Little Anna
After that day in the library when Annette and Anna simultaneously found out about the Tax Bill, it became an obsession for them both. Anna rushed to the library every day as soon as school let out, and every day when she walked through the doors of the Library Annette would be waiting for her. She always had that same warm smile and she'd say, with her hands on her hips, hurry up over here Anna, I wanna get in my dose of politics today with my favorite girl. And so the two of them would sit together at the same computer, the one by the window, looking over the days news with Annette shooing off the odd collection of students and homeless men who wanted her help with a quick, annoyed brush of her thick, plump hand. She even brushed off the rare, semi-normal adult who'd come in shuffling their feet and looking around like they'd never seen in a library before, or maybe they just couldn't quite shake their disbelief at having finally found a book they didn't wanna buy off Amazon—Annette hated Amazon almost as much she hated homeless men—and they'd ask her if she was busy and she'd say, can't you see I'm helping Anna with her homework assignment now? And she'd send them off with some little piece of paper she barely looked at as she scribbled, and they'd trot off to this or that aisle, armed with a bunch of numbers and letters Anna could never understood how she knew.
More or less, though, they were left alone for the few hours it took them to scour the internet for news, and so they'd look through all their favorite web pages and take turns reading them out loud, and at the moment, what they were following more than anything else was the Tax Bill. When they read Obama's final version that he was putting to Congress for a vote, Annette clasped her hands to her chest and let out a sigh Anna thought might change the world. Her breasts heaved and her thick fingers splayed themselves like little sausages against her creamy brown skin. She put her hand on little Anna's back then and told her she was beginning to have her doubts about whether Obama was the right man for the job. We need one of them boys from the projects up in there, she'd said. Somebody with balls of steel.
Barack Obama
Press Conference to Announce the New Tax Bill
12/10/2010, 4:20 pm
Fuck you!
That's what I should of said to him. I should have slapped that pansy-ass white-bread mother fucker clear across the mouth and told him what I thought of him. I should have taken his god damned whore of a wife and thrown her up against the wall and showed them both what for, but Bill and Joe say this is the best we can do. And anyway, if John Boehner and I get off on the right foot, we may be able to sit down one day as real partners in this thing and not have to feel so divided by stupid political affiliations which, I mean, really, what do they mean? I've always known deep down that things don't have to be so hostile. It makes my skin crawl that nobody worth their snot has ever really tried anything close to what I'm trying now. By the time I'm done we could have an honest to god's compromise on our hands! And that's what the American people elected me for, dammit, some peace and quiet in the White House.
" . . . what was your advice to President Obama today about how to deal with a Congress being in the hands of an opposition party?"
That was when I tuned back in.
I was standing next to Bill as he took the questions for me. Was it a mistake to let him talk? How was he going to answer this one? Sometimes I wonder about everybody always telling me to let him back me up. Was that because what I had to say wasn't good enough anymore? Did everyone forget already that I had the highest approval rating since Kennedy? Come on now!
As Bill laughed and started to answer I put on my indignant yet still fun and easy to get along with grin, the best I could muster, anyway, on a day when Michelle was breathing down my neck to get my ass home to that Holiday Party she'd been talking about all month, and I leaned into where Bill stood so he knew I was listening. He didn't need to look at me though, he was a pro, he just smiled at them all real coy and said,
"I have a general rule that whatever the President asks me about my advice I always leave it up to him whether or not, and what of it, he discloses to anyone . . ."
I jumped in then— fuck these unpatriotic reporters always trying to make me look small! I took the microphone with my best James Dean, smooth-cool, fuck-you smirk, and I crossed my arms over themselves the way Michelle always says makes me look like I'm in control, and I told them what they could do with that question if they wanted to, but in my too-cool-for-school-way so that nobody really knew . . .
"Here's what I'll say about that," I told them, brushing my shoulders off, "I've been keeping the first lady waiting for about half an hour now, so I'm gonna take off."
I enjoyed the laugh, 'cause it means I'm just like them, and I left him there to bask in the flash of the cameras and all the raised hands. I wanted him to enjoy having the American Flag and the President's seal behind him and being called Mr. President again in the White House Press Room, so he could feel like he really was again, at least for a little while. It was my Christmas present to him. And as I walked to my limo I sent him a silent little Christmas wish that, for old times sake, he'd get one of those tiny little hard-ons that sometimes happen when you're up there, the kind that pokes up a little, brushing up against the inside of the pants, just so you know it's there.
Bernie
The Senate Floor
12/10/2010, 10:25 a.m.
Bernie took the podium.
"As I think everyone knows, President Obama and the Republican leadership have reached an agreement on a very significant tax bill. In my view, the agreement they reached is a bad deal.
"You can call what I am doing today whatever you want. You can call it a filibuster. You can call it a very long speech. I am not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle; I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have to do a lot better."
10:40 a.m.
"The truth is—and I don't think anyone disputes this—the infrastructure in the United States is crumbling. You do not have to be a civil engineer to know that. All you have to do is get in your car today and drive. Roads are in disrepair. Bridges, in some cases, have been shut down. Water systems—"
He paused a moment. A story was coming to him.
"I remember I was in Rutland, Vermont, and the mayor showed me a piece of pipe.
"He said, you know, the engineer who helped develop this water system and lay this pipe, after he did this work for Rutland, he went off to fight in the war.
"I knew there was a catch line coming, so I said, which war?
"He said, the Civil War.
"So you are talking about water pipe being in Rutland, Vermont that was laid in the Civil War. The result is we lose an enormous amount of clean water every day through leaks and water pipes bursting all over the United States."
He raised his voice now.
"Shame on us! We need this infrastructure. We could being putting people to work!"
Elizabeth Kucinich
12/10/2010
Washington, DC
10:05 a.m.
She pulled her computer towards her on the table settled back in her chair. She'd been watching him all morning, live streamed from the Senate floor, standing up there with his messy hair and his 1960s glasses and his blue shirt and his blue tie and his butterfly hands . . . damn he looked good for an old Jew. She clucked her tongue, inadvertently tapped the metal ball of her tongue ring against the back of her teeth and let her hands run absentmindedly over her bare white arms. She was emailing Dennis as she listened. A modern-day hero, she wrote to him. Up there with his books and his principles, saying what is true, letting everybody know this is not a time for compromise, it is a day for standing up for what you believe, just like every other day should be, and speaking out against adding 700 billion dollars to the deficit in a period of war.
And to think, she added, without writing it down, he was just in our house last night, sitting right there on that chair and talking to us with his head in his hands.
