Some of the news that is fit to print

Polling problems

Pollsters Having a Tough Time

As noted by Poyter's Al Tompkins

The head of The Washington Post's polling unit says pollsters are having an increasingly hard time getting people to talk to them.

The Washington Post reports:

Cell phones, Caller ID, and increasingly elaborate call screening technologies make it harder than ever to reach a random sample of Americans. Prompted by the popularity of do-not-call lists, a few state legislatures are considering laws that would lump pollsters in with telemarketers and bar them from calling people at home.

Costs are soaring as cooperation rates remain at or near record lows. In some surveys, less than one in five calls produces a completed interview -- raising doubts whether such polls accurately reflect the views of the public or merely report the opinions of stay-at-home Americans who are too bored, too infirm, or too lonely to hang up.

The story continues:

...far more refuse to participate in surveys today than a few decades ago. In the 1960s, it was common for two-thirds of those contacted to complete a telephone survey. But participation dropped steeply through the 1980s and early 1990s, when it appears to have leveled off.

No surveys are immune. "Phone surveys are suffering, but so are response rates to mail surveys and even mall intercept surveys" in which people are interviewed while shopping, says Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, the best source of data on social trends in the United States. "All of the dominoes are being knocked down because the whole table is being shaken."

Going THERE?

So the President spoke out for the first time yesterday about the missing explosives.

Our military is now investigating a number of possible scenarios, including that the explosives may have been moved before our troops even arrived at the site," Mr. Bush told thousands of Republicans at an airport rally in Lancaster County, Pa., his first stop of a day that took him through three states.
"This investigation is important and it's ongoing," he said, "and a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your commander in chief."

Given the fact that we went to war jumping to conclusions without knwing the facts... and he is our commander in chief.

Meanwhile the NYT follows with a story about Iraqi employees of the compound who said they witnessed the site being picked clean by looters soon after U.S. troops sweep through.

Presidential tie?

Ah, the much bemused electral college. WP reporter Dana Milbank had a piece this morning that said there are all sorts of potential scenarios that could result in a tie.

Tuesday's election will probably be decided in 11 states where polls currently show the race too tight to predict a winner. And, assuming the other states go as predicted, a computer analysis finds no fewer than 33 combinations in which those 11 states could divide to produce a 269 to 269 electoral tie.

New iPod...

Um... Yipee!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE my iPod. And this new one looks really cool.

Newest iPod From Apple Holds Photos and Music [NYT, 10.27.2004] By JOHN MARKOFF The new iPod Photo, priced at $499 and $599, will be able to store up to 25,000 wallet-size images and up to 15,000 songs.

Meanwhile XM is going to have a new portable satellite radio. Slate argues both the iPod and the portable satellite radio have their advantages.

One really disappointing thing about MyFi is that it doesn't let you create customized play lists—you can jump between the individual songs and talk show segments you record, but only in a prescribed order. The biggest problem with XM right now, though, is content. It's got 130 channels that I don't want to listen to. There's no Howard Stern, no Car Talk, no Rush Limbaugh. If XM has ever played Fischerspooner or Trooper, I missed it. If you want your music, stick to the iPod. The million or so tracks available through the iTunes store are only a subset of the millions of songs, shows, and books ever recorded, but that's still an order of magnitude more than what XM can fit on 130 play lists. You can also rip your CD collection onto your iPod, legally.

Halloween tidbits...

From Poynter... some Halloween facts

The United States produced 805 million pounds of pumpkins in 2003. Illinois was the largest pumpkin producer with 326 million pounds.

The Census Bureau says:

There also were a whole lot of pumpkin patches in California, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York. Each produced at least 70 million pounds of pumpkins. The value of all the pumpkins produced by these states was $81 million... Source: http://www.usda.gov/nass/

Here is a great collection of other Halloween facts from the Census Bureau.

Campaign sighs...

So as you can tell, I love politics, but the last part of a campaign -- especially a political campaign -- gets exasperating.

Driving in this morning, I saw two campaign signs that I found terrifying – both pro-W, coincidently. Both looked make shift, you know, like they were hand stenciled. One was multiple signs along the median of the road – “The US weapon of mass destruction” and then “Bush-Chaney ’04.” To be honest, I can’t tell if that is pro-W or pro-Kerrey.

The other was, “Leading through faith and prayer. Bush ‘04” OOOOOOOK!

I travel to Hershey, Pa. this afternoon for work, which will be my first trek into a battleground state since I was in Ohio for the Fourth of July weekend. I am there for work, but I’m sure there will be campaign stuff all over the place. I’ll update later.

The other thing about the last week of the campaign is that there is nothing really going on so The Media goes hyper-speculative. The Sunday political shows certainly demonstrated that in spades. All had their roundtables where folks tried to assess what would happen and why and all had political hacks representing the two parties and spinning away. My beloved Meet the Press featured Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie and a political roundtable. While MTP demonstrated why it is the number one Sunday morning program, my favorite part of the campaign isn't the horse rase. Rather it is the healthy debate of ideas.

Unlike some who say they can’t wait for it all to end, I love the political campaign. It forces us as a country – and our leaders – to pay attention to what is really important. That doesn’t always mean the best decisions are made, but campaigns force us to ask questions and set priorities.

One of the things I love about living in Washington is that it is a company town and that politics is the life blood of the city. And unlike some who say that they avoid political discussions, I relish them because they are at the heart of democracy. I don’t believe I have the answers to everything. To the contrary, through discussion and debate, I formulate my own views and the only way I can do that is by having somebody that sees things differently.

(Just an aside, I love a political debate with an intelligent person. Nothing is more frustrating then holding a discussion with somebody who is just a knee-jerk. When we were in Hilton Head, North Carolina recently, I had the opportunity to meet somebody like that. Her take on the election: If Kerry is elected, the United States will be in serious danger. Seriously!?!)

Most people in Washington don’t take politics personally. They understand that one wins some and one loses some, but most people have a ardent belief that the result of the debate of ideas is wisdom. That debate is at the heart of democracy.

If I have a problem with politics today, it isn’t they money involved. To the contrary, I think that is healthy. Nor is it that some people don’t vote. People will vote when they believe it is important for them to vote, I think. But what is troubling is that the professional campaign managers have become so sophisticated, they don’t wage a debate of ideas. Instead, they hone a message, much the way you market shampoo, that they believe consumers will buy. Thankfully, technology has made it more difficult to create that message. One of the amazing things about this year is that pollsters are having trouble getting a gauge of the numbers because many people only have cell phones and therefore run below the radar of pollsters. So I’m excited about next Tuesday. I guess I just wish it was today… or tomorrow.

Acknowledging everything said above, what were Kerry’s people thinking with the goose hunt?

Argh! He isn't going to ride in a tank now, is he?

Show-off...

So we went to the National Symphony Orchestra's annual Decorator Show House this weekend. This is where numerous decorators each do a room of the house. This year's house, Château Peyrenc de Moras in Potomac, Md., is one of those McMansions that have proliferated around the country and are really awful. That made the task for the decorators more difficult. It is also often jarring. One goes from one room to the next and finds a complete design change. It just leaves your head spinning. And I just don’t think the decorators did as well this year as they have in years past.

There is a wonderful sitting room that had this amazing flat panel television which raises right out of the cabinet. And there is an amazing window treatment that is actually a canvas that was been painted. Those were quite nice. The rest of it, however, was a bit over the top, which, combined with the over the top house, was way over the top.

Clinton translated

As noted in Slate.com's Today's Papers:

Forget faux Louis Vuitton purses—the hot new knockoff on the streets of China is a revised (and Communized) version of Bill Clinton's autobiography, My Life. Explains the NYT:
[F]ake publishers have certainly managed to take plenty of liberties with the text. One of the best examples is the very long opening sentence of Mr. Clinton's version, which takes 48 words to detail his birth, even the stormy weather that preceded the big event. The first sentence in the pirated Chinese version says: "The town of Hope, where I was born, has very good feng shui." ... Another retranslation of the pirated translation last summer has Mr. Clinton explaining to Hillary that his nickname is "Big Watermelon."

Sinclair reviews

So Sinclair's controversial anti-Kerry 'news' broadcast aired on its stations on Friday. Here in Washington, we did not see it, but it was seen as more fair then anybody had expected.

Softened Strike: Sinclair Program Critical of Kerry, But More Balanced [WP, 10.23.2004] By Howard Kurtz Sinclair Broadcast Group last night aired a program that sharply criticized John Kerry over Vietnam, with the anchor declaring: "Some people are trying to suppress the right to free speech."

AP also filed a story.

The LAT also continued its look at the Sinclair Broadcast Group today.

Sinclair's Growth Matched by Criticism [LAT, 10.24.2004]
By Elizabeth Jensen and Walter F. Roche Jr.
For a glimpse at the Sinclair Broadcast Group's particular place in the American media landscape, consider the firm's quest several years ago to add a new group of TV stations to its growing empire. The Federal Communications Commission had some problems with the deal — a sensitive transaction because it involved the still largely banned practice of owning more than one station in a given market. In this case, not only was Sinclair getting the stations for a "small fraction of their value," but the commission found that the company, operating under an agreement merely to manage the stations, had instead effectively taken control of the outlets before the purchase.

Kushner for Kerry

Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Tony Kushner, author of Angles in America, in a recent issue of The Advocate writes a column in favor of Kerry.

An unmannerly pre–Election Day splenetic [Advocate]
“I’m too angry to write about this election,” writes Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Tony Kushner. “I think what’s really driving me nuts is that 50% of my fellow citizens are going to vote for Bush, and I don’t understand it.”