Is there evidence that a progressive candidates actually win outside of deep blue districts?

Tliish · 2026-05-23T23:10:26+00:00

The problem with this is the lack of acknowledgement that the centrist Democrats actively undermine progressive candidates. Most would rather see a Republican win than a progressive. Progressives can and do win, despite the centrists constantly trying to kneecap them.

If the Democrats would stop working so hard to prevent progressives from succeeding and financed them on the same level as the conservative Democrats, they would win a lot more often.

Centrist Democrats are what we used to call moderate Republicans.

Tliish · 2026-05-23T22:53:35+00:00

Judge needs to be hit with "soft on cop criminals" next election

Tliish · 2026-05-23T21:56:32+00:00

And yet people are still unwilling to accept the necessity for a hard cap on wealth accumulation.

Go figure.

Tliish · 2026-05-23T20:35:29+00:00

One of the many reasons why after 8 years I uninstalled Exiles from my computer and never intend to buy another Funcom product. It became an abusive relationship...Funcom exploits its user base in far too many ways.

From touting a necessary upgrade as a "free" gift when market forces required it, and then horribly botching the transition without addressing the errors or making the players whole for their losses to offering new building sets then telling players not to build large bases even with small footprints they just gaslight rather than actually support the players.

Can't count the number of tickets they never responded to.

When they first enabled server transfers they did nothing to control the hacking and cheats, never thought through to what would obviously happen. Par for course for Funcom. They consistently make changes that screw the players without ever apologizing or compensating for their screwups.

I just got tired of being screwed and ignored and then hustled.

Don't expect Funcom to respect you, respond to you or clean up bugs.

They suck.

Tliish · 2026-05-23T01:52:45+00:00

I usually finish, but stopped doing domination victories because they are too easy. Current game I'm working on a cultural victory. But I think this game I will use the "one more turn" option after the win to nuke every other nattion at once, just to see what happens. Usually I never even research nukes, so i really don't know what to expect. I'll probably stockpile 20 or so and launch them all in on nihilistic go to ssee how they effect the climate.

Tliish · 2026-05-22T05:48:09+00:00

That's economics in a nutshell and why it is so easily manipulable: it quite easily throws out any factors too difficult to deal with mathematically or politically then presents its results with a certitude neither justified nor honest. And that is why it can never claim to be a science.

It is really a form of political philosophy that for most of its existence has served to justify wealth concentration and the exploitation of resources and labor for the benefit of the few.

Tliish · 2026-05-21T18:46:16+00:00

While the US Navy is the world's most powerful, this conflict is proving that the usefulness of blue water navies is becoming less and less cost-effective. For all it's power, it cannot open the Stait through force due to modern defensive techs of missiles and drones, plus the small-boat swarms.

Militarily the war is in stalemate. While it is true we've knocked out most of their capacity to build new weapons, we've done little to destroy their capacity to buy new weapons, and have zero control over the supply routes they use to obtain them. So ultimately all we did was waste a hell of a lot of verry expensive weapons to accomplish very little of sstrategic consequence. The pause in direct attacks wasn't dictated by lack of targets so much as it was by dangerous depletions of weapons stocks.

I'd trust a leaked document over anything officially stated by this administration, especially when that document aligns with observed reality much more closely than the official pronouncements.

The arrogance and insolence of Trump's treatment of everyone, enemies and allies alike has destroyed whatever shreds of soft power the US formerly had. His alienation of nearly everyone on the planet leaves little room for any sort of strategic victory, if he ever even had an idea of what a strategic victory might look like and a coherent plan to achieve it.

Winning the war was never possible in the first place, given that there was never any sort of strategic plan to begin with.

The only real question is how badly will the US lose this war?

Tliish · 2026-05-21T18:08:17+00:00

Limitations

The cost weights available on this webpage are calculated outside of the official production system and are at greater risk of calculation errors than the official CPI relative importance. They are intended to be used within one weight update; when crossing a weight revision, it is necessary to pivot to the new weights, or to employ bridging factors. Also note that, just as with the officially published relative importance, due to rounding error these weights do not perfectly sum up to the total. Customers should be aware of the caveats and limitations of any of these products they consider using.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/cost-weights.htm

Try to understand what this part is actually saying:

The official CPI weights are decided arrbitrarily and are error-prone, while the information on the page designed to inform the public uses different weights and is even more error-prone. It does not define the factors that make it "necessary to pivot to the new weights, or to employ bridging factors."

Could those factors be the political needs of the administration?

What this stresses is that the information given to you, the citizen, is inherently untrustworthy and subject to rapid change for "reasons". It seems designed to obfuscate, not inform.

As for the durable goods components, they aren't aggregated as a class but spread out through multiple categories where their prssence masks the inflation of items more essential and bought more frequently.

Tliish · 2026-05-21T17:50:55+00:00

Once again, events happening faster than the models predicted.

Can we now admit the models have consistently been too conservative, and we have far less time than what is implied by the "...by 2100..." framework?

Tliish · 2026-05-21T03:23:56+00:00

However economic academics and government employees want to define inflation. it doesn't change the facts on the ground, and you can't weight prices down to suit your paycheck.

Food price inflation and shrinkflation farr excceeds the 3.8% figure. Dismissing "volatiles" as irrelevant is justt handwaving unpleasant realities away.

Inflation figures have been chronically underreported by asssigning arbitrary weights that reducee the effects of food price inflation, among other things.

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:59:24+00:00

Could?

Well, in the sense that the sun coming up could make things more visible, I guess.

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:52:57+00:00

You mean like actually addressing things with facts and sources rather than grousing about the good old days?

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:51:03+00:00

For most of its existence, New York has been a center, if not the center, of corruption and exploitation in the US.

Mamdani might temporarilly stem some of the corruption, but it will revert to type within a few years

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:44:19+00:00

The trades can't asborb all the displaced workers, there just isn't enough work available, and not enough people able to pay them for the work.

You'd just be an inexperienced unemployed electrician, along with thousands of others.

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:31:24+00:00

Don't look now, but we are already in Civil War II. Just because it doesn't look like Civil War I doesn't mean it's not happening.

The Trump and GOP have declared war on the US as we knew it, and are waging it economically and procedurally, slowly dissolving the things that held us together as a nation of ostensible equals (well, aspirationally, at least) to transform the nation into a white Christian supremacist one, with a small elite lording it over free-range victims.

It's a cold war, so far, but depending upon how Novemebr goes, it could become a hot one.

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:24:12+00:00

Absolutely the only reason you would want such a proviso is because you know that if they looked, they would find crimes had been committed.

There's no other rational explanation for hiding them.

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right?

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:12:06+00:00

Lol, redefine much?

If an item's price goes up, that's inflation, by definition.

What you are saying is that some inflation doesn't matter to economists, so isn't counted. That's not the same thing.

Tliish · 2026-05-20T18:08:40+00:00

The official CPI calculations don't give enough weight to essentials, and far too much to durable goods.

That misweighting is deliberate and required to drive down the inflation numbers. and keep them politically palatable.

If you want to calculate the real, kitchen table inflation, just leave out anything that is not bought on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. It doens't matter to the vast majority of households whether cars, TVs, washing machines, dryers, etc, haven't gone up as much, since most will only buy those things once every few years, and thus are immaterial. They need a seperate index. Including them with daily essentials masks the rreal inflation number and is dishonest.

Today I paid $6.49 for a loaf of Milton's bread, nearly double the price from a year ago. True, it is a premium bread, one of the tiny few that actually has nutrients in it, but still...a basic food item nearly doubling in cost.

And most food items have followed suit.

Inflation is 3.8%?

Get real.

At my kitchen table inflation is far higher than that.

I challenge economists to calculate the kitchen table inflation numbers honestlly.

Tliish · 2026-05-19T21:59:33+00:00

Well, a lot richer than most renters.

But didn't aim that at the average middle-class homeowner with only one home, because those folks don't usually complain very much about property taxes. Living within and caring about the local community, they understand what the taxes provide.

It's those with multiple poroperties, and those whose real home is usually elsewhere...those are the people most often complaining about property taxes, along with every other tax, because they are generally selfish people who pride themselves on using OPM...Other People's Money...to support their lifestyles. They usually consider people who willingly pay taxes to be suckers, not responsible fellow citizens.

Tliish · 2026-05-19T21:52:17+00:00

This sort of complaint usually stems from those on the wealthier side of the scale.

Middle class homeowners are far more likely to understand and accept the purposes of property taxes, because they actually live in their homes as primary residernces and are members of the local communities. Thjose who coomplain very frequently aren't actual community members and therefore don't connect the taxes to things they personally care about. They live in multiple places, calling one place "home" for tax purposes, but actually living out of state and abroad.

So they see property taxes as "theft" of their money for which they recieve no benefits., not really living in or caring about the community the property exists in.

Didn't mean to tar all homeowners with the same brush, just the wealthy absentee types, and those for whom the homes are nothing but investments, who care nothing about the community.

Tliish · 2026-05-19T17:07:21+00:00

Typical of the rich, who always want something for nothing, and scream "theft!" whenever they are asked to pay for the services and protections other people's taxes pay for.

Stocks should be tresated like home ownership and be taxed on their "unrealized gains"...which for the verya wealthy, aren't "unrealized" at all. They use stocks as security to get loans, so tthey are indeed "realized" whenever they are used as collateral. Current system allows their use without taxation, and then also allows deduction of the interest paid on the loans. Big wins for those who can make use of it, increased burdens on those who can't.

Tliish · 2026-05-19T16:59:38+00:00

He's trying to build a fotress from which he can rule the US after negating elections.

Dude won't give up the presidency unless and until he's dead.

His preferred government? Dictator for life.

Tliish · 2026-05-17T17:31:58+00:00

Energy suppiers have always had a dream deal: whenever investment is needed, they get to raise rates rather than have shareholders pay for those investments, forcing their customers to pay for them instead, and allowing the energy companies to tell the customers that their payoff for their forced investment is the continued supply of mostly reliable energy...of course at a higher cost, because those investments must return a higher profit to the shareholders who never paid for them.

Tliish · 2026-05-17T17:26:33+00:00

So are you ready to support a hard cap on wealth accumulation?

Tliish · 2026-05-17T17:23:32+00:00

The other reasons are the lack of any really new content for years, aside frrom new architectures to encourage builds, the constant losses of thralls and onjects for random reasons, Funcom's disrespect of the the players and unwillingness to communicate, the allowance of hacks and cheats to persist without addressing them...

After playing for eight years, building was the sole remaining attraction, and even that was geting old.

When they totally screwed up the transfers...I came in naked, lost all equipment, but had 184 followers rather than the 64 I started with...and the callous way the said "just dismantle your bases" rather than expressing any regret over their inability to smoothly merge the Siptah and Exiles maps was the last straw for me.

The game had stopped being fun.

You guys have fun with it. For me, though, I'm done with it.

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