The Stew

Before calling the Minnesota state unemployment office, be sure your cell phone is fully charged.

I’m a relatively savvy computer user, so when I needed to file for unemployment benefits, I headed straight to the Web. Supposedly, one can enter all the necessary information there.

Only I couldn’t. I’d get to a certain point, and then an error would occur on the server and I’d have to start over again. I figured it was an IE problem, so I used Firefox. No go. I figured it was a Vista problem, so I used XP. No go. I’d get to the same place each time, and I’d get an error each time.

The Web site has two ways of getting technical help. I tried the online form, which is supposed to generate a response within 48 hours. It didn’t. I used the provided email address, which is supposed to generate a response within 5 days. It didn’t.

Desperate for help, I called the automated help line, and got a busy signal.

Waaaah? This indicates one of two serious problems:

a) The unemployment office’s phone system consists of Lily Tomlin and a bunch of crossed wires;

b) There are too many people trying to file unemployment claims. Yay, it’s the Bush economy at work!

Anyhoo, I called back at several times during the day, hoping to get through to a computer that might possibly get me through to a human who might possibly be able to tell me what was wrong with the Web form. All I got was busy signals.

The next day, after several attempts, I finally managed to get their phone to ring. I navigated through several layers of questions (yes, I’d like English; yes, I tried using the Web form; yes, I’m a moron and I need to talk to an actual human) before being put on hold.

The picture you see here is me still on hold. After 41 minutes and 27 seconds of some of the nastiest honkey-jazz-easy-listening-elevator music, I snapped this pic. And then I waited on hold for about another three minutes before a human answered the phone.

She couldn’t help me with the Web form, so she entered all the information manually as she asked me questions I’d answered repeatedly online. At one point there was some kind of error (not at the same place as my error) — and I had to wait on hold for another three minutes before we were forced to start the whole process over again. This time, it worked.

I’ve got to say, the person I talked to was incredibly friendly and easy to work with. However, getting to that point was way, way too hard.

Why let a little thing like the facts get in the way?

According to our intelligence experts, the facts on Iran have just flipped 180 degrees. Two years ago, it was widely believed inside the U.S. intelligence community that Iran was in full-blown build-a-nuke mode. This belief resulted in a foreign policy based seemingly on belligerence and the hope (on at least the vice president’s part) that the bombing could begin in five minutes. Any talk about Iran discussed how bad things would be if Iran had nukes. The president himself brought up the specter of World War 3.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate says waitaminute, Iran actually stopped trying to build a bomb 4 years ago. Now that the facts are different, the policy will be different — right? Wrong. In George W. Bush’s own words from this morning, “our policy remains the same.”

This is the latest example of what I believe is fundamentally flawed about this administration: the facts don’t matter, since they’ve already made up their minds. We lived through this on Iraq already, with dire consequences. It didn’t matter that the U.N. inspectors weren’t finding anything, because we knew they had WMD. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t find the WMD, because we were really there to topple a dictator. And so on and so on, 5 years and $600 billion later. Anyone remember when Lawrence Lindsey was sacked for suggesting that the war might — might! — cost as much as $100 billion?

Why anyone would pay any attention to what these clowns have to say about Iran is beyond me.