By not using candidates' names it is felt a truer sense of how the parties are perceived can be teased out of the data.

Years 1998 - 2001
Years 2002 - 2005
Current Year Arcives

Travelers' Tip:

The speech that Donna and I did was at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. I checked in at about five in the afternoon the night before our noon event and went to my room.

I found the hair dryer as you see it above: Stuck into the towel rack with the cord dangling in a less-than-coiled manner.

I pulled out my camera and took the photo on the left above; went downstairs to the front desk and asked for a supervisor. When the supervisor came out I showed her the picture and suggested this was more like something I would have expected to find at "Al's Motel: Rooms by the Month, Week, Day or Hour" but not at a Starwood property.

She was dutifully shocked and said she would inform housekeeping immediately.

I went down the block to have a bite to eat (P.J. Clark's had meat loaf and mashed potatoes on the menu which I had been craving since my 42nd High School Reunion weekend).

When I returned a hour or so later I went to my room and found the hair dryer still tucked in behind the towel rack.

I went back downstairs and asked for a supervisor again and the same woman came out. I wasn't angry, but I asked her how it could be that the hair dryer caper hadn't been corrected. She said she had called housekeeping and she couldn't understand it either.

I suggested we get the head of housekeeping to join us at the front desk so we could all have a chat about who called whom about what and why nothing had been done.

She didn't think that was such a swell idea so I had an alternate suggestion: I wanted a different room; an upgraded room for the insult of having to deal with a room decorated in the mode of "Al's Motel."

She saw the wisdom of my thinking and gave me a room on the Club Level which not only had a hair dryer in its little holder in the bathroom (as you can see in the photo to the right), but also featured a large flat-screen TV and free continental breakfast in the club lounge.

Moral: If you're paying full rates, don't settle for anything less than full service.

Catchy Caption of the Day

Actual Caption:

A 29-year-old Iraqi immigrant travelling with his mother at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, was too embarrassed to tell security the squeezable rubber object in his backpack was a penis pump, he mumbled something that sounded like "bomb" and was immediately detained by the airport police.

See? A guy from the Middle East gets busted for having a penis pump. Another example of racial profiling. Wouldn't have happened if he'd been from someplace like ... Uranus.

(AFP/Getty Images/File)