eyes of the law in this country both are offered the same protections. "Semantics aside, the real issue at play was whether there is a clear distinction between denying the individual and denying participating in a ceremony that the business owner deemed inconsistent with his values." That is probably going to be how they argue it in a legal sense. But I don't think that argument is going to hold legal water because from a legal standpoint you couldn't refuse to bake a cake in a interracial or inter-faith wedding because participating in it would violate your values or your religious values. It is irrelevant as to wither or not you feel that the racial/religious comparison is valid or invalid because under the civil rights act they are afforded the same protections.

I don't think laws against segregating businesses that serve the general public are slavery. Sorry.

If it is slavery (And I do not think it is) to force business to not racially segregate than I am fine with that. If you genuinely think the civil rights act enslaves business owners then we are just not going to agree on this. I honestly did not know that the civil rights act was such an evil piece of legislation.

I would argue that not serving someone because they are white or gay is an aggressive act. Who is more violated in a situation a person who steps into a business and is told that they are not good enough to purchase a good their with their money simply because of the color of their skin or a business owner forced to not segregate their business based off of racial or other lines that fall under the civil rights act? I agree that both are having their freedoms limited but who is having more harm done to them? That business owner is still allowed to kick people out for almost any reason, they are still allowed to have a dress code, they are still allowed to run their business to associate themselves with who they want as long as it isn't based off of lines that fall under the civil rights act, and there are many other ways besides blanket segregation they can control their clientele (You can even racially segregate a private club or business that requires membership and doesn't serve the public if you so choose.) Whereas if you are white and the business is black only your only other option is to take your business elsewhere, you might have no way to access that service or good simply because you are who you are. If you still feel that a business owners freedom of association is a greater freedom than the ability for people to live in a society without segregation then we simply have a different view of the world.

To do so without repression from the law you do not have that ability.

Poor wording on my part (I should have said ability to, I wrote it late and choose poor phrasing), but the fact is that in any society you are giving up the ability to do things as a condition of you being able to live in that society. You do give up your ability to hurt or harm other people without repercussions by living in a society, no one really has any issue with that because we all understand the non-aggression principle and have common sense. Then there are other abilities/rights like the right/ability to segregate your business that we give up because we understand the tremendous negative impacts that can have. I would also argue that by excluding people based off of characteristics they have little to no control over is doing harm to them thus a violation of the non-aggression principle in some form (or though there is certainly room to argue that.)

No a Jewish bakery shouldn't have to have to bake a custom cake with a Nazi flag on it if it finds that to be obscene or against their values. But the person requesting the cake would not have a civil rights violation case because Nazi is not a nation of origin thus not a protected class. Nazi does not equal German, that's a very big component of why your argument falls apart. So because Nazi does not equal German that makes your analogy faulty and not in anyway disproving of my point that you can't discriminate generally against a protected class. For example if that gay couple wanted a cake depicting a gay sex act the baker could refuse and there would be no civil rights case because that baker would have refusing on obscenity grounds and grounds that the obscenity is not solely tied to the fact that they are just gay (The baker can rightfully claim that he would have declined to do a cake depicting any sex act.) The race card was not a Strawman because we are talking about the civil rights act and I am drawing a connection to it because on what grounds can you be forced to serve people? When does it tread into what you define as slavery? Are you saying that any business that is forced to serve people it doesn't want to serve is a slave? I am genuinely asking these questions because do you find that the civil rights act forcing people to not discriminate just on immutable characteristics that fall into a protected class an undue burden onto businesses? I find the comparison to slavery a very strong and loaded analysis because in what way is taking peoples money to do a service anything close to slavery. These business owners are getting compensated for their work. Are doctors that can't deny patients service if they are unable to pay slaves? If you offer a custom service to the public you can't refuse that service only (key word only) on the basis of sexual orientation. If you offer that service to the general public you have to serve the general public the same. Yes there are many instances where one can refuse service but the civil rights act imposes reasonable (In my opinion) limits on why you can't serve people. I just fail to see where this falls into slavery. Living in a society requires you to give up certain freedoms. I give up my right to murder you and you give up your right to murder me. There is always a limitation of freedom unless you live in total anarchy (I am not saying you want to live in total anarchy, I am just establishing a baseline.) I am more than willing to give up my right to have a public business that openly discriminates against classes of people in order to live in a society where I know I can patronize any public business. If you feel the freedom to not serve people just based on Race, Sexual Orientation, or any other method you so choose supersedes peoples rights to have access to public businesses then we have fundamentally different opinions on the type of society we want to live in. I appreciate your honesty in what freedom you value and we just honestly see the value of that freedom differently.

Does your freedom of religion allow you to not serve black people if it goes against your religion?

From reading the judgement and reading various interpretations I am reading that this does not set the precedent that you can refuse a ceremony but not people (If I am reading what you wrote correctly.) Its seems to me there were many extenuating circumstances in this case that made it unable to set a precedent. For one gay marriage was not legal in Colorado when they ordered the cake and the court also took issue with how the Colorado Civil Right Commission handled the bakery treating them with hostility instead of neutrality as required by law. In Kennedy's opinion it establishes that they could not rule more broadly which does not set the precedent due to the fact that the ruling was based off the aforementioned circumstances and not off of any right to free expression. Now when a similar case gets kicked back up to the Supreme Court I think that argument about ceremony vs. person will be used. However that argument will likely fail because if it is a service that they would offer to anyone then you can't discriminate based off of sexual orientation once again due to the civil rights act and sexual orientation falling under a protected class.