He certainly hasn't helped the debt, however, were it not for his actions the economy would never have recovered and government revenue would be much lower than it will be, meaning we'd be in an even worse situation, because we'd still be in debt, but the government would be earning less money to pay it off with.

During times of economic recession, the government needs to run a deficit in order to stimulate the economy. This is all that Obama is doing. During times of economic expansion, the government should run a surplus and this is what Clinton did. Bush on the other hand is the person who you should put a lot of the blame for our current debt on. He ran a deficit while the government was expanding.

As soon as we are back to full output, and the unemployment rate is back to its natural rate then Obama will stop running a deficit and begin running a surplus and paying off our massive debt.

Well unless we're talking about the fact that he fixed the whole economy. That actually seemed to work out pretty well.

Joe I do seriously hope you were drunk when you created this (but it did make me smile).

Not really.

Communists have committed crimes, but other than that atheists actually have been pretty damn well behaved.

Social contracts are what we agree to in order for society to function. We give up a small amount of freedom to help everyone in society. We are fortunate to live in a society in which we can choose the extent to which we do this, and we are free to express our views on how this should be done.

Claiming that we put a gun to someone's head though is ridiculous. There are people who don't want to pay for public education, and probably people who don't want to pay for roads, but thankfully their not allowed to just opt out, otherwise our society would collapse.

There are better, very legitimate arguments for why we shouldn't have welfare (or at least reduce the amount provided) than just the whole "it's like stealing" thing.

Haha...sorry I'm not trying to let those people who have almost nothing to survive with die. I guess I'm just a bleeding heart.

I don't think your example is accurate. Allow me to give you a better one.

Let's say me and a group of 7 friends are walking and we see a little homeless girl on the street. 2 of the friends want to just leave but the other 6 decide that we should do something to help. So after a vote the group decides that we all need to help out. The two that didn't want to donate are a little bitter about it, however, but in the end we are able to help the girl with our combined efforts.

You see, the money that we are agreeing to donate isn't from other people, it is from us too. In addition your argument that only poor people vote for policies like this is BS.

You do realize that the economy has been improving for almost 6 months now, right?

Joe: love the comments but your debates are often retarded.

I know but some people choose not to (myself included) and this means less people participate.

Nothing would be wrong, I'm just saying that that's probably the reason. If you limit the people that can participate less will.

No one commented because you have to be part of your community to do so.

You see you've stumped me, but not because your arguments are convincing but that I actually don't know how to respond: there are way too many options!

I could argue that the link you posted about muslims in America deals primarily with African-Americans who have converted to Islam, and that this demographic is radically different from the muslims marching and protesting through the streets of European cities. Primarily this difference has to do with the fact that those muslims who converted have already gown up and adapted to American culture (most importantly the significance of freedom of speech) and therefore wouldn't be a threat unless you're just afraid of the Islamic religion in general.

On the other hand I might point out that, unless there is a mass exodus of muslims to the U.S. it would take many generations for them to even become even as significant a minority group as Asian Americans, much less African-Americans or Latinos (not to mention the fact that Latinos are the fastest growing minority group, and are mostly Christian).

I could also point out that muslims growing up in the U.S. for multiple generations are (once again) far less likely to be similar to the extremists in Europe.

Maybe I could ask for some actual statistics about birth rates of different demographics since you didn't actually provide any, but instead relied on unsubstantiated stereotypes. None of the muslims I know have 6 kids in their family so until you give me some evidence I'm gonna have to call bullshit.

I could go on, but I don't think that's necessary. Instead I'm going to ask you to stop being so alarmist...I mean the world's gonna end in 2012 anyway, right?

Islam will never gain the same political power as it has in Europe, so I wouldn't worry. People in this country are ridiculously prejudiced against muslims so any muslim that wants to be taken seriously has to jump through hoops in order to show that they aren't like the extreme muslims we see in Europe protesting against freedom of speech.

I assumed that you supported laws against sweatshops and child labor, and this wasn't to what I was referring. These laws, though necessary from an ethical standpoint, don't necessarily help the economy.

What I am talking about is regulation of financial institutions, and an active counter-cyclical fiscal policy.

I wish I had a scanner because there is this great graph in my Econ textbook which shows the U.S. growth rate from about the last 200 years. I can't find a similar graph online, but if you want an idea of what it looks like imagine someone drawing peaks and valleys around a middle line, and as they move toward the present the peaks and valleys become less extreme. What the graph is meant to show is how more recent monetary and fiscal policy (mostly based on Keynsian theory) has had a "smoothing" affect on GDP growth. What this means is, in the last half of the century we have had fewer, and shorter recessions and longer periods of sustained growth (especially in the last 30 years). A part of this has to do with increased regulations on the market.

Obviously we should allow the market to operate freely in most cases, but there are areas where regulation is necessary, because financial institutions often times will take risks. Often times these risks end up having negative consequences on the economy as a whole, causing the volatile changes in GDP and rises in unemployment characteristic of the pre-Keynsian economy.

Here is a point I feel like I need to make very clear:

No one is advocating socialism

Socialism sucks: not only does it severely limit freedom, it doesn't work. The only redeeming quality is that it promotes equality, but the result would only be a society where everyone is equally poor.

What I and others like myself are advocating is a mostly free economy with some necessary regulations to protect against serious economic downturns.

I don't have a problem with your point of view: I can understand and respect it. What I don have a problem with is the fact that you right off those who disagree with you as somehow delusional. I promise that I have good reasons for the opinions I hold whether you want to believe it or not.

But that doesn't matter, just right me off as an elitist lefty liberal who has no idea what he's talking about.

I recommend a course on European history. The crusades were begun by Christians when they invaded Jerusalem and slaughtered the Jews and Muslims who were living there (Jews and Muslims living peacefully together, surprising right?) at the Seige of Jerusalem in 1099 (a.k.a. the first crusade).

In addition, did you hear the phrasing you used: "expel the infidels." Doesn't that sound eerily similar to what we hear from muslim extremist terrorists today?

Anyway, you are also mistaken about the nature of Muslims back then. They were expanding there empire, but they were not the violent extremists we think of today. In fact, they preached religious toleration, and (as I mentioned earlier) lived in peace with Jews and Christians in their empire. It was the Christians who were acting intolerantly, and had been killing jews by the thousands in Europe.

...and the Muslims. I'm sure that if you look deep enough, you'll find that there are others that object to homosexuality.

I agree, but you asked about Christianity. Just because others are oppressing homosexuals as well doesn't make it any better that Christians are doing it.

From the wikipedia article about the English civil war:

One of the first events to cause concern about Charles I came with his marriage to a French Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta-Marie de Bourbon. The marriage occurred in 1625, right after Charles came to the throne.[5] Charles' marriage raised the possibility that his children, including the heir to the throne, could grow up as Catholics, a frightening prospect to Protestant England.[6]

So religion once again did play a part.

...was caused by the leader of a very warped form of Christianity.

I would argue that any war fought in the name of a religion is a warping of religious texts. It says "Thou Shall Not Kill" in the 10 commandments and yet we see all of this violence. I'm not arguing that Christianity always leads to war, I'm merely disputing your point that atheists have committed atrocities (in the name of atheism) that are far worse than Christians.

The dutch revolt was caused by a number of issues, but the oppression of Protestants by Charles V and Philip II played a significant role.

Many of the wars I mentioned had numerous causes but in all of them religion also played a part.

The cold war was not fought because of atheism. This is one of the stupidest things I've heard you say yet. As I've stated before, the only atheists that killed were communists: I'm not sure why that's so difficult for you to understand. I am strongly opposed to communism in general and especially opposed to the actions that were taken by Stalin, Mau and other communists who have killed in the name of their ideology. Their atheism was a symptom of their communism not the other way around. They all also believed in gravity, but this likely didn't influence their decisions to kill people either.

So once again: any non communist, atheist mass murderers? Didn't think so.

The muslims began some of the crusades, definitely not all. In addition the crusades as a whole were begun by Christians invading Jerusalem and killing Jews and Muslims. Read about it here.

I never mentioned the conquest of Alexander the great, I mentioned the Alexandrian Crusade.

The French wars of religion were civil wars fought between French Catholics and Huguenots (French Protestants). The main conflict was religion.

Almost all of these wars were fought either because of Christianity, or had Christianity as a cover for some other reason (like money or power).

Damn, what's with all the hate?

I promise we're not that bad.

I kinda like my Christian, Jewish and Muslim friends and family. I actually don't know all that many atheists so I'd probably be pretty lonely.

(You know that you don't have to copy and paste my whole argument into yours, right? I mean I literally just wrote it, and it appears on top.)

I find your first statement kind of funny because it, is both incorrect, and misses the point. As I just stated, the crimes committed by atheists weren't because of their atheism but because of their communist ideology.

Name for me a few wars begun by Christians.

Almost every war in western history, because for the past 1,000 years almost everyone in Europe (and later the Americas) has been Christian.

But this isn't what you meant, right? You see I just did the same thing you did: I took all wars that Christians began, and then implied that Christianity was their cause. You obviously meant to say: "Name me a few wars begun because of Christianity."

I would be happy to:

The Crusades

The first crusade

The second crusade

The third crusade

The fourth crusade

The albigensian crusade

The fifth crusade

The sixth crusade

The seventh crusade

The Eighth crusade

The ninth crusade

The Northern Crusades

The numerous crusades against the Tatars

The Aragonese crusade

The Alexandrian crusade

The Hussite crusade

The swedish crusades

The European Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion

The first war

The second war

The third war

The fourth war

The fifth war

The sixth war

The seventh war

The war of the three Henrys

The war in Brittany

The war with Spain

Wars of Religion in Germany and Bohemia

The Schmalkaldic Wars

The thirty years war (one of the worst, killed 15 - 30% of all Germans)

The wars of religion in the Netherlands

The dutch revolt (eighty years war)

The wars of religion in England and Scotland

The Scottish Reformation

The English civil war

The scottish civil war

The Taiping Rebellion was the bloodiest civil war in history and resulted in the death of 20 million people. It was started by Chinese Christian Protestants over religion.

So there you go. It's more than a few, but it is not at all comprehensive, and could have been longer if I wanted to add more. I also did not include the numerous atrocities committed in the name of Christianity (killing of Jews, and witches) or the current worldwide oppression of of homosexuals in the name of Christianity.

So now I ask you: name even one war that was begun in the name of atheism, not just by atheists.

All atheists that have been mass murderers (like the ones you mentioned) have all been communists, whereas religious murderers have come from nearly every major religion, and have supported a wide variety of of ideologies.

Therefore, if you are an atheist, and not a communist then you're probably fairly peaceful.

I think it should be punishable by death.

What's the point in making a law that is unenforceable?

If there is a large enough spanish speaking population in the area, then it would probably make economic sense depending on the business, but I think a law would be unnecessary (except for maybe cases like pharmacies in which people may be seriously harmed.)

Joe now I know you're fucking around. You want to make life difficult on a very large group of people in our country so that you don't have to press one extra button?

"If we don't play God, who will?"

-James Watson (Co-discoverer of DNA)

Oh I can still consider you scientifically challenged, just not purely on the basis of your religion, or any other generalization. If you said, for example, that dinasours and humans roamed the earth together, and had no evidence to support this claim (The Flnstones don't count) I would still laugh at you.

Yes we can get into a debate about semantics, but if you ask him I can guarentee that he at the very least meant most liberals, and wasn't making a debate about why specifically some liberals resort to name calling.

Generalizing groups of people without much basis does tend to annoy me regardless of the side it's coming from, and I do think that it is a problem on both sides and would firmly stand against anyone who tries to make these generalizations, even if I do not fall into the catagory of generalization.

In this case the debate was more an attack on liberals than an actual debate, however, it was also mostly in jest because it was made by Joe, so don't think that I took it too seriously.

As for your question: because people are lazy. It's easier to assume that someone who disagrees with you is ignorant, or racist or uneducated or out of touch, than trying to consider that they may have a different world view than you, and that their view could be as valid as yours. This is the same with most generalizations, and is why I am so strongly against them.

See, I would never resort to name calling when I know that I have legitimate arguments to defend my positions.

Neither would I make broad generalizations about groups, because I know that in general they are not true. I don't call conservatives racists, or greedy. I am happy to debate any issue, however I know that name calling just makes me look immature.

Considering that's what basically every one of your debates are I kinda figured, but I'm sorta sick of people generalizing liberals so I figured this was a good a time as any to make a statement about it.

Why on earth do we keep getting these broad generalization over and over again. I don't care which side you are attacking, generalizations that deamonize your opponents are not helpful, and are in fact simple minded. Whether it's liberals or conservatives or independants doesn't matter. What's ironic is this debate is essentially complaining about name calling by labeling an entire group in a certain way: that's essentially name calling!

Joe, I have debated with you numerous times and I'm pretty sure I can't think of a gngle case where I name called in replacement for an argument. So according to you I must not be a liberal... does that sound right?

Well next time you're sick have the ambulance drop you off at a church and see what happens.

I'm not sure I understand this one Joe... are you saying that by warming the earth we are destroying some things, but giving oppurtunities to others? Cus that's kinda dumb.

Perhaps in you own delusional idea of reality, but the real world he would be countered by economists and politicians who understand why providing for those who are unable, for some reason, to support themselves and their family is beneficial to society. In addition, you would hear numerous personal stories of people who worked numerous jobs, yet still needed a little help to feed their kids.

As people who don't need welfare it's easy to argue that those people who need welfare are just freeloaders, but in reality they are people who need a little help to get by.

It's the same result they could come up with if special interests weren't involved, and there weren't people denying the overwhelming evidence of global warming.

See what clarity a little objectivity can bring to a situation?

Not if they did it in a smart way, like by spending money on alternative energy programs.

Anyway, in the long term Australia's economy will suffer more if the current warming trend continues.

For what is now the 10th time I will link you to Loving v. Virginia. Please do us both a favor and read this so that we can stop wasting time on the whole "marriage isn't a right" benefit.

Also your entire argument about licenses is a fallacy. You give examples of rights that don't require licenses and privileges that do require licenses making the assumption that everything must fall into these two categories. This is called excluding the middle. What if we took the right to own a gun, as guaranteed in the constitution? Gun ownership often requires a license and yet is still a right.

In short: your argument is bullshit.

I'm sorry but what are you talking about? Homosexual couples are denied marriage licenses. Clearly people are being given different rights.

If what you are trying to argue is that "homosexuals can get married, just not to someone of the same sex" then this too shows that people have rights that are not equal, but seperate. Allow me to explain: do you agree that men and women should be equal under the law? Do you agree that this means they should have the same rights? Assuming you said yes then how is it possible that a women is allowed to marry people that a man is not, and vice versa? There rights are considered "seperate but equal" but we know that seperate but equal is inherently unequal. This is the exact same issue that was being addressed in Loving vs. Virginia, because people had the same rights to marry within their own race, and therefore were considered to have the same rights.

You keep trying to frame this question in ways where you don't seem ridiculous in wanting to deny marriage to homosexuals, but everytime you come off sounding worse and worse. You are fighting a strawman anyway, because gays would be fine if everything was civil unions and marriage was left up to churches, but in the vast majority of states homosexual unions aren't recognized at all, and in the majority of those states that do recognize same sex unions the rights are not equal to those of marriage (for example if they move to another state, they lose whatever rights were granted by the state where they got the union).

It's like you can't rationally articulate why you don't think gays should get married but you just feel that they shouldn't and therefore are willing to go through this hilarious convoluted logic in order to justify your feelings.

We have had this same argument about a dozen times at this point and hopefully this time you will take away something useful and we won't see anymore of these dumb debates.

Well the entirety of the supreme court disagrees with you, but hey what do they know about rights?

What if you can't join the military for, let's say, health reasons? Then what?

Or what if the issue isn't that you don't have a job, but that you don't make enough money from your current job to afford healthcare for your whole family.

Or what if you have a kid who is uninsurable because of preexisting conditions.

But yeah other than those minor flaws, I guess the system is perfect.

Wow, a strawman argument of a legitamate position...what else is new Joe?

What the two sides should be are:

1) It is something the government cannot punish you for excersising (like the right not to get thrown in jail for speaking freely)

2) It is something that the government must protect (like the right to property, so people don't steal it from you).

My answer would be, both. There are certain rights that put limitations of the government, and others that sometimes require government intervention to ensure. This usually means spending some money (paying for a police force, judges, etc...)

Could you post the link again, it's not working for me. Thanks.

You get along fine by yourself? Consider this:

-Every day you eat food and possibly take medicine, that you know is safe because it is approved by the food and drug administration

-You know what the weather is going to be like because of satalites designed built and launched by NASA

-You check the time, which you know everyone uses because it is regulated by congress and kept accurately the the National Institute of Standards and Technology

-You drive a car that you know is safe thanks to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and drive it on roads built and monitored by local state and federal agencies.

-You then get to work and use the internet, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration

-During this whole day you do not get killed, carjacked or robbed because of local, state, and federal law enforcement keeping you safe

But of course you get by fine on your own, don't you Joe?

Let's face it, unless you go off into the woods to live, you are not taking care of yourself, so get some perspective and realize that there are a lot of things we need the government for, and those services require money; money that I am more then willing to pay to enjoy the quality of life I am fortunate enough to have because I was born in the U.S.A.

People aren't asking for handouts: they are trying to improve the lives of everyone, and that requires everyone to chip in...themselves included unless you assume that all democrats are poor, and all republicans are rich which is an absurd assumption.

Well, other than microbes that can digest plastic (as joe suggested) there isn't much we can do. The pieces are far to small, and the area is much too large for there to be a feasable solution for cleanup. All we can really do at this point is stop adding plastic to the oceans by doing a better job of recycling and stop dumping garbage in the ocean.

Hell if I know... the important thing is not the name however, but instead the evidence which undeniably points to a warming earth because of human activity.

Actually, what happened with the volcano is very different than the effect that CO2 has on our atmosphere.

When a volcano erupts it throws up a tremendous amount of dust and dirt into the atmosphere, which then reflects the sun's light. The same effect (more or less) can be achieved by painting ones roof white. Obviously car exhaust does not reflect radiation from the sun, but instead traps the radiation and re-emits it as heat.

Active volcanos that aren't erupting tend to actually spew CO2 into the atmosphere however, so in that way they do contribute to global warming, but not even close to the level that human emissions contribute.

I guess people like you are willing to take any fact out of context to try and prove your point though... watching all that fox news must have rubbed off on you.

Joe. How many times are you going to make me prove you wrong on this issue? There are a million things wrong with what this guy says, but let's stick to the graph that he claims shows a global cooling.

I am far too tired of repeating myself, so instead watch this video:

Since you chose to copy and paste your argument into a debate, I shall do the same with my reply:

Force themselves into a club where there not wanted?

How does any gay getting married effect any straight couple? Your argument, which you continue to repeat time and time again, is ridiculous, and you know it.

All gays want is equality, and if the government stopped using the word marriage but instead used civil unions that would be great. Look at this site that advocates equal marriage rights. It gives a number of scenarios:

We want the Flag of Equal Marriage to be complete, with all 50 stars lit up. We see three routes to marriage equality, as we define it:

1. Every individual state could pass a law allowing same-sex marriage.

2. The federal government could repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and allow same-sex marriage at the federal level, overriding all state-level bans.

3. The term "marriage" could be removed from state and/or federal laws, turning all "marriages" into civil unions in the eyes of the government. PLUS, same-sex civil unions would need to be recognized in all 50 states or at the federal level.

So here you're arguing a straw man "gays aren't being reasonable" argument.

Back to the whole "joining a club thing" and why it's bullshit. When African-Americans and other minorities "forced" their way into predominately white institutions, and clearly weren't wanted, should they have stopped?

In addition, marriage isn't a club. There aren't members only meetings where only married people are allowed to get into, and married people don't have to do anything for other married couples. Marriage is the legal (and often religious/cultural) union of two people who love each other and intend to spend the rest of their lives together. So allow me to repeat: how does letting gays marry affect, even a little bit, straight married couples? What gives them the right to deny those who want to pursue happiness with the one they love, legal sanction to do so?

If this is the best argument that you can come up with for opposing gay marriage, maybe you need to reevaluate your position and realize how ridiculous you sound (even more so than usual).