The Thanksgiving weekend was a good time.  It was a lot of fun to be able to see all my siblings again.  That hasn’t happened for a very long time.  So that was good.  I also got to meet Barry (Hi Barry!), who’s dating my sister.  I like him.  He’s a good guy, who you can crack jokes with.  He even helped clean up the house, change oil, and change windshield wiper blades.

Thursday we went to my Uncle Mark’s house for Thanksgiving Dinner.  There were some people there, and it was a good time to relax and visit with people.  We also searched through the news paper for the best deals for Friday morning.  We were thinking about going shopping.  Beth and I also were able to go for a nice walk out in the woods.  That was pretty fun.  It’s always nice to be able to get out into nature.

Saturday was a busy day.  The ladies had a Baby shower for my sister-in-law, and then a Bridal shower for Beth.  All the guys were out at my uncle’s place.  I was at home cleaning and getting ready for a surprise 35th wedding anniversary party for my parents. It was a lot of work, but I got it all done, or most of it at least.

Sunday was a good date day too!  It was the 6 year dating anniversary for Beth and me.  We went to see A Christmas Carol that the local community theater was putting on.   It was a decent performance, but having seen it at the Guthrie and Ford’s Theater it wasn’t the best I’ve seen.

So that’s my weekend recap.  I’ve got other things I could talk about, but I’ll save that for another post.

I read an article this morning that the Boston University College Republicans (BUCR) is giving a scholarship called the “Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship”.

From the article:

“Did we do this to give a scholarship to white kids? Of course not,” the scholarship reads. “Did we do it to trigger a discussion on what we believe to be the morally wrong practice of basing decisions in our schools and our jobs on racial preferences rather than merit? Absolutely.”

I must tip my hat to the BUCR’s (as I would to any organization) for bringing up this issue.  It is one that people don’t want to talk about.  To many things are not equal.  That goes for scholarships and jobs. I think to many people sit quietly by and watch all of this.
I know of one person who will not hire some one based on race or sex.  If he has 2 candidates of different sex or race, but they are equal (in the initial interview) on qualifications he’ll bring them in for as many interviews as it takes to get the more qualified person.  He will not make a decision based upon race, sex, religion, or anything like that.  It’s based upon qualifications.

Affirmative Action has been a hot topic.  In fact, my first big policy research paper was on this very subject.  I think it’s great that the BUCR is bringing attention to this issue.  We see it played out in a lot of schools across the nation.  I believe that it’s a big issue on Bethel’s campus, however in my interview of the Admissions Counselor there he said Affirmative Action was not used in the process of accepting students.

My paper was on the topic of Affirmative Action and using that in the college admissions process, but it would have been interesting to do it with Scholarships.  I have a feeling that a lot of schools have scholarships with racial preferences.

I personally think that in today’s society we need to give people equal footing.  We don’t want to elevate one group over the other.  “Equal Opportunities” is the common phrase.  But when schools give out scholarships based upon racial preferences is that equal?   Shouldn’t scholarships be based upon need?  (I don’t think schools define “need” very well.  They define need based upon what their parents make.  What if the parent’s don’t help their kids with finances in college?  A person from a family that has an income of $50,000/year but their family doesn’t help out with tuition costs is on the same financial footing as a person from a family that has an income of $20,000/yr.)

Any thoughts?

One year ago today I was sitting in the office anxiously awaiting the arrival of Beth and my parents out in DC for Thanksgiving.  Wow, that seems weird it was a year ago.  I remember the anxious feeling surrounding the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Everyone was ready to go on vacation.  Lauren and I were busy finishing up the Christmas Cards.  What a great time!

I got to meet Beth at the airport!  I scared her while she was waiting for the subway to come.  That was great!  I’ll never forget that moment.  That was the night we got to tour the West Wing, which was pretty sweet.  Also got to get my parents in to see the departure, which was fun.  Although it was a little chilly and Marine One makes a big wind storm!

What a great weekend!

I must say that this was the best weekend I’ve had in a very long time.  It was relaxing, and a lot of fun.  I got to hang out with friends, and Beth, and just have a good time.

It was very productive as well.  We got a lot done for wedding stuff, and I think we’re where we should be with all of that.  Except for music.  We still need to work on that.  Hopefully this weekend we’ll figure that stuff out.  Once we get that done I think that’s the last “major” detail we have to work on.  There are other ones I’m sure, but that’s the last big one that I’m aware of anyway.

I did buy a car this past week.  It’s a 2001 Daewoo Nubira.  It looks something like this. Actually it looks just like that, but that’s not a picture of it.  It’s got decent mileage on it, and it gets great gas mileage.  Straight highway miles it gets about 40, as far as I could tell anyway.  That’s pretty sweet!  The car’s under my name, so I think we should be alright with the name thing Mooney.

We looked at apartments this weekend too.  That was pretty fun.  We found one that we liked in Little Canada.  We’re going to look at more in 2 weeks when I’m down there and decide on something.  It would be great to get that figured out.  Seeing how we’ll both (hopefully) have jobs some place we could use a place to live.

I think that sums up the weekend (or it’s at least the short version).  The rest is just a rant about the liberal media.

I was reading the Star Tribune on Sunday and read an article about Rep. Marty Seifert being elected the new MN House Minority Leader.  The article made me somewhat mad.  It  talks about the election, and what he wants to do as the Minority Leader, and that type of thing.  I’m fine with that.  Then it comes on to blast him about things he’s done in the past, such as:

Measures that he has pushed include: denying dessert to prison inmates; prohibiting school students from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish or any language other than English; reducing benefits for welfare recipients who smoke cigarettes, and making funding for Minnesota Public Radio contingent upon MPR’s publishing the top salaries it pays.

To me these measures seem reasonable.  But the liberal media doesn’t like it.
It seems to make sense from a fiscal perspective.  I don’t know how many prison inmates there are, but I’m guessing it’s a good number. For the sake of my example I’ll use the number 10,000 for inmates.  Take that times 7 (assuming they get desert once a day, 7 days a week), even at $1 for dessert that’s $3.65 million in a year (or $1.8 million for 50 cents per dessert).  It seems to me that money would be a start towards the never ending debate over health care and education funding.

It also seems to me they want to require accountability with the money they fund MPR with.  They tried to do the same with education and the left didn’t like that.  What’s wrong with being fiscally conservative and requiring accountability with our tax dollars?

On the other hand the pioneer press ran an article on the same story.  Only they did a much better job at reporting the news, rather than reporting their viewpoints.  You can compare the articles by viewing them here and here.
When did the media go left?

That’s what I’m doing right now it seems like.  I’m super excited to get on my way to the weekend.  Beth and I are going to hang out, and look for apartments.  That’ll be very nice. I’m excited to see her and find where we might be spending the first few months of our married life.  It’ll be fun to go see Brad’s new house.  He’s throwing a party, and I’ll be there, so come on over see his house and have a good time!

Work has been interesting today.  First off new applications are being implemented, but no one tests such new apps.  So the server gets overloaded, and takes super long to do anything.  Next people have problems accessing it, and chaos ensues.  Next Mac’s can’t access it (which isn’t a huge problem cuz 98% of the people don’t use macs, but the 2% that do can yell loudly). So it’s been a day filled with putting out fires of that.  I think it’s mostly taken care of.  The directions which were sent out made people do something that was completely unnecessary and which caused a lot of the problems.

I’m looking at some new jobs.  I’ve applied for a few and will do more of that soon. I’m hoping to find something that will pay well.  After all I do (or will soon) have wife to take care of!

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend, and I’ll see some of you I’m sure!

That’s what Toys for Tots tells kids anyway.  (Okay, that might be spun not quite right, but they said they can’t give out the talking Jesus dolls to kids). Here’s the full story on CNN.

I for one had never head of these dolls before.  So if you want to see them check out this site.

We’re looking at apartments this weekend.  I’m looking forward to that.  It’ll be nice to get out of the house.  Start moving things into the place that will be ours (even if only for a short while).

We might be buying a car for Beth.  More on that, if everything works out.  Maybe I should make her blog about that.  She doesn’t blog anymore.

I’m eating ice cream at work right now.  It’s yummie.  Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and sprinkles.  Woo-hoo!

Cingular kicked us off of their network.  So we switched over to Verizon.  That means a new phone.  That phone, for me, is a RAZR.  I like the phone, but Verizon does stuff to it which I don’t like.  Namely I can’t OBEX file transfer with it (for the non-techies that means I can’t move pictures or sound files from my phone to my computer (or vice versa) via bluetooth).  I wish I could do that, but I might try to find a way.  Other than that it’s a good phone, I think.  I haven’t had any problems with it, so hopefully it stays that way.

Ice cream is gone.    Back to work.

It (World Wide Web) turns 16! I wonder what kind of car it got…

1556.  No, that’s not votes.  That’s the number of spam messages I got in the past 30 days to my votebleess.com address.  That’s a lot of spam. I talked about it a while ago.  If I remember right Mooney discussed it not long ago as well, but his example had far more spam messages then mine.

I had a good, relaxing weekend.  Beth was home and so I got to hang out with her a fair amount.  I’m looking forward to spending next weekend with her too.  It’ll be a good time. My brother came home this weekend, so I hung out with him.  I don’t think I’ve seen him since August.  It’s been a while.  It was good to see him, even if he didn’t get his big buck.

So, tonight after work I’m going to put the signs away.  They’re going into storage for about 18 months.  I’ve got to get them piled back up, and see how many I still have.  A number of them got stolen during the campaign, and some people threw the signs away afterwards.  Needless to say I’m not to happy about that.  But hopefully I’ll still end up with a fair number of them.  I don’t have all of them at the moment, I have to swap signs with other people.  I’m shooting to get at least 400 back.  We’ll see.

Enjoy the Monday.  Perhaps I’ll write more later.

The election was long, and I am bummed about the outcome. The “perfect storm”, according to Speaker Sviggum, was strong. We’ll see what happens.

Today I talked with Speaker Sviggum. He sounded bummed, but overall up beat. He looks at the big picture, and he’s a great man. I have the utmost respect for the Speaker. He is one of the best and nicest people I know. He is down to earth, and just overall a top class person. He had a press conference on Wednesday which I thought was great. You can see his true self coming though, the link is here if you care to watch it.

I am pleased with how well I did. I received more votes (percentage wise) than any other candidate has in the past against this incumbent. It was a fun experience, it was great, it was something I will do again. So many people have told me to keep on working for the people of Minnesota. Speaker Sviggum said the same thing. I will keep my goals, I will not give up.

I cannot say for sure where I will be on Election Day 2 years from now, or a little over a year from now when being a candidate starts, but I will run again. Some day, some where I’ll be on the winning side of the election.

Here are my thoughts, and they might be scattered. But bear with me.

The GOP in Minnesota (and everywhere) go the short end of the stick. Door knocking this summer people always talked to me about property taxes, and health care costs. After they mentioned that it turned to something like “How do you feel about the war in Iraq?” The Minnesota State Legislature doesn’t do anything about the war in Iraq.

There is a big anti-Republican sentiment going through the nation, and it swept through Minnesota as well. No Republican challenger beat a DFL incumbant. 19 Republicans lost to their DFL challenger. There is not much I can do about the anti-Republican sentiment.

I ran a good race. I worked hard, I put the shoes on the ground, hit over 8,500 doors, and did everything I could to get my name out there. I spoke the issues, and I spoke the truth (something I can’t say of my competition).

Liberal media: it’s not just a myth. The papers in the district here lean so far left it’s sad. Nothing would get printed that I put out after April. However, my oponent had several things published well into the election season. They try to (or just do) edit articles, and challenge what I say in them demanding proof. A rebuttal to my letter is given with complete lies. Double standard. Charging $40 for a 200 word letter to the editor is outrageous, especially when you can buy a year-long subscription to the paper for $35. Do you think they could try much harder to silence people?

Being a part of a “national referendum” makes me realize that people don’t separate the levels of government. It’s sad really. People say they want a change, but they keep the same person in there every election. They want a change, but they don’t vote it.

What’s next? I dunno. We’ll see. I’ll keep ya posted.

Check them out by clicking here.

That’s a question, which for days (months) has been on my mind and asked of me. When I finish door knocking one precinct I always move on to the next. But today, that’s all over. I have knocked my last precinct, for this election season. What an interesting time it has been. It has been a lot of fun and I enjoyed it. It’s a weird feeling to be done though. I think it will be weird Wed when I don’t have a whole lot to do. Well, I’ll be picking up yard signs, but that’s not door knocking.

Tomorrow I’ll post a link for the election results. If you don’t want to wait for me to post it, just go to the MN Secretary of State site and look for the results in District 11B. I’ll be sure to send out an email to everyone after I know the results. If you want on that list leave a comment, and I’ll be sure to get you on it.

Don’t forget to vote tomorrow!