Just found out the other day. I waited in line 2 hours yesterday morning for tickets. It's at 10am today (saturday) and he's gonna talk about the space program. I guess that's why he's coming here, I live in Titusville, FL which is the city across the Indian River from Kennedy Space Center and pretty much all their employees live here.

Crazy stuff! The whole time in line everyone was like "I still can't believe he's coming to Titusville."

I called my dad (Republican - UGH) to let him know he was coming and I was like, yea it's nice to see that one candidate cares about this place. LOL.

 

what is he going to do that makes you support him? just curious....

 

Reasons I don't support McCain:
1. He is a hypocrite when it comes to many of his policies (like many of his policies were the complete opposite before he was trying to appeal to the entire republican base). For example: the Iraq war. Just a few years ago, he opposed it. How can you know what he's going to do if he changes his mind all the time? You can't. He is inconsistent.
2. He is a scumbag for most of the claims he has made against Obama (like the whole celebrity status thing - he's just jealous because he can't pack a whole arena like Obama can).
3. He is a grumpy old guy who only has a few years left in his life and if he doesn't calm down he's gonna have a heart attack from his aggression.
4. He is rude. what happens if he's rude to Iran's leader? We get nuked?... He needs to be more careful of what he says.
5. He doesn't seem to care about the 'average joe'.
6. I'm not dissing veterans, but being a veteran does not entitle you to the presidency, Senator McCain.
7. Speaking of veterans, he is one, yet he doesn't support programs to make sure war veterans receive their college tuition from the GI bill and things like that. That's pretty retarded.
These are only 7 of the very many reasons that I do not like John McCain one single bit.

My Reasons for supporting Obama:
1. I like his plan for health care (creating competition for better prices between health care companies, etc.).
2. I think taxes are a good thing and I support his stance on taxes. I support the fact that the middle class needs some tax breaks and that the higher-income families need to contribute a little more. The rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer and the average income families are getting poorer. Please note that I am from an above-average income family and I still support this stance on taxes. My father doesn't like this as he is the owner of the family business, however my grandparents (my dad's parents - lifetime Republicans, of which my grandfather has NEVER voted for a single Democrat) have switched their party affiliation to Democrat and both support Obama. That is just simply amazing and shows how well Obama can attract voters from both sides of the spectrum.

My Tax rant:
He talks about raising taxes back to the rates they were at with Clinton. People complain about this but that's because people are selfish. Well when Clinton was president, we were brought from the red to the black on our national debt. I can understand how people don't want their hard earned money being taken away, but really the case is that taxes benefit you either directly or indirectly (as sad as it is, welfare can mean keeping a desperate person from having a reason to rob a bank or steal from someone; taxes pay for roads, parks, etc.). My mom, her fiance, and my girlfriends dad's jobs (county and city jobs - my mom and her fiance work for parks and rec, my girlfriends dad is the state attorneys assistant) have all been jeopardized due to FL's amendment 1 which reduced property taxes. My mom's job was in limbo for a while, it was questionable if something would happen to her fiance's job, and my girlfriends dad is now doing his job and the jobs of like 5 other people that got laid off because of no government funding) It has proved to be unsuccessful and my city is actually raising the city's property tax to undo the damage amendment 1 has done. Could you imagine a USA with no taxes? Talk about crappy roads, no parks, no city governments, no government funding whatsoever. /tax rant

3. I like his positions on speaking with leaders of countries that we don't like. You can't just ignore your possible enemies. That also shows his courage.
4/5. I like that he wants to withdraw troops from Iraq and the fact that he had good judgement in knowing we shouldn't have gone in there. Sure it's working now and the Iraq war may finally be ending, but regardless, look at our national debt. While we were too busy worrying about some other country, we let ours fall apart. Our economy is crap now, and the dollar isn't worth ****. I'm suprised other countries loan us money, idk how we're ever going to pay it all back.
6. I like that he is coming to where I live to talk to us. It's nice to see he cares about the little guy (my city is not very big (60-70k population) but apparently important to him)
7. He seems like a really nice guy. I'd like to have a nice person as president instead of a hothead like McCain.
8. He seems trustworthy and honest.
9. He speaks well, and could more intelligently represent our country as our leader, rather than our current president who struggles worse than a pre-school student to put together a proper sentence, let alone use real words.
10. He has proven his willingness and ability to work across party lines. It's not so much our congress' fault that nothing gets done. Our president vetos almost EVERYTHING. If Obama wanted to write a bill as president, he has the ability to make it work by compromising certain things for other things on the bill so that it can get passed even by a bipartisan congress and get things done.
11. I agree with his position against lifting the ban on new offshore drilling, along with most Floridians. (This is my rough estimate), but ~85% of Florida's border is coastline. An oil spill would be completely devastating to our entire state.

The above are all just things off the top of my head. There are many more reasons for my decision on who to vote for


I'm interested as to what he will say tomorrow about the space program. If they end the space program and Titusville, FL becomes a ghost town, in a way it won't be anyone's fault but Titusville's own.
Let me tell you what i'm talking about:
Background: Titusville is home to very many Kennedy Space Center and affiliated companies' employees. Without the KSC, people here will be jobless and leave Titusville. Well, the city currently has very little shopping, entertainment, dining, or other businesses, and everyone goes to other nearby cities for these things. The city has had many opportunities to have new restaurant chains open but the city prevented it. Our mall has no good stores, and recently someone wanted to purchase it and rebuild it (the building's roof is falling apart and the building is not large enough to be a modern day mall), but our city once again did not permit it and said that if they rebuilt it they would have to dig 2 very large retention ponds (which ended up being so big that they would take up way too much of the current mall's land). This of course caused the idea to be given up. They recently built some very nice condos right on the water (people complain they block the view of the water - well the whole city is freakin' waterfront so it's not that much view that the condos even blocked) but the condos are so expensive that no-one can afford to live there and the (3) 20-story (something like that, i'm not exactly sure how tall) buildings are maybe even less than half occupied. Our movie theatre is probably equivalent to a nice movie theatre in 1970. If the city turns to crap, I can't blame it on the loss of KSC jobs. I blame it on the city government for preventing business growth in Titusville. And I also will blame Wal-mart for putting most of the businesses that were in Titusville in the early 90's out of business.

On a side note, shame on Wal-mart for recommending to their employees that they vote Republican.

 

So I am assuming you are all for taxing big oil right? Just sit down and think for a second. Who do you think is going to pay the tax increase on that oil? Do you suppose the oil companies are just going to take the hit and then lower gas prices? Simple economics would tell you that the tax increase will be payed by the people who demand their supply. AKA, you, me, and everyone else that uses a gas powered engine in this country. Off-shore drilling and alternative fuel research will cut our dependence on foreign oil, which will in turn lower gas prices. Obama just recently switched on being against lifting the ban on off-shore drilling. He stated that he would support it.

But as for your rant on taxes... hiking taxes to a struggling economy is not good economics at all. I'm not saying get rid of taxes, but sky rocketing them isn't the best decision either. Its simple economics.

Now on to Obama's "change". The only thing Obama wants to change is what the American Dream really is. Voting for Obama is one step toward socialism, and one step toward communism. His change is having the government co-sign your home mortgage loan, to provide universal health care, and to control our social security. The American Dream is working hard to provide these things for yourself, not to have the government control your life, your money, and your health. Universal health care, works out great for Canada doesn't it? Why does the bum on the street drinking motor oil everyday deserve the same health care that I do, a healthy, non-smoker, non-drinker? Why does the government have to fix his health when he is out screwing it up on a daily basis?

As for the war on Iraq. I think the Democratic foreign policy analyst said it best.

“To say you’re going to get out on a certain schedule—regardless of what the Iraqis do, regardless of what our enemies do, regardless of what is happening on the ground—is the height of absurdity.”
—Michael O’Hanlon, Democrat foreign policy analyst at the liberal Brookings Institute

“The idea that four months before a presidential election a candidate can run through these countries, meet some world leaders, and claim experience in these matters may impress the liberal media, but to me, it exposes just how unprepared for the presidency this guy is... I have never seen a presidential candidate with less to offer this nation—yet with more arrogance and self-delusion—than Barack Obama.”
—Rush Limbaugh

There are many more issues, such as abortion, for reasons that I support McCain over Obama. Though I am a conservative and McCain was not my first choice, but he is the lesser of 2 evils.

 

just to clear it up, i'm not trying to start an argument, we have a democracy with 2 parties because each person has different opinions, so don't get upset at what I have to say. Calling someone a scumbag or retarded isn't necessary. Name calling won't get you anywhere. Keep it civil as this is America and we have the freedom of choice.

 

So Obama's speech was great. My friend got to shake his hand I go pretty close but not close enough. My arm was about 2 feet short. LOL. Got some good pictures, a great seat, and a couple short videos. Will post them once my girlfriend e-mails me the files (they're on her camera).

So as for the space program, he has re-evaluated his stance on space exploration and said that as president he will make sure there is funding for at least one extra shuttle launch after the last shuttle launch that is currently scheduled. He said space exploration is important and that it is a huge inspiration to science and other scientific discoveries and that his idea for early child education is going to get the funding some other way, not by delaying the Constellation missions that are suppose to start in 2015. He said that as president he will not let the major Kennedy Space Center job loss that the delay would cause happen.

One other of his positions that I didn't know about is that he wants to cut the middle-man (the bank) out of student loans, and just have them funded directly from the government rather than indirectly, so that loans are more affordable and banks aren't making tons of money off student loans.


Reply to your post: (oh and i don't take it as an argument, it's more of just a friendly debate - we all have our own opinions and our rights to them)
The taxes on big oil companies will go towards funding other government programs. Exxon mobil made 14 billion dollars profit in the past 4 months, while these past 4 months have been the worst prices at the pump for us consumers. WTF. Sure it may not lower our gas prices, but it can be used to partly fund some of his planned programs like universal health care. There is a lady who spoke who lives in Rockledge (15 miles from Titusville) and she opened 2 pet stores in the 90s and life was good. Then the hurricanes and the falling economy caused her to have to close one of the stores, and sell her house, just so she could keep her business. THEN, she was diagnosed with diabetes, and she had no health care, and couldn't afford it.

I might be reading this wrong, but you said he supports it? I just witnessed a speech about 150 feet away from him and he said he doesn't support it. Also, I live in FL and offshore drilling is a really big issue here, because a possible oil spill would be disastrous. Also, off-shore drilling is not a short-term solution. By the time those places would be pumping oil, we could possibly have alternative fuel completely solved.

i'm not sure if you understand. Obama wants to give tax cuts to the middle and lower class, and to make up for that loss in government funding, he wants to raise the higher income families' taxes. This will definitely ease situations for the lower and middle class. The higher-income families are not struggling. They are just fine, and hiking their taxes just a little bit isn't going to interrupt their lifestyles.


I'm not saying turn the USA socialist, but it seems to work for the UK.

About social security, he mentioned today that if we privatize social security today and everyone's money starts going into their "accounts", where are we going to get the money to provide social security to the current social security recipients or the people who are about to start recieving it? The money that is taken from your paycheck for social security is spent almost instantly on the current social security recipients, therefore, if we privatize it, the people who are going to have social security in just a few years will not be able to put enough money in their account over the next few years to support themselves after they retire.

like i said, it's sad that welfare and such that goes to a non-working person and you're paying for it, a hard working person. but the fact is, it might keep someone off the street, keep them from being desperate enough to mug you or steal from you, etc. Welfare benefits the hard-working person indirectly in this way.



As selfish as it may sound, we need to stop worrying about Iraq for once and fix our own situations. We need to get out of there ASAP, without completely undoing what we have fixed so far. I'm not saying get out now, i'm saying get those Iraqis to freaking do what they're suppose to be doing so that we can leave.

who actually listens to what Rush Limbaugh says? not to offend you or anything.

this is almost impossible to debate and is an extremely tough issue and i don't know if people on the opposite sides of this issue can ever find common ground. I respect the pro-life stance, and I am pro-choice, and that's about all i can say. lol


and about the name-calling, sorry, was just getting a little too expressive about it and i'm not running for office or anything so calling him names won't get me in trouble. however, i will refrain from name-calling.

 

I stand corrected about his offshore drilling stance. He is now still opposed to lifting the ban, however he is open to bipartisan compromise.

I sustain my position on offshore drilling. even if it is safe like McCain says, it still will not help us one single bit NOW.

 

details are here for those interested http://www.wftv.com/news/17073337/detail.html

 

fun fact for you:
did you know John McCain voted against making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a holiday?

 

One thing that bothers me a lot about this country is tax brackets. Why should different income levels be treated differently? We ALL work just as hard at earning money whether it be minimum wage of $200-300/hour. This is retarded.