Needless to say, all is quiet on the home front here in Elysian Heights, although I am standing by with my multiple devices should I get a call. So just for kicks, I video-ed my vote below. Did you vote today?
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As has become a tradition, I video’d my vote this morning. There is never much of a line at my polling place, around the corner at Elysian Elementary School. But this morning I did something that I’ve never done before. I know… wait for it… I chose the Republican ballot.

“I really hope you reconsider and vote for Democrats in the fall,” said the poll worker — after i put my cameraphone down. I chuckled and looked down at the page in the precinct roll with my name on it. All Dem and one N/P. N/P for non-partisan (or “no pickles” in restaurant shorthand), otherwise known as “decline-to-state.”

I am a decline-to-state voter for various reasons: I’m an independent and don’t subscribe to the limited scope of a two-party system; I don’t want to be added to any more junk mail lists; because i don’t care what you call me just don’t call me a D or an R (“commie” is fine, “babykiller” is not).

But the main reason for doing so is for the opportunity to make a choice on the spot when it comes to the primary elections. FACT: Jerry Brown is going to run away with the Democratic nomination for governor of California and after he does, I will vote for him in November. But there was no point in voting for him today. So I took a Red ballot — granted, as a single person with no dependents or home ownership, I did not bother with the school council board items. But I cast a vote for an underdog candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary because I’m not a fan of either Meg Whitman or Steve Poizner. Poizner seemed OK at first, but the more I read about him, the more I detested him. So I voted for Bill Chambers. He likes freedom and has a dope mustache and a mullet.

Always feels good to vote — and I prefer to vote to change things for the better. on the Props I went — 13: yes 14: yes 15:yes 16:no :17:no.

Don’t forget to vote today — if you’re in LA you can find your polling place via lavote.net/Locator/, elsewhere, check smartvoter.org.

Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act –

Posted via web from Andy Sternberg’s posterous

Here’s the SUmmary:

Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act: Summary –

and to whitehouse.gov.

YES. WE. DID.

See also: White House blog.

Video streaming by Ustream

Barack Obama’s 21-month-long presidential campaign got off to a lively start, owing much to students who used Facebook — among other social networks — to raise awareness and build a coalition. The McCain campaign (as well as every other campaign) struggled but all fell short in attempts to embrace and embolden the millions of social media loving youth to their advantage.

It was easy for Obama. At an early campaign rally, he went on and on about the Students for Barack Obama group on Facebook and how it helped get his campaign off to a running start. This was in Los Angeles in February 2007 and I was there shooting video:

Last week, Obama’s online team went live with an integration of MyBarackObama.com and Facebook via Facebook Connect.

Tonight I was welcomed to Facebook with a notification asking me whether or not I had voted yet. The greeting came from the Obama app which I had installed months ago. In Facebook — as in much of the online world — Obama beats McCain in a landslide. Messages from campaigns on online networks *could* get annoying if frequent, but in Obama’s case, frequency was not necessary for the messaging to be effective. Facebook users are more aware of social media etiquette than most. Perhaps that’s why they’re so quick to call out the bullshitters and fear-mongers — as much of the online media world is at this point in the campaign (see my previous post).

How has the Obama campaign used social networks and leveraged social media so wisely, even getting up and running on Facebook Connect a month before its official launch? Obama discovered the power of Facebook early on in his campaign and, well, he’s got Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes working on his online strategy team.

See also: Obama Dominates Content Sharing as Election Approaches at Mashable.

Campaign Coverage FAIL! FoxNews has been striking out all over the place in recent weeks, along with much of the so-called Conservative media. It’s enough for them to actually go and interview this Joe the Plumber hack again but to quote his admittedly racy and barely informed point-of-view in a headline?!? It looks funny. It looks straight outta the Onion. But it’s effective as another hollow strawman for anyone reaching reaching reaching for reasons to vote for McCain.

Now I don’t disagree with Jack Shafer’s assessment today in Slate, that journalists will have us all retching upon hyperbole and re-statement to the effect that “Obama’s candidacy is momentous, without parallel, and earth-shattering, so they can’t file garden-variety pieces about the ‘winds of change’ blowing through Washington.”

At least I won’t be as ill as I was in 2004, when I couldn’t sleep for days after Bush was crowned a second time, or in 2000, when I was overseas and left to make excuses for my country’s inability to select a winner in a national election in the world’s bastion of democracy. And then, weeks later, to hand the keys to the kingdom to The Imbecile.

But I digress. The GOP doesn’t appear to have an October surprise that will stick. Not in today’s 24-hour social media climate. McCain is literally cracking himself up on the campaign trail thanking his pundits for not eating up the Hall-Obama-ween candy. Muahahaha, he might add.

Here’s a sample of what’s been brought to the table by the ever-desperate anti-Obama minority — and yes, it is a highly-unbalanced minority — in recent days:

DrudgeReportLOLWTFBBQ: The site trumpeted a headline featuring audio that was edited to change Obama’s words in a 2001 interview on Chicago Public Radio’s midday program Odyssey (which, by the way, featured the all-time best NPR theme song, as written by OKGo for host Gretchen Helfrich). WBEZ promptly delved through the archives and posted the unadulterated audio on it’s web site, along with an article clearing up the smear.

There’s the continued attempt of McCain backers (and now, apparently, the campaign itself) to get the LA Times to release video of Obama at a party for Rashid Khalidi, a former University of Chicago professor but also — or so they claim in right blogistan — a former PLO operative.

Regardless of Obama’s alleged association with Khalidi, it is McCain who is on the record has having given more than just a hug to the Palestinian sympathizer, in a relationship that dates back to 1993, according to Seth Colter Walls in the Huffington Post:

A 1998 tax filing for the McCain-led group shows a $448,873 grant to Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies for work in the West Bank. (See grant number 5180, “West Bank: CPRS” on page 14 of this PDF.)

I could go on and on and if I have the time, I will. For now, prepare to eat crow, and until then you might just want to hide your hands behind your back.

WASHINGTON — The ATF says it has broken up a plot to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a Tennessee murder spree. In court records unsealed Monday, agents said they disrupted plans to rob a gun store and target an unnamed by predominantly African-American high school by two neo-Nazi skinheads.

How many such “plots” might be out there? How many copycats may be inspired by such reports and how many will be frightened? At least two other Obama death threats have been publicized in recent months. Personally, this makes me feel ill.