TheWasilla Wonder

I just got off the phone after a lengthy time spent on hold with a department of the State of Alaska. I am frustrated.

Alaska, in case you didn't know, has a "welfare plan" (goddam socialist communist fascist motherfuckers) under which each and every permanent resident gets cash every year, based on the amount in the so-called "permanent fund" from the heady days of land-raping oil extraction on the North Slope.

So I know someone -- a relative -- who was a "permanent" resident in Alaska for the last two calendar years, but who now is an unhappy resident of a county jail nearby, and who has to stay there until the end of the year (an old DUI charge, third offense, which carries a 364-day mandatory sentence).

So I'm trying to help the kid out by getting all of his W2 forms and such so he can file his income tax. The only thing I'm missing now is the form to send in to Alaska so he can get his share of the welfare-money.

So I check out the appropriate State of Alaska website. No way to download the form. However, they do have a nifty online form. Which does me no good since HE has to fill it out. So I call the office in Juneau, stay on hold for days, and finally talk to a snippy little chick who informs me that they don't mail out the forms because it costs too much!!!

"Costs too much?" I asked.

"Yes. In a cost-cutting move instituted by our governor, we are not sending anything by mail. Postage is too high."

"Jesus, I'll pay the postage. How about you send it C.O.D.?"

"Sorry," she said, without sounding in the least sorry. "He can always file online."

"Which part of 'he's in jail' did you not understand?"

"Lots of people in jail have computer access."

"Have you ever been in jail?"

"No, not really."

"Then basically, like your ex-governor, you're talking through your ass, aren't you?"

Click!

Jeez, what a bitch! But, to put the best possible spin on that conversation, I guess the employees of the state of Alaska don't like being compared to their ex-governor, the Wasilla Wonder.

Speaking of which, Andy Ostroy over at The Ostroy Report has a brilliant take on our Sarah's appearance at the Teabag Convention:

Oh what a night! It was everything a bunch of grass-roots revolutionaries looking for a better (or is it tax-free?) America could have hoped for. Intense excitement filled the air as "The Future," former Alaska blink-of-an-eye Governor Sarah Palin, took center-stage at the cultish Tea Bag Party Convention in Nashville Saturday (haven't these poor people yet realized they've named themselves after a nadsack on the chin?).
There was absolute joy among Palin's ever-shrinking far-right-wing base when she bragged "0-for-3," referring to the three key Republican victories in recent months in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. "How's that hope-y, change-y stuff workin' out for you?," she obnoxiously asked in that painfully annoying fake-cutesy voice.

There's more, especially where he dissects the math and finds that in reality (a foreign shore to the GOP) the count is more like 5-3 Dems.