As Americans face the worst economic crisis in years, even the upper 3 percent are getting hit in the pocketbook.

For security reasons, President-Elect Barack Obama will likely have to give up his Blackberry habit. Because of the Presidential Records Act, everything he says and does is public record. That and general security concerns were referenced in the Secret Service’s request.

Also, Obama will be the first U.S. president to have a lapop on his desk in the oval office. A powerful symbol of his understanding of matters like net neutrality and mass communication, this will be a relief from a president who once referenced “rumors on the internets.”

Arianna Huffington has the story on MSNBC:

California, the state commonly associated with paving the way for a kinder sort of Americanism, has banned gay marriage. I won’t get into this personally because Kieth Olbermann said it far better than most could have.

In a watershed moment for mankind, Barack Obama was voted by a massive mandate the first black president of these great United States of America tonight. With hope renewed, the nation popped champagne corks and danced.And so, good night and good luck. 

Hempstead, NY - As anti-war protests have seen an increasingly aggressive police presence, Sergent Nick Morgan, an Iraq war vet, was trampled by a police horse at a peaceful protest outside the Oct. 15 presidential debate at Hofstra University.

In the fray, 10 members of the Iraq Vets Against the War were imprisoned while protesting McCain’s alleged lack of support for V.A. quality of life programs.

I remember the early 90s when various organizations were running their televised anti-smoking ads. Where smoking was once the sort of thing idolized cool kids did behind the playground, it had suddenly become gross and wasteful.

With what little connection I still have to the youth culture these days, I see a similar transformation (finally) occurring in younger voters. In a number of conversations you’ll hear someone make the same old argument: “Oh, my state always leans X anyway. Why should I vote?” But instead of agreement, it seems a lot more people these days are putting the pressure on the apathetic. I’ve seen twenty-somethings literally get disgusted with each other over this.

Of course I take the stance that you should always vote with your heart. The idea that one’s vote “doesn’t count” just because he or she lives in a more Democratic or Republican state convinces a citizen to discount the validity of his own views. This type of person knows little more about the way their country is run than water-cooler chatter and evening news yammering.

I vote because if I didn’t I would not be doing my civic duty. I would not be making a record of who I feel should be in charge. Or at least because I love to criticize my elected officials without being a hypocrite.

George Carlin once said, “If you have selfish ignorant citizens, you have selfish ignorant politicians.” Basically he said people have too much extra money to care about our government. I wonder if the downward trend in our economy is inversely proportional with the upward trend in young adult voting.

According to a CIRCLE study presented in civicyouth.org, the 2006 elections had a large increase in young adult voters (ages 18-29):

• Senate - 60 percent VS 33 percent
• House of Representatives - 58 percent VS 38 percent
• Governor - 55 percent VS 34 percent

CIRCLE also has a study about young voters in the 2004 presidential election, which they say was up 49 percent VS 40 percent in 2000.

It seems to me that excess and apathy go together like Garfield and lasagna. Not so big when that lasagna is eating you, eh? Now that the economy is in tatters, will people realize that all we have left is our pride and willpower?

So get out there, learn who you can kick out of office, and vote. But don’t take it from me, here’s George Carlin:

With a grim read of the GOP’s proposed $700 billion bailout of failing Wall Street institutions, Ron Paul laid out some of the major concerns.

Perhaps most striking is the language included in part of the bailout preventing “any court of law or any administrative agency” from interfering. This is it America. After that money goes to continue paying the salaries of Bush’s Wall Street cronies, devalues the US dollar and fails to help Uncle Joe keep his house, our great empire will be fast on the trail to total collapse.

Get some sense people.

U.S. Sen. Ron Paul, R-Texas, likely feels like he’s talking to a wall. A serious plunge in the stock market this week occurred after the fire sale of Merril Lynch to Bank of America and the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holding. With the falling value of the dollar and a tremendous national debt, the Bush administration has now taken up a “no more bailouts” stance. There just isn’t any money left in the U.S. piggy bank.

Could we be headed into another great depression? Strangely enough, Paul saw a worldwide economic crisis coming nearly a year ago.