I think it would be a mistake to pay Purdy. He has been great for a seventh round pick that we only have to pay $1 million a year. If we have to pay him $50 million+ a year, his value proposition completely changes. I don't want to get locked into a mediocre QB for several years. It's time to move on.

Hey, remember when we drafted Solomon Thomas instead of Patrick Mahomes?

As of writing this, Purdy has a QB rating of 7.9.

No, it's worse.

Looks like it's going to be a close, mostly defensive game, just like the Superbowl.

If my pay rate doesn't automatically increase to match inflation, then any inflation is bad from the consumer perspective

That's the thing, economists will say that modest inflation is fine, necessary even, but it's only "fine" for people whose income increases every year at a rate that is at least equal to the rate of inflation. Anyone who doesn't get a raise that at least keeps up with inflation is actually getting a pay cut. Many people do get at least a cost of living raise every year, but many people don't, and those people get poorer every year.

But even people who are lucky enough to have an income that keeps up with inflation are just staying in place financially. They're not getting any poorer, but they're not getting any richer either. Working your ass off in a job that slowly kills your soul, just to run in place, doesn't make people feel great about things.

As was the case in all western economies, inflation surged in the US...The US was less exposed than Europe to higher gas prices and the peak in inflation was lower at 9.1% than in the eurozone (10.6%) and the UK (11.1%) and has subsequently declined to 2.4%...But prices in the US are markedly higher than they were when Biden entered the White House as president and it is this, rather than the current inflation rate, that appears to have affected the public mood.

That's the thing. Economists only focus on the rate of inflation, as if people will be indifferent to inflation so long as the year-over-year rate of increase is low enough. But even at a relatively low annual inflation rate of between 2% and 3%, consumers are going to realize after only a few years that things have gotten noticably more expensive, especially if the price increases effect big monthly necessities, like rent, food, and energy. A lower inflation rate doesn't mean prices are going down, it just means prices aren't going up as quickly. Things are still getting more expensive, and they're going to continue to get more expensive, forever. That's the plan, that's how our monetary system works. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Like I said, it's a good thing the good guys have the world's largest navy so they can police these waters.

Well, it's just a good thing the good guys are the ones with the biggest navy. Let's hope it stays that way forever.

In my part of the US, we tend to see more severe weather during la Nina than El nino. That doesn't mean there isn't any severe weather during El nino, just usually not as much. During the last la Nina, the severe weather was quite significant, with some storms spawning multiple, highly destructive tornadoes.

"U.S. Central Command forces conducted multiple airstrikes on numerous Iran-backed Houthi weapons storage facilities within Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen," a U.S. defense official said.

The defense official said the weapons were used to "target military and civilian vessels navigating international waters throughout the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden."

But the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden aren't anywhere near US territory.

In the U.S., the Northeast and Ohio Valley typically see wetter than normal conditions with an active storm track due to the position of the jet stream

Welp, here come the tornadoes.

We differ on a salient point I think. You view progressives as radicals.

I really don't, and that's not the point that I'm making at all. I'm saying, the majority of American voters view progressives as radicals. Bernie Sanders and AOC, and any other politician who identifies as a socialist, Democratic or otherwise, as well as politicians who advocate for Medicare for All, a green new deal, etc, are seen by a majority of American voters as radicals. That's what I'm saying.

American's support "progressive" policy when it's not framed as a political question.

That article you linked to supports my point. From the article:

Consider: Ordinary people in both parties turn out to like ordinary people in the other party well enough. In a 2021 study in the Journal of Politics, researchers found that when a person in one political party was asked what they think of someone in the other party, their answer was pretty negative. That certainly sounds like polarization. But it turns out the “someones” respondents had in mind were partisans holding forth on cable news.

If told the truth—that a typical member of the opposite party actually holds moderate views and talks about politics only occasionally—the animus dissolved into indifference. And if told that the same moderate person only rarely discusses politics, the sentiment edged into the positive zone. These folks might actually get along.

“There are people who are certainly polarized,” says Yanna Krupnikov, a study co-author now at the University of Michigan. “They are 100% polarized. They deeply hate the other side. They are extraordinarily loud. They are extraordinarily important in American politics.” But those people, she adds, are not typical Americans. They are people who live and breathe politics—the partisans and activists whom academics refer to in this context as elites.

That hardly recommends today’s politics, and goes a long way toward explaining why many people avoid partisans. “They dislike people who are ­really ideologically extreme, who are very politically invested, who want to come and talk to them about politics,” says Matthew Levendusky, a University of Pennsylvania professor of political science.

But, yes, moderates can, like progressives, want to improve the healthcare system and address climate change. Where they differ is in how they would go about it, and I think most moderates would prefer to go about addressing those issues by making as few radical changes as possible.

There's a theory called the Overton Window and Dems moving to the center has shifted this whole country to the right.

I don't agree. I don't think Democrats shifted anything, they were just going where the voters were. Democrats have to win elections and that requires getting people to vote for you. The Democrats didn't shift voters to the right, the voters shifted Democrats to the right.

We lost abortion rights because of it

I think abortion rights are a winning issue for Democrats, but not because it's an exclusively progressive policy. I think abortion rights is a very popular policy among moderates.

If you want to look at a winning strategy that directly refutes your point look at FDR.

I'm talking about where American voters are today, not where they were 80 or 90 years ago, and today I think a majority of Americans are politically moderate.

I think progressives tend to overestimate their numbers. Maybe Millennials and Gen z are moving the needle a little further to the left, but I don't think it's as much as many progressives want to believe. There are many millions of Americans under 40 who are moderate, center right, or right wing. The US in general is further right than most other democracies, I would say. In fact, I think the US overall is center to center right. For this reason, I think it is generally a losing strategy for the Democrats to prioritize progressive policies, especially in the presidential election.

Most progressives live in deep blue states; states that are going to go for the Democrats regardless. Whereas, the states that matter, the swing states/purple states are much more moderate. Those are the states the Democrats have to focus on, because of how our election system works. For this reason alone, it makes more sense for Democrats to try and court moderates, at least in the presidential election. But, it's probably true of Congress as well. I think moderate candidates do better in most states and congressional districts than progressive candidates.

It brings me no joy saying this. I'm politically left, I would estimate further left than the majority of Americans. I have been advocating for radical changes for years, but it's mostly fallen on deaf ears, and some of my fellow Americans have been aggressively hostile to the ideas I've been advocating for. Americans, generally, like capitalism, they like class hierarchies, and hierarchies in general, because they believe that some people are just inherently superior to others, and that doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon.

Fedora, so missionary position, but the lights are on and we're on top of the covers.

The constitution went from a living document to a fossilized document.

I really don't think Israel is going to be a deciding factor in this election. Both parties support Israel (so it's not a point of differentiation between the two parties/candidates) and most Americans don't know or care about what's going in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, etc.

I've noticed that a lot of economists, in the US at least, don't seem to care all that much about the Nobel prize in economics. I've mentioned Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel in economics for her work on possible solutions to the tragedy of the commons, and most have never heard of her, or her findings. There's also Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winning economist that most American economists don't seem to like or respect. I guess the prize just doesn't impress very many American economists anymore.