You KNOW I take that as a compliment, right? Anytime I get you all riled up and you're hissing with insults I KNOW I'm on the right track.


LOL - whatever makes you feel better, Scooter.

That's because your sh.t is old and fake.


Incorrect. I am certainly not Godless and you have no authority to tell me any different. So get over it. As for Christian values... whether or not they lead to theocracy depends on how you're defining them. Some Christian values come from Jesus and some come from Rome.


What balance? If there should be a balance between common sense and faith it belongs in the home, within the family. At the state level, there should only be common sense. Faith is too absurd to govern modern populations.


Yes, that sounds like a good idea. You just sit with your hands folded in your pious tower of stone, all stuffed with hate and bitterness and the rest of us are going to celebrate love and freedom and Party OUT!

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.


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.


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.

Hamas has the same list of grievances... they oppose abortion and all sexual expressions outside the "God-given" rules of marriage. You'd fit right in.


Again, the same EXACT declarations heard by Islamic extremists. They are the so-called champions of traditional morals and defenders of what is righteous and what is sacred and it's their love for their country that inspires them to replace liberal policies and western influence with moral tradition. Iran's theocracy even has a moral police force.


Your opposition to a woman's right to choose makes your talk of free will and free choice cheap to say the least.


You're not a retired priest... Don't you know lying is a sin?


Well then... you're a dumb evil son of a bitch. Are you getting the point?


You said it.


For most secularists it's working out just fine. We have morals based on very simple rules, like treating others with respect. Some of us get these morals from a wide range of religious guides, including the Bible, the Koran and the Tanakh. Some of us get them from our parents, or from teachers in public schools or our peers growing up and some of us can simply figure it out.

We don't all need to be corralled by religious doctrines and the ONLY reason for the Original Sin is to scare people into submission.


The only thing I know about a Marxist Democratic party is that it's a delusion suffered by idiots who have no clue what Marxism is. But I do know plenty of real Christians that vote Democratic.

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.

"wise" is an adjective, dumbass. If you didn't drop out of school, you would know to use the word "wisdom".

Funny as hell that you're so eager to tell people that they aren't too bright and yet you can't even get the one sentence in your post right.

Aw... what's the matter Karen? Are the bad people agreeing with each other?


Looks like you ejaculated prematurely. I just addressed your misinterpreted "facts"

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.

Thank you '66... Of course I do realize that most people on the alt-right will tune-out pretty quick and depending on who is online, there could be a rash of insults. But I never take any of that personally and I don't write for them anyway so it really doesn't matter what they come back with. On occasion a few of them will make the attempt to actually have a decent discussion. In any case, its nice to get a compliment here and there, so much appreciated.

Dunning Kruger... that's funny. Very applicable though... I've always said democracy requires a certain level of competence... watching Trump supporters vote is a bit like watching monkeys operate a nuclear submarine.

Just do a search on straightUp ;) ('kidding) Most browsers support an AI "co-pilot" these days. You could use that to read the result page and ask the AI to grade the style. That's what I would try short of coding something.

Yeah, it works really well. It puts the results in a single page that includes links to each individual post. I can share it if you're interested. Here's a snapshot of the results page.

Yes, but I'm going to stop your right there because your personal budget is far more influenced by your own personal decisions than anything a president does. I mean, why is it that in 2012, your budget was only $2900.00 and mine was $8600.00? I'm going to guess it's because my income was higher which allowed me to commit to more financial obligations. I would credit my higher salary to decisions *I* made as well as my commitments to greater financial obligations.

Try to stick with things like the consumer price index which takes all your personal decisions out of the equation.


Look, I understand the pain of inflation and I get that it's a frustration for a lot of Americans today, including myself but just blindly throwing the blame at the president isn't going to help you. If anything, it will keep you from understanding what the actual problem is.

First of all, prices NEVER remain flat for decades at a time. If you're a grown adult, you should know that.

Secondly, the economy in the first year of any presidency is ALWAYS influenced by the previous president. Trump took office in 2017... Guess who signed the 2017 budget? Obama did. Biden took office in 2021. Guess who signed the 2021 budget? Trump did.

That being said, your numbers are actually working against your argument because you stated that between 2012 and 2016 your personal budget went up by $100. That was under Obama's budget. Then you state that your personal budget went up again, between 2020 and 2021, by $150... ($50 more than before) and THAT was under Trump's budget. THEN you say it went up by ANOTHER $150 between 2021 and 2024, which was under Biden but where under Trump, it only took one year to go up by $150, it took three years to go up by that much under Biden. So clearly, Trump is your worst bet.

Now, like I said using your personal budget does well to illustrate your bottom line and that's what should really matter to us as middle-class workers but it doesn't give us a clear read on presidential influence.

That being said, there are a LOT of things that influence the cost of living that has NOTHING to do with who is sitting in the White House. The pandemic for instance had a massive influence on the economy that eclipses the influence of a president entirely and that isn't just limited to depressions created by a pandemic but the inevitable inflation that comes recovery.

You said that the cost of living was flat until Biden came along. Well, Biden came along in 2021 and like I said, Trump signed the budget for 2021 and trust me I would LOVE to blame Trump for that spike but I know that despite Trump signing the budget for "the year that Biden came along", the pandemic was a far greater influence. This is also why I don't blame Trump for the economic shut down in 2020. By contrast, you are chomping at the bit to blame Biden.


Hate to tell you this (not really) but you're flat wrong. Here's a chart showing us the Consumer Price Index over all the years in question...


As you can see, almost ALL of the increase in the CPI actually occurred during the years that Trump's budget was in operation... 2020 and 2021. It actually peaked at the end of that year. Biden's budget took over in 2022 and what do we see? A decline in the CPI.

So the FACT is... Under Trump's policies inflation went up. Under Biden's policies inflation started to come down. But this is how Trump leverages the ignorance of his base, by letting you remain ignorant about the federal budget while stirring up emotions about the hated "Brandon".


Well now that I've exposed that little detail about the federal budget, we can see that inflation actually happened under Trump's influence, not Biden and yes, the data shows that Trump was in fact the worst out of all three. But again, I cite the pandemic as a far greater influence, so Trump get a pass on this one. Even though I think the pandemic itself would have had less influence if Obama or Biden was in charge when it happened.



Another one? I was asking someone to provide ONE thing that Trump DID to help the middle-class American. So far that hasn't happened. Instead, you reverted to attacks on Biden. Ranting about how Biden did this or that is not showing me what Trump did to help us.


OK... FINALLY an example of what Trump actually did. Too bad it's wrong. So I guess I'll have to explain this one too.

Trump didn't actually "secure the border" until the pandemic hit. That's when we did what most other countries were doing at the time. We closed the border BECAUSE of the pandemic. That's what the provision in Title 42 was... a TEMPORARY shut down that was NEVER meant to be permanent. It was one of the two gifts that the pandemic gave Trump... an inevitable recovery and inflation that he could try to blame on Biden and an automatic shutdown of the border that he could pretend was his solution to "securing" it.

So it's not really anything Trump actually did. Congress had already created Title 42 and it was automatically enacted in response to the pandemic. All Trump did was pretend it was all him and of course no one believed him except for those who were ignorant about the details, which of course includes his base.

After the pandemic Title 42 was lifted (as it was always planned) and we were back to business as usual, with one small difference. There were a LOT more immigrants at the border. Part of that was the backlog of immigrants that piled up when Title 42 was enacted but by far the biggest reason is that people were (and still are) migrating out of Venezuela and the reason for that is pretty obvious to anyone who looks... Trump. Venezuela was already hurting economically because of some bad management but when Trump slapped sanctions on the country it collapsed entirely and now the people can't even find food.

So while Trump didn't do shit for us, he certainly did something for the Venezuelans... He destroyed their county and now the people of that country are knocking on our door. Most immigrants at the border are in fact from Venezuela and the numbers are breaking records.

The other thing I have to ask is this... What makes you think that shutting out the immigrants actually helps middle-class Americans? That was actually part of my question... to explain HOW the action taken actually helped the middle-class.

So... I still have yet to see ANYONE provide just ONE example of what Trump actually DID to help us.

So we're back to the MAGA tradition of shooting in the dark.

Where in that sign do you see the word "illegal"?

First of all, not ALL immigrants are "illegal". In fact, there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant. They are either documented or undocumented. If they are undocumented it means they crossed the border illegally which is WHY they didn't get documented... OR because they let their temporary documentation (work visas) expire. Either way, without valid documentation they can't actually get legitimate jobs, which means they aren't included in that big number you got there.

So you are following the MAGA tradition here of making bold accusations based on data you don't understand. Well done.

Yes, I do. I asked you to explain ONE thing that Trump did to help the middle-class and you decided to point out that gas prices went up during the Trump administration causing the price of everything else to increase. So can you explain HOW that helps the middle-class?

Also, looking at the graph... I can see that you are correct in that gasoline was at $2.25/gallon at the end of Obama's term in 2016 and then went up under Trump until the pandemic hit then it dropped again. I'm going to say that had more to do with the pandemic than Trump policy. I would say the same for the sudden rise after the pandemic during Biden's first year when the economy was recovering. But what's interesting is how under Biden the prices started to fall again. Interesting because I can see the prices fall under Obama and I can see the prices fall under Biden, but under Trump the only time it fell was during the pandemic.

Maybe you need a different chart because this one is working far better for my argument than it is for yours.

As for my original challenge. I'm not going to ask anymore. I asked you to show me ONE thing that Trump actually did to help the middle-class, not what price of gas was. Presidents don't control the price of gas. Presidents do things like work with Congress to pass healthcare reforms, or invest in infrastructure projects, unless it's Trump the one president in my life time that didn't do sh.t.

So, I'll write this off as just one more example of how Trump supporters can't actually point to a single thing that Trump did for them.

I agree, it's a part of human nature. But the difference I am finding in the aggregate is that liberal and even the old school conservative positions tend to match up more with data and evidence. The alt-right from the Tea Party to MAGA appears to be void of ANY such matches.


At least they're looking for evidence. That's the part that I can't say the alt-right EVER does. Instead, they rely on conspiracy theories.

And just so you know, I am only referring to what we are calling the alt-right, which includes the MAGA folks. Not the folks you call RINOS.

I'm still trying to figure out why the alt-right is so unique in that respect.