leh-nerd skin-erd

Fair enough, and I respect your right to your opinion. However..let's assume my income hits the magic number, but instead of 1500 sf and a home purchased in the suburbs of Chicago, I choose to buy a house in my neck of the woods that is 3500 sf and taxes exceed $11,000. Suppose further that my state's personal income tax was among the highest in the country. How much of your 20% savings would you be willing to forgo saving to help me help the country? Would you be agreeable to scaling your savings back to 5% to get us back on track? Let's say your commitment needs to last 7-10 years or so. In exchange for your contribution, my fair share (already substantially greater than your contribution) only has to go up 2% instead of 6%. Thoughts?

So...you're advocating Bush era tax rates or increased taxation for $250k+?

JUST THROW IT seems to be a bad answer to some of what we saw when he was in. It's as easy to criticize a QB for tossing 3 picks in his chance to shine* game as it is to watch what happened. *if your make it shine game comes in your first start, against one of the better defenses in the league with a couple very good corners, playing behind the 8th evolution of an offensive line, in the 16th game of the season, on a 4-11 team struggling to run the ball----perhaps expectations should be low.

Government exists to protect the government. It seems infinitely fair to do what must be done to deal with a crisis until they come after your stuff. The power grab mentioned above is a perfect example of that. I think you'd fine most of the citizens in middle America would feel their testicles shrink to the size of raisins when the words "The government is going to seize..." spoken in conjunction with "your property". * *feel free to substitute "ovaries" as you see fit.

In fairness, Sarah Palin is part of the political establishment where these crazies are not. The argument is that her symbolic gesture was the match to the kindling that resulted in the assasination attempt. I'm a conservative voter, no fan of Sarah Palin for President, but the crosshairs thing is simply overblown. There are somewhere around 300,000,000 people in this country and thus far we have one deranged, incoherent nutjob who pulled a trigger at a political rally with absolutely tragic consequences. So, we're looking at .000000003 of the population, and of course that assumes the politically motivated crosshairs had anything at all to do with this incident. We all know, we reasonable people anyway, that it's like the Black Eyed Peas say..."Crazy is as crazy do". Unless we're looking at banning the internet, movies, music, entertainment television, op eds, network and cable news, video games....crazy people are going to do crazy things--and in fact they'll do them anyways. Small minded people unable to grasp that concept will somehow pull the crosshairs into the discussion and not support her. Based on all I've said and read, that lady has been the target of as much hate speech as any political figure in recent memory.

Admittedly, I've made this mistake before (Edwards, Trent), but I'm hard-pressed to toss a second string qb out in the trash after playing a defense as good as the jets behind the latest incarnation of our o-line. Unless I misread the tv screen, someone named Ally Beal was starting his first game. And yeah, the jets were resting starters but there has to be a significant trade off with the line we had going. Where the disconnect for me comes is when fans are lobbying for Brohm to start as if Gailey in completely unaware of what he brings to the table. Finally----it's a game of rhythm and it was awfully unfortunate for him that SJ fumbled on the first drive of the game after a nice play. Message to Stevie, too---hold on to the ball like it means something ALL the time.

Word. If the theory goes it takes a while to season a rookie, and if you are rebuilding a team in the image you would like it to be, and you have a multi-year plan, why wouldn't you take the player you feel helps you get there? It's Gailey (and Nix, of course) plan, he/they should work it as he sees fit. The ultimate proof of success/failure isn't at the end of 2010, it's where he ends up with this team in the future. I could give less than a rats arse if they took a punter in the first round if they put a team on the field that can compete week in/week out, and God forbid maybe even play a game in January. If they are unable to do so, we hop on the "Spiller was a terrible choice!" bandwagon. There's always extra seats to be had, and they are always free.

i'm thinking you call for the guy's head when you know that he has good-to-above-average talent and squanders the opportunity to have an impact-defense. or, perhaps, you call for his head when the defensive alignment is not suited for the players he has to work with, and he fails to make adjustments. i'm hard-pressed to call for a guy's head to roll when he starts the season with a defensive scheme that may include some mismatched players beyond his control, fails to adjust on the fly or learn on the job, or doesn't noticably squander talent and opportunity. it just seems to me that when you have a coaching carousel non-stop over time, you're constantly playing catch-up and always behind the 8 ball. That said--if dick lebeau becomes available, you probably grab him. i like the coaching style of chan gailey, i like his adaptability and have opted to trust his judgement here. it's good to know if the defense struggles again next year i'll have something to complain about.

changing a culture of losing by losing seems like a bad business model to me. there are of course franchise players that enter the league via the draft each year, but good teams have good systems and are run by good coaches with good front offices. i don't know for sure, of course, but it appears to me that Chan Gailey isn't all jacked up about the losing end of this season. let's hope he's the guy (and yes, i understand the front office problems of this franchise).

you bring up a good point, cyborg. the odds of basking in the afterglow of a world championship in my lifetime go up substantially in the event of a lockout. i say lock it down.

i was listening to the radio, sorting through Christmas tree lights on my front lawn getting ready to hang 'em on the trees. i was cool, hip, figuring we weren't going to win it. i like what i see from the coaches, and have hope for next year and beyond, so iw as waiting for the inevitable. anyways, murph says..."blah blah blah...TOUCH...HE DROPPED IT". i realize, looking back, i wasn't cool at all. i'm not hip, i live in the burbs, i'm hanging Christmas tree lights on pine trees. really, how cool can you be? i screamed literally at the top of my lungs something that might have sounded like 'snother snucker', but was actually something much, much worse. i calmed down quickly, and honestly, i may have been yelling as much because each successive string of lights had less lights actually lit up than the one just prior---and they all worked great last year. bills fans should be spared the Christmas light syndrome, don'cha think? we do our time.

You sir, are no doctor.

confusing as hell listening on the radio. when murph does the play-by-play, the short delay in announcing what has happened has always driven me crazy ("Rothlisberger under pressure....steps left...they're after him again...scrambles for 16 yards and a first down!...") but depending on where the game is, you get the crowd noise as a barometer of the play. today, several times in the first half, I was thinking the Bills made a stop or good play only to find the crowd noise was pro-pitt. Seeemed like it swung back in the second half when the Bills moved the ball, but it's an odd thing nonetheless.

i was rolling and made that part up (acknowledged at the end of the paragraph).

You think that's bad??? Last year, my roof was damaged by hail, my satelite dish removed from the roof during the course of repair in June. My roofer offered to put it back on after the repairs, but I was worried about it being on the roof and causing a leak so I said I'd handle it myself. I have no skills in this area and had no reasonable plan to replace it. I pocketed the $75 I was paid for the reinstallation and blew it at Chili's during off-peak, non-happy hour pricing. I planned on getting the dish back up on the house by August, buying the NFL season ticket and watching the gailey-lead bills begin their move back to respectability. Prior to the first game against the dolphins, a dolphin fan buddy of mine told me at a meeting that he had tickets in the Kelly section, and was taking his 11 year old son to the game and had two extra. In a flash, I decided to take him up on the offer and take my own 11 year old to the game. I hadn't considered the cost of the tickets, and when he told me I owed him several thousand dollars, I simply figured I had already accepted and paid him for them. We drove in from Albany, got off at the Depew exit to meet him at his buddy's house, and were on our way to the stadium and his buddy's "special ez in/ez out" parking lot. Turns out it was right behind the fieldhouse, and it took us an hour to get out of there after the bills inexplicably decided that the new way to win in the nfl was to leave your offense at home. After that debacle, I decided to hold off on installing the satelite dish and paying for direct tv and it still lays on it's side in my yard, causing me to miss the bengals game which was alot of things, not the least of whuich was exciting and fun to watch (I assume). So, while your story is tragic, in mine: I got screwed by hail. I got screwed by my roofer who didn't insist on reinstalling my satelite dish when he knew, or should have known the bills would mount a cool comeback this past weekend. I got screwed by Chili's due to their pricing policy. I got screwed by my dolphin fan buddy who soaked me for $2,500 for tickets in the Kelly section to see the bills lsoe to the fish on opening day. I got screwed by his buddy following bad parking advice. I got screwed by the local media for failing to show the hotest game of the week, bills-bengals. But mostly, I screwed myself for not having the roofer put the dish on the house when it made the most sense. Most wounds are self-inflicted. (Oh, and I made up the $2,500 for the tickets part to make the story better).

f-ing freefall in the heartland (if Minneapolis was actually in the heartland).

good stuff, though i'm on the let's see how lindell finishes out before we lose him. i also think winning remains important, as it's difficult to change a culture of losing by failing to win. i must have missed something on roscoe. my thought was that a gailey offense seems to like those playmaker types, and roscoe was becoming an integral part of the offense. great win, it wasn't on here, so i had the radio on. in figued it was just one of those days in the first half, but it was pretty exciting in the second!

if Moss puts asses in seats during this season, under this scenario, we're as pathetic as it gets.

i appreciate the offer to meet halfway, if indeed halfway to arrogance is stupid. Dan. no hard feelings, but I'm going to have to pass (get it?). I've been thoroughly disgusted with the bills this year. I went to the Miami game, the Jags game, and i'm at the point in my life where losing doesn't hurt the way it used to, but incompetence feels like an errant dart shot to the testes. i'm not a football guy from an x's and o's perspective, have a decent feel for the flow of the games---and i actually felt better after these last two weeks. don't get me wrong, false starts killing drives are irritating, the fitz int was horrible, and nelson fumbling blew too. but, it seems to me they are improving from where we were earlier in the season. i figure a bad team is going to get bad breaks and make bad mistakes---but i think we have a real football coach leading the team. so, i'm going to assume that he saw something he didn't like on the run (defensive schemes problems with the line etc) and went with what he thought was the higher statistical probability play (in his opinion). still seems to me if they were a better team, they win those games, but they blow up at unfortunate times in little ways. 0-7 is 0-7 and always will be.

You really think Chan Gailey was operating from a position of arrogance? 0-6, cut his choice for starting qb 2 weeks into the season, on record as saying we lack talent in on the line, trying to tinker with the offense week in, week out----arrogance? I'd bet he made choices based on what he thought would win us the game, taking into consideration the likelihood our running game would be succesful at that point in the game. Looked to me that with all the warts on this team he's running, both the Raven's loss and the Chief's loss came down to execution. Fumble by Nelson (and unsportsmanlike conduct call) v. the Ravens, bad int by Fitzy and missed kick by Lindell against the Chiefs, Fitz missing Spiller in OT. Now, obviously, there are other issues---the Chief's playcalling and execution, defense v. offense and so on, and I ry not to oversimplify, but arrogance? You could make as strong an argument that he was right as that he was wrong.

it's a defensive wildcats b*tches. the league is about to change before our very eyes...

you call this guy a linebacker? tedy bruski would have hit these guy harder and then healed them instantly. and let's be honest, by the time this radio interview was over, guest host judy mcdonald would have been pregnant with twins.

you know, they could probably pick this year's bill's team up for a couple blankets and a box full o' beads. the ultimate irony? build the stadium on grand island.

well, like many who defer to the lowest common denominator in a sports or political discussion, you've made a compelling argument that the only possible answer is racism.

i honestly think it's presumptuous of you to assume that everyone who likes kyle williams likes him because he's a white guy. i honestly think it's presumptuous of you to assume other people are not honest because they have an opinion that might conflict with yours. i honestly think it's a mistake to try and sound like you're the voice of reason when you toss in a self-serving and unverifiable statement like "there is less than a 10% chance...". i honestly think the poster who pointed out that Wang wasn't born in China was honestly correct. and i honestly am not sure if the girl scale you're using is based on a 5 or a 10 and honestly that makes a big difference. oh, and i honestly think you make some decent points otherwise.