well, i screwed up one of my few diary entries.  it was about the white house correspondents' dinner where colbert delivered a scathing speech about the bush regime, right to the president's face. this was an example of political theatre at its best.  

do not fail to watch it.  you will be missing a subtle, yet in-your-face exposure of the evil that is governing our country.  do not be put off by the lack of belly laughs.  these people are not alughing for a good reason. think about it/

Perhaps we are celebrating a bit too hastily to poll numbers we love.  A caveat is in order here.  I have some experience with survey research, some postgraduate courses, a stint as an ICPSR (interuniversity consortium for political and social research ) representative and currently as a telephoner for a polling subcontractor.

Lately, bloggers are focusing on creating and funding polls.

Some of the questions I have seen are fundamentally flawed.
In graduate  school, I took several courses in survey research.  This was during the time that interactive computing replaced those pesky cards. Later in my work as a librarian I worked with survey researchers. Those were the good old days when there were no caller ids, phone blocks or cell phones!

In retirement I have been working for a telephone bank for a survey research company(market and political). My colleagues and I cringe at the quality of many of these polling questions. Often, we have to reword them for confused respondents. And that ain't good.