Mike Berman’s Washington Watch

June 29, 2008 8:55 AM

This and That

About polling: WW has passed this reminder to its readers before, but it is worth doing again. As the campaign season escalates there will be hundreds of polls. Many of them are sponsored by substantial organizations with high standards, like NBC/WSJ, WP/ABC, CBS/NYT, Newsweek, LATimes Bloomberg, Cook/RT, etc. And then there are surveys taken on the cheap by a variety of entities whose goal, as much as anything, is to get their name in the news cycle.

Then there are surveys of all adults, registered voters, and, closer to the election, likely voters. Be mindful of the group that is being surveyed.

All of which is to say, consider the source before you rely in any substantial way on surveys that come to your attention.



40% of Americans have gotten campaign news and information from the internet so far during the election season. Only 31% could say that at this time in 2004. 6% go online for this purpose daily, while 19% go on at least once a week. [Pew Research Center 2008]



Reilly's Rules (John Reilly that is)

Rule # 1 - In a campaign, if you ever receive a "contribution" in an envelope which consists of four $100 bills, you can be certain that the person giving you the envelope has "nicked" either $100 or $600, because nobody in political history ever gave anybody $400.

Rule # 2 - In every campaign you will ever be in, there will always be somebody on Your Side that you wish devoutly was on the Other Side.

Rule # 3 - You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones on who you have to concentrate.



It appears that in their Federal political giving, "Bermans" favor Democrats by a substantial margin. According to Fundrace08.Huffingtonpost.com, as of May 31, 2008, persons with the last name of "Berman" contributed to Democrats over Republicans at a ratio of $2 to $1 during this 2007-08 cycle.



Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.



A family went to one of those restaurants where the walls are plastered with movie memorabilia. The woman of the family went to see the hostess about reserving a table. When she returned she found her 11-year-old-daughter staring at a poster of Superman standing in a phone booth. She looked puzzled.

She asked her husband, "Doesn't she know who Superman is." "Worse," he replied, "she doesn't know what a phone booth is."



[Editor's note: One thing about having your own newsletter is that you can include just about anything that suits your fancy. In the interest of full disclosure, WW is a stockholder in the company described below.

For gentlemen readers I will explain at the end of the following why this site should be of interest to you.]

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