I got push-polled todayFollow

Wish I can paid better attention to the name of the polling firm.

Nothing earth-shattering and national, I'm afraid. Was mainly about local county board seats. But after the first couple of questions (likelihood of voting, age, top voting issue, etc) they listed six people (and their parties) running for the county board and asked me which ones I'd vote for.

Then the next bunch was "I'm going to tell you some platforms the Republicans are running on and you say if they make you more or less likely to vote for them. Bringing in new jobs and helping the local economy. Widening [local highway] to improve safety. Moving [local hospital] to better provide care for you and your family. Preventing [local railway] expansion to prevent noise pollution and the chance of hazardous waste contamination due to accident..." and a couple others of the same vein. Then they asked again which of the six people I'd be willing to vote for.

Was kind of amusing once I realized what was going on. Funny thing is that I'm pretty sure the same firm called me yesterday and that time the questions were much more straightforward ("Which presidential candidate will you vote for? Are you certain, likely or leaning?", etc). Maybe they picked up a new contract.

The only marketing poll I ever answered, one of the questions was "Is it important to you to have a beautiful smile and straight teeth?" I pointed out to the pollster that the two things weren't mutually exclusive, to which the pollster agreed, and agreed these were stupid questions, but said I needed to provide a yes or no answer. I think I answered "no" because I didn't like the manipulativeness of the question, or the intimation that all crooked teeth are ugly.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I got that pollster either in immediate trouble after he hung up, or I REALLY damaged his productivity stats. Because I started pointing out all these problems with the questions, and laughing at them, and in the end, BOTH of us were laughing hysterically to each other on the phone, for ages and ages and ages, and really loudly.

If anyone here reading this has heard me have hysterics on Skype or vent, you know for how long I can go on for. And I didn't have any reason to control myself for this poor pollster, so I didn't.

Yeah, it's great when they remove people from their homes to build a highway, not because it's needed, but because they don't want to lose federal funding.

They didn't ask:

George Bush: Great President, or greatest President?