Sen. John Blutarsky

$1/lb. I love it. Would you carry a scale or just go by rough estimate. Also, is there an ugly surcharge?

It's hard to find a veterinarian on call at that hour, cut em a break.

I said I was chubby. I've got no problem admitting it. so since I've admitted it am I now allowed to point out that's she's got a bit of a weight problem and may have been unusually difficult to avoid with a motor vehicle not to mention unusually slow in her movements to avoid said vehicle?

You did of course notice that that infomation was posted last August. They start excavation yet? -edit- On second thought, you know what, you're right, that was snarky of me. I really hope they build that and everyone works together to get it done for a change because if you compiled a collection of conceptual art that got approved and never built Buffalo would look like an ultra-modern metropolis. Buffao DESERVES to have buildings like this and the stupid people who throw roadblocks in the way need to be dealt with post-haste.

and there were 3 Bills in the car, coincidence?

Listen, baby. Im chubby, you're chubby, it's all good. Sometime our rolls got gots ta roll wit it, ya know? Just think, one of those skinny Sarah jessica Parker lookin hos woulda broken 16 anorexic hollow bones, and that was just stepping off the curb. You got more cushion for the pushin, or hittin with Porches in this instance... What I think happened is someone heard Marshawn say he like hittin' white women with big badunkadunks and someone got the wrong idea

Nah, we'll lose in the finals...

Is this Javon in Vegas? Or is this?

There are two keys things there. The first one is plans. I think we are all up to our ascots in plans for the waterfront, what's really needed is some actions on the waterfront, such as actually tearing down the Skyway, not just talking about it, or planning to talk about it. Second. You are absolutely correct that it takes time. We are working on what 30, 35, 40 years since industry pretty much died in that area of town. Just for a comparison, in 1945 every major city in Japan was a smoldering pile of sometimes radioactive rubble. By 1985 they made nearly every piece of electronics in the world and were well on their way to making most of the cars. In 1968 Buffalo's industry was well in decline, today in 2008 absolutely nothing has happened to change that.

I agree that it is somewhat heartening to see that the Aud is finally going be be torn down and that there does seem to be some new construction going on. I hope that the city has actually turned a corner and has, once again, figured out how to accomplish something. Given that, lets not forget that the casino we are discussing is pretty late to the table because the politicans spent a decade getting in the way, the Aud stood empty for a decade during which saleable assets inside were destroyed, this is the umpteenth waterfront proposal that has been started, and the Peace Bridge is still conceptual art. If I'm a bit skeptical it's from experience. I certainly hope all these things succeed, but my experience tells me there will be problems. While we're discussing these developments one of the area's biggest politcal footballs, ECMC, is getting kicked around with everyone figuring out how to avoid losing their either patronage board position or how to avoid giving up their ridiculous county benefits in order to work for a private company and have benefits which are more on par with what the real world has. The whole point of that discussion was to consolidate and eliminate unnecessary hospital beds and surplus staff, not to figure out how to maintain the status quo through new creative funding. yet, that's what seems to be happening. The taxpayers end up footing the bill during the frankly obnoxious arguing back and forth. Mark my words, at the end of that process there will be some sort of deal structure in place wherein the county taxpayers pony up money in order to cover some sort of disparity in labor costs or "operating expenses" Whereas if the county lawmakers and ECMC board had done wha tthe state told them to do and truly consolidate the hospitals the taxpayers obligations would be opver. We can't have that, there are too many BS administrative jobs at stake. The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. The new county exec seems to be saying the right things and I hope that he has the politcal juice to cut through the layers of political red tape that are in his way. The area has far too much government and needs to start eliminating it and Yes Virginia, that means some people are going to lose their jobs, possibly a lot of people. But the only way to loosen up the tax burden is to cut the expenditures of government and government controlled agencies. Some if it is largess such as county cars for people who don't need them (which frankly is just about everyone), huge office staffs and expenses for county legistators such as assistant associate vice sub coordinator of paper clips positions which are created and exist solely to reward politcal cronies, some of it is parallel agencies that do the same job. Example? Why do Kenmore, the Town of Tonawanda , and City of Tonawanda all have their own police departments with fleets of cars and police chiefs (who by the way don't police squat and are expensive) when one regional PD would do the job, particularly given that those areas are also policed by the NYS Police AND Erie County Sherriffs? You know how many PDs my town has? One. State Troopers, that's it. The Borough next door has one part time officer who writes traffic tickets. The County Sherriffs (which is the oldest county sherriffs dept in the country BTW) only work in the courts and do prisoner transport. There is no local PD at all (though some towns do have their own PDs, especially bigger towns). There's nothing saying that those cities and towns can't contract with the county sherriff for policing. Grand Island used to do that and stupidly stopped to have their own, parochial PD. The crime rate is the same, it's just more expensive to do it that way. or, on the other hand, if all the little towns WANT to have thier own PDs, why are the county sherriffs necessary for anything other than prisoner transport and court duty? I live in a suburban county without any big cities and we have about 450,000 people spread over 760 square miles. Erie County (minus the City of Buffalo) has about 650,000 people spread over 1175 square miles. My county has 592 people per square mile, Erie County minus the city has 553 per square mile. The point is, we are able to police that way and we have an exceedingly low crime rate. If the County Sherriffs either were the only police in the suburbs, or ceased to exist eintirely, it is very likely that you would never notice the difference but you would eliminate a huge level of bureaucracy and unneeded expense. You can probably save 400k - 500k tomorrow in Kenmore and the C and T of T by eliminating 2 chiefs and their assistants and givng the third a raise if you factor their fringe benefits such as benefits and cars into the equation and that doesn't even consider eliminating ANY officers on the street or cars from fleets due to redundancy. You can have exactly the same number of police on the street only half a million cheaper per year. now ask the hard question, how likely is that to happen? not very. All the police unions would pitch a fit and tell everyone that Charles Manson will be at their door if they eliminate a police department, advocacy groups would be all over the place campaigning to keep their cops, some brilliant person would tell us all about the terrible economic impact of eliminating all those good quality jobs and bemoaning the fact that people will have to work in service industries, etc, etc, etc, etc. Amherst sort of has the right idea in that Sweet Home, Amherst, Eggertsville, East Amherst and Williamsville all operate under the Amherst PD. Amherst is large enough that the PD operates like a regional PD and the size of Amherst is comparable to the 2 EC Tonawandas and Kenmore combined. I recently read an opinon piece about a guy up there who is campaigning to town boards to downsize or dissolve themselves. North Wales brought him in and was very interested and good for them i hope they follow through. Blasdell brought him in to talk about downsizing but specifically barred him from discussing dissolution of city gov't in public session. If anyone in the room can explain to me why Blasdell needs a government and what services they provide which could not be equally provided by a larger, more regional authority I will get off the topic. As I see it the only people who benefit from ANY specific local government in Blasdell are the people drawing salaries from it, and therein lies the problem.

I lived there until I was 18 and I travel back once or twice a year (and am going back for the 4th this year). There are a great many things which I love about the city and the area in general, not the least of which being the people. I wear my Buffalonian nature on my sleeve and I am proud to fly the colors whenever possible. That being said I've been away fromt he city long enough tobe objective about and seperate myself from the romantic image of what I'd like the city to be. i love to visit there and I have a lot of fun but I honestly don't think I could ever live there again. For one the job market is terrible and the tax situation downright sucks and the weather blows (winter is bad, but spring is worse)..but those are the common responses. The real problem is the city is stuck in a cycle of failure and self-destruction. It certiainly isn't the only city like that but until it breaks the cycle things will never improve. Until the political hacks are thrown out they will continue to protect their own jobs and patronage at the expense of everyone else. Until the unions start realizing that they, in many ways, are leading to their own destruction (though certianly not exclusively) there will be no progress. Until the area realizes that every little town does not need its own entire government complete with police, fire, water, and highway departments and allow for reasonable and economical considation, there will be no progress. I am proud of where I'm from but when I come back I am increasingly saddened by what I find. Every trip back it's just a little bit worse. It's frustrating to know that the people whom I love in the area are both the best, and worst thing about it at the same time. Interpersonally they are terrific. i have never been to another place where people go so far out of their way for others. But at the same time, it's those people who vote to protect the patronage, and block consolidation, and have NIMBY protests, etc. The area I live in is pretty far from perfect and we have our own share of political stupidity, and the Philly unions are no peach to work with (example, the new Comcast tower in Philly has water lines run to all of the urinals even though they are waterless urinals and are not connected to water. Why? because the union wouldn't work on the building unless they did it.). Even with all that things get done here. yeah they're more expensive than they should be because of the graft and the waste and the parochical politics are a which are nightmare, but they get done. All of the impediments to progress down here are similar, it seems that the mindsets are different in that everyone evenutally sits down at the table and gets SOMETHING accomplished because there is no money for anyone if they don't. As sick as it sounds, there no kickbacks to be taken if there are no contracts given. Again, it's not perfect. But in Buffalo the barriers are all in opposition to one antoehr protecting their little fiefdom rather than allowing the fiefdoms to work together to grow the kingdom. The Peace Bridge is a big joke up there now and it seems that even the people who live there have written it off. Rather than standign up and DEMANDING that a bridge get built we seem content to squabble about which West Side neighborhood will be infringed upon and whether customs belong on the Ft Erie side or not. Meanwhile the world goes on around us but Buffalo is stuck in its own little world, like Brigadoon, arguing about a bridge, which at this rate will never be built. Mark my words, soemone willr ead this and think (if not type) that West Side neighborhood isn't important to you ebcause it isn't YOUR neighborhood. If you are that person anayzle that thought and you'll realizer that it illustrates my point. It's more important to you to protect the fable of what your neighborhood was than to help the city, which you profess to love, to survive and flourish. Like I said. I'm proud to say where I'm from and I love the fable to, but until the reality starts to catch up Buffalo is a fading mirage on the horizon and it makes me very very sad.

That would rule. Make it happen R Dub!

LeCharles Bentley with one leg is better than Melvin Fowler with four.

re: pilots? Yes. The greater point was that they still don't care if you have 20/15 if you had Lasik to get it you can't fly. When that policy changes I might think more of the procedure.

So they do. I stand corrected. Doesn't change my original problem that it would have been either DirecTV and FiOS internet or just all FiOS. Plus the service looks like it uses DVR space. The nice thing about them being truly seperate is that I don't have to dedicate DVR space to kids programming. It alos nice not to have to wait 3-4 minutes to download it every time. 3-4 minutes doesn't sound like much but it can be an eternity with a 2 year old.

My bad, missed that thread.

You're allowed to do that now I think. You can buy the football and have no programming package apart from that.

I was conflicted with which way to go. I wanted to ditch CrapCast. It was either DirecTV and FIOS internet or all FiOS. FiOS VOD stuff is great if you have kids who want to see Little Einsteins right now, not tomorrow when they're on. So VOD + DVR was a must. that basically eliminated DirecTV. I DVR stuff for myself and some things for the kid, Speed RFacer, etc. but we always have the VOD in our back pocket if he's having a Barney day and I don't have any stashed away on the DVR. Also, DirecTV in this area doesn't have CrapCast Sports Net (not available, not for sale at any price BC CrapCast won't sell the rights to the dish company) so you get no Phillies baseball, Flyers hockey or Sixers basketball. Admittedly I only care about the baseball but it screws you if the Flyers plays the Sabres in the playoffs for example. You get blacked out and are SOL. Happened to my Dad 2 years ago. He came to my house to watch that round because he couldn't get it at home. if neither of us had the channel it would have sucked. It helps that I don't have to buy football or hockey because my Dad gets them. I think hockey will be on FiOS soon and I didn't need the football anyway. DirecTV does have more HD right now though so if you don't care about the VOD, or CrapCast Sportsnet in Philadelphia (or a local weather channel, which is more annoying than it sounds) it's the way to go. That said. I love the FiOS and I have the mulit-room DVR that allows you to watch DVR'd programs on multiple TVs in the house without having to get multiple DVR boxes, great invention.

Yeah I know. I just don't like the margin for error. once those get screwed up they're tough to fix. I found a site that states the military allows lasik now instead of eyeglasses but I still don't think they allow it for pilots. You need to be 20/20 or better uncorrected IIRC.

College campuses are definelty a good idea if not fair game. Go to the dining hall at meal time. Worst thing that happens is they ask you to leave.

People pay lawyers for a reason. Right now he's doing what he's told by the man on retainer.

I have to tell you, I'm a little disturbed that he did the Lasik thing. The problem rate is higher than advertised and you've only got one set of eyeballs. let's hope his doctor was good and did a proper screening before he did the procedure and didn't just cash the check and flip the laser on.

maybe it's possible that we just haven't been very good the last two years. What our team has done an excellent job of is playing hard. They had tons of chances to run for the bus last year but they kept showing up and playing hard. The coach plays a big role in that. It's not the BS pep talks it's the environment he builds throughout the year. Even before the injuries I don't think we were a very good team but afterwards we were pretty bad. I watched the Redkins game yesterday and ticked off guy after guy who is no longer on the roster who was seeing significant playing time. Leonhard, Hargrove, Stamer, and Haggan at least. They went down 11 points early in that game and still won despite it being the Sean Taylor game, on the road. Hell, even the GOOD Bills lost to the Jets the week after Dennis Byrd's paralysis. Whether you like DJ or not they were a gutty team last year and if they bring that level of hustle and determination to this season with better talent they'll be darn good.

You know, we could put some weight on him and have him be a TE.

We don't have enough bandwidth for that.