Orton's Arm

Why stop there? I think Rob Johnson's available!

Fixed.

Because they have functioning brains.

I agree that we need a very good MLB in our scheme, but I'm not 100% sold on Willis. If we have to, we could go into next year with a LB corps of Ellison and Spikes on the outside, and Crowell in the middle. I'm sure Bill from NYC will agree with me when I say that taking an OT in round 1 and an OG in round 2 are not mutually exclusive. The Bills could justifiably do both.

A few weeks ago, I came across an article where Marv said the defensive line had to get better. He went on to hint that this improvement could come from players already on the roster. I got the feeling that he envisioned rookies like McCargo and Kyle Williams stepping it up in their second years. That said, I hope the Bills take Okoye.

Fixed.

One man's preference for these options: 1. Okoye, DT 2. Brown, OT 3. Tradedown 4. Adams, DE 5. Hall, CB 6. Willis, ILB

Three years is a very long time in the NFL, and a lot can change. That said, I agree the Pats have the best chance to win the division this coming season. As for the Bledsoe trade; I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now.

There are those who refuse to blame Bush for anything. What's even more disturbing are those who have the following Bush-like thought process: Iraq is a disaster. Invade Iran. Afghanistan is a disaster. Invade Pakistan.

My post was about the hypocrisy of the Bush administration's stance on Pakistan. You point out the people who live near the Afghan/Pakistani border don't recognize its existence. Fine. But you seemed to think your observations to that effect undercut my statements about the Bush administration's hypocrisy. If anything, they reinforced my assertion; because the task of securing the Mexican border would be significantly easier than securing the Afghan/Pakistani border.

My original post pointed out the hypocrisy of lecturing Pakistan on its non-secure border with Afghanistan, while the U.S. government has only a token effort in place to secure our own border with Mexico. The facts you mentioned had nothing at all to do with my post.

You sound just like a government official. Just the other day, I read a comment from the State Department that said, "Holcombs_Arm wouldn't be aware of this, but there's a low-level guerrilla war taking place between China and Islamic rebels. Indeed, conditions have been worsening." A treasury official reported that, "while Holcombs_Arm may lack the background to make solid macroeconomic predictions, we believe our forecast is the best possible given the available data . . ." So don't worry: it's perfectly normal to combine economic, political, or military analysis with apparently irrelevant criticisms directed at me.

I agree with the first two of your points. The Bills should have traded down. Had Whitner not been available, they could have drafted a (thus far) superior football player in Mangold. And it's a mistake to let Clements walk with no compensation. If they weren't going to extend him at the end of the 2006 season, they should have franchised and traded him at the end of the 2005 season. The whole one-and-done thing doesn't make sense for Clements. Nor does it make sense for McGahee. The Bills aren't going to this year's Super Bowl. Don't give me players who are here today, and will be gone tomorrow. Give me a solid core with which to work! A core that will be around for a long time. If the Bills don't plan to extend McGahee after this season's over, they should make every effort to trade him. A fourth round pick may be a little low, but you know what? If that's the best anyone's willing to offer, then maybe it says something about how much McGahee's actually worth.

You're using phrases like "most easiest of questions," and you think I'm the one who has an "uncanny ability to look like a complete idiot." No, if I wanted to look like a complete idiot, I'd try to convince people that the following two statements mean the same thing: "The U.S. government lectured Pakistan's government." "The U.S. government lectured Pakistan's government. Pakistan's government passively listened to the lecture, and immediately agreed to comply with each of the U.S. government's wishes. This is because the communications and interactions between the two governments are always one-sided, with the U.S. government getting everything it demands."

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that signing bonuses automatically get amortized over the life of the contract. At any rate, I remember Antoine Winfield getting a very high first year's salary. I don't see a reason for the Vikings to have structured his contract that way if they could simply have taken as much of a cap hit as they wanted from his initial signing bonus. But stuff like that can change. In any case, the Bills' large amount of unused cap space is a sign the owner's being cheap. I know it's always easy to spend someone else's money, but in this case I think Ralph would be well-served to spend the extra cash to get a Super Bowl ring. Maybe he's trying to make a point about how hard it is for small market teams to compete under the new agreement. . . .

Maybe Gandy figured he'd earn more as an average guard than as a below-average LT.

Yes, I clearly wrote that whenever the U.S. talks to any country at all, they passively sit there and listen to our criticism. Thank you so much for clearly seeing what others couldn't, and for brilliantly pointing out the error of my ways. It would take an absolute genius to figure out that communication is a two-way street; but you at least have grasped that very elusive point. It's too bad that a point which was so easily within your grasp is so hard for anyone else at all to understand. Perhaps you should write a doctoral dissertation on the subject, entitled, "Not Every Country Does as the U.S. Says." Such an unheard-of insight would revolutionize the world of diplomacy!

I can see three ways of looking at the question of race: 1. All group-based preferences are inherently wrong. 2. It's natural for people to want to help others of their own race; so group-based preferences are sometimes okay. 3. Group-based preferences are acceptable when used to help blacks, Latinos, or women, but wrong when used to help white males. I commend that college Republican group for having the courage to point out the hypocrisy of that third view. But it's the second view which permits and encourages the existence of traditionally black colleges, as well as the United Negro College Fund. To call such institutions "racist" is just plain silly. I have no objection to organizations which exist to promote the well-being of blacks, any more than I'd object to similar organizations aimed at Asians, or Latinos, or at whites. The only time I would be concerned is if such organizations stopped being helpers to within-group members, and became insurmountable barriers to those outside the groups. If someone wants to found a college that's targeted at, say, Asians, that's fine with me. But if "schools targeted at Asians" come to utterly dominate the Ivy League, and suffocated opportunities for non-Asians, then there's a problem.

Yes, we have every right to lecture Pakistan on the consequences of a lawless, unsecured border.

I feel a little more positive about the Kelsay signing than some, but overall I agree that Marv's overpaid for the likes of Reyes, Fowler, Triplett, Price, etc. None of the free agents Marv's acquired thus far are long-term, solid answers as starters. I hope that changes soon.

There are two ways you can employ a "cash to the cap" philosophy. With Method A, you try to minimize the amount of signing bonuses paid out, and you give very high first contract-year base salaries instead. A player signed under Method A would have a very high cap hit his first and sometimes second years, and a much lower cap hit in subsequent years. The idea behind Method A is that if you know you'll have $30 million in unused salary cap space for the upcoming year, you may as well restructure players' salaries in order to move much of their salary cap hit from later years to the upcoming year. When Antoine Winfield signed with the Vikings, they had a lot of unused cap space. They gave him a very high base salary his first year--taking a large cap hit right away, and a smaller hit in subsequent years. Then there's Method B. If Method A's objective is to free up cap space for future years, Method B's objective is to allow the owner to spend less money. Once again, consider a team with $30 million of unused cap space. This team signs some guy to a five year contract with a $25 million bonus and a base salary of $2 million for the first year. This contract only creates a $7 million hit against the real cap (1/5 of $5 million, plus the $2 million in base salary). But in cash-to-the-cap eyes, it's a $27 million contract, because that's the amount of cash that was paid out. The difference between the real cap figure ($7 million) and the cash to the cap figure ($27 million) means that for the upcoming season, the team will have $20 million in unused salary cap space. That space isn't helping you build for the future. It's just sitting there, unused, and at the end of the year it goes away. If a team is far below the NFL's real salary cap, and if that team watches high priced free agents slip through its fingers due to financial concerns, it's a pretty good indicator the team is using Method B. Method B is designed to save the owner money; not necessarily to win as many football games as possible.

Unless the Bills extend McGahee (which I doubt), they'll face the problem of one less starting RB after the season's over anyway. Better to have a third round pick than nothing.

Very good post. Since you're interested in this issue, I suggest you read the article about immigration.

Should the Bills trade McGahee? If a) they're going to let him walk in a year's time anyway, and b) they could get something decent for him, then yes, I'd rather have that draft pick than one last year of McGahee. Flip things around: would you give up a first day pick to get just one year's play from a mediocre running back? Didn't think so. On the other hand, if the Bills are reasonably confident they'll extend McGahee, or if they can't get much for him anyway, they should keep him.

I agree LBJ was running scared of the Chinese. Too scared, if you ask me. At one point during the war, the U.S. sent a battleship to bombard the Viet Cong. The battleship's shells could reach 50 miles inland. It was more considerably accurate than bombers; which meant fewer civilian deaths, and more military value. But the Chinese protested the battleship's presence, so LBJ discontinued its bombardments. American soldiers and pilots had to die to achieve military objectives that battleships could have accomplished far more easily. That's just one of many examples of the military being forced to fight with one arm tied behind its back. Would it have been wise to invade North Vietnam? You're right in saying the invasion probably wouldn't have gone over well. But the North Vietnamese government was extremely effective at turning their population against us anyway. I'm not sure how much more fanatically anti-American they could possibly have become. And if the invasion was followed by responsible behavior (no raping, no stealing, etc.), it would have blunted the effectiveness of the North Vietnamese propaganda machine. Perhaps more importantly, a successful invasion would have severely harmed the North Vietnamese government's ability to wage war. I'm not saying such an invasion would necessarily have been the best option, because honestly I don't know. But it was certainly a better idea than what LBJ actually did. If communism was perceived as a threat, it's because communism was a threat. The first Soviet leader who didn't espouse the long-term goal of global conquest was Gorbachev. Conquest and mass murder often went hand-in-hand. But even in the absence of mass murder, undiluted communism is arguably the most evil ideology ever conceived.