AKC

Based upon the links you cited: North Dakota, Population 633,000, 9 servicemen lost in Iraq or one for every 70,000 citizens. New York, Population 19,500,000, 67 servicemen lost in Iraq or one for every 300,000 citizens. Based upon the facts as you supplied them North Dakotans are losing their lives at a rate 4.5 times faster than New Yorkers in Iraq. We can do it with virtually every state in the heartland if you like, the figures don't vary much and there are far more dramatic examples, it's simply that you decided to bash the courage of Dakotans in your posts so I'll offer the facts about them here. Back to your yes or no question- Do you dare to publicly recognize the fact that higher per capital losses are suffered in rural America than in the liberal hotbed of New York City? Yes or No?

If you're in North Hornell you'll find that your window broken by the anonymous baseball came from one of the Mahoney kids. And I'm serious about that!

Gamma Theta Gamma '77

Born at St. James in Hornell and raised in Wellsville. I have family in Hornell on Cleveland Ave., they're among the strongest Bill's Backers in the family.

Mickey's "Look at me hide" Campaign. yawn.. Here's the critical question Mickey- Will you, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, simply acknowledge that far higher percentages of our men and women in uniform come from rural areas of the country versus New York City? It's yes or no. If you continue to ignore the basic facts about the subcultures in our urban versus rural areas you are doomed to the continued political failures that are driving your party towards insignificance.

You say that as if it's a bad thing, yet curiously enough you have clearly fallen lock step behind the religion of liberalism that's led by the likes of Teddy Kennedy and Michael Moore, one who allowed a young girl to drown in his car to save his political hide and the other who has done less for individual Americans than virtually any preacher you'd find in the country. I'm not religious myself but I sure can clearly see the difference between people who devote their lives to improving the lives of others versus those devoted to improving their own. Your position does bring up the question of why, with your difficulties accepting a capitalistic representative democracy, don't you pack and move your family to the socialistic nirvana that your religion pushes on us? Oh, that's right- they've all proven to be utter failures! Socialism is simply a guarantee that all people will be poor

"I think that evidence, that fact, is a far more powerful statement regarding the courage of New Yorkers than uncited service statistics. It is certainly a direct refutation of the "instead allowing" Dakotans to die for them reference in the post. Instead of what? Instead of dying themselves." Your continuing refusal to acknowledge that 5 times as many North Dakotans per capita have died in our uniform in Iraq compared to New Yorkers is an insult to EVERYONE with the courage to serve. Because of your political bias you refuse to recognize that the atmosphere in the "Red States" is more conducive to inspiring the courage it takes to enter that recruitment office or to commit to a tour overseas. And the simple reason in my opinion that you continue to diminish these brave kids is that it's people like you who have created that environment in places like New York City: the exact places at risk that these country kids are dying for. You ignore the obvious, you refute the irrefutable, you hide from the truth. Your embarrassment over your own coddling of the cowardly and rallying for a nation of those who would cower and run after being attacked appears to know no bounds, yet you manifest that embarrassment behind words like "patriotism" and "freedom of speech". Shame on you. And to think that the 9/11 attacks took place in your back yard! All good Americans should make sure their next vacations are in the areas in our country producing the highest percentages of brave soldiers. New York City and San Francisco deserve not a penny of tourist capital from decent, honorable Americans who love their country and remain proud of its will to defend itself and those places that create an environment friendly to the idea of allowing any prospective soldier to make their own decision on whether to join the service in defense of their country.

I'll leave the continued insulting of those in uniform to you, I offer simply concern about those communities that breed contempt for our military and in turn produce far smaller percentages of military personnel than our valued heartland. The difference between uys is that my point is about those who try to influence others not to serve, versus those who promote the values of America even if it's simply to protect the liberal elitist establishments of the country they love (something those same liberal elitists refuse to do). Since your shamelesness invites complete embarrasment I'll use your figures to prove EXACTLY what I first pointed out- that you live and embrace a culture that discredits service to our country by exactly the type of rhetoric you regularly espouse here on PPP- In Iraq the Dakotas you talk about have lost a uniformed military person for every 60,000 (ND) and 90,000 (SD) residents. New York is at one per every 300,000 residents. You might get really embarrassed if you looked at the numbers from other states with major populations like Texas but then again, it's possible their losses might offer you some form of glee. (They've lost about double the percentage of New Yorkers). What we can bet is that Western NY has supplied big percentages that buffer up to some degree the tiny fraction a place like NY City sends, but the facts is the facts. NY is right there among the lowest percentages in the country among serving and lost and it's NY City that we can safely assume drags it down to that embarassing level. It's a shame you can't simply acknowledge the fact that our heartland is doing an inordinate amount of providing the military personell who today are protecting the liberal establishments of our major cities, while the elitists in those major cities produce environments that discourage the same level of patriotism from their populaces. My charges of cowardice, as noted, are exclusively for the cowards who would foment an environment that discourages military service to our country. God Bless every one of the war casualites from every state, none more so than those forced to overcome the cowardly influences of liberal metropolises.

Is it just me or are terrorists, the French and American liberals the only people in the world who are disappointed about the election results in Iraq?

Unlike 'Nam, we had a long and thorough period to protest this action priot to our Congress overwhelmingly approving the same action. Today is the time for support. Back to Patriotism- isn't it fitting that during this whole period of the lead-up and action in Iraq the only people bringing up Patriotism are those who seem to express doubts about their own!

I agree with you that you have the right to support positions that invite more 9/11 attacks on our country and also the right to fail to connect the 2+2 equation that shows the necessity of our fight in the Middle East against those in that region who hate us has. You have the right to ignore that we're impacting our enemies ability to attack us on our ground through tying up the most fervent of their disciples and financial resources along with our intelligence gains with our action in the Middle East. I'll choose the other path- to recognize what appears incredibly obvious and also to credit those who have chosen to protect the whole of America by not suggesting they are so stupid that they succumb to the will of others. It takes no great courage to question the intelligence of the bulk of our troops as you have, but it takes great courage to commit to joining a war-time military. I'm sorry for you that you could publicly feel compelled to say something so reprehensible to most Americans and especially to our troops.

I see absolutely nothing in this string questioning the patriotism of others, although I see plenty of quesitoning of the judgement of other! What is clear is that there is tremendous self-doubt among those of you who have failed to step up and support the good mission; you appear to wonder yourself whether you are a patriot. Don't ask me to answer that question for you, you might possibly be gaining enough persective to answer it yourself! Self-doubt can be a powerful teacher ;-)

What we learned from the Vietnam experience was that tens of thousands of American kids were killed simply because of the Anti-War movement. As General Giap, the commanding officer of the North Vietnamese forces explained in his memoirs, his side was preparing their surrender terms at the time the Anti-War movement became highly publicized by the Main Stream Media and Giap and co. strategically decided to hold out and see if these would change American resolve to finish a job which was for all intents and purposes completed. The rest is history, and the tens of thousands of lives lost to those in the U.S. who couldn't find support their own while under fire is is one of the great failures of a segment of our public. It's a lesson we would have liked to have thought was learned, it appears possibly it was not based upon your position.

Even a liberal could understand the term "percentages" if they wanted to accurately discuss my original proposition. Since the facts about those percentages completely contradict your post and fully support mine, I'll simply assume you're so embarrased by your lack of support for the honorable mission of our troops overseas that you're willing to resort to distortion to hide that embarrassment. Stick with the facts- they're irrefutable. Distorting my post is something I can accept, your distortion though of the couragous numbers of our service members who disproportionately as a percentage of our population come from rural America is shamefull at this time when they are performing under fire and so effectively. Your refusal to acknowledge the disproportionate representation of "Red State" Americans serving may cloud you own ability to express pride for America today but I can guarantee you most Americans have no such restraints. I continue to support every one of our service members while I refuse to ignore the smaller percentages of them coming from the liberal bastions that remain the primary targets of our enemies. God Bless America, and my America includes the small towns where the highest percentage of our military come from. It's disappointing that your America diminishes the contributions of those same great Americans and their voices. FYI- I spend equal times in my home in Santa Monica, one of the great liberal populaces in the country, and my home in rural Pine Mountain. I've got a pretty solid reading of the difference between the attitudes in these very different SoCal locations.

I watched it with some morbid fascination as he once again made a major political miscalculation by insisting on the interview the morning after the Iraqi vote in the anticipation that vote would be a failure and he would get widespread publicity voicing his opposition to the Bush administration to lead the MSM stories all week. Instead he was committed to the 50 minutes with Russert and the vote turning on him- you could just hear the "but" coming as he praised the troops and then ripped Bush. It is sad in some ways, that the guy can be this politically awkward with his calculations but also that he actually believed the MSM doom and gloom about the Iraqi vote. I'd say his misstep here along with Russert getting him to admit he lied about Cambodia plus the strained concession to sign the form releasing his records (which purportedly will show he was not awarded an honorable discharge at the time of his military separation) puts the final nail in the Kerry Coffin as far as another Presidential run. Maybe it could be accurately identified as his "Dead Meat" Interview.

It's a disappointing phenomenon in this country- liberal elitists in the major population centers convince the residents of those same centers to keep themselves and their kids out of the military while small town America always supports our Armed Forces. In the current conflict it's our major population centers EXCLUSIVELY at threat- Middle Eastern Terrorists couldn't care about Bonesteel South Dakota while elite New York City is target #1- yet elite New York City sends the nationwide lowest percentage of Americans to the fight, instead allowing the kids from Bonesteel and other small towns to die protecting their elite centers. It's one of the great American hypocrisies- the disgusting cowardice of the loud-mouthed elite. I offer this opinion as a former enlisted member of our armed forces, an experience that offers me a first-hand perspective of who actually serves in our volunteer forces.

There is no greater pride than that I feel for our troops in Iraq right now who are making the Iraqi venture into democratic government possible. Godspeed to every one of them and may those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in this conflict be forever remembered not just by those who loved them and those who fully supported them but also may they now be embraced by those who insist they should never have been there in the first place.

Do you watch games with the BBLA club in Old Town or in the old days at Bobby McGees?

You don't live in Toonerville do you? A buddy of mine rented a house there a few years back and within two weeks LAPD showed up and "recommended" he leave the area because the locals though the was undercover- not a very good 'hood along the LA River.

You might say that if you included that with Tom Brady QBing the Steelers today the end result would likely have been very similar.

One thing for sure Bone- Cowher would kick the snot out of a booger-eater like Belichick in a one on one fistfight, but if you let that same booger-eater recruit his own guys to do the fighting the tables can turn in a big way.

In the interest of competitive spirit for us Southlanders, while the're been not a flake on my steps in Santa Monica we're already over 9 feet for the season in my SoCal house an hour north of LA. I'm considering a blade for the Tacoma ;-)

Jesus- you Easterners need to chill out. I got just over 7 feet of snow at my house in Southern California over the past 3 weeks and I didn't even hire any kids to help me shovel out the driveway (and I'm an old timer based on TSW standards). But it did hit 55 today so I'll probably do some sunning tomorrow ;-)

Your conclusion is one that’s reasonably arrived at considering the faults Bledsoe has always had in the short game added to the seeming likelihood that his skills are declining or the speed of the game has passed up the pocket passer. There are a number of very knowledgeable long time posters here who have reached the same conclusion based upon the same logic. I’m not one who buys the “inevitable decline of the pocket passer” since the media has been burying them for 50 years yet they continue to hold far and away the most championships over the course of time. The modern pocket passer is a live and well behind very good offensive lines, lines that appear today to be more susceptible to clever scheming to break them down, viv a vis the Indy line trouble in their game last week. The susceptibilities of clever scheming seem on paper to be there- and the NFL has had at least 20 coaching “geniuses” over the course of my fanhood, each of whom was granted the throne of being a timeless victor only to find answers to their strategies and having the same “geniuses” become little more than frustrate has-beens within a few years of the declaration. Even the one’s with sustained success over many years found the game catching up to them- Bill Walsh comes to mind. The thing is history seems to bring everything back in cycles, and that cycle ALWAYS returns to he big passer who makes his living in the pocket. As far as Bledsoe is concerned, he looked to me to have taken some of the off-season coaching lessons and tried to apply them, but unfortunately asking him to throw the type of screen passes we should be killing people with considering the balance of our personnel he clearly doesn’t have the feel or the accuracy to manage these throws. At the same time when we do go up top in play action he is still one of the most dangerous in football because he plays with so much more field than the average NFL QB that he can fully take advantage of the threat of play action. In NE he relied on TEs to complement his long ball and poor accuracy on the short game, and TE has hardly been a position of strength on the Bills offenses he’s run. I’m more inclined to think he’s not suffering from “rapidly declining” skills as much as he’s just the same QB he’s always been and he’s just not gotten better. He’s still a deadly big ball guy but without the intermediate game he becomes absolutely one-dimensional and a one-dimensional pocket passer is a sitting duck in the NFL. We’ve seen a little of JP Losman and IMO we’d have finished about 5-11 under him this season while he learned to play in the NFL. Yeah he’d have a year under his belt but the NFL is about winning and we won as many as we could. If this team moves into the ’05 campaign with the same garbage at TE we have after Campbell then I see no chance of improvement under Bledsoe. At the same time if we were to bring in a Bubba Franks and perhaps a vet LG I’d rather hold the line on the QB spot instead of conceding a season to the learning curve. I don’t see anything unreasonable about either of our positions, it’s possible to reach either of these or a hundred others. What’s unreasonable is to look at every game this year and find that Drew Bledsoe, more than any other element of our team, “threw the season away” because of his awful skills, terrible leadership and inability to move his feet. The evidence contradicts these things, and in turn it contradicts those with no ability to grasp the dynamic nature of the game of football. You don’t strike me as having any problem understanding that and applying it to your process of analysis.

The cue for you to ignore this string was "INTELLIGENT thread about the QB position"- I'll give you a heads up when there's a "OBSESSIVE thread about the QB position".