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In your OP you wrote:
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What is the significance of a 10% CPI? Well, the CPI is used to "deflate" GDP, which we are told was nearly 4% last quarter. Uh, what? How is this absurd number arrived at? Well, they only deflated the nominal GDP by 0.8%. That's right. You read that right. In calculating GDP last quarter, the government assumed price inflation was 0.8%. That's the lowest since the Eisenhower administration.
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Actually I found the data you're citing:
GDP Data
Could come at this a couple of other ways but all the data is generated by the government so it probably wouldn't mean much one way or the other to you.
I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily. If you look at all the data inflation in the 70's was much worse. How long do you think the government may have been erroneously reporting the data? Inflation in the 70's could have been understated as well.
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As someone has already pointed out, if the current CPI definition had been in place, inflation during the 70s would never have exceeded 3%.
I have no reason to believe that there was any systematic manipulation of inflation metrics prior to the early 1980s.