...but I can NOT support the brand of "Republican-ism" we've been subjected to for the last 8 years, and I will not vote for it.

I've asked some conservatives on message boards just what it is about McCain that might represent a change or a departure from what America has experienced during the Bush presidency, and they can't say. "Campaign finance reform"...but how does this matter to me, really? I mean, if the process gets less corrupt, that's great, but will it? Really?

All the criticism of Obama I hear is of the "no experience" variety, except for a couple of right wingers who are trying to equate him with Louis Farrakhan and the Black Muslims, but I'd ask, if THIS is what "experience" has gotten us, I think I might opt for someone who is newer to the system, who has had less time to be corrupted by the system, to learn how to "play the game" so to speak.

I've heard people complaining because Obama has suggested that he would open a dialogue with Iran, that this shows his inexperience and could be dangerous to our "security" (how, they don't explain) but I just can NOT see the danger in talking to people as human beings and not as part of the "Axis of Evil". I may be biased because I married into a Persian family, but I know a little about the common Iranian people, and I know that they are not stark raving lunatics who all believe that Israel should be wiped off the map by any means, including violence...nothing could be more of a polar opposite than that.

When did we become afraid of hearing what another people thinks/wants/believes? That wasn't the America I thought I was born into.

A friend of mine, who also said that he should be voting Republican but won't because he has two sons of draft age and can't support someone who supports long term involvement in Iraq, suggested that these people in power now are NOT Republicans, but in fact something closer to facists. And John McCain has tied his wagon to this facton...and I will never vote for more war, more corporate excesses as common people struggle, and those struggles get passed up the ladder till finally, maybe, someday, it will affect those corporations too. But by then the facists in charge of those corporations will have their pockets stuffed full and won't need to strip mine the pockets of common Americans any longer.

I don't care what Biden said, what Hillary Clinton said, or what the pundits and attack dogs say, I will not be voting for a candidate who believes we should stay in Iraq and who handles the country as if it's the private fiefdom of super rich corporate execs...