Field dressing a turkey is the new Kroger, y’all. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Obama Administration is taking their winning communication strategy to the White House using social media platforms to direct message the American people.

And Obama’s campaign found innovative ways to go around that filter, including regular Web video updates from David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager. Millions of people signed up for the updates.

Zeleny says the campaign was brilliant in sharing information through online social networks, YouTube and other viral outlets.

“I think in this White House, you may once again have more information about the president and the administration than ever before,” Zeleny says. “But I still think there will be fewer opportunities for questions and direct interaction with reporters and the president.”

The Obama White House is expected to hold more press conferences than did the Bush White House. Transition team spokeswoman Psaki says the old-fashioned media outlets still matter, because so many Americans still get their news from them.

But, she says, “We have certainly tapped into a willingness and a desire by the American people to receive constant news updates and the news in its raw form — you know, the original speech, the video of the event.”

So the White House press corps may end up competing with newsmakers and sources who increasingly want to deliver the news themselves.

President-Elect Barack Obama’s first weekly “radio” address was very un-radio. Posted Friday on YouTube, the first weekly address is 3:34 long and was seen 725,000 times over the weekend.

The Obama campaign’s innovative use of the web in the 2008 Presidential elections channeled passionate grassroots support into quick campaign cash and mobilized a political movement. States like Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama, where Democratic parties did not use the web to engage voters in the same winning manner, yeilded to Republican victories.

I find my mind turning to outhouses tonight, wondering how they work, how to control the smell in the summer. I never thought I would live in a time where something like that could be a possible way of life.  

In these last days of the Bush Administration, I find myself thinking about the possibility of having to dig a hole to manage my own solid wastes.  I find myself learning that Australians called the outhouse the “dunny,” or “thunderbox,” and paid civil servants to collect the “nightsoil” from the dunnys. It just sounds funny saying it with your inner Australian voice.

Time to scoop the nightsoil from the dunny, I reckon, mate!

I don’t want to be one of those people who drove around for years with the “W” stickers on their car proclaiming their partisan allegiance to everyone around them in traffic.

I want to be one of those people whose allegiance is to ideas and hard work.

I want to be the American I wished they would have been. I want to hold leaders accountable when they fail. I want to be vigilant through the challenging times that lie ahead. I want government that is prepared to lift America back up.

The election is over, and we all have one big mess to clean up.

I hope I’m always in good enough health to never miss an opportunity to vote and to make it one of the most shared experiences I can with others. That made my debut on TV last night sharing local voting experiences that much more special to me. I’ll post video of what we did later, but bringing your voting experience in photos, videos, blog posts, tweets and chats to a television audience was awesome for me personally. I was fortunate to get to witness your shared experience flooding every social media channel.

It was an amazing moment in the newsroom when all the channels on these monitors slowly switched to views of crowds finding out for the first time that Barack Obama was now President Elect of the United States.

I was driving home when Barack Obama made his acceptance speech and listened to it on WPLN. I rolled right into the driveway when it ended. Vince was right behind me. We stayed up for another hour just to make sure this was real. It’s for real.

Tomorrow (Nov. 4) is going to be a long day in Studio A, but I’m excited for a number of reasons. One is because I make my television debut bringing your Nashville-area web to our viewers.

Throughout tomorrow night’s coverage of the 2008 election results, I will feature your latest tweets on Twitter, some of your blog posts, comments from a live blog on NIT and your photos and videos.

If you’d like to join the conversation, here are a few links to ways you can have your voice featured in our television coverage of this historic night.

• follow me “nitweet” on Twitter
• join the live blog conversation launching at 5pm CT.
• send your photos of lines at the polls or video saying who you voted for and why.

Here’s a map I made to illustrate socialism’s entrenchment in America. Note the states that take more federal tax dollars than they contribute. Is it time to stop spreading America’s wealth around?