I pondered for a while even responding to this. And to start out, I do appreciate hearing your side of it, as I am always curious as to why people vote for someone.

With that out of the way, I'm going to be a bit blunt. Feel free to tell me off for this, but I would hope that this discussion remains in a civil format, and can proceed in a way that allows people on both sides here to understand the other side a bit better.

First off, I find myself a little disappointed with people who vote for a candidate based on a single reason on either side. To me, I don't want to ever apply a political label to myself, as they constantly shift anyhow, and one label never seems enough to properly describe everything a person stands for. My biggest complaint with our process today is that the election does come down to just two viable candidates and parties. That system just allows for very black and white campaign promises in a world that isn't that simple.

But clearly, many people including yourself are happy to just stick a label on a person and vote against them because of some notion that the label is bad. Socialism is a complex topic, and using it as a label really doesn't have much effect without proper context. To me, the $700bn bailout could be seen as a form of socialism. The public school system could be seen as socialism. Hell, get right down to it, and the interstate system could be seen as socialism. So why exactly is it a bad thing that Obama wants to spend $50 to $65bn on improving healthcare of Americans, to allow them to be healthy, lead productive lives, and overall improve the workforce of this country? To me, thats a great idea, compared to throwing $144bn at Iraq every year. War money that is either coming from our taxes now, or being piled on the debt for future taxes to pay off. If he manages to end the war somehow, his "scary socialism" healthcare plan is more then paid for without changing a thing in the tax system. Oh, and I can't find a single place that says Obama's health care plan will be extended to any illegal immigrants.

McCain just didn't convince me that he would distance himself from the decisions that have led us here today. With his voting record on the war in Iraq, Bush's budgets, and many other issues, those actions spoke louder then his campaign speeches. If he was truly opposed to out of control government spending, he should have voted against the budgets, and chosen to criticize them much sooner then when he was running for president. Obama didn't seem to contradict himself nearly as much when comparing his voting record to his campaign promises.

With that said, just because I voted for Obama (on a provisional ballot in a very shady polling place) doesn't mean I'm giving him a blank check. I will be just as critical of him and his actions in office as I have been of the previous administrations.