The Obama team started off their first week of his Presidency with the harsh realization that they have moved into the dark ages from a technological and communications perspective.

It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari. Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

It appears they will be working on biege computer boxes with Windows 2000 on them. I realize that the Federal Government is quite a large organization and upgrading the systems is not a simple task, but you would have to think that the staff at the White House of all places would have an IT system and infrastructure that employs standards and technology from this decade.

Calrissian or Emperor Palpatine. This is just a riot. And they actually got Billy Dee Williams to participate in the video. Via Buzzfeed

Hope you are going to vote today. Everyone is doing it.

Track the news, results, and idle banter here:

• Twitter’s Election 2008
• ABC News Election Coverage
• CNN Election 2008

On the day the NY Times endorses Barak Obama, they also posted an interesting interactive display of their Presidential endorsements through the ages. What were they thinking endorsing Wendell Willkie over FDR back in 1940? Also interesting, but not at all surprising, that they have not endorsed a Republican since 1956.