Peevo

I, like others, just fail to see the big deal. The "Muslims build mosques on sites they conquer" argument is ridiculous. It's not even at Ground Zero. Muslims (excluding the terrorists) died in the 9/11 attacks too, suffering is not limited to Jews and Christians. Let them do what they want, they're not gonna raise a new generation of terrorists. I actually think that when the military does a major "whoops" and mistakes that terrorist hideout for a school, or a house, or a factory and kills hundreds of innocent people, that probly would make more kids pissed off at the US than a mosque built by Americans to worship freely as their right enumerated in the 1st Amendment.

Awakenings with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams is probably the most depressing movie I've ever seen. True story, too. Offers a really depressing question-if you were afflicted by that disease, and you had the chance to snap out of it only to know you would eventually revert back, would you want to be anyway? It's one thing to be shut out from the world, but to know that you were back and then slowly lose control again is brutal.

If the Republican party is going to be the party of less, and I mean, truly less spending, less government, they HAVE to mean it. You can't just run on "extend the Bush tax cuts and cut Obamacare." I don't buy that. I want DRASTIC, hardcore, meaningful cuts in ALL federal programs. Yes, that includes the biggest bureaucracy of them all the US Military. Basically I want a Ron Paul Republican. I'm sure there'll be plenty of criticisms to that take. Fine. I want any foreign conflict to be immediately pulled out. NO war without a Congressional declaration-per the Constitution. I don't care about the "modern war" we live in. You can't hammer Obama for shirking the Constitution when we haven't declared war since 1941. I'd love mandated drug testing for entitlement programs-Welfare, unemployment, etc. You need the safety net? You're not spending tax dollars on drugs. Sadly none of this is gonna happen, and by 2012/2014 we'll be in a "vote them out" again mode. The 2 party system is broken.

I don't know what the big deal is. If you don't like it, don't listen in. What do you want them to do? Talk about pitching strategy and NASCAR pit strategy for 4 hours? It's August, before preseason. July-early August is sports talk radio hell, and even Colin Cowherd would agree with that. We don't have a big league baseball team. They cover training camp everyday. The Sabres don't exactly make blockbuster moves, unless you count cutting a 3rd line player for a really cheap arbitrated deal.

Well put.

I fail to understand what's such a big deal about gay's getting married. Seriously, how does it negatively affect any one else? I think they deserve to be just a miserable as the rest of us. The only negative thing that might end up empirically affected in my opinion? The national divorce rate. I, like many of my generation, fail to see the benefit and tangible realistic expectations of marriage. Being with the same person for the rest of your life? Seems far fetched from a child of divorce. I dunno, that's just me. The days of the male/female/2 kids/dog nuclear family are WAY over, if ever they really existed in the first place.

A good article. Well written and to the point. Fred Smerlas is decidedly before my time, so I can't really comment either way on him. However I don't understand why a lot posters here take such personal issue with any media figure making honest criticisms of the Bills. It's as if they're personally attacking us for their opinion on the NFL team that happens to play in western new york. Sullivan is a good example, too. His job is to write opinions about local sports. He says it on the radio all the time, "honest, informed skepticism." The Sabres and Bills have been, for the most part of the 2000's, pretty bad. What do you expect him to do? He wants people to read his column and buy the paper. That's his job. Do you really think Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh are so successful because they're talking about how much money they're making and how good their book sales/ratings are? No. Fear sells. Hopelessness sells. Anxiety sells. I'm not accusing John Warwow of mongering fear for profit, by the way. I'm just saying that there isn't an easy way to put a positive spin on a product that has been terrible for a decade and offers little hope to a jaded and disaffected fan base. There is very little hope left.

Couldn't agree more. The bulk of my touring was from 2005-2008, and on our biggest lineups, we were only getting $100 in a guarantee and a $7/per diem for food. I remember like it was yesterday- Feb 3, 2007, heading north on I-65 from Indy to Chicago, and boom, our rear axle cracked on the highway. Poof-$3,900 repair bill. We had to rent a van to finish the tour-no trailer allowed. Unlimited mileage-that was $1,200. Plus all the gas, tolls, and living expenses. It set us back over 10 large, easy. Morale couldn't have been at its lowest point. And at the end of the day, all I wanted was to play music. It's really, really, really hard to do that and even function these days. Most bands, myself included, don't need to be the Foo Fighters and sell out Wembley stadium at 80,000 people a night. Just a meal, a decent crowd, a few bucks for gas and on to the next show, and hope nothing important breaks. Unfortunately this is impossible. Either you get a sincere break and really catch on, or you end up jaded, cynical and miserable. But hey, that's just my story. http://www.myspace.com/speakerfire

Thanks for your help guys. I'm in a weird spot, cause I feel the only reason I need to take on credit is to build my score. I can afford rent/car/utilities with my budget as it is. But at my age its important to build one's credit, I just to do so carefully. I'm obviously not gonna buy a $5,000 HDTV ya know. Even though that'd be sweet haha.

I'm honestly confused at the system itself. I'm 23, and have 0 credit. 0 debt, but that's just as bad isn't it? My parents luckily helped me and my brother out with college. They didn't want me drowning in debt at an early age. But honestly, I pay all my bills with real money. Cash money right out of my checking account, I pay everything with it. Is that so bad? What's wrong with buy now, pay now? Isn't the whole "buy now, pay later," system part of what brought our whole system down in the first place? People don't pay their bills on time. Not that that's ok, but its how it is. I fail to understand the necessity of the credit system in this country. It seems self-conflicted and dangerous. Credit card companies don't make money if people play all their bills on time, compound interest, right? Isn't in their best interest to have people accrue interest and keep paying on it for as long as possible? I realize this is slightly off topic, but I would love for someone to explain how a young person can build safe, responsible credit. A bank is NOT going to issue me a low limit, low interest card. Something that can be paid off easily. What should I do? I'm only getting older.

So where are we at? Magox is doing a really good job of spelling out the situation. If neither side is willing to compromise, how bad could it really get? Are we talking severe depression? Like, say 30% unemployment? What comes next? Global warfare? Literally the end of the world? I'm not trying to monger fear here, but how bad will/could it be?

"our chief export is crippling depression." amazing, cause its Buffalo. I struggle with justifying fan anger/believing free agents "owe" something to the city. Lebron had a right to free agency and he used it. I feel for Cleveland fan though. It's sad that the people that really care, really love their teams, are the ones left behind. Pro sports is a cold weather thing. Do people REALLY give a **** about Miami sports? When there's beautiful weather, beautiful women, vibrant night life, South Beach, and a bunch of other awesome things to do in a sub-tropical climate? Buffalo prides itself on few things-its food, its arts/music scene, and love for terrible sports teams. It's one of the few things we got left. I just wish for once the Rust Belt catches a break.

We can argue till we're blue in the face about effective monetary policy, but under all this is a country with real people and real problems, struggling day to day to make ends meet for themselves and their kids. Can't we all agree on that? People are in trouble here, and other parts of the country deeply affected by this mess. But no one seems to be offering solutions, or jobs. Is it all Obama's fault that major corporations are hoarding cash and not hiring people? What I'm asking is, if there are any, pragmatic, altruistic solutions to these problems? Seriously. I'm not trying to be difficult or smarmy. What are the solutions? Do we cut ALL discretionary spending? That means no military, no roads/bridges or infrastructure spending, no help for kids my age with college spending. No nation building, or "war on terrorism," "war on drugs," etc. How about mandatory spending? You really wanna piss off a MASSIVE elderly voting bloc and cut Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid? Good luck getting reelected on that platform. What i think we need to do is cut spending and RAISE taxes. I'm struggling to pay my bills, so i got another job and cut out some bad habits that cost money. I cut spending and raised revenue. How do else do we fix this mess? Seriously.

Incorporation is an interesting if not confusing debate. I think the "conservative" wing of the court made an uber liberal swing yesterday. On certain issues, conservatives want to devalue national/federal power, as in the immigration debate. You hear Hannity talk all the time about how Arizona should deal with its own immigration problems and not have to go through the federal government. But on the 2nd amendment rights, its the EXACT opposite. Local cities and municipalities, like Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, Baltimore, etc, have serious, serious gun violence problems. Can you blame their local leadership for at least trying to do something about the problem? Sure, maybe their restrictions don't get rid of all the gun violence, but at least local leadership is doing something. I think Stevens is right. The conservative wing evokes history-justifying how newly freed slaves had to have guns to protect themselves and the 14th amendment by extension incorporates gun ownership to the states. I get the argument. But at the end of the day, "The reasons that motivated the framers to protect the ability of militiamen to keep muskets available for military use when our nation was in its infancy, or that motivated the Reconstruction Congress to extend full citizenship to freedmen in the wake of the Civil War, have only a limited bearing on the question that confronts the homeowner in a crime-infested metropolis today." -Justice Stevens' last dissent before retirement. Say what you want about old men/women on the SC, but that guy at 90 is sharp as a tack.

I'm all for this too. The preseason is a complete joke and you NEVER see Gibran Hamdan play any time other than against Detroit in preseason game 4 anyway. 2 preseason games, 18 regular season is a great idea. Yes, injuries are a reasonable concern. But the league won't suffer as much as Tom Brady and Ray Lewis say it will. These elite players rarely get hurt. When has Peyton Manning ever missed a start? Brett Favre? The best of the best, which is what tv and the NFL is most concerned with anyway, won't be affected by this. Furthermore, coming from a bitter jaded Bills fan perspective, it most importantly makes the playoffs easier to qualify for. 2 more games means a diluted playoff pool, and you can still have a shot at the playoffs with 7, maybe even 8 losses. Simply put every game is just too important with only 16 in a year. Each game needs less value so that more teams can have a chance to qualify for the postseason. Only speaking on a Bills fan perspective, it sucks being completely out of the running by early November. It just starts the vicious cycle of waiting for the draft, waiting for training camp, getting pumped for the season, they're terrible, and it's "whens the draft?" in November again.

After all the dust settles, what's gonna happen with the names of these conferences? Sorry, Colin Cowherd I am not, so I'm not just gonna go along with the big money super BCS conferences just because they tell me its important and best for the "level of play." I really think that a "Big 10" with 12 teams and a Big XII with 10 teams might possibly be one of the stupidest things in sports. It won't make any sense. Also, Colorado's closest road game will be Arizona State. Last I checked Colorado is land locked, nowhere near the Pacific Ocean. It just doesn't make any sense. I get that the "Big 10" is a brand (read-Michigan and Ohio State). But you're gonna run into problems with unchanging the name when you're building the conference. It really should be the "Big 11" as it is already. I'm a UB student, so I'm a UB fan, by extension a MAC fan. The MAC is actually very solvent and competitive. I can live with crappy defense and "mid major" talent. At least the games are high scoring and entertaining.

I hope Marshawn speaks at practice and he's like "we sittin' heyah, I'm supposed da be franchise playa, and we in we in heya talkin' bout practice."

Unfortunately one of the only true Bills playoff games I vividly remember. I was 11 at the time. The Bledsoe years really all just blend together for me. The only game I can think of off the top of my head from that era was the blowout loss 35-5 Kansas City Sunday night game circa 2003, i think.

Man, I was just about to post this. I'm not very religious at all. But if there's one thing that I remember from Sunday school is that the rich man was going to have a very, very hard time getting into heaven. Christ himself was poor and was an advocate of the poor. So, yes, I'd agree that Christ would find corporatism, excessive greed, and oligarchy a sin. And yes, we're still growing at a rate where the top 1% of the country still earns and possesses more than the bottom 95% of it. http://www.scribd.com/doc/6674234/Citigrou...y-Report-Part-1 - say what you want about how "socialist" this may sound, but this memo might be the most disgusting and prideful boasting of greed, excessive wealth, and income disparity i've ever read. I wholeheartedly disagree with the biggest Fox News talking point railing against progressivism. At the end of the day, the most Republican president in our history, in my opinion Teddy Roosevelt, championed progressive tax legislation-tax the rich to give to the poor. Regressive taxation, like sales tax, hurts the poorest the most. As a Political Science major I do study this material empirically, just for your information. Call him a king of socialist entitlement programs, but even in my "liberal indoctrinated" education at UB, I NEVER once, ever read about this until I saw it in Michael Moore's latest film. I earned a 5 on the AP US History exam in 2004. I've aced all my political policy classes. I never, once, heard about FDR's "Second Bill of Rights." Call it socialism. But is every American with a job, an education, and decent healthcare such a bad thing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights And yes, I do understand that entitlement programs cost money. And for the record, I'm sure every member of my generation won't see a dime of Social Security. But I'm glad I got a good public education. It costs money. Taxes. We can't have it both ways people. You want good infrastructure (roads, bridges, hospitals) it costs money. How about good teachers? Where do you think they get their paychecks? At some point, it has to come from the taxpayer. I'm sorry, but spending $50k plus on a HIGH SCHOOL education is retarded. I got a great one for free.

Although I was never a huge fan of the comics, the end-credits scene at the end of Iron Man 2 is a shot of the Hammer of Thor falling to Earth, obviously referencing the 2011 release of the movie. Interestingly, its director is Kenneth Brannagh, of Hamlet and other Shakespeare fame, and stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as Odin, Thor's father in the series, and in the original Norse mythology as well. Jon Favreau-director of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 has said in interviews how difficult merging these different worlds into one movie, The Avengers will be. Iron Man, and The Incredible Hulk work because we live in such a technologically advanced age, that its somewhat plausible these characters can exist and thrive. Thor lives in a fantasy world, dominated by Gods and what not. So obviously, Brannagh has a tough sell with this. I'm looking forward to the Avengers, but I am skeptical on Thor and the cast of the Avengers' leader-Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America. Having done a rather piss poor job as The Human Torch, I'm not too sold on the super soldier and leader of the Avengers. But we'll see what happens.

For what it's worth I liked the read. I felt genuine contrition on Marshawn's part and it sounded like he truly accepts responsibility for his poor choices. Bulldog on WGR550 has made comments as well regarding the local police having it "out" for Marshawn. Not so much in the context that it exists in earnest, but that there are some credible people who have argued that he's a target based on little more than his reputation. A few posters above made reference to the fact, and I'm in this camp too, just make plays, stay healthy and stay out of trouble. I respect that Marshawn's done some good charity work here and in Oakland, but I don't need athletes to be my role model. I just want my team to win. And if Lynch can help do that, I'm all for it. At the end of the day, I'm rather indifferent to the situation either way. Lynch has done nothing negative to me, and I'd certainly be willing to bet any of the other posters on this board. We take sports so personally that Lynch getting arrested affects us somehow negatively. And I don't think that's fair to him or to us as fans. Either he gets his act together, makes some plays in 2010, or he doesn't.

I should say I'm not surprised this exists, but there's seriously whole blogs dedicated to how draft picks impact one's Madden playability? Good lord, I'm of the generation of the internet and sometimes I feel behind the times. Come on, serious, lucid analysis about a teams' chances of success in a video game? Where the player has the ultimate control over what happens anyway? I tell ya what, online blogs ain't what they used to be.

This is ridiculous. Everyone's such a constitutional law expert in this post yet hasn't cited one case, one dictum, nor one opinion to back up anything they actually "know" to be true. If Kagan makes the Court, which she most likely will, its trading a staunch liberal in Stevens for a center-leftist. The court's dynamic really doesn't change very much. Bush got Roberts and Alito in the court, both strong conservatives. Scalia and Thomas are arguably MUCH more conservative than even Stevens was liberal. My con law professor explained once that Thomas doesn't even want to hear ORAL ARGUMENTS in session. He's such an old timer that if a case makes the High Court, it's already been deliberated to a point where no arguments need be made further beyond amici brief. Please people, do some research and not just regurgitate pundits on websites. A great example, is the concept of "substantive due process." A staunchly CONSERVATIVE court found a "substantive" element to the 14th amendment due process clause, "the right to contract." Read Lochner v New York. It's as liberal a stretch as finding a constitutional right to abortion was in 1973. So yes, even conservative courts can stretch the constitution to whatever they find fit. "The law is, and nothing more pretentious, what judges say it is"-Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes 1897. http://www.constitution.org/lrev/owh/path_law.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_v_New_York No, I'm not a con law scholar, nor expert, but I've taken 4 con law classes. I've read the case law, its super dry, trust me.

Nick, I loved your work at WGR, in comparison to other personalities, it's obvious you were one of the few from the younger generation, of which I certainly identify with much more than the older guys on the air. Not that what Bulldog and Howard et al have to say is out of touch, but sometimes I'll be honest, I don't care about your kids, or your wife, or your mortgage, or your housemaking. I don't have a wife, nor kids, nor a house. I'm struggling to get through college right now. While I realize you're further along in that regard than I, I still feel like you can identify with the youth struggle more than any of your older former cohosts. I get frustrated sometimes that if my opinion doesn't match up with the hosts or talking heads, that its somehow less important or well defended. Like, when EVERY guy on the radio yesterday is railing the Bills' 1st round pick, does that mean because I'm not a professional radio or sport's media personality that I dont' know sports as much, so I can't like the guy? I watch Fox News A LOT, and they do, HONESTLY give both sides of the issue. There is none of that on WGR. At the end of the day, especially with Hamilton and Sullivan, and sometimes even Schopp, they act as if they've been personally slighted by these organizations. As if giving Jerry Sullivan A DIGITAL (oh, my god, EVERYTHING is digital these days-money, votes, music, EVERYTHING) copy of the press/media guide is some insult to the great writers of a bygone era. Sorry, brah, its 2010, not 1945. Yes, black people can go to school with white people. You can't smoke everywhere you want anymore, sorry dude. Paul Hamilton gets personally insulted when they didn't tell him about the cancelled Hall of Fame ceremony. OK? Who cares? It's less work for you anyway man. They come off as if because I'm not "one of them" we puny everyday listener folk couldn't possibly understand. Basically I want honesty, not contrived personality. Break the 4th wall. No, of course they didn't personally attack you, Mike. They're giving you GREAT material so people call up your show and listen to you. Don't patronize me. I don't have a masters in broadcasting, but I understand that having a combative personality gets you listeners, and callers, and sequentially, advertising revenue-which all in all, is all they care about. So Nick, maybe your show can be a forum for honesty, not just what "the sports talk show handbook" says you HAVE to have the guys that just argue with their callers and eachother, just because "its good for radio." Steve Tripi

Yeah, same here. Not really much familiar with Knife Crazy although I remember reading a good review of them in the Beast a couple years back. Artvoice is weird. They act they like they have their fingers on the collective pulses of Buffalo's art and music scene yet left some glaring omissions that seemed very obvious to me. It's a bunch of 30 plus snobby Buff State journalism grads. SpeakerFire only got literally 2 words from them once, and it was "alternative rock band." Ok, that was 3 words, but still. I guess I'll take that. As much as local papers like this are important in a sense, I'd say Buffalo Rising and the Beast are more readable. And Standard of Living, not my favorite, but they're nice guys, work hard, and have been at it a few years. They deserve some press. It's A Firefight was on my radio show, good dudes, I've known Brett since his Looking For Seven days. My overall point is that local music has been and will always be for the youth. It's a forum for youthful expression. You hit 30, you can't be in a "local band" playing original music anymore. I'm sorry, but it's true. I'm 23 and am pretty much over pushing my original music on people. If you're not signed, touring, and have full booking and management support, you can't be in an original band beyond 30. You're grasping at straws at that point. Life catches up to you, and you have to accept it at some point.