The caller ID on our phone showed a call from Salt Lake City Tuesday.

No message on voice mail: Just the call, along with four or five others from 800 numbers.

I recognized the Salt Lake number: The call center for The Tarrance Group, a Republican polling firm based in Alexandria. I know the folks at Tarrance and worked with them in a number of campaigns. My guess is they were calling to poll on George Allen.

Just for grins, I ran backtraces on the 800, 866 and 877 numbers. All came from polling firms or other political organizations.

One week to go until the November mid-term elections and both parties have their propaganda machines running at top speed. We Tivo everything on local channels so we can speed past the endless barrage of ads from the Senate race in Virginia.

This election is a no-brainer in our house. We’re voting for Jim Webb for Senate because neither Amy nor I can stand having a corrupt racist like George Allen represent Virginia in the Senate. And Rick Boucher gets our vote. He’s a good Congressman with a decent record of constituent service.

And we’re voting “no” on the marriage amendment. It’s nobody’s damn business if people of the same gender want to marry and we’re both damn sick and tired of the rabid right-wing extremism that has taken over government, especially at the federal level.

Our minds are made up and we don’t need propagandists from either political party telling us how we should vote on Nov. 7.