My, not mine personally, congressional member Republican Rep. Ted Poe of Humble, Texas, sent me an e-mail today wanting my opinion about legislation he filed. Mind you, he wasn’t personally sending it to me personally no doubt because he is usually too busy with personally chasing off illegal Mexicans and appearing on Fox News and Lou Dobbs. And personally I wouldn’t want to seek the opinion of someone who uses personally more than once in a paragraph. But, hey he asked me.
Rep. Poe wanted to know how I felt about legislation he put in the hopper that would lift the moratorium on offshore drilling “and provide an incentive for coastal states by allowing them to share in the revenues from oil and gas leases off their shores.”
Now, technically speaking, he really didn’t ask my opinion because the only possible answers were:
“Yes”
“No, they will continue to depend on Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to do all the work.”
“Unsure”
Obviously Mr. Poe didn’t leave the possibility for an open-ended “no” nor even a “not no but hell no.” So really the congressman was asking a trick question even though my true opinion is a complexly-qualified “yes.”
I suggest that if the good congressman really wants his constituents’ opinions he will genuinely ask for them and not just ask questions with the answers he wants. But then again I am sure he is much too busy stirring up animosity over immigration on right-wing talk radio and TV to contemplate little old my opinion. So I suppose I should thank him for taking time to e-mail me, even though some staffer probably did or even some machine. So, thanks, personally.