Really? How the heck do you know. I have never said on this forum that I am, so you are blowing smoke. So, naturally, I expect you to search my older posts to find one where I declared myself an Atheist! Good luck!

I grew up in Texas, in the Church of Christ, more conservative than the Southern Baptists, and you know nothing other than the fact that I rejected the teachings of that church. Doesn't mean I don't believe in a higher power - just not the one that I was taught as a kid. I no longer take the Bible literally. So what? That makes you superior?

Padre is, IMO, a sanctimonious, hateful, and bigoted individual who is nothing like the Christian ideal that Jesus preached. I know enough about Christianity to see that in a heartbeat, and IMO he gives Christianity a bad name. And you, Emily, are always here to defend him. No surprise whatsoever that you would chime in here.

And which of my words on this post express "hate"? I made an IMO observation, nothing hateful about it. The true "hater" here is the one you incessantly defend. He hates on others all the time. Jesus would surely be proud of him, don't you think? What say you, Emily?

Really? How the heck do you know. I have never said on this forum that I am, so you are blowing smoke. So, naturally, I expect you to search my older posts to find one where I declared myself an Atheist! Good luck!

I grew up in Texas, in the Church of Christ, more conservative than the Southern Baptists, and you know nothing other than the fact that I rejected the teachings of that church. Doesn't mean I don't believe in a higher power - just not the one that I was taught as a kid. I no longer take the Bible literally. So what? That makes you superior?

Padre is, IMO, a sanctimonious, hateful, and bigoted individual who is nothing like the Christian ideal that Jesus preached. I know enough about Christianity to see that in a heartbeat, and IMO he gives Christianity a bad name. And you, Emily, are always here to defend him. No surprise whatsoever that you would chime in here.

And which of my words on this post express "hate"? I made an IMO observation, nothing hateful about it. The true "hater" here is the one you incessantly defend. He hates on others all the time. Jesus would surely be proud of him, don't you think? What say you, Emily?

That's been my observation too. He calls himself Padre and makes all these claims to righteousness but his underlying messages are always loaded with bigotry and hate. He seems to fit the archetype for theocratic politics where people exploit religion to gain political advantage - the very basis for manifestations such as the Christian Nationalists and the Islamic Resistance, which is really the same thing, just a different part of the world and a different stage of development.

If anyone wants to see where the Christian Nationalist movement will go if they are allowed to breach our secular government, they need to look no further than Hamas, Hezbollah or ISIS. These are all right-wing, conservative, theocratic movements filled with people like Padre.

You are a much better icon exactly where our nation and people are going than I am. You're a disgusting Godless perverted bastard who believes Christian values and objective leads to a theocracy all because we object to the Godless perversions you promote. We had a very workable relationship between church and State until you jackasses force fed evil issues highly objectable to people of faith into politics and destroyed the balance.. You upset the balance not people of faith. You're the effing bigots. You're stupid and arrogant enough to believe we should sit passively, our hands folded meekly in prayer, while you promote wickedness and steal souls?

You don't have to use the word "Atheist" to display that you are one. Your own words tell us that very clearly....and the things you support tell everyone that as well. You "no longer take the Bible literally" is just one example of your Atheism! Or should I call it your Apostasy...it's both, really.

straightUp wrote:
No it's not, really. Atheism is a rejection of God. You don't have to take the Bible literally to believe there is a God. That's just what some uptight religious assholes say in their attempt to own God.

EmilyD wrote:
And yes, I defend people I care about...and padre and his wife are two of them. They have been repeatedly attacked because of what padre has done all his life!

straightUp wrote:
I don't know what he did all his life. You might know him better than me. But on these anonymous sites, there is only our projections. And what he projects is arrogance, intolerance and hatred so his projection is going to get bashed.

EmilyD wrote:
And I stand by my theory that padre and several others who are faithful and have been so all their lives threaten the very fabric of your being to the point you are frightened of them and what they stand for. Which is why you feel the need to attack him.

straightUp wrote:
Not the very fabric of our being, the fabric of our secular society which we will continue to defend from false prophets and theocratic fanatics like Padre.

Brighter than you Perky. You just used up all those fancy words to tell me what I already know. All you have to do is read the chart - it actually says "annual change in inflation". If you look at the chart you will notice that the point at each year matches the year end figures that add up to your totals. But you're averaging those totals over each term which flattens out the spikes that you see in the chart due to the higher frequency of data points. It's like I'm looking at a high resolution monitor and you're on a low-resolution gameboy screen and you're telling me that MY view is inaccurate.

I will admit to one mistake... I said after 2022 the CPI went down. I meant to say the rate of change in the CPI went down, which means that for that the last two years inflation has been slowing down. And that's Biden grabbing the reins and saying whoa!

The other thing that seems to have flown right over your head is the point I made about the first year of any presidency. You're giving Biden credit for the inflation in 2021 when the budget for 2021 was signed by Trump. The year end figure for 2021 (rate of change) is 4.7% so add that to your 7.7% figure and that comes to 12.4%, but to be fair we should take the figure for 2017 out since that was under Obama's influence, that year end figure is 2.1% so now we're at 10.3% not 7.7%. Then we minus that 4.7% from Biden's total leaving us with 14.7%, not 19.4% All of a sudden, the difference doesn't seem so drastic.

BTW, the budget doesn't actually have THAT much impact on inflation but I'm using it symbolically to make a point... NO economic policy is enacted the minute a president takes office. Almost anything involving money has to go through Congress. Typically, it takes a year at least for a president's economic policies to be implemented.

This leads to my final point. Presidents (in fact, the government as a whole) has VERY little control over inflation anyway. The current inflation is the result of an economy normalizing itself after a near complete shut down. This is when demand suddenly comes back and in this case, it came back faster than the goods could be delivered which prompted players in the private sector to gouge prices. My guess is that this price gouging accounts for at least 80% of the inflation we've experienced.

So it's a bit ridiculous to keep blaming Biden for the inflation. The economic shut down that made inflation inevitable happened under Trump and it was mostly driven by greed in the private sector.

AND... blaming Biden for the inflation STILL isn't an example of something Trump did to help the American middle-class which is STILL something no one here has been able to provide.