From the Notebook

-Still working on the last touches of the updated Burger Tour, it should be ready to go sometime next week. Five joints were booted off the tour and replaced and there’s the inclusion of a long essay about how I evaluate burger joints.

-Also, I’m now in the middle of working on the Christmas Gift Guides, as usual the first episodes will appear sometime around Thanksgiving. I don’t know how many I do, it depends on how busy I get between work, the MBA program and the MN Senate Recount

-Ah yes, the recount in Senate…It’s starts tomorrow and I’ll be among the many volunteers across the state observing the process on behalf of the Coleman campaign. I’m doing the morning shift, done by 1pm, then off to the library for a few hours before I have to get to work. Home just in time to catch a few hours of sleep. I hope it doesn’t go one for very long.

-About the recount, I probably need to correct myself a bit after this post. My point was not we couldn’t accurately count ballots, my point was that the true will of those people voting on election day couldn’t be determined with any significant accuracy. My comments about the margin of error of the optical scanners is actually moot. I forgot errors should be expected to be distributed somewhat normally in what is in essence a binomial distribution of votes. While a shift of up to 70 votes would not be unusual, a shift in 200 votes would be completely unexpected.

-Don’t expect me to talk about Obama very much for the next few months. At this point, I’m going to give the president elect the benefit of doubt when it comes to his appointments and general administrative direction. I’m not interested in praising or criticizing before he’s actually done anything. Matter of fact, I probably don’t care to discuss politics at all until we’re into the 2010 election cycle, which should be about this time next year. Unless I see policies which are direct attacks against personal freedom (gun registration or mass property confiscation) I see a healthy amount of apathy in my life for sometime.

-This raises the question of the future of GOP. Well, just wait a bit everyone. The direction of the GOP on a strategic level should be a topic of discussion but not a serious one for quite some time. The issues of the day, the events in the newsand the activities of our opposition will mostly decide the way we direct the party in 2010 and beyond. It’s out of our hands. Fill in knowledge gaps, obviously, brush up on political technology and start thinking about 2010, but don’t knock yourselves out. In other words, relax.

-One of the tactical changes the GOP does need to think about is leadership changes. In most democracies the leaders of losing parties resign. This is healthy and something I would like to see, a turnover in leadership. (This doesn’t mean we throw the leaders overboard, think of it like taking combat leaders off the front line, they don’t suddenly leave the military, they are just reassigned to other areas. It’s an organizational necessity).

-Watched the movie “Faith of my Fathers” which was a film based on the John McCain memoirs of the same name. It’s a good film, not great. It focuses on McCain’s years in the Hanoi Hilton, which make it difficult to watch at times.