Bill Burt implores the Patriots to sign Vick

[HEY BRO! WHAT UP?]

Won't happen. This is the same organization that immediately cut their draft pick Christian Peter for his off the field issue. If they wouldn't take a chance on Terrell Owens, who isn't even a criminal, why would they take a chance on Mike Vick?

 

[Tunescribe]

Irony writ large.

Meaning ... ? If you're referring to my placing Burress and Vick in a category of off-field transgressions different from Dillon and Moss, you are correct. We're talking felonies here; i.e., killing and putting others' lives in danger.

 

[DefenseRules]

I don't want Michael Vick anywhere near my favorite team. All that money and the only thing that he could think to do with it was to establish a dog fighting ring.
I watched a program on the National Geographic Channel that showed some of the damage that was caused to the Vick dogs that were rescued. The most sad case was the psychological damage that one of the dogs had. The poor animal was afraid of everything...he crawled on his stomach when he walked. The poor thing was in a constant state of fear. Just sad. Another dog had no teeth...THEY WERE INTENTIONALLY REMOVED!!! It made me so ANGRY. I just don't understand people who could do such things to animals. It always makes me wonder what they are capable of doing to people.

 

[Deus Irae]

Meaning ... ? If you're referring to my placing Burress and Vick in a category of off-field transgressions different from Dillon and Moss, you are correct. We're talking felonies here; i.e., killing and putting others' lives in danger.

While I'd love to pay this response the kind of in depth answer it deserves, that would take it to the political forum, and I'm not going to do that. So, I'll just note that Moss hit a traffic cop with his vehicle and leave it at that.

I won't go any further with this for the aforementioned reason, so enjoy the long weekend!

 

[eom]

Extending Michael Vick’s ban back from playing football for lying is a slippery slope Goodell might want to avoid. He starts banning guys for lying, and there will be about two NFL head coaches left in a week. He starts banning guys for lying about their various off-field problems and, well, where do you stop?

Vick is presently under house arrest. He is wearing an ankle bracelet and will soon begin work as a laborer on a construction site for $10 an hour. If he isn’t broke, he’s close to it, and he still has three years of supervised probation to try and walk off, which with as many people watching him as there will be won’t be easy.

How much punishment is enough? Punishment is supposed to be about rehabilitation, and we are supposed to be a nation of laws. So what is the message to Vick when he hears this constant demand for another pound of flesh after he’s served his time?

lolz

I wonder what the other dudes on the construction site are being punished for.

 

[State]

It was a calculated and deliberate lifestyle choice and just a step below what Ray Carruth did.

You're apparently the kind of morally misguided person who gets more upset at animal cruelty than human homicide, what our legal system still largely acknowledges is worse. Carruth killed a human being and is jail for life.

Are you a vegetarian? Do you wear leather? For me, it's yes to both accounts--notwithstanding the book by Matthew Sculley,_Dominion_, on the cruelty of animal-slaughtering plants.

Dennis Prager finds that this moral confusion, alas, is the norm. When he asks high school students about whether they would save either a stranger drowning or a drowning family pet, they almost always choose the family pet.

I think the Bill Burt article has merit. Not with Vick as QB--talk about alienation of our true QB! Imagine the look on his face as he stands on the sidelines as a double-digit IQ athletic freak makes a mockery of our offense--but as our #3 receiver and kick-off returner.

Now that's a legitimate interest.

 

[Tunescribe]

While I'd love to pay this response the kind of in depth answer it deserves, that would take it to the political forum, and I'm not going to do that. So, I'll just note that Moss hit a traffic cop with his vehicle and leave it at that.

I won't go any further with this for the aforementioned reason, so enjoy the long weekend!

You've already backed yourself into a pretty tight corner, I have no problem taking it to the political forum if you'd like to meet me there. And for the record, Moss did not "hit" a traffic cop, he rolled through a traffic barrier with the cop trying to stop him. How that reaches the felonious level of gunplay and financing an interstate dogfighting operation, I'd love to know.

You're apparently the kind of morally misguided person who gets more upset at animal cruelty than human homicide, what our legal system still largely acknowledges is worse. Carruth killed a human being and is jail for life.

Are you a vegetarian? Do you wear leather? For me, it's yes to both accounts--notwithstanding the book by Matthew Sculley,_Dominion_, on the cruelty of animal-slaughtering plants.

Dennis Prager finds that this moral confusion, alas, is the norm. When he asks high school students about whether they would save either a stranger drowning or a drowning family pet, they almost always choose the family pet.

I think the Bill Burt article has merit. Not with Vick as QB--talk about alienation of our true QB! Imagine the look on his face as he stands on the sidelines as a double-digit IQ athletic freak makes a mockery of our offense--but as our #3 receiver and kick-off returner.

Now that's a legitimate interest.

Wow, talk about misguided reasoning! Slaughtering livestock for food and torturing/killing animals for sport/pleasure are apples and oranges to most sane folks. You're a goofball. But I'll let Mo handle this one.

 

[State]

I don't have to wear leather. I don't have to eat flesh. I choose to. They add value to my life.

Some people, the PETA crowd, consider that I'm an active participant in a "holocaust."

For many parts of the world--and in parts of the black community--the travesty of animals fighting is considered a legitimate recreational activity.

It was too in Shakespeare's day, bear baiting, which finds many references in his plays.

A bear would be staked to the ground and be harried by a pack of dogs until he tired and could be set upon by them. In the process a couple of dogs likely would be maimed and killed.

The most popular sport at the time. Kind of like barbaric football where the players need canes to walk around when they're 45 and are addicted to pain pills because of sports injuries.

So it's a cultural thing, but murder, if you believe in the Bible, is a God-prohibited activity. I just can't believe how people get more exercised if animals are killed than people.

In NH a man who whipped a cat to death is going to jail for much longer than a DWI woman who killed two teenaged boys. You ok with that, pilgrim?

Regarding animals, we're supposed to be good shepherds of them. But a lot of us white boys, who have our dogs with us when we drive, like I do, put canine companionship a lot higher than in other places.

Dog fighting is a disgusting activity that finds more support in the American South, esp. among certain racial groups. That's not to condone it, but to accurately portray it.

 

[State]

Here's evidence that there's a black-white divide in perceptions over Mike Vick:

AD: Vick Dog Fighting Case Gives Ugly Glimpse Into The Black Community

 

[MoLewisrocks]

Here's evidence that there's a black-white divide in perceptions over Mike Vick:

AD: Vick Dog Fighting Case Gives Ugly Glimpse Into The Black Community Here's evidence that there's a black-white divide in perceptions over Mike Vick:

AD: Vick Dog Fighting Case Gives Ugly Glimpse Into The Black Community

Get out...amazing that didn't surface during the OJ trial...oh, wait..:ugh:

I don't have to wear leather. I don't have to eat flesh. I choose to. They add value to my life.

Some people, the PETA crowd, consider that I'm an active participant in a "holocaust."

For many parts of the world--and in parts of the black community--the travesty of animals fighting is considered a legitimate recreational activity.

It was too in Shakespeare's day, bear baiting, which finds many references in his plays.

A bear would be staked to the ground and be harried by a pack of dogs until he tired and could be set upon by them. In the process a couple of dogs likely would be maimed and killed.

The most popular sport at the time. Kind of like barbaric football where the players need canes to walk around when they're 45 and are addicted to pain pills because of sports injuries.

So it's a cultural thing, but murder, if you believe in the Bible, is a God-prohibited activity. I just can't believe how people get more exercised if animals are killed than people.

In NH a man who whipped a cat to death is going to jail for much longer than a DWI woman who killed two teenaged boys. You ok with that, pilgrim?

Regarding animals, we're supposed to be good shepherds of them. But a lot of us white boys, who have our dogs with us when we drive, like I do, put canine companionship a lot higher than in other places.

Dog fighting is a disgusting activity that finds more support in the American South, esp. among certain racial groups. That's not to condone it, but to accurately portray it.

I love tortured logic...:blahblah: :blahblah: Somewhere between PETA and reality lies the truth. Not sure it's even worth engaging someone who resorts to biblical, mideaval literary, socio-economic or ethnic surveys and culltural norms as the arbitors of criminality or barbaric behavior in this millinea...most of us like to believe societies can and do evolve. Thankfully for many of us this one has.

You're apparently the kind of morally misguided person who gets more upset at animal cruelty than human homicide, what our legal system still largely acknowledges is worse. Carruth killed a human being and is jail for life.

Are you a vegetarian? Do you wear leather? For me, it's yes to both accounts--notwithstanding the book by Matthew Sculley,_Dominion_, on the cruelty of animal-slaughtering plants.

Dennis Prager finds that this moral confusion, alas, is the norm. When he asks high school students about whether they would save either a stranger drowning or a drowning family pet, they almost always choose the family pet.

I think the Bill Burt article has merit. Not with Vick as QB--talk about alienation of our true QB! Imagine the look on his face as he stands on the sidelines as a double-digit IQ athletic freak makes a mockery of our offense--but as our #3 receiver and kick-off returner.

Now that's a legitimate interest.

You seem to be the one who struggles with what our justice system in your words acknowledges as worse...I guess because you don't grasp the legal concept of intent. I never said I was more upset over Vick than Carruth. One should be banned from the NFL, the other should have been executed. And if the system decides to consistently punish DUI as I would there would probably be far fewer lives lost to it. The sad fact is too many judges and juries suffer from there but for the grace of god syndrome for that to ever happen. And If Goodell decides to just ban 'em all that's fine with me, too.

The only people who are morally misguided are those who want to win football games at any cost including rationalizing interest in players they may not even want (but will defend to the death the right to) based on equally morally misguided precedent, the previous wrongs must make it right argument. If a guy who killed a human pedestrian ten years ago while driving under the influence got 90 days and 8 games and was then allowed to play, and if a malcontent who bumped a meter maid or a guy who got into a shoving match with his wife can live to play another down, and if cattle raised as food can be slaughtered and you eat it and no one goes to jail, then why can't an athletic sociopath who raises dogs to fight illegally in a criminal enterprise and illegally gambles on the outcome of said fights and inhumanely kills and maims those who can't compete as fighters, not to mention cheats on his taxes, knowingly spread a sexually transmitted virus, used illegal drugs (some here continually lament the illegality of) and lied continually to his employers who invested $34M in him to represent their franchise on and off the field since he'd been doing all of the above since college deserve a second chance in this NFL???

Oh what a moral dilemma...for some of you. Not to mention a situational football dilemma. Now you're left to rationalize how a team with a HOF QB could use this guy who could never read a complex defense or run anything beyond the most simplistic offense and even than only erratically could be used as a legitimate weapon here, and unable to make that case leap into rationalizing how he could multitask at positions he's never before assumed such as kick returner and #3 WR in a well established sight adjusted offense...

You're in about the same predicament as the HSUS President who wants to embrace Vick to capture the spotlight even at the risk he's just enabling a sociopathic serial animal abuser to regain much of what he lost as a result of his own sick as well as criminal behavior and that's bound to alienate a substantial segement of his organization's bedrock constituency. I choose to think Robert Kraft is smarter than that.

I don't really care if the NFL lets Vick back in. Nor do I care if they don't or if in future they ban all convicted felons from the league. I know lots of people who have lost their freedom and employablity let alone in their chosen field over a lot less. Sometimes even through no fault of their own. There is a young man at BC right now who projected to be a first round draft choice in 2010 who may never see a football field again let alone get a shot at playing in the NFL. I'll save my sympathy for him rather than squanter it on an athlete who has never exhibited an ounce of empathy for any life form beyond his own. Vick at least had a shot at living the life of his dreams, and in doing so, because of what his perverse dream life persistently entailed, he blew it and nearly destroyed a franchise and probably ruined some human as well as animal lives in the process.

I hope he will deserve whatever he does or doesn't get for the rest of his life. And whatever that is I believe he won't be getting it in New England for lots of logical football and business market reasons.

I gotta laugh now thinking back on brother Marcus failed NFL career and how all the talking heads were calling for Michael to exert his influence and turn his brother around...He'll be as useful at turning urban youth against dog fighting igsfly: as he was in salvaging Marcus...

 

[Deus Irae]

Here's evidence that there's a black-white divide in perceptions over Mike Vick:

AD: Vick Dog Fighting Case Gives Ugly Glimpse Into The Black Community

You're wasting your time with people who want others' oxen to be gored, but will insist that their case is different and theirs should be left alone. Nothing can come of this but the removal of the thread to the political forum.

 

[State]

Don't talk to me, chronic poster. Talk to the brothas who don't have a big problem with what Vick did.

Did you check out the link? Here it is:

***While most of us are sickened by the details of NFL star Michael Vick's brutal and cowardly treatment of his dogs, apparently, dog fighting is an acceptable activity for many other thuggish professional athletes.

Shortly after Vick’s 2007 arrest, the New York Knicks’ Stephon Marbury, defended Vick by saying: "They don't say anything about people shooting deer." He went on to declare: "Dog fighting is a sport!"

Former NFL player Deion Sanders even wrote an article for NewsPress.com defending Vick's criminal behavior.

Sanders justified the brutality by saying: "What a dog means to Vick might be a lot different than what he means to you." He went on to offer the following insights: "I believe Vick had a passion for dog fighting. I know many athletes who share his passion. The allure is the intensity and the challenge of a dog fighting to the death. It's like ultimate fighting, but the dog doesn't tap out when he knows he can't win."

Then this final gem from Sanders: "It reminds me of when I wore a lot of jewelry back in the day because I always wanted to have the biggest chain or the biggest, baddest car. It gives you status."

Yet another of Vick’s colleagues, Washington Redskin’s Clinton Portis told a reporter with WAVY-TV: "I don't know if he was fighting dogs or not, but it's his property, it's his dog. If that's what he wants to do, do it. I think people should mind their business."

When the reporter told Portis that dog fighting is a felony, he replied, "It can't be too bad of a crime."

"You want to hunt down Mike Vick over fighting some dogs?," Portis said. "I think people should mind their own business. I know a lot of back roads that have the dog fighting if you want to go see it.”***

It's all so confusing. I was taught at university that no culture is better than another. If dog fighting is popular with some people, whom am I to protest?

It's like the evil imperial British who banned suttee in India during the 19th century, the barbaric practice in which still-living widows were expected to thrown themselves into the funeral pyre of their dead husband.

It's the clash of multiculturalism, the lie that all cultures are equal, with animal welfare and protection.

 

[State]

Nothing can come of this but the removal of the thread to the political forum.

You mean sweeping it under the rug.

 

[Deus Irae]

You mean sweeping it under the rug.

Not at all. This is the football forum. When you start delving into the 'rightness' or 'wrongness' of dog fighting, you take this out of the football realm.

 

[AzPatsFan]

I can't believe that this post is this long and no one, save me, has even raised the question of what football talents Vick has.

He is a QB who can run. He is also a QB that can't do the fundamental thing that all Quarterbacks in the NFL must do first and foremost. He can't pass the football adequately.

So he is at best a spot duty, single wing triple threat tailback, or was; but he is already getting old and has been away from the game for a relatively long time.

No thank you , I'll take Julius Edelman, as he is the younger competition that Vick would face on the Patriots. Even Edelman has but a marginal chance to find a spot on the Team.

Why waste time discussing a guy that has no position to play with the Patriots?

 

[JMarr]

I can't believe that this post is this long and no one, save me, has even raised the question of what football talents Vick has.

He is a QB who can run. He is also a QB that can't do the fundamental thing that all Quarterbacks in the NFL must do first and foremost. He can't pass the football adequately.

So he is at best a spot duty, single wing triple threat tailback, or was; but he is already getting old and has been away from the game for a relatively long time.

No thank you , I'll take Julius Edelman, as he is the younger competition that Vick would face on the Patriots. Even Edelman has but a marginal chance to find a spot on the Team.

Why waste time discussing a guy that has no position to play with the Patriots?

Never say never. He's not a fit at QB but BB could no doubt find a way to use him if the need were great enough and the price was right. No doubt that it probably would never happen due more to Kraft's misgivings than to Belichick's. Kraft's job is PR management, Belichick's is different.

It is interesting to me that some think that there is some sort of line to be drawn (ie. being a convicted felon or "sociopath") where a player would never be considered by the Pats. Would Kaczur have been released if convicted of felony possession? Probably, but more because he's a marginal player than b/c of moral issues. I think that being a unabashed anti-semite or murderer are pretty sure bets to put you in the untouchable category, but beyond that who knows?

Most people do not equate the lives of dogs or other animals to human life, just as a majority of people believe that Vick should be given another chance.

 

[Brady'sButtBoy]

The self-righteousness of some posters here is startling. Reminds me of a quote regarding the human race - we invented forgiveness and forgive nothing.