Vick to plead quilty to dogfighting charges!

[michelle2677]

^^^ I love that that vomit smiley still has puke on his face when he is finished


and yes, i hate him too. I realize that i'll never meet him and it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things, but I have no tolerance for people who abuse animals. and for what he did-there is no punishment too great imo

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by Raeven Skye

there are a lot of african-americans here (NC) that say Vick is being "picked on" b/c he's african-american. i'm honestly, surprised, that so many people are not at all offended by what he did, but are more offended b/c they think it's a racial issue.

The NAACP was on CNN the other night defending him. Said it was "cultural." I couldn't believe my ears.

[Sarah]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

The NAACP was on CNN the other night defending him. Said it was "cultural." I couldn't believe my ears.

People that practice that "culture" need to be eradicated. Subterranean mutants.

And Michelle, as far as seeing him in person... I'd probably throw a can of gasoline on him and flick my bic. He's not worth a bullet.

[amber]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

The NAACP was on CNN the other night defending him. Said it was "cultural." I couldn't believe my ears.

That is equivalent to saying murder is "cultural", which is of course absurd, just like the NAACP defense is. Just because a culture does it, doesn't make "cultural" a defense for the action.

In other news, a guy in my office just ordered a bunch of Michael Vick dog chew toys.

[Miss Vicky]

Is it wrong that I hope the A.L.F. torches this guy's house or worse?

[gldstwmn]

NFL: Vick suspended indefinitely

No link yet, banner at top of CNN home page.

Edit:
NFL suspends 'reprehensible' Vick indefinitely
NEW YORK - NFL has suspended Michael Vick indefinitely.

The announcement came hours after the Atlanta quarterback filed a plea agreement in federal court in Richmond, Virginia. In that plea, Vick admitted to the charge of dogfighting. He denied ever betting on the fights.

In a letter sent to the Falcons quarterback, league commissioner Roger Goodell wrote, "Your admitted conduct was not only illegal, but also cruel and reprehensible. Your team, the NFL, and NFL fans have all been hurt by your actions."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20429109

[irishgrl]

one giant step for humanity, one big pratfall for "culture".

[JWS]

Vick is through with the NFL. He lost his 10 year $130 million contract. The Falcons are to go after a return of the signing bonus. Vick is the biggest moron and loser in the history of pro sports...and for nothing but dead dogs

[buckymcnix]

so let me start by saying -
I am a HUGE animal person. Huge.
i have a variety of animals.
I am by NO MEANS advocating this 'curltural' argument but i would care to discuss it more.

Cock fighting in Mexico. Cultural?
Beta fish fighting? Cultural?
Do you shoo a bug that lands on you or smash it ?

I have never known anyone who has been to or participated in dog fighting.
I think what vick did to those dogs is horrific at best and my knee jerk reaction resembles many of those expressed here, Sarah winning 'most colorful vengence' by far .
But honestly, if someone is exposed to that kind of behaviour, be it fish, roosters or dogs, then of course they don't feel it's wrong. How do we reach the people who this appeals to? How do you show someone who has already been desensitized to such violent behaviour how vile and wrong it is? I don't even have a suggestion on how to do it.

I was asked to go to cock fights in mexico and i wouldn't. I ate bugs but i wouldn't take part in the cock fights.
But i also couldn't get into an argument in a language i could barely speak about why i felt it was wrong.

anyone have thoughts on that?

[gldstwmn]

http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sp...824.html?imw=Y

Vick deeply into dogfighting, father says
QB's dad says he didn't abandon family

fights in the name of friends to avoid being implicated some day.

Michael Boddie, in two sometimes tearful interviews with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution this week, said some time around 2001 his son staged dogfights in the garage of the family's home in Newport News, Va. Boddie also said Vick kept fighting dogs in the family's backyard, including injured ones — "bit up, chewed up, exhausted" — that the father nursed back to health.

Boddie, who is estranged from his son, dismissed the idea that Vick's longtime friends were the main instigators of the dogfighting operation.

"I wish people would stop sugarcoating it," Boddie said. "This is Mike's thing. And he knows it."

He "likes it, and he has the capital to have a set up like that."

Daniel Meachum, an attorney for Vick, said his client never mentioned situations described by Boddie, nor discussed Boddie in relation to dog activities. "It's a disgrace Mr. Boddie, who chose for nearly 22 years not to be part of Mike's life, would at this time seek to capitalize on his son's current situation."

Vick's mother, Brenda Vick Boddie, who hasn't lived with her husband for the past five years, did not return calls seeking comment.

Boddie said he and the Atlanta Falcons quarterback have had a volatile relationship for years and that his son has refused to speak with him directly for the last 2 1/2 half months. Boddie said he is speaking out because he's been hurt by his son and wife's failure over the years to correct what he considers inaccurate media reports that Vick grew up without his father present.

"I've been drug through the mud," Boddie said.

He said he intends to write a damaging book about more of what he knows.

Boddie, 45, lives in a Duluth apartment that his son has paid the rent on for the last three years. Vick, who has a $130 million contract with the Falcons, also gives him a couple of hundred dollars every week or two, the father said.

Boddie wanted more. Two years ago, he said, he asked Vick for $1 million, spread out over 12 years, enough to keep him comfortable for the rest of his life. Vick declined, the father said. In recent weeks, Boddie asked Vick, through an assistant, for $700,000 to live on.

Boddie said he hasn't been contacted by federal investigators pursuing dogfighting accusations against Vick. A federal grand jury indicted Vick with one count of conspiracy to cross state lines to engage in illegal gambling; to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture; and to buy, transport and receive dogs for animal fighting.

The indictment does not mention the parents' former home in Newport News, where Boddie said he cared for Vick's pit bulls and where he said three dogfighting session were held, roughly around the time that Vick was transitioning from college football to the pros.

Earlier this week, Vick agreed to plead guilty Monday in the federal dogfighting case in Richmond. He faces prison and the possible end of his football career. Three co-defendants already pleaded guilty and were expected to testify against Vick if the case went to trial. In addition, a Virginia prosecutor is considering bringing state charges against Vick.


Anger and anguish

Boddie lives in an apartment, just a few miles from where his son lives in the upscale, gated Sugarloaf neighborhood. Posters of the football star are thumb-tacked to the walls of a guest bedroom. A picture of Vick's two young children is framed on a wall near the kitchen. Hung on a wall beside the kitchen sink is a long list entitled "Quick Drink Recipes."

In language blanketed with profanity, a sometimes sitting, sometimes pacing Boddie recounted what he said was some, but not all, of what he knows about his son. At times while discussing his wife and children, Boddie appeared to alternate between anger and anguish. His cellphone rang several times. At one point he answered, paused, unleashed an expletive-laced torrent of words and marched out of the apartment with the phone to his ear. He later said the caller was an assistant of Michael Vick's who asked what he planned to disclose to a reporter and urged him to keep quiet.

"I know some things," Boddie said. "That's why they're going crazy."

He said he's not perfect. He said he hasn't worked since 2003, went through drug rehab in 2004 paid for by his son, was sometimes high or drunk around his children when they were young, has gotten in trouble for drinking and driving and had his driver's license revoked.

"There are some things I wish I could go back and change," he said.

But Boddie said he gave Vick something that most kids didn't have in the Newport News housing projects where both grew up: "I never left his side. Never left his mother's side. And where we come from, this day and time, that's a hell of a thing."

He and Vick's mother weren't married when Michael Vick was born. But they married later and Boddie said he lived with the family from the time Vick was 3 years old until after his eldest son went to Virginia Tech to play football. He said he was usually working during Vick's youth, often on jobs sandblasting and repainting ships.

He said he is frustrated about continued suggestions that Vick was raised without a father. He said his son and wife should have set the record straight.

But in a 2001 AJC article about their son, his wife was quoted as saying that Boddie's presence in Vick's childhood "means a lot to me."

"He was always there, providing, taking care of what needed to be taken care of. Through everything, we stayed together as a family. I have a lot of respect for him for that."

But in other press reports, both Michael Vick and his mother suggested that Boddie was an emotionally distant father. He "never paid that much attention to me," Vick said, according to a Sports Illustrated story in 2000.

Boddie said that, over the last year, his son has been disrespecting him, "talking to me like I'm one of his . . . dogs."

Boddie said he's tried to look out for his son. Around 2002, while at Vick's rural property near Smithfield, Va., he warned his son.

"I told him basically, 'You don't need to be doing this. You got bigger fish to fry. You got more important things that you can do.' "

Boddie recalled telling his son to transfer the property to the name of one of his friends: " 'Take this place right now, put it in one of their names because if anything goes wrong . . . it's you they coming after.' "

Boddie said he doesn't recall his son's reply.

Boddie also said dogfighting occurred at the family's Newport News home on Terrace Drive. The family was in the house for about a year or more as Vick moved from playing college football at Virginia Tech to the pros.

Boddie said he cleaned out the home's garage three times in 2001 to make room for dogfighting sessions held by Vick and his friends.

"I hung around long enough to actually walk in there when an actual dogfight was going on," Boddie said, but he added that he didn't stay long.

"It wasn't my thing," he said.

He said he had already witnessed test fights of dogs — in which dogs battle to see how well a prospective fighter will perform.

"It's really something to stand there and watch. You have to have the stomach for it," he said.

Boddie said Michael Vick kept pit bulls in eight cages in the backyard of the Terrace Drive home.

However, a neighbor, Willie-Mae Hansell, said she only saw one dog at the house, and never heard anything unusual there.

"I fed the dogs," Boddie said. "I've nursed them back to health, dogs that have been in fights. Raised litters of puppies."

The injured dogs could barely muster up enough strength to eat at first, he said.

Boddie contends that Vick's mother was aware of the dogfighting and said he heard her tell her son to stop it.

Boddie said of his son: "I think he basically told her, 'OK, Mama. OK, I'll stop.' "

Boddie said he wasn't aware of any dogfighting in the Newport News projects when Vick grew up there. The closest he recalled was kids being fascinated as dogs chased stray cats in a nearby lumber yard.

He said that, despite his earlier warnings to his son, he never expected Vick would someday face the dogfighting troubles he is in now.

"I thought he would have gotten out of it by then, gotten it out of his system."

[Sarah]

Hey Mike. Even your dad thinks you're a worthless sack of crap. Go crawl back under your rock and die. Mutant. But, you know, his dad should be flogged too. I wouldn't clean out my damn garage so they'd have a place to do it if I didn't approve. Spineless bastard.

And bucky... setting someone on fire transcends all language barriers.

As a side note.. $130 million? Are you effing kidding me? I knew it was a lot, but Jesus Christ. There's too much going on in the world for these meatheads to make 9 figures for what they do. I'm not saying it's not strenuous on the players or enjoyed by fans. I'm just saying there are starving people in this country, let alone the rest of the world, and these mf'ers are making ridiculous dough for a GAME. Even the lower level players who "don't make a lot" make a lot compared to, you know, real jobs. Like teachers. The priorities here are completely whack and I absolutely detest professional sports for this reason. It makes me sick a little bit.

[Sarah]

And now, it's DMX's turn to get busted for cruelty. Again.

Pit bulls taken from rapper DMX’s home
By Eva Wolchover
Saturday, August 25, 2007

A dozen “distressed” pit bulls were taken from rapper/actor DMX’s home in Cave Creek, Ariz., yesterday, according to a Phoenix television station.
Along with the dogs, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department found a large cache of weapons in the raid. DMZ, whose real name is Earl Simmons, was reportedly not at home during the raid, KPNX-TV reported.
In 2002, Simmons pleaded guilty to the cruel treatment of 13 pit bulls in New Jersey. He avoided jail time by agreeing to make a public service announcement against animal cruelty.
The rapper has a long rap sheet, including a string of convictions for drugs and weapons possession. In 1999, he was arrested on charges of stabbing and shooting his mother. He was eventually cleared.

Here's a link to a full story with pictures and video. http://www.kpho.com/news/13970298/detail.html#

FEED AND WATER YOUR DOGS, PRICK.

I'm not sorry to say... if these guys think this is their "culture", they deserve every nasty label/word that they're called. Their lack of decency disgusts me and makes me forget about my own decency. Truth be told, if they were on fire in a ditch, I'd pee on them just so I could say that I did, then I'd set them on fire again. I'm serious you guys, I'm about to blow a gasket. This **** is making me so goddamn mad every day; I just can't get over it.

[David]

It will be interesting to see whether Michael, when his jail time is served, gets into a pro football league again, NFL or other. I guess the deciding factor any league would have to settle is whether Michael has a fan base at that point. I can't imagine any team wanting to pull a player aboard -- no matter how great a player he is -- if there is going to be extreme public refusal to accept that player as part of the team. A team has to sell itself, after all, in many different ways. It's a business, as we all know, & it relies on marketing its products. But if the majority of the football public is still vehemently anti-Michael Vick, what league would sign him? What would be the purpose if there were no revenue in it?

[JWS]

Originally Posted by David

It will be interesting to see whether Michael, when his jail time is served, gets into a pro football league again, NFL or other. I guess the deciding factor any league would have to settle is whether Michael has a fan base at that point. I can't imagine any team wanting to pull a player aboard -- no matter how great a player he is -- if there is going to be extreme public refusal to accept that player as part of the team. A team has to sell itself, after all, in many different ways. It's a business, as we all know, & it relies on marketing its products. But if the majority of the football public is still vehemently anti-Michael Vick, what league would sign him? What would be the purpose if there were no revenue in it?

On ESPN the talk is Vick play again in the NFL, but not as QB after a three year layoff. He'll be a part time RB and KO/punt returns.

[buckymcnix]

Originally Posted by David

It will be interesting to see whether Michael, when his jail time is served, gets into a pro football league again, NFL or other. I guess the deciding factor any league would have to settle is whether Michael has a fan base at that point. I can't imagine any team wanting to pull a player aboard -- no matter how great a player he is -- if there is going to be extreme public refusal to accept that player as part of the team. A team has to sell itself, after all, in many different ways. It's a business, as we all know, & it relies on marketing its products. But if the majority of the football public is still vehemently anti-Michael Vick, what league would sign him? What would be the purpose if there were no revenue in it?

There always seems to be some team that is low enough on cash and fans that they are willing to go for a gimmick/"any press is good press" type of situation.

Although he was dumb enough to put that huge contract at risk, i bet he is smart enough to come out of his sentence a "changed man full of apologies and a new understanding into the pain he has called".

Whether this attitude change is for real or just for the hopes of getting back in the game will be subject of much debate i am sure. I really hope he can change his view of dog fighting and what constitutes animal cruelty.

If he can get his foot in the door again with some team it will be a Public Relations Miracle for him but , in this day of paris hilton, nicole richie and insertyourfavoritenotalentcelebrityhere I think P.R. miracles are easier to come by these days. Sadly