After I posted the photograph of Little Diomede, Alaska, I told my friend that I had used their photograph on my blog. Instead of being annoyed, the person sent me a couple more photographs that were taken on their Alaskan trip in the summer of 2007. Above & below are the unmodified versions of the photographs and below the fold I decided to include the two photographs after doing some color correction.

View the same photographs after color correction:

Above is the unofficial results from yesterday’s election. Since I didn’t vote for Barack Obama, I decided to not celebrate last night. It wasn’t my victory. All I can say is that I voted for the other black presidential candidate, the one the media decided to ignore. I’ll probably revisit my feelings toward the 2008 election in a future entry. I’d also like to make another round of maps of where DC residents voted for DC Statehood Green Party candidates. One positive aspect of the election is that the party was able to maintain ballot access for the 2010 elections.

Related 2008 Election Entries:

Last Friday I went to the Huffington Post DC office and filmed the above video clips that were published today on the Huffington Post. After we filmed the clips below we went outside and had some fun interviewing people.

It’s been a year and a half of election coverage. So many sights that we’ll never be able to unsee. So many attack ads that still haunt our dreams. So many memories that need purging. But maybe you’re just joining us today or something, and you have no idea what all the hubbub is about! For those of you who find yourself completely clueless, I’ve endeavored to recap the entire election season for you, in two videos, using notes I scribbled on one hundred index cards, and commentary pulled from my ass on the fly.

In Part One, we move from me not remembering Bill Richardson’s name (in the moment, I swear, I thought his first name was Dennis), to the pundit’s early predictions, to John McCain’s primary victory, to the Math vs. Momentum deadlock that embroiled the Democratic race.

Continuing:

And, in Part Two, we roll from Obama’s primary victory to forsaken town halls, attack ads, conventions, veeps and debates, culminating in the emergence of the Great Destroyer, the Devourer Of Worlds, Satan’s Mongrel…a man that I like to call Joe The Plumber. NONE SHALL ESCAPE HIS CLUELESS, UNEMPLOYED WRATH OR HIS RECORD DEAL.

As you’ll see, reliving the entire past year gets pretty tiring near the end, but it still feels good to get all of this angst out of my system. I think you’ll enjoy it, too, for that reason!

As an added bonus, Liz Glover took this photograph of me setting up the camera for the shoot :-)

I’ll be back later and add details to this entry. Fast forward to about 4:30 to watch me vote!

This entire election season I have not received any unsolicited e-mails from any presidential candidates or local candidates, until tonight. The image above is a screen grab of the e-mail that I received in my mailbox earlier tonight. Talk about last ditch effort. Below is a screen grab of the WHOIS search of the e-mail’s source:

While this can be spoofed by a mildly intelligent person, I have a feeling that this spam is legitimately from the campaign office of John McCain. It was sent to e-mail address listed on the right side of this blog, which is not an e-mail address I use for communication. This means that the e-mail address was harvested from a spider that was then sold to John McCain’s campaign. Nice job illegally contacting me, but I’m still going to make history tomorrow.

By clicking the “vote” link in the e-mail above the recipient is brought to this landing page:

To the unsuspecting visitor the forms that they are being asked to fill out look as though they would help them find their polling place. However, this might just be a covert means to gain voter registration information for future races. This type of clandestine data mining would definitely be considered “the double maverick.”

As I noted before, Jason Linkins, Liz Glover, and I recorded some man-on-the-street interviews on Friday. I had suggested going to the White House to interview tourists and it turns out that we found quite a few foreigners to interview when we arrived. Of the five or so interviews that I recorded, I had the most fun recording with the dual interview (above) between Liz Glover & Polish television correspondent Paulina Drapala. I am told that Paulina’s interview aired last night on Polish television. If I’m able to get a copy of that version, I’ll post it here :-)

Poniżej prezentujemy linki do różnorodnych map. Znajdziecie tu mapy polskie i z całego świata. Większość map jest w języku angielskim, ale są również mapy w języku polskim.
…
Nikolas Schiller – strona artysty, który ze zdjęć satelitarnych tworzy dzieÅ‚a – strona w jÄ™zyku angielskim

Translated text:

Here we present links to a variety of maps. Here you will find maps of Poland and all over the world. Most are maps are in English, but some are in Polish.
…
Nikolas Schiller – an artist who creates the work of satellite photos – page in English

[note: I rarely use satellite imagery due to copyright restrictions. Most of the imagery on this website is derived from aerial photographs that were placed into the public domain.]

The other day I found this photograph above on a friend’s Facebook page. The photograph was taken from an airplane while the friend was traveling Alaska on behalf of their job in the American government. Around the time current Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, made a gaff about being able to see Russia from Alaska, I remembered how there was only one spot in America where this was the case and it just so happened that my friend had recently been there.

Known as the Diomede Islands in America or the Gvozdev Islands in Russia, the two islands are only split by about 4 kilometers. What I’ve always thought was interesting is that the houses on Little Diomede (above) face tomorrow. Due to the placement of the International Date Line, the Russian side is one of the first territories to start the day. This means folks on Big Diomede can also see yesterday.

NASA satellite image of the Diomede Islands

Back in August before I went to Denver to help cover the Democratic National Convention, Liz Glover asked me to design microphone flags for the Huffington Post, Radar Magazine, and Blackbook Magazine. The idea behind making these microphone flags was that she’d be able to change the flags on her microphone before interviewing people for the different news organizations. It adds an extra sense of legitimacy to any reporter in the field and it genuinely looks more professional.

On Monday she went up to New York City to cover the opening of Steve Lewis’ new club Aspen Social for Blackbook Magazine. In the video above I spotted the Blackbook microphone flag that I designed for the first time. Judging by the success of the interview, I hope to see that flag more often.

By the way, did you see what happened to that same microphone in Minnesota? I’m still laughing at that dog named Sarah.

On Sunday, I went with my friend Elizabeth Glover to Ana Marie Cox’s house and help direct the 3rd edition of their semi-weekly Huffington Post on-line show “Vlogorrhea with Jason Linkins & Ana Marie Cox.” This week’s show was about the election and the demise of Radar Magazine. Click the image above to watch the two videos.

I am still getting used to Head-Roc’s performing with a rock & roll band, but I like it. It shows Head-Roc’s sincere talent as one of the best musicians in Washington, DC.

Since the American media has completely blocked out the presidential campaign of Cynthia McKinney, its good to see that some foreign media is covering her campaign. In this web exclusive (aka not broadcast), Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan speaks to Cynthia McKinney about her platform and campaign.

I don’t think I’m allowed to be paid for my vote? Am I?
A $500 gift card is just so utterly tempting.

Early Friday morning I left my house with a sticker with the one intention of placing a sticker on the poster of street artist Shepard Fairey’s “The Duality of Humanity” which has been stuck up all around this country, from Denver to San Francisco and now, not far from my house in Washington, DC.

It was literally a tongue in cheek action because the sticker was temporary and message was humorous: I <3 Vandalism. I had obtained the sticker from a random street art book a friend gave me for my birthday. The reason behind doing this was two-fold. First is that some forms of street art is vandalism. The other, more important issue, is that Fairey’s street art is merely stylish propaganda, which deserves to be defaced over time, like all street art.

It’s really the Barack Obama poster that gets to me. In my opinion, there is nothing revolutionary about Barack Obama’s character. Nothing. He stands for the status quo. It might be progress that he might becomes president. But when placed in the context of revolutionary ideals and presidential aspirations, this street art becomes explicit Democratic party propaganda and thereby subverts his entire message.

Moreover, its gimmicky— have an acclaimed street artist come to town, put up some large prints that depict ironic pseudo-revolutionary memes on derelict property, have a gallery opening to sell it to rich folk who keep the duality alive, and put up Barack Obama posters on the side. I get it and it sells well. Yet political art should have a larger message that is defiant of the status quo. To embrace the partisan, lesser of the two evilism, might be a Duality of Humanity, but its politically feeble-minded and artistically weak, but it sure is nice propaganda.

At the beginning of September I posted a similar graphic showing the third party presidential ballot access in the United States of America. In the month since, the final deadlines have passed and the updated graphic above shows the final state by state (plus the colony of the District of Columbia) listing of the candidates who have the statistical chances of winning the electoral college and becoming president of the United States.

What is sad about American democracy as it’s presented on television and in the print media is that America consists of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, and only those parties and no mention of the ones above. All the third parties above are either completely ignored or they are incorrectly lumped together into Independents. The result is a marginalization of all other parties who might contribute to the political discourse.

My friend just put up the interviews on YouTube that I filmed while in Denver, I figured today was the best day to post these.

The above screen grab is from the DC Board of Elections and Ethics website and shows the votes cast for D.C. Statehood Green Party Candidates in my precinct. Unlike the presidential primary election, where there were two DC Statehood Green Party votes cast, this time around the tally shows that I was the only person at my precinct to vote for the D.C. Statehood Green Party Candidates.

Taken together, these two votes show that I vote in the super minority, but when combined with the fact that I was the only person in 2004 to vote for David Cobb in my precinct, I’ve come to the conclusion that voting can empirically show my uniqueness.

Yet politics and elections are not supposed to show that only I voted, rather when aggregated they are to reflect the values and beliefs of a geography. So in this respect, these election results show that I am unique to where that I live, but they also show how little influence my beliefs have at the ballot box of my precinct. Regardless, I am happy to live in a city that has more than two major parties because many cities only have two choices.

The Republican Party’s vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Tonight this website had a visitor from Wasilla, Alaska who looked at this statehood-related map. Upon looking at the city on Google Maps, I found out that Wasilla is a border city where the imagery of the geography shows only a portion of the city using new high-resolution imagery. In some ways, this map proves that Republican Party’s vice-presidential choice was literally off the map.

Related Google Map Entries:

This entry has depreciated. Please click here to view the most up to date graphic.

The inverted color graph above from Wikipedia shows the states where political parties in America are on the ballot. Each state has its own ballot access rules and regulations, so unlike the two major parties in America, the smaller parties have a harder time getting access to all states in America. In Washington, DC residents like myself have the option of Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney as well as the two major party candidates.

Last week in Denver I went to Ralph Nader’s rally and found his speech to be quite dull. I have the utmost respect for Ralph and he is one of my personal heroes, but when it comes to perennially running for president, he has nothing new to say and is a waste of time when it comes to growing third parties in America. This was the third political rally I’ve attended with Nader as the keynote speaker and his speech this year was not much different from the one I heard at the Green Party National Convention in 2007. His stance on the issues is 100% in line with my vision, but in most cases it seems that he’s still living out a dream that he is somehow going to crack through the two party system. By running as an independent he is able to keep the alternative voice alive in American political discourse, but by not aligning himself with a specific party he’s denying his supporters a political organization that can promote change from the bottom up, instead of strictly from the top-down. This has been sufficiently called Nader’s Nadir and it’s why I am not supporting him. I believe that changing the political sprectrum in America comes from the ground up through a slow coup of multi-partisan support. Or I’d at least like to believe its possible.

Below are a selection of videos from yesterday:

View the rest:

The Iraq Veterans Against the War hosted a free concert at the Denver Coliseum with The Coup, Flobots, and Rage Against the Machine. After the sold out show, about 4,000 people took part in a 4 mile march to downtown Denver to give the presidential candidate Barack Obama Campaign a list of demands regarding the war the in Iraq and the treatment of veterans.

This sequential video starts at the Denver Coliseum with clips of the Flobots and Rage Against The Machine, then follows the demonstrators to downtown Denver, and finishes on the Denver police marching like soldiers & a polar bear at Ralph Nader’s “Open The Debates” rally at the University of Denver Magness Arena.

Click here for photographs from the day’s march.

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