THIS IS NOT SNARK
Between Michelle Bachman channeling Joe McCarthy and Colin Powell getting his balls out of hock we missed a killer story. All I'm gonna say is "imagine the field day they would have if the shoe was on the other foot."
Apparently "First Dude" was asked by AP for any emails he sent to or received from Alaskan officials. His response?
Well, let's see it could have been Cheneyesque... but he didn't go there.
He could have simply claimed "privacy" .... but he didn't go there.
He could have gone for the "I'll try to find ya some, and I'll bring 'em to ya." .... but he didn't go there.
No, Todd decided to emulate his wife and chose the "Ebay response." That's tacky, but he didn't stop there...
He had his wife's office respond by demanding $15 MILLION DOLLARS!
And that is not a typo.
Here's how they justified it:
Governor Palin’s office said it would take up to six hours of a programmer’s time to assemble the e-mail of just a single state employee, then another two hours for "security" checks, and finally five hours to search the e-mail for whatever word or topic the requestor is seeking. At $73.87 an hour, that’s $960.31 for a single e-mail account. And there are 16,000 full-time state employees.
Governor Palin’s office told the AP that if they send a check for $15,364,960.00 Governor Palin will gladly hand over the First Dude’s emails that showed that his wife gave him access to Alaskan state business that he should not have had access to.
They actually went beyond that... but we are already so far into cloud cookoo land I won't tell you what else they tacked on for expenses. Suffice to say, even if AP was stupid enough to cough up the extortion, the material would not be delivered until Christmas.
This is a level of greed that is insane... and we thought Bush & Co. were looting the treasury? Man, I don't EVER want to hear another winger talk about how the Clinton's snatched stuff on their way out of the White House. I don't even want to think what these folks would do given half a chance. And this is a woman who ran for office promising a clean and transparent government?
Based on some comments suggesting the money would go to the state of Alaska and not the First Dude or Dudette... let me ask ya a question...
how much do you think it would cost to find out where the money wound up?
I'm just sayin'
sheesh