You heard it here first: my prediction for Republican presidential and vice presidential nominees for 2008: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn) and Senator George Allen (R-Va).

I opened my mail today and discovered something from my phone company. They were offering a five-cent/minute long distance deal, but something wasn’t quite right about the nickel they depicted on the ad. Sure enough, I got a real nickel and compared the text. A real nickel says “IN GOD WE TRUST” left of Jefferson’s image. Verizon’s nickel says “FIVE CENTS”, as if a true depiction of US currency is somehow offensive. I also find it strange that they didn’t just put the word “Liberty” to the left of Jefferson’s image, as it appears on his right side on the real nickel. Maybe Verizon thought its customers wouldn’t get the connection between a round coin with Jefferson’s face on it and the “five cents/minute deal”, thus the explicit mention of “FIVE CENTS.”

Reality check: Saddam Hussein killed at least twice as many people as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

I found an article about the facts of outcome-based education. My thoughts:

If we must resort to having our schools attempt to improve the self-esteem of children, it must mean that these children are arriving at school with feelings of self-doubt and underdeveloped egos. Simply telling a child he is valuable will not cut it. It is akin to telling an injured person “you are not hurting.” If a child isn’t valued and loved at home, what the child needs is positive attention, not lectures on self-worth. The assurances may be well meaning, but it should not be the school’s responsibility to indoctrinate feelings into children. Respect from others must come first from family and friends, and should be only a secondary reinforcement in school.

Some say that a person will be more likely to cope with certain situations if they are convinced that they are effective. But in this case, perception is NOT reality. The “relatively errorless progression” is the bane of outcome-based education because it encourages not the mastery of knowledge, but feelings. “Feelings, attitudes, and skills such as learning to work together in groups will become just as important as learning information — some reformers would argue more important.” (Closson) I’m most concerned with the idea of an “errorless” outcome. Telling a child he is correct when he is not and changing the rules as one goes along will not prepare that child for the work environment, where employers and deal-makers won’t give a rat’s rear end about “feelings”. Employers will not rate employees on a curve or cater to the lowest common denominator.

Visits to my Bush daughters poll have increased over 3000% since last week. I’m keeping the polls open late and I won’t rest until all the votes are counted. Ha ha. I really need to find a way to automate the results…

Why did Yahoo call Nevada before New Mexico or Ohio?!? This makes no sense whatsoever, as Nevada at the time had a smaller percentage of precincts reporting and had a smaller Bush lead. Sigh … I just realized this: 1972 was the last election year that the Republican party didn’t have a Bush or a Dole on the presidential ticket.

Matt’s election eve prediction: Bush up 2.3% in the national popular vote; Bush up 295 to 243 in the Electoral College.

Today, while working at the Hirshhorn Museum’s library, I came across a stainless steel shovel — it happened to be the one used by Lyndon Johnson at the museum’s groundbreaking ceremony on 6 Jan 1969! So now I’ve touched a shovel that was briefly used by LBJ.

“I agree with John Kerry, from Thursday night.” —John Edwards

Reagan’s funeral procession happened to go directly in front of the Museum of American History — the building I was working at that day. I went outside after work to find that a huge crowd had gathered to pay tribute to the man. It felt like Independence Day — patriotism and American pride filled the air. Everyone had a camera and it was relatively quiet. I watched in awe as the horse-drawn casket passed. People saluted, put their hands over their hearts, smiled, cried, took pictures… I even heard shouts of “I love you, Ronnie!” Personally, I had my hand over my heart and I heard myself sigh.

For once, the population was unified; Reagan’s historical and political stature seems to keep rising with every passing year. In hindsight, he was our best president and we were proud to call him our commander in chief.