Quote - I'll add this in regards to the issue of polls: it's just too bad that there isn't some sort of a hardline check on opinion polls like there is on election polls.  The pollsters have a tough time, not to mention an embarrassing time, trying to explain why their poll claimed that a candidate  who was supposed to win by 15 ends up losing by 12.  But the pollsters are free to say anything that they want to in regards to how many people are for or against various social issues, etc..  Because unlike with elections: there's no empirical way to test the pollster's claims on such abstract issues.  So the pollsters can blithely say that 75% of the American public favors this, or is opposed to that -- with no one able to point out to them just where they are operating in a world of statistics and figures which is heavily colored by their own wishful thinking.

Polling companies are also way behind the times: they do their research by calling people with land lines, not cel phones -- and given how our society is moving more and more towards cel phone use, the numbers are even more falliable.

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