CreateDebate



Welcome to CreateDebate!

CreateDebate is a social tool that democratizes the decision-making process through online debate. Join Now!
  • Find a debate you care about.
  • Read arguments and vote the best up and the worst down.
  • Earn points and become a thought leader!

To learn more, check out the FAQ or Tour.



Be Yourself

Your profile reflects your reputation, it will build itself as you create new debates, write arguments and form new relationships.

Make it even more personal by adding your own picture and updating your basics.


FB
Facebook addict? Check out our page and become a fan because you love us!


pic
Report This User
Permanent Delete

Allies
View All
pic


Enemies
View All
None

Hostiles
View All
None

RSS USMCLiberal

Reward Points:15
Efficiency: Efficiency is a measure of the effectiveness of your arguments. It is the number of up votes divided by the total number of votes you have (percentage of votes that are positive).

Choose your words carefully so your efficiency score will remain high.
78%
Arguments:5
Debates:0
meter
Efficiency Monitor
Online:


Joined:
5 most recent arguments.
3 points

First of all, we've never put anyone's face on our currency during his lifetime, and Mr. Obama is alive.

Second, as much hope as we have invested in Barack Obama, he hasn't had a chance to demonstrate his character to nearly the extent of the people on our other bills or coins; he may well end up meriting this kind of commemoration someday, but that's someday.

Third, Ulysses Grant earned his place in history not merely via his unfortunate presidency - he was not corrupt himself, but he was a poor judge of character and relied on unreliable people - but also on his role in saving the country by leading the Army in the Civil War, and also based on his personal qualities - he was honest himself, and he was solid under stress, generous, humble, and very articulate and intelligent.

If President Obama lives up to his promise and potential, history may rank him as one of our greatest presidents. If that is the case, as I hope it will be, we may find ourselves commemorating his contributions on our currency, postage stamps, a monument, or in other ways. Let's give him a chance, wait and see, and not try to make a decision like this less than a week into his presidency.

4 points

I believe in facts that can be demonstrated. On those grounds, there's no contest. Prayer may or may not do some good; it makes some people feel better (though the God to whom they pray seems to have an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus or Mr. Wizard). The effectiveness of work is visible.

The only prayer I've ever thought either worth the breath it took to say it, or sufficiently respectful of any God worthy of the name, is "Help me to have a better understanding of your will, which will always be the right thing to do, along with the willingness and courage to do it."

4 points

No pure ideology has ever worked for the majority of the people in any society. Capitalism needs to be tempered with the spirit of mutual responsibility, just as collectivism (whether you call it socialism, communism, or another name) needs to be moderated to include incentives for individual achievement. Trickle-down economics have never worked - this is at least the third 'Gilded Age' our country has experienced, and each time it has meant misery for many more than it benefited - and neither has 'from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." They tend to end in depressions, as this one seems to be doing, which are followed by reforms that only last as long as our collective memory.

If there's any single change that would probably do most to make our society more equitable again, it would be to strip corporations of their status as 'persons' under the law and limit their powers the way they were limited until the Civil War. Corporations are not only encouraged, but required, to behave in a way that is fundamentally sociopathic as well as short-sighted.

0 points

Let's see -

1. She ran as a reformer, then immediately generated a new set of scandals involving financial shady dealings (working from home instead of from the state capital where the governor is supposed to be, then billing the taxpayers extra per diem for living in her own house?), along with scandals related to alleged inappropriate firings;

2. She is in tight with the oil industry and works to undermine environmental protections that get in that industry's way, as in suing the government to take the polar bear off the endangered species list;

3. She has a long-standing reputation for being ruthless, secretive and vindictive, e.g., trying to use the power of her office to fire people who cross her, like the librarian who wouldn't ban the books her fundamentalist Pentecostal church didn't like from the not-religiously-affiliated public library serving the whole community;

4. She lies about her political record - she says she was against the "Bridge to Nowhere", when actually she was for it until the Feds wanted Alaska to pay more of the tab, at which point she became against it, but kept the federal funds that had been earmarked for the project anyway;

5. She has a history of affiliation with an extremist movement advocating Alaska's secession from the US, and goes to a church where she gets up and makes speeches saying it's God's will to help Big Oil run a gas pipeline through Alaska, and shares the stage with a minister who says the Jews are evil, secular Americans are evil, the end times are coming, and Alaska is supposed to be some kind of a hideout for likeminded psychotics.

In qualities 1-4 she is Cheney in drag, and in quality 5, she's Bush in drag. Some maverick. The only way you can call her a maverick is to note that she's even more extreme and farther to the right than the current administration.

10 points

I agree that the idea of a book-banning fundamentalist political novice, chosen for purely cynical and calculated reasons, and more likely than any past VP to become president via sudden death, is terrifying. The facts that she belongs to a church preaching end times theology and condemns Jews and secular Americans as evil, lies readily about her record, and is an anti-environment proxy for the oil industry makes it even scarier. You want to see continued paralysis of effective action on climate change, continued movement toward theocracy, and war with Iran? If so, vote for McCain and Palin.

USMCLiberal has not yet created any debates.

About Me


"I am a retired Marine mustang officer, psychotherapist, and author (3 books in print on addiction treatment and 2 more in the works.) I live with my wife Jan, who is a clinical social worker, and we spend a lot of time taking care of our grandsons after school. I write for the progressive blog Bring It On! under the pen name Liberal Jarhead."

Biographical Information
Name: Jim Finley
Gender: Male
Marital Status: Married
Political Party: Independent
Country: United States
Postal Code: 87112
Religion: Other
Education: Post Grad
Websites: Bring It On!

Want an easy way to create new debates about cool web pages? Click Here