Kyle Bell

I was watching election night coverage on CNN the other night and will.i.am came on from Grant Park in Chicago - not by a remote camera location. No, that’s soooo 20th century. For the first time on television (that I know of) an interview was broadcast using a hologram. Watch the video below:

With the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama, America won in last night’s election. Not only will he be the first black president, he will also be the first Democrat to win a majority of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976. With not all of the vote yet counted, Obama stands at 52% to 46% for John McCain. After eight years of enduring the worst presidency in United States history, thank God hope and change beat hate and fear.

We have a lot to celebrate from yesterday’s results, and a lot to be disappointed about as well. The election of Barack Obama as president confirms that we, as a nation, have come a long way since the civil rights movement that gave African Americans voting protections, ended segregation in the South and punished those that commit hate crimes.

While the Civil War was won nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, the electoral map of 2008 vividly displays the divide between North and South. Yet for the first time since 1964, the state of Indiana joined its Midwestern neighbors in backing a Democrat for president. This is astounding in itself, as Obama managed to win heavily white rural counties, including those in Southern Indiana, which were once a hotbed of KKK activity. But it was the counties that include South Bend, Lafayette, Bloomington, Gary and Indianapolis that delivered 15%+ victories to help Obama win a state that George W. Bush carried by 21% in 2004.

He also won in the Southern states of Virginia, which like Indiana has not voted for a Democrat since 1964, North Carolina and Florida. The growth of these states in recent years has brought young professionals from all over the country to seek jobs and a new way of life in cities like Richmond, Charlotte, Orlando and Tampa Bay. Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi were the closest that they have been since 1996. The “Solid South” in the next few years will begin to be seeing a little more blue.

At the same time as Americans celebrated the election of the first black president, a new class of citizens came under assault. Gay Americans suffered major setbacks as discrimination was written into the constitutions of Arizona, California and Florida. Proposition 8 in California, which passed 52% to 48%, will reverse the California Supreme Court decision earlier this year that legalized gay marriage in the state. With the help of a massive effort from the Mormon Church, who literally flooded the state with volunteers to pass Proposition 8, Californians singled out a class of their fellow citizens as second class by revoking their right to legally marry.

For those that voted for Proposition 8 and others like it, how does a gay person’s marriage affect you? Proponents of banning gay marriage claimed that society would go into chaos, yet that hasn’t exactly happened in Massachusetts, California, Canada or European countries where gay marriage is legalized. The argument against gay marriage is based in religious doctrine and has no place in determining our laws.

For those of you that find yourself on the fence or are confused about the issue, let me explain something that is vitally important for you to know: legalizing gay marriage DOES NOT mean that your church will have to perform gay weddings. It would be unconstitutional for the state to tell a church what they have to do. The question here is whether a gay couple has the legal right, under state law, to civil marriage. If you picture in your head a ceremony and then picture going to the courthouse for a wedding license, the only thing that is affected is the piece of paper that you receive from the state. Gay marriage guarantees equal rights under the law for gay couples. It does not mean that churches will have to perform the wedding ceremony.

The fact that a simple majority can alter the constitution of a state to embed hateful and discriminatory policies towards one group of Americans should be alarming to everyone. I am a strong advocate for your right to practice religion as you want. But that does not give anyone the right to tell me that I can not marry the person that I love. For America, November 4, 2008 will be a day that one group of Americans took a step forward and another group took a step back. The hopes and dreams of a nation now ride on the actions of a newly elected president and Congress that are more sympathetic to the needs of its people than the Republicans and George Bush.

Just a few years ago John McCain was one of the biggest advocates for deregulating our financial system. Today, with the stock market in ruin and financial institutions collapsing, John McCain is all of a sudden changing his philosophy. He now believes in government regulation! It’s as if he woke up one morning and saw the light. Nah, not really. It’s just election season and he knows that he’s on the wrong side of the issue, and has been his entire career in Congress.

The Republican Party is engaging in voter suppression in the swing states of Michigan and Ohio, as reported by two prominent newspapers. The first incident occurred in Ohio and was reported last week by the Cincinnati Inquirer:

About one-third of the absentee ballot applications received at the Hamilton County Board of Elections have been ruled invalid because Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign printed a version of the form with an extra, unneeded box on it.

In a narrow interpretation of Ohio law, Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner says many of the McCain forms have not been completed properly. If the box stating the person is an eligible elector — or qualified voter – is not checked, Brunner said, the application is no good.

Even though the box is unneeded, by not checking it voters are essentially admitting they’re not eligible, Brunner said.

The result: nearly 1,000 ballot requests have been invalidated in Hamilton County, Ohio alone. The county election board will now have to contact tens of thousands of voters to correct the problem started by the McCain campaign when they sent out 1 million of the faulty forms. Voters will have to fill out a new form and hope that they receive and send their absentee ballots in time for Election Day on November 4.

Meanwhile in Michigan the Republican Party is planning on challenging voters going to the polls, according to the New York Times:

Last week the chairman of the G.O.P. in Macomb County, James Carabelli, was quoted in the online publican, the Michigan Messenger, as saying that the party planned to use foreclosure lists to stop voters who no longer have valid addresses from casting their ballots.

“We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” Mr. Carabelli was quoted as saying, according to a Sept. 10 article in the Michigan Messenger.

The Democratic Party and the Obama campaign are now suing to prevent this illegal practice from occuring. Two months until Election Day and we are already seeing the Republican voter suppression machine in full force.

Today may go down in the history books as the start of the next Great Depression. The Dow Jones dropped over 500 points on Monday, September 15, 2008, marking the biggest drop since the 9/11 attacks. Over the weekend it was revealed that the investment bank Lehman Brothers would file for bankruptcy. Most people (including myself several months ago) had never heard of Lehman Brothers. It’s the fourth largest investment bank in the country. And while it sinking would otherwise be a big deal on Wall Street, it probably would not have much affect on Main Street.

That’s not true, though, because of the situation that the economy now faces. With the $613 billion in debt that Lehman Brothers will be protected from in bankruptcy, news broke that the third largest investment bank, Merrill Lynch, was also in trouble. Instead of filing bankruptcy they agreed to be bought out by Bank of America for $50 billion. The collapse of Lehman puts 25,000 people out of work in an economy that already has a 6.1% unemployment rate.

The blame lies in Washington and on Wall Street. President Bush and his administration enabled the mortgage crisis by letting Wall Street become the Wild West where an unregulated banking industry played by its own rules. The banks were giving loans, “sub-prime mortgages”, to people that either could not afford them based on their income or had bad credit. They gave them loans anyway and teased them with low interest rated, but the interest rates were variable and adjusted upwards eventually.

Meanwhile, the banks sold these mortgages to investment companies so when one of these people with these loans paid their mortgage, it wasn’t actually going to the bank - it was going to an investor. When the interest rates adjusted, millions of these loans defaulted and now the companies that put their money into them are waving around worthless pieces of paper. There was no government regulation at all of these schemes that resulted in massive exchanges of money, people losing their homes and investors being defrauded.

America under George Bush and the Republicans has become nothing but a way for large companies and powerful Wall Street executives to pass on risk to someone else while they cash in. Al Greenspan has called this a once in a century event. The economy is teetering on the brink of recession and while it is unpleasant to imagine, the reality is that the parallels to the Great Depression are too great to ignore.  We have an out-of-touch president, a reckless group of thugs on Wall Street and millions of average Americans suffering, as usual. America, have you had enough?

A sad, sad display of how little experience Sarah Palin, John McCain’s choice for VP, has as a governor of Alaska for a year and a half. A heartbeat away from the presidency and this is the best the Republicans can offer?

President Barack Obama (oops, Freudian slip!) was officially nominated today as the first African-American nominee to a major party. Hillary Clinton led on the convention floor to declare that Obama was the nominee of the party to defeat John McCain and the Republicans in November. It’s something that could only happen in the Democratic Party: a woman and an African American come this close to becoming president.

“With eyes firmly fixed on the future, in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and our country, let’s declare together in one voice, right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president,” Hillary Clinton said, setting off a loud celebration in Denver as Obama’s nomination became official.

Following up on his wife’s stellar performance last night, President Bill Clinton declared in his speech tonight that, “Barack Obama is ready to lead America and restore American leadership in the world.” President Clinton went on: “They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more. Let’s send them a message that will echo from the Rockies all across America: Thanks, but no thanks. In this case, the third time is not the charm. America can do better than that. And Barack Obama will do better than that.”

This party is united, it’s excited and it’s ready to put an end to the rule of George W. Bush!

Hillary Clinton delivered perhaps her best speech of her political career tonight. I’m an Obama supporter and while I was disgusted by the tactics that the Clintons used against him in the primaries, Hillary gave a rousing speech tonight and deserves much credit for the effort she put forth. As the first woman to have come this far in a political campaign for president, 18 million votes ain’t bad, wouldn’t you say?

That being said, everything Hillary stands for and everything her supporters believe in is at stake in this election. Hillary and Barack have virtually identical positions on the issues, whereas John McCain is the opposite on almost everything. Any SANE Hillary supporter, as much as they may be disappointed that she did not prevail, can not let a George Bush Republican win the White House again. It is against everything that Hillary has fought for her entire life! To vote for McCain would be to turn your back on Hillary.

Always the party poopers, a good deal of Republicans from across the country have converged on Denver for the Democratic National Convention. One of them, a supposed former Hillary Clinton supporter, invoked on Hardball with Chris Matthews that Barack Obama was a Muslim who went to a madrassa. Even though CNN and other news organizations debunked this claim (he attended a secular school), it continues to get circulated on the Internet and in the media (especially on channels like Fox). When pressed for evidence, she had none. Apparently rumors and innuendo are enough for some people’s small, bigoted minds.