The Big Cat

And this is why you're the worst. You come in and try to be snarky and dance around a point just for the sake of antagonizing someone, and then double down on it, forcing them to take your emptiness apart thusly:

Outrage and discussion don't mean **** if you never click his links or purchase copies of his newspaper. I highly recommend both.

Your point being...?

Didn't think so. Just more antagonism.

One voice I'm not hearing is yours explaining why you responded to his mediocre 2016 statline with news of his single-game franchise records. Still waiting.

I'm still waiting for you to explain how one really good game for the Patriots* is indicative of a season's worth of lost production in Buffalo. It's all good. He'll twist into a pretzel to disagree with just about anything.

I hadn't realized you thought then and now that Chris Hogan would have solved all the Bills' problems in 2016. Tell me more about why you mentioned his franchise record in response to the middling numbers he put up over the course of the season. Couldn't help but notice you strayed from that assertion.

Go on.

Hogan's best year in BUF: 41 catches 426 yards 4 TD's Hogan's breakout season in NE: 38 catches 680 yards 4 TD's Can we please STFU about Chris !@#$ing Hogan, the guy who was cut by four !@#$ing teams before we decided that the statline above qualified him for a scholarship at Hogwarts?

Who much time ya got?

I assure you that's not the case. Super hilarious. You're totally awesome, for an internet tough guy. Nice life, champ. It's in Schaumburg.

You don't read good. May be I'll be back here again in a year or so. Hopefully my city isn't a nuclear wasteland by then.

I hadn't realized it was a contest. I was curious about his perspective, came off as suspicious, LA asked a question and I answered it to offer some transparency toward my own. Mine also just happens to be a relative to a tiny corner of our universe that everybody these days pretends to be an expert on but has ever visited. I'm not sure why you insist on making everything so combative. It's my perspective. It might be wrong to you, fine. But I don't profess to know anything about you while you profess to know much about me. And in a hostile way. Your issues, I guess. Absolutely not. But your experiences 20-30 years ago simply aren't the same as what happens nowadays, and particular here in Chicago. It's different. I don't claim to be an expert on what you understand. I'm not sure what gives you the authority to see things through their eyes, or mine for that matter.

Wasn't making a point, just evaluating my perspective based on others'. May be they know something I don't know. May be I know something they don't know. To LA's questions: I'm younger than most of you guys, so I think there's some genuine wisdom to tap into on this forum. Some of you are nuttier than squirrel ****, but others seem to articulate the ways of the world in a manner worth paying attention to. I don't think you lack perspective in this sense. But I do think there's a significant gap between the reality that helped your shape your understanding of human nature and the reality that exists in some of these areas. I don't "think" I see anything in these areas. I know what I see in these areas because I spent a year of my life working on behalf of people in these areas, out of an office IN one of those areas. That was from March 2014 until April 2015. A lot of my preconceived notions were confirmed. But when you have to observe things from the macro level while simultaneously dealing with individuals (as was the nature of my job) the complexity of it all is just insane. And when the stakes are as high as they are (784 homicides in Chicago last year), it's pretty god damned daunting. For reference: a kid was shot about 20 feet from desk, just outside the exterior wall behind where I sat. Sounded like an industrial barrel skidding across the pavement. That was one of about two dozen shootings that happened in about a four block radius during my time, but that's limited to the ones that were reported. I think our neighborhood had seven homicides over the course of that year. I know that things got that way because of a pervasive culture which deemphasizes family structure and education collided head on with diminishing job opportunities, available guns and public assistance programs and so-called community leaders who were motivated to either maintain status quo or collect for themselves first and foremost. Sprinkle in some paranoia, a little bit of pride and ignorance and a heavy sense of entitlement, and you get a community that's--simply put--stuck. And we weren't even the worst neighborhood in Chicago. But as the families went, so too did the communities and the agreed upon sense of right and wrong. Now suddenly "dignity" gets defined in a whole new way--It's everybody else's fault by mine and don't you DARE tell me what to do. Then they got guns. It's my opinion that the moral authority begins at home. And for most of these people, growing up at home meant growing up in chaos. I could go much much deeper, and we can get into the pubic policies which have contributed to all of this. But the long and short of it: that was my experience. I know what I know based on it.

But long story short, it's been more than 20 years since you've had any experience in any area with poverty. And more than 30 since you've been in a predominately black area. That's it. That's all I wanted to know. Helps me understand your perspective.

I asked you when. You told me how old you were. Who's the idiot? I'll ask you point blank then: what years were you in North Las Vegas and in what years were you in a shuttered factory town inhabited largely by Latinos?

Can't help but notice you're intentionally hiding the year.

When did you leave? I'm gauging perspective.

So no. How about experience in areas of high crime/unemployment/poverty? How about experience in areas that are predominately black?

I mean we can live in a fantasy land where we entertain the possibility of any kind of sterilization is ever the law of the land...but...it's utter nonsense. Just so I can get my bearings. Do you have any meaningful experience dealing with disenfranchised populations? It's okay if you don't.

Well, as I've said throughout this thread, nothing beats instilling a culture the emphasizes the importance of family. I get the sense, though, that others championing this concept are a little naive to what a Herculean task that would be. By all means we should be trying. But that's a generational change that, on top of everything else, would be met with resistance, from individuals as well as leaders, insane though that is. As for the solution your positing above, no. I'd much more in favor of means testing, knowing that: First we'd have to remove financial incentives for having offspring so that Attempts, but failures to meet means testing would qualify candidates for assistance given their apparent desire to be a parent But that would cost money to set up parameters to accommodate them, but Not as much money as it will cost to accommodate the outcomes of those who cannot pass means testing and have no desire to Means testing is a great idea, provided you're willing to have the conversation about what happens when those tests are failed. I'm perfectly willing to go down that road.

Okay. I fundamentally disagree with you then. The "drug problem" is massively reduced in scope when there is care and stability beginning with the family. And I believe the same is WAY more true for major offenses. So, to me there is a direct line (a home to prison pipeline, if you will) connecting broken homes and the deeds which lead to incarceration. You mean your attempted deflection to a point I wasn't defending? In this case: that there should be no consequences for reckless behavior. If you define strawman in some other way, I'm all ears.

That would be a strawman and contrary to much of what I've been saying in this thread about taking the first steps toward fostering a culture of accountability. But I also don't think that you should be left to watch such an impressive unit rot, wither away and fall off because you couldn't access/afford the care needed to keep it dangling and wrangling.

superior care, for the price you pay. Even five year olds know not to get their news from hotair.com.

Sammy has been one of the most outspoken champions for personal accountability. I highly doubt this impacts his approach/efficacy.