In My Mail

I got some lovely mail the other day, a big white envelope that said:

DO NOT DESTROY

OFFICIAL DOCUMENT

It's tax time and there's nothing scarier than official documents that you should not destroy. I opened it to find a 2017 Congressional District Census and a questionnaire that is, of course, designed to measure objective opinions on the issues of our time. Here are some of the questions:

• The first asks how I identify myself politically. The choices are conservative Republican, Independent voter who leans Republican, Democrat, Moderate Republican, Liberal Republican, or Tea Party Member. Notice there's one choice for Democrats but all kinds of flavors for Republicans.

• Media use is great. They offer all kinds of possible responses to how I regularly receive my political news. So, for example, there's NBC/CBS/ABC as one choice. That's okay, the three broadcast networks lumped together. As someone who seriously researches this stuff I can live with that. But then there's CNN/MSNBC together, which is silly. FOX News gets it own category, as do newspapers, radio, blogs, etc. And if wouldn't be Republicans if they didn't put a category called, and I'm not making this up, "Social Network." Not Facebook or Twitter, not social networks, but in all caps and singular, as if there's only one.

• On what five issues I think should immediately be acted on, every single one of them is written toward a conservative response. My favorite? "Cancel unconstitutional executive orders issued by Barack Obama." Clearly irony escapes these folks, given present circumstances.

• Here a question that's not leading at all -- "Do you agree that President Donald Trump and our Republican leaders in Congress should be aggressive in working to pass legislation to create jobs, cut taxes and regulations, end economic uncertainty and make America more competitive?" Really? That's a survey question?

• Here's another winner: "The Democrats' fixation on "climate change" has led to costly regulations that are negatively impacting our nation's economy. Do you think climate change is a major threat to our nation?" Ya know, let's put that "climate change" in quotes. Because why not?

• There is some good stuff here, like whether I support sending ground troops to Iraq and Syria, but most of them are complete bullshit.

Lemme be clear, this is not a real survey, it's really a way to raise money. They ask all these questions and when you finally get to the bottom there's a way to "better deliver our message as we fight to Make America Great Again."