Stop Calling
It was a reflex. I saw Leonard Lee’s name and number on my cell phone. I answered, said, “Stop calling,” and hung up immediately.
“Your mom, again?” my too-cute co-worker asked. From his much-too adjacent cubicle, my poor too-cute co-worker was the only person forced to observe me repeating the same lame process five to ten times a day, five days a week, for nearly a month—and he was, generally, decent enough not to dissect the insanity that my life had become.
“It’s no one, again,” I said. “And ‘No One’ says ‘hi.’’”
“Almost lunchtime—‘No One’ must’ve slept in.”
“It’s hard work. I don’t see your tired ass stalking anyone.”
“Stop. Calling,” my co-worker said, perfectly mocking my mom-like severity.
We both laughed. Or we sighed—or groaned. We released air in some audible way. And in that moment, I was as calm as I’d been in weeks—months.
Seconds later, my phone was vibrating, again.
“Stop. Calling.”
I heard sobs. Usually it took three or four straight hang-ups before Leonard would get to sobbing. But this time he was straight at it. His sobs were pitiable, childlike, trailing off into oblivion. It was a sound that no decent person could dismiss easily—unless she’d heard the same shtick 1,372 times. “I’m serious,” he mumbled. “I need you. Pleaaaaaaasssse.”
“Stop calling,” I repeated with softness in my voice. It was weakness. He was winning, again.
He called right back, bawling. Mucous was definitely surfacing from the depths of his soul. “I’m seriousssssssssssss, Nat. I need you.”
I could only pray: Please stop calling stop calling stop calling stop calling, please. Please, I’m begging you. Please, stop calling. And NEVER EVER call me “Nat,” again, you ill fucking fuckface.
Only my mom and my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Ellis, my favorite human being in all existence, have ever called me Nat. But that’s what you get for letting a lunatic check your voicemail for you, once.
No. I wasn’t going to beg. That was his thing. I just hung up, and tried to breathe. Sometimes, often, I get so tense that I can barely take in any air—it’s a wonder I’m alive.
“And you can’t change your number because…” my too cute co-worker said. He leaned back, digging his shoulder blade into his chair, stretching and trying to get at an itch at the same time; he was always multitasking. “Wait, don’t tell me. I know this. You won’t because you won’t. I forgot you’d reasoned this all out, back and forth. Kant would be proud, Natalie.” He smiled and returned to hunting and pecking at his keyboard.
It was my phone number. I’d even say that it was my FUCKING phone number. It was the only number I’ve ever had for myself. I got it the day I turned sixteen. No one was going to take it from me—especially him. Changing it would be a gigantic FUCK YOU to every human being I’d ever known. And why would I say fuck you to everyone I’ve ever known because of one idiot that I met on the Internet?
Besides, if I changed it, I’d have to explain what was going on to my mom. I preferred death to even considering telling my mother about Leonard Lee. No, like any slight mental illness, after a while this would eventually just be a bad memory, a minor symptom of a larger incurable character defect. With some patience, I figured that I’d have my life and my number back by summer, or winter. Eventually he’d find another inordinately large-breasted white girl with incredibly low standards to fix his entire being upon.
Besides, Leonard was harmless. Well, he was harmless from a distance—so far.
More vibrating from my phone. This time in short, spastic bursts.
A text. From him, of course. “I did it. I don’t know what to do OPlease help!!#”
He did what? It?
Shit. “It” had to be his sister. It had to. She was the only “it” in his life.
Maybe he’d finally stood up to her. Maybe he’d lost it on her. I imagined that the kind of rage he’d been accumulating over eight years could spark into violence in an instant–if his body produced any testosterone at all.
For a moment, I forgot how angry I was, or should be. For a moment, I could breathe—something resembling hope might’ve even clouded my mind, loosening the muscles in my shoulders into a comfortable slouch. I wouldn’t blame him if he hurt her. Actually, in the dark crevasses of my brain where depravity reigns, I’d be proud of him.
I’d told him how I’d deal with her: “Put her on plane, special delivery to your parents.” Maybe I’d even suggested darker courses of action that involved rat poisoning or bleach and quickly added a “Just kidding” or a “But you know what I mean.” And he’d ask, “Would you love me then?” completely serious about it—as if that was I promise I could make (or a reasonable consequence of killing a sibling). I’d explain that that wasn’t the point, but he didn’t care. He was just like his sister when he wanted to be, incapable of understanding anything he didn’t want to hear.
Maybe he’d just sent her away. The idea of Leonard’s sister in an airport terminal was unsettling. She’d have to be sedated, or shackled. For some reason, I conjured the image of her in a wheelchair bowling into a crowd of strangers.
I wanted to text back, “Just what did you do?” But the cops would get his phone, his bills, his everything. As soon as the autopsy was complete, they’d have warrants.
Then the trial: “Ms. Steiner, if your codefendant was stalking you, can you explain then why you never EVER went to the police? Can you explain why, instead, you answered his calls 1,372 times in the month of May?”
“To hang up on him immediately.”
“On the 15th and the 17th, the record indicates that you spent over an hour…”
That’s when I’d plead the Fifth. I was complicit—an accessory, an accomplice. I was guilty by reason of association.
I texted Leonard, “Stay there.” Then I pushed away from my desk. “I’m getting lunch.”
My too-cute co-worker saluted me with two fingers. “And a restraining order, maybe? Think about it, Natalie. Do it for us.”
#
Leonard Lee and his sister lived in a gated community—one of those bland, plain-brand sort of gated community that became suburbia in the 80s and 90s. You’ve been one of those gated communities with some half-a-transient in a cramped toll booth playing security.
Every time I got the gate, the poor guy would wake from a dull daze. He’d look right and then left and then locate his clipboard in his lap. He’d swallow some phlegm and ask, “Who you here to see?” And if you said, “Pizza for the Bergs,” or any Jewish or Asian sounding last name, he’d buzz you straight in. No questions asked.
By the third time he let me through without saying a word. He’d just mouth something like, “Oh, the Lees,” and the arm of the gate went right up.
It was noon and the streets were empty. Even the driveways were empty. Every garage door closed. Each house had the same cookie-cutter landscaping, green and coiffed. Plastic looking. Any one of them could’ve been a model home.
What if she’s dead? I couldn’t not consider the consequences. He’d get the house. Maybe even a real life. He deserved it. After eight years indentured by his parents to that sister so she could pop pills and make up nonsense about colors trying to suffocate her, he could live. Basically his whole adult life had been wasted coddling severe mental illness. No wonder his only hobby was stalking me.
But what good was it getting rid of her if it meant he was going to jail? What if I was going to jail, too? Could I hack it? Would I become a lesbian? Wouldn’t I have to? I’d have to find one badass dike to protect me—I’d be her bitch, if I had to. Why couldn’t I think one thought at one time? Was my brain diseased? Had I continually deprived my brain of oxygen for so long that it had wasted away to the size of a walnut? Knowing that would be a relief. Knowing that would explain everything.
Their driveway was empty—completely mini-vanless. Just as it was when I met him.
Yes, during my brief “affair” with Leonard Lee, I drove. But if I complained or even paused slightly—he’d call us a cab. And taking a cab to and fro in the suburbs was one of those overly indulgent luxuries that drew me to Leonard. (He also only wore new socks, tipped excessively and voted Republican, even in 2004.) Focusing on absurd excess—and the sweet little cowlick he had just above his bangs that made him look like he’d always just woken up—made it easy to ignore what I was really getting into.
For six whole days and nights, Leonard was simply a mysterious, independently wealthy guy with the sorts of quirks I looked forward to developing should I ever end up independently wealthy. He was just well-off and sort of cute. Sometimes he even seemed a little too normal. That’s what I told my friends and co-workers, if they asked.
And then I met his sister.
It was 12:30 AM, Tuesday night. The cabdriver was dropping us off after a movie. As Leonard was paying the driver, I was staring off into some distant driveway, trying to not to see or hear how much the ride cost. I heard a screech, a pre-historic screech.
Leonard’s head snapped toward it; he saw something and something inside of him turned on instantly—like a motion-sensing light.
And there she was, standing in the middle of their lawn, dressed only a bathrobe and hooker high heels.
The cabbie said, “Go on.” We were barely out of the car before he zipped off.
She was ten feet from us, one foot forward—a bull in hooker shoes ready to charge.
I asked Leonard, “Who is that?” thinking some skank he’d met on Match.com was having a Fatal Attraction moment.
Her screams became words, ‘Where. The fuck. Is my minivan? Leonard?”
“It’s her—my sister,” Leonard whispered
“Don’t whisper, Leonard!” the sister screamed. Even from a distance it was clear that her eyes never focused on the same thing at the same time.
“Don’t whisper,” he said, loudly. “It’s her condition.” Then he whispered, “It gives her vertigo and foot cramps.”
That was too much for her. She let wailed and ran toward us; her fist in the air as if she wanted to stab us with her knuckles.
Leonard grabbed my hand and whispered, “Come with me.” In the midst of the madness, the flailing of his sister’s knuckles, he was calm. I’ll admit it: that turned me on. That’s how disturbed I am—at that point, I was still able to get slightly aroused.
Swerving wide toward the sidewalk, we cut across the lawn to the front door.
“Don’t step on the azaleas, specially the blue ones,” Leonard whispered loudly, though I wasn’t even close to them. “They’re like her children. It’s her condition.” Every time we passed them, he’d told me not to step on the azaleas that lined the front walk, as if he had detected my unconscious compulsion to do so. But he’d never explained why.
We must’ve gotten too close to her children because his sister screeched, again. A wild, violent scream followed by a harsh, hacking cough—the kind of cough you couldn’t not look at.
“Don’t stare,” Leonard said. “She doesn’t like that. It’s her condition.” He tugged on my hand. We got through the front door and Leonard slammed it behind us. “Up there,” he said. “She won’t…she can’t go up there if there’s a stranger in the house. It’s…”
“…her condition,” I said. I’m a quick study. I took two steps at a time. He was right behind me, breathing hot buttered flavoring into the back of my ear. (Now, of course, I have to wonder why I went along with this mad chase. Why didn’t I just leave? My car was twenty feet away. And frankly, I wasn’t really intimidated by his sister. I’ve seen worse; I’ve been to public school. It must’ve been her scream—the ululation of a feral beast. Your only choice is to flee with the other natives.)
I stumbled straight into Leonard’s room and he slammed the door behind us.
More screaming from her. But it wasn’t getting any closer. She was stuck; Leonard knew her condition. Between the screams, I heard coughing and blubbering. The woman was always making some unpleasant noise.
Leonard backed away from me, kicking his shoes off and wandered over to his futon. He fell on his butt and stared at the door, eyes blank and unfocused He definitely had PTSD—tons of it. His eyes were twitching—all kinds of flashbacks must’ve been firing off in his brain. For the first time ever, I wanted to flatten his cowlick, but I didn’t dare for fear he’d forget himself and dropkick me.
At that point, I figured there was a fifty-fifty shot that we’d stuck in that room for the rest of our lives.
“She’ll quit after an hour or so,” Leonard said, finally looking me in the eye.
The house rattled with her shrieks.
“Are you OK?” I asked, probably because I wanted him to ask me the same question. That’s all I do; I live the Golden Rule. I treat people how I wanted to be treated—and it’s never done me any fucking good whatsoever.
“Well,” Leonard said. “I don’t even know where I left her minivan.”
“She has a minivan?” I don’t know why that baffled me so. I think up until that moment minivans had epitomized normalcy, middle-Americana, sanity.
“Yeah, my mom got it for her when she said that she was going to start a garden design business after she couldn’t extra in movies anymore because of her condition. That was two years ago. But we just use it for shopping, mostly. I think we were at the mall or the Home Depot when she had her last thing. I went with her in the ambulance and I forgot to go back and get the minivan—until now, I guess.”
“That’s understandable.”
He nodded.
No one ever gets it when I’m being ironic.
“Do you think it’s still there, the van, wherever I left it?” he asked.
“How long as it been?”
He counted his fingers. “Maybe nine days.”
“Sure.” What else was I going to say? I was too busy figuring out that she’d been in the hospital the whole time I’d known him. His real life was back.
“This is a very shitty world,” Leonard said. “I hate this world.”
“Tell me about it.” I hated myself for saying the most ordinary thing I could possibly say. I needed to make it up to him. I approached him at an angle and sat down, nearly in his lap. We both sighed then crumbled into each other. I found his cowlick and traced it with my finger.
Eventually, after an hour or so, I fell asleep. Immediately I was woken by a scream. Every fifteen minutes the same process repeated, all night into the morning. But Leonard was apparently used to this kind of insanity. At three minutes to eight AM, I had to shake him from a deep sleep to say, “I have to go to work.”
“OK,” he said and dug his palm into his mouth to wake himself up. “Maybe she’s asleep.”
Before we could move, she screamed, as if she’d heard every word I was thinking.
“She’ll give up soon,” Leonard said. “I promise.”
“A half hour,” I said. “Then I got to go.”
He shrugged away from me and stood up to stare at the window. After a long, doleful gaze, he turned to me and stared, as if he were trying to figure a way to Rapunzel me out of there. His eyes settled on my breasts. He smiled. A reflex, I’m sure.
My back began to ache. “I’m going down.”
“She’ll attack. She’ll get incontinent. She may bite.”
I didn’t buy it…or I didn’t care…or I didn’t believe in any causal relationships anymore. Shit just happened or it didn’t. There was no reason for anything, nothing you could do to avoid trouble—not anymore. “I’ll risk it.”
“Nooooooooo!” he cried, a hint of his sister’s growl in his voice. And this is where I was introduced to the Leonard I know now. The real Leonard. He sank his head into his arms and sobbed completely.
I stood up. “I’m going now.”
He cried some more. When he realized that wasn’t going to work, he said, “OK. Just stay to her right. She can’t move to her right—it’s an ear drum thing. Part of her…”
“I get it,” I said, realizing how we’d evaded her so easily on the driveway.
He opened the door and let me go, alone. That’s when I knew we were over. Yes, it wasn’t to that point that I decided we were done no matter how he tried to make it up to me. I’m obviously quite desperate myself. But I have my limits.
She was at the bottom of the stairs. Her robe was hanging open and flesh was dripping off of her in all kinds of anatomically incorrect ways. Her arms were up, guarding the bottom step like a goalie in some European sport.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said, trying not to stare.
She screamed and clawed at me from ten steps away as if she were Kong and I was a biplane, circling. But her scream was hollow—she was losing her growl from overuse.
I edged as far as I could to the left, her right. She didn’t move. I slid three steps down and had about seven more waiting. I decided to go all the way to the right, her left.
She mirrored me with tiny steps until she was at the far right edge of the bottom step.
I took nine or ten deep breaths. Then I did it.
I ran straight at her and just as we ready to collide, I lunged to the left, her right. Leonard knew her condiition. All she could do was swat at the air around me. I ducked through her arms and got straight to the front door.
Before she could circle round for another swipe, I was avoiding her azaleas, especially the blue ones, and running across her lawn. In pursuit, she shrieked madly. When she realized I was too far ahead of her, she turned on a garden hose and sprayed toward me.
A couple of neighbors were gasping in horror, covering infants’ eyes. But they didn’t look as shocked as they should be. Around there, this kind of thing must’ve happened all the time.
As water plopped on my car’s roof, I locked every door by hand and promised myself, God, everyone and anything that I’d never ever even get close to that house again.
Still, there I was—back in Leonard Lee’s sister’s neighborhood. But maybe she was dead, or gone, or at least unconscious. I had to be optimistic. It was my only choice.
I fished my phone out of my purse. 18 missed calls. All from him. More missed calls that I’d gotten in all 2007 in the fourteen-minute drive to his house. Amazing how letting one psycho into your life can change your perspective on everything.
I parked my car about a block from his house and sat for a few minutes. Then I did one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life. I called Leonard Lee.
It didn’t even ring once before he picked up.
“Are you here?” he asked.
“I’m not going in there.”
“I don’t see your car… I’ll come out to you.”
“Are you OK?” I asked.
“No. I’m not. I’m in trouble.”
“Hold on.” I shifted to drive and rolled along the curb at two miles per hour.
Digression: What makes being alive interesting is that there isn’t just one voice inside our brain. In moments like this, it’s clear that our brain is more like the big scene in 12 Angry Men, with one lone voice calmly yet assertively arguing for rationality (“Just leave, Natalie, there’s no good to be done.”) while the rest are screaming out nonsense like “Maybe he stabbed her?”, “Will there be blood on his hands?”, “I bet he strangled her,” and so on.
It took a full minute, but there I was, outside their house. The minivan was there, covered in a green goop that could have only have been the result of a very close encounter with a poltergeist.
Leonard came running out of the house, ducking as if he were avoiding gunfire or the blades of a helicopter. I unlocked the passenger door for him, expecting him to jump in screaming, “GO! Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
But he was somber—he’d been crying, or sweating, or both. Even his cowlick was gone—flattened by water or sin. He’d done it; he must’ve.
“What did you do, Leonard?” I sounded like his sister. What if they were contagious?
“So many fucking people in this world,” Leonard said. I’d never heard him cuss before. I tried to make him cuss once for hours, and he wouldn’t do it. Now it just flowed naturally. Murder must change a person. “A thousand babies born every minute, millions more of us all the time. And why? What fucking good do any of us do?”
He was making good points, for once. “What did you do, Leonard?”
Why was I interrogating him? Why wasn’t I going straight to the cops? Why was I always thinking in questions?
He reached across himself to put his seatbelt on.
I put my hand on the strap, refusing to let him buckle. “No, Leonard. Stop. Tell me what you did.”
“I killed them.”
Them? He killed THEM. Had his parents shown up? Had all his anger woken up at once? He was clean, but sweaty. Did he already wipe the blood off his hands? I didn’t know what to say; but I needed to say something. “How did you do it, Leonard?”
“I stomped. Stomped and stomped until they were in pieces. Then I buried them.”
“All of them?”
“I guess there are some more in the backyard. But she doesn’t care about them.”
“You buried them there?” He was even more insane than I imagined.
“No.” His phone began to beep. His entire body stiffened. “Hold on,” he said and pulled it out of his pocket. “Oh fuck it’s her. She knows.” He stuffed the phone back in his pocket.
“She’s alive?”
“Yes, and she knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That I did it.”
“Did what, Leonard? Seriously. What the fuck did you do?”
He sighed and that turned into tears and sobbing, his usual sobbing. “I killed her azaleas, all of them. Even the blue ones.”
Oh, Christ. “Are you fucking kidding me, Leonard? That’s what you’re going on about?” I screamed or grunted or something. I was working up the courage to tell him to get the fuck out of my car when I saw a beige blur screeching toward us down the lawn. “Lock your door, Leonard!”
I got my side locked and realized that he was paralyzed by the sight of his sister. I leaned across him to get his locks down. It was obvious that the maniac had a hard-on. He’d just mass murdered some blue azaleas and he had a hard-on. That’s one sick bastard.
His sister was barefoot and in her robe, but it was completely tied up this time, thankfully.
She circled the car and stopped at the front. Putting her hands on the hood, he screamed, “GET OUT! MURDERER!”
“Leonard, you’re going to have to deal with her eventually. Just get out and do it now.”
He shook his head and immediately started crying. “No, no, no. Take me with you. Please. She’ll torture me.”
“Get out, Leonard,” I said as his sister screamed the same thing.
“I can’t, Nat.”
“You stupid sick asshole,” I said and hated myself for revealing my true thoughts. But fuck him, fuck them. I had to get back to work. I had to get back to my life—a life that had nothing to do with the Lees and their Azaleas. If he wasn’t getting out, he was coming with me. I shifted my car into reverse, checked over my shoulder and backed up.
BOOM. That crazy bitch jumped on my hood. She was crawling toward my windshield, staring at both of us at the same time. Leonard sank into his seat, hiding in plain sight. Fuck it. I didn’t have any choice; I shifted into drive.
I took my foot off the brake and we started rolling forward at three or four miles per hour. She was pounding on the windshield, shrieking; Leonard was pawing at his face, crying; and I was perfectly calm. Together we rolled through those empty streets at about the pace of a speed walker. I felt like we were maniacs on parade. I wanted to wave.
Finally I pulled up to the security guard’s little booth. I rolled down my window slightly and shouted, “Excuse me! One of your residents won’t get off my car!”
The guard looked left and right, swallowed some phlegm and came out of his booth.
Leonard’s sister stood up on her knees and roared, “MURDERER!” My hood buckled slightly under her weight.
I calculated the damage—less than my deductible.
Still perfectly calm as far as I could tell, I rolled down my window completely and yelled, “If you don’t take your resident off my car, I’m going to pull into traffic and she’d going to get fucked up. The bitch doesn’t even have shoes on.”
The guard didn’t even know where to look. “Let me get my clipboard,” he said, not realizing it was in his hands.
My phone began to ring. For once it wasn’t Leonard Lee—it was my too cute co-worker. Fuck, I was late. I picked it up, said, “Stop calling,” and hung up immediately.
I turned toward Leonard. He had huge, soppy eyes—as if he’d seen a ghost, or life from another dimension. Maybe he was sad that he wasn’t my stalker. I didn’t give a fuck what he was thinking.
I laid on my horn and screamed, “Get this crazy bitch off my car NOW.”
The security guard sprung into action. He dropped his clipboard and approached the car. After long seconds of pleading with her to get off, he put a hand on her shoulder, which instantly doubled her freak out. She grabbed my windshield wipers with no intention of letting go. The guard was trying, politely, but that was never going to work.
I had to get involved.
As soon as I was out of my car, she stood up on my hood, said, “I told you never to come back here, bitch,” and lunged at me.
Right then, I realized that I wouldn’t last a day in jail. My only thought was RUN. I felt her right behind me, so my only choice was to circle round my car and get back to the security guard. I passed Leonard’s window and rounded toward hood.
I heard a door open and looked back just in time to see Leonard tackle his sister—his shoulder right into her stomach. They both went down.
“Ouch! Ouch! She’s biting me. She’s biting me,” Leonard screamed.
I looked at the security guard. He was trying to get his clipboard off the ground with his fingertips. Leonard and his sister were both screaming and rolling around on the ground. I had no choice; I had to get back to work.
I got as close as I could to their melee and stood over them. And raging with every bit of anger and angst and frustration I had inside me after 1,372 calls and two meetings with Leonard Lee’s sister, I screamed, “STOP IT.”
I screamed it over and over until they both slumped into the ground and looked up at me.
It worked. They were both huffing and puffing. The sister’s robe had inappropriately, of course. But they were stunned and listening. I was playing their game–whoever’s craziest wins.
“Leonard,” I said. “Give me your phone.”
He dug his hand into his pocket and fished it out. Clutching it with four fingers and a thumb, he held it up to me.
I grabbed it and threw it straight at the ground. It cracked, I think. “And if you ever call me again, I’m going straight to cops, I swear to God. I’m done with you two forever. So STOP CALLING.”
Warning: What Eight Years of BUSH/CHENEY May Do To Your Economy
The most common side effects of BUSH/CHENEY are ill-conceived invasions of foreign countries, excessive occupations of said foriegn countries, tax cuts for the rich, wasting a long-sought-after surplus (a surplus that was really paying down slivers of our monstrous debt; a surplus AL GORE ran on preserving—remember the ‘lockbox?’), no-bid contracts for cronies, military spending unchecked by conscience or fiscal discipline, unfunded mandates on public schools, a completely bungled response to a nearly apocalyptic hurricane, the opportunity for hedge funds and private insurance companies to explode in unsustainable growth, irresponsible or lacksidasical regulation of banks, millions wasted on abstinence education, massive real estate fraud, and upset stomach. Less commonly, blurred vision, restricted civil liberties, hostility towards science, SARAH PALIN, or sensitivity to light may briefly occur.
What a Responsible Public Health Care Plan Could Mean to You
1. You can keep your current insurance—if you are lucky enough to have care you love.
2. You’ll have access to a comprehensive medical care plan that won’t reject you or inflate your rates based on who you are.
3. You’ll have a primary care physician you can select and see on an ongoing basis. This physician will provide all care including preventative care, mental health screening and dietary advice.
4. Your rates will be predictable and will only rise at or below the rate of inflation.
5. Medications will become more affordable and less tied to marketing costs.
6. Your insurance will be available to you regardless where you are working.
7. If you become extremely ill, your care will continue at costs that are manageable and fair.
8. Health care will be respected as a right—not a privilege.
9. Your children will get all the care they need at minimal cost to you.
10. Billions of dollars that private insurance companies spend trying to not insure Americans and treating preventable conditions brought on by smoking and obesity will be saved.
The Republican’s Deficit Deception: Fiscal Irresponsibility at Its Worst
The Republicans should have a Ministry of Truth to erase the history that don’t like. Instead they just blatantly lie and misrepresent the past to make their case.
As Dick Cheney has said, deficits don’t matter—except when the money is being used to create a more just, responsible society.
The fact is that the GOP purposely drove up the debt in order to prevent the government from delivering more services that help more people. They don’t believe in a government that works for anyone but businesses, banks and defense contractors, and a large debt fuels the argument that we can’t afford real change.
President Bill Clinton left this country with a SURPLUS in 2001. Of course, there was still a huge debt, but we were paying it down.
The only reason we have the debt that we do is because of the irresponsibility of George W. Bush and the Republican Congress.
Bush and Cheney cut taxes for the rich and then they cut taxes for the rich, when they were done with that they cut taxes for the rich. Just weeks after 9/11 the administration was arguing that the attack required cutting the Capital Gains taxes.
These cuts didn’t build infrastructure, fund sustainable development, keep people in their jobs or provide health care for the needy. They just lined the pockets of the top 5% of this county as this country waged war in two foreign countries. It’s unprecedented in American history and a blatant example of the irresponsibility of the Right.
Obama is trying to bring responsibility back to capitalism and create fundamental reforms that will prevent another unnecessary crisis.
Republicans can say that 2 + 2 = 5, but that doesn’t change the fact that they aren’t concerned about debt. They’re just scared to death of creating a government that actually works for people.
A Public Health Care Plan Could Save Your Life
50 million people in this country have no health care insurance.
Some can’t afford it. Some aren’t willing to pay the outrageous fees they are being charged because of a pre-existing condition or previous ailments. A few just don’t want it.
And because they don’t have insurance, they have no access to preventative care, early diagnosis or general wellness. We have no idea how much that costs us eventually in Medicare and public assistance.
But we do know about the billions the private insurance companies make and millions they spend trying to prevent covering the wrong procedures or people.
A public health care plan would change this by giving every American access to affordable health care.
Private insurance companies complain this will make it impossible for them to compete—as if their profits were more important than saving American lives.
In fact, it will help private insurers by covering the people they spend millions to not cover. And it will help small businesses, entrepreneurs, freelancers and the entire economy by creating jobs by relieving employers the onerous burden of providing decent health benefits.
Creating a public health care plan could save your life. Or the lives of your friends, families, fellow Americans. And we will retain our system of private insurers who will be forced to offer premium care and service.
Here’s the serious part. Our best and only chance public health care plan could die in the next few weeks.
The opponents of universal care are powerful, as powerful as the banks, those banks that’ve retained an iron grip on Congress even after causing this Great Recession.
The attacks against a public plan will be shady, targeted and smart. Really stilted TV ads are already darkening our airwaves
We need a creative aftershock to the earthquake that helped get Obama elected.
We need everyone to tell the story of health care.
You need to explain what a public plan mean to you. Tell people about your experiences being denied coverage. These stories can be personal and painful, but they are poignant and necessary.
We also need filmmakers, poets, writers and all creative sorts to tell the story of why a public plan maters to us as a people.
And we need everyone to know why NOW maters so much. Universal health care has been the goal of Democratic administrations throughout the 20th century. But the current recession reveals how important it is become a more responsible, empathetic society.
This President has the will of the people behind him.
But unless we can tell the story of why a public health care plan matters so much, the private insurance industry and their friends in the GOP will defeat a bill that could save your life.
Obama’s Answer to the Muslim World
If there was anyone out there who still doubts the importance of electing Barack Obama President of the United States, his Speech to the Muslim World is your answer.
Of course, this one gesture can’t heal his predecessor’s seven-year plan to piss off the Muslim world.
Of course, we still have to deal with the aftermath of seven-years that flaunted International Law and common decency, mostly at the expense of the Muslim world.
Of course, there are Hawks and Conservatives that will spew vitriol against any sign of empathy for any foreigner they do not deem worthy. Hawks and Conservatives who will look to Tehran and see fundamentalists as enraged and committed as they to spreading ideas through violence.
Of course, these critics will call Obama naïve—as if a political movement that despises scientific theories like evolution, that invades non-aggressive countries without conducting a meeting of the National Security Council to weigh the move, that nominates Sarah Palin to the Vice-Presidency can expect us to take their judgment on naivety seriously.
But the image of a man who would have been declared 3/5 of a man at the founding of this country standing as the President of the United States was America’s new answer to the world. And that same man poignantly advocating non-violence is proof itself to the Muslim world that anything is possible when women and minorities are given the transformational power to vote.
He didn’t condemn the feudal states that oppress their people. He didn’t ask for forgiveness for the US’s role in perpetuating the refugee crisis in Palestine. But he did present a simple way forward through fundamental respect and engagement.
If there was anyone out there who doubted if peace was better than war, George W. Bush did his best to give you his answer.
If there is anyone on earth who still hopes to live in peace, thank you for your patience. We’re de-Cheneyifying ourselves as fast as we can.
I didn’t believe in miracles — then I saw this parked a few blocks from my house.
The Better-Off Dead
1.
A policeman was blocking the front door when I arrived. Serious sunglasses, snug short-sleeved shirt, stiff slacks, arms locked across his chest. The splotchiness of his freckled skin could only be seen when you were immediately in front of him. Probably because his forearms glistened with smooth layer of sweat–a necessary reaction to the burn of the desert sun, still brutal at minutes after five PM. Read more »
Nothing to Sell But Fear Itself
Newt Gingrich has always had a problem with context.
He didn’t get that impeaching a President for lying about an affair while he was having an affair wasn’t a brilliant move.
And he doesn’t quite get that the terrorist threat, while grave and serious, isn’t the same existential threat that marked the Cold War.
And he especially doesn’t get that selling the fear of boogiemen to people who are worried about keeping their job, their health care, their 401k isn’t going to work—even a world where an act of nuclear terrorism is likely if not inevitable.
But on Sunday, the thrice-married, recent Catholic convert, former Speaker of the House said these words: Let me just say, I think people should be afraid. He then listed a series of Al Qaeda attacks (all of which resulted in less loss of American lives than the Iraq War) from the 90s, ignoring that the Bush Administration ignored intelligence that predicted the 911 attacks.
Fear doesn’t keep anyone safe. Either does blind aggression. What keeps people safe is realistic threat assessment, constant engagement and willingness to learn from mistakes.
What keeps us safe is context, and Newt’s fear mongering is just a non sequitur.
Child Abuse?
I’m not certain I would diagnose myself with chemical depression. But if I am currently suffering, a definite symptom would be my recent interaction with a nine-year old girl.
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