QUIZ QUESTION : Which party is generally more supportive of reducing the size and scope of the federal government?
A.) The Republican Party
B.) The Democratic Party

Tough question ?
Nah … not for me … but on a survey consisting of 13 questions, only 53% of the respondents provided the correct answer. I won’t tell you the answer, so that you may take the Pew Research online quiz (less than three minutes on dial-up).

The thirteen questions were pretty easy … associating ideology and political party, or politicians and their political party (not sure if John Boehner would be glad or disappointed that only 55% of the respondents identified him correctly — then again, the survey did not ask if who John Boehner was, so some answers could be pure guesses.)

Granted, people can accidentally click the wrong button …
Or the question could be phrased in a way that you did not anticipate – for example, “Do you support or oppose a Minnesota Constitutional Amendment to make Minnesota a Right To Work state ?”
“Right to Work” is an interesting choice of words for which Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1961, “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as ‘right to work.’ It provides no ‘rights’ and no ‘works.’ Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining… We demand this fraud be stopped.”

But of these 13 questions, only 8% of the survey pool answered all of them correctly.

That’s pathetic.

The television airways are now being filled with advertisements designed more to deceive than inform … remember the “Angry Al” commercials from the 2008 Coleman-Franken contest ?
The NRSC commercial depicted Al Franken on an out-of-control, emotional outrage … except the footage was from an excerpt from a speech where Al Franken was imitating Paul Wellstone cheering on his son during a cross-country race. In this instance, the Franken campaign countered the Republian ad with one of their own, featuring the extended speech … This new ad consists of a long video of Al Franken telling the story of late Paul Wellstone jogging with his sun; towards the end of the story, Franken imitates Wellstone enthusiastically talking to his son – and that’s one of the moments the GOP selected in its attack ad. “That’s right,” the announcer says. “Ads for Norm Coleman use this footage of Al Franken telling this story about Paul Wellstone and his son and try to make it seem like he was angry. Minnesota deserves better.”

Actually, America deserves better … Which brings us to the Voter ID question … why is there so much focus on whether the voter is legally entitled to vote versus if the voter is able to explain the issues and the reasoning for the vote ?