That said, a salary cap does not mean that every team has the same resources to spend on talent. Take my Buffalo Sabres. They had been operating on the cheap, spending under the salary cap and skimping on player development. And, being surprisingly competitive. That is changing with new ownership; the salary cap is the same, but the team is getting more resources to spend on talent.

As for Rays/Blackhawks, I was thinking of what happened to the Blackhawks after they won the Cup; they had to shed a lot of players to get under the cap, while protecting their cyoung core of talent. The Rays have developed a lot of young talent, but haven’t show that they can keep it.

Automatic is a great album but my favorite is still, after all these years, Lifes Rich Pageant.

I’ve listened to it since it was first released and the music holds up well to this day.

I also agree with Craig’s opinion regarding Troy Davis, his execution was a monstrous injustice and the death penalty itself is a cruel and barbaric practice that does not deter crime, is applied in a racially biased manner and only serves to escalate the cycle of violence in the United States.

I awoke this morning pondering this very thought. Thanks for laying my mind’s eye’s thoughts out on the blog once again, Craig. It’s a lot to do with why I keep coming back. Now, if you’d just cheer up about the Braves a little and hold hope for them, we’d be on the complete same page.

As far as the death penalty is concerned as a whole, I really struggle with it. What’s the proper punitive measure for someone that willfully and pre-meditatedly kills someone? On some level, I think it has to be the death penalty. And in the context of murder, the death penalty is as mitigatory as it is punitive. It’s giving someone what they did to someone else.

But philosophically, it’s a harder argument for me. I tell my daughter all the time that two wrongs don’t make a right. Killing someone doesn’t negate the crime that they committed against someone else, and to that end, I have a really hard time sanctioning the death penalty.

1) Insane and looking for an insane plea or

2) Represented by a stupid and incompetent lawyer.

But yeah, Sonic Youth is right there with REM in terms of “relevance”/influence.

Fwiw, Accelerate is solid. And it topped charts in 2008, not 20 years ago. I’m a Keith Law fan, but I thought that comment reeked of holier-than-thou hipsterism, especially considering it came from a self-proclaimed old-school hip-hop guy. Eric B. and Rakim haven’t exactly been relevant for 20 years either, homes.

Yankees (Red Wings), yes, wealthy, well-managed teams.

Rays (Sharks), don’t think so. The Sharks are what the Braves were, top-notch regular season, not so much post-season. Same for the Capitals. The Rays analog may be the Blackhawks, lots of young talent but couldn’t afford to keep the team together. (It has something to do with the NHL has salary cap.)

A couple of others:

Cubs (Rangers), rich teams who overspent on overage talent. The Rangers are getting younger; let’s see what the Cubs do under their new GM.

Twins (Sabres; disclaimer — Sabres fan), teams that compete without big payrolls. Though they’re going in opposite directions. The Twins are going down the tubes, while the Sabres have a new owner who’s willing to spend the money to upgrade the talent.

It’s a pretty compelling argument, though, that a state governments can’t be trusted to build a decent overpass or tender a contract in a fair manner, but they are infallible when it comes to judging guilt and bumping people off.

Still not sure what American Idol is, though.

Unfortunately, if they never carried the death penalty out, then the threat of it would never have any power.

Different things make different people tick. And different rationalizations make people choose alternate paths. You and I would never come close to committing an act like this, and not just because of the consequences – but because we are moral people.

What I am trying to say is that in the specific examples you mention, there is no deterrent. The punishment is only going to be for retribution (I’m afraid) after the act has been committed.

Also, compare the rates of capital crimes committed in death-penalty states with those in non-death penalty states and countries. They aren’t significantly lower. The death penalty as deterrence doesn’t work.

I believe that anyone who murders a cop or a child should get the death penalty. Because those two crimes need the death penalty as the ultimate punishment to give people pause before they are done. Not for retribution and not eye for an eye type of stuff. For determent. The problem is that Right-wing nuts try to apply it to everything from shooting your spouse in the heat of the moment when you find him/her in bed with another man or something crazy like that. All murders should not be punishable by death…but if you kill a cop and you should not be allowed to breath the same air the rest of us do. Period. Those guys put their lives on the line every time they kiss their wives or husbands goodbye at night.

Let’s be serious, he’s far more likely to push Ron Gant in.

McNulty’s fake wake on The Wire with that song playing is (IMO) one of the most emotional closes to a TV show in history.