quote/unquote: Dewey-Truman polls, Giuliani, Krauts, Mencken

(Another in a continuing series as related by D.J. Wilson from St. Louis, MO)

"Harry Truman was trailing Thomas E. Dewey by 5 percent in the last Gallup poll in 1948, conducted between Oct. 15 and 25 * the same margin by which Mr. Obama seems to be leading now. But on Nov. 2, 18 days after Gallup's first interviews and eight days after its last, Truman ended up winning 50 percent to 45 percent. Gallup may well have gotten it right when in the field; opinion could have just changed."
*- Michael Barone, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Oct. 22, '08

"Hi, this is Rudy Giuliani and I'm calling for John McCain and the Republican National Committee, because you need to know that Barack Obama opposes mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, drug dealers, and murderers. It's true, I read Obama's words myself. And recently, Congressional liberals introduced a bill to eliminate mandatory prison sentences for violent criminals -- trying to give liberal judges the power to decide whether criminals are sent to jail or set free. With priorities like these, we just can't trust the inexperience and judgment of Barack Obama and his liberal allies. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008."
*- "robocalls" in Colorado,Wisconsin and Minnesota paid for by McCain/Palin, read by Rudy Giuliani

"Touching is not part of German culture, and even less so in the culture of this German. . .Physical exhibition of feelings is not proper to Germans."
*-journalist Dorothea Hahn of Die Tageszeitung, referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has gotten word to French President Nicolas Sarkozy to refrain from touching her during meetings

"(this book is) no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that. . . The principal personage is a bounder typical of those parts * a young man with a great deal of mysterious money, the tastes of a movie actor and, under it all, the simple sentimentality of a somewhat sclerotic fat woman. This clown Fitzgerald rushes to death in nine short chapters."
* H.L. Mencken, in his review of "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)