Last night someone called to survey my opinion about politics.  The man, who had an African-American accent (and who occasionally had difficulty reading the questions -- whether this reflected tiredness or poor education I don't know) announced his affiliation (Voter Consumer Research) and said he wanted to ask "a few questions" about my opinion on the upcoming elections.

After a couple of real questions  everything else was a statement followed by a request to rate my reaction to the statement as "very positive, somewhat positive, somewhat negative, or very negative" (no neutral option).

It didn't take me more than two questions of this type to realize it was a push poll, because the questions were heavily biased.  Some statements were outright falsehoods.  After answering a few of the questions with a brief argument about why the statement was false or misleading, I decided to go the whole nine yards and spent some 45 minutes spelling out my views about McCain.  I decided to spend the time because it was fun - I don't usually get to talk politics - and to tie him up.  Maybe even to try to put some sense into his head, though for all I know he might be pro-Obama already.

More on the questions, as far as I can remember them:

Bush has vetoed the farm bill, which also contained some modest help for middle- and low-income Americans.  Here is the link to the the NYT article

The reason he gave is that "the legislation is fiscally irresponsible".  But what strikes me is that the New York Times article...

Hardly did any work today.  Instead spent the day reading dozens of diaries and hundreds of comments on DK, and following links (even the press seems to have recognized gold this time around, with the predictable exception of Rush Limbaugh). And reveling in the pure joy of rereading and reciting parts of the speech.