The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

Whenever we are headed to a full moon, I suffer from insomnia.  As I tossed and turned last night, instead of counting sheep, I started thinking of all the Russians that I could name off the top of my head.   Let's see, there is Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Baryshnikov,  Nureyev, Yul Brynner, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Catherine the Great, Emperor of Russia and Anastasia.  Then my thoughts turned to the movies about Russia and the Soviet Union:  The Brothers Karamazov, Doctor Zhivago and thanks to TCM, Ninotchka with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas as well as another Greta Garbo film, Anna Karenina.  There may be other names, books and films somewhere in the recesses of my brain, but I think I have listed enough to illustrate my point.  Of the few Russian leaders, authors, dancers, actors, etc. I can name, there is one category in which I can say with absolute certainly I do not have any names:  Russian ambassadors.  That was the case until last week   when suddenly the name Kislyak was bandied about in the media.  For 69 years I have never known the name of any Russian ambassador until the 45th president of the United States was elected.

Without a shot fired, or bombs dropped or airplanes flown by terrorists into American buildings, the Russians attacked and landed.  Make no mistake, the Russian cyber attack  was as much of an attack on our country as the terrorist attack of  9/11/2001.  No lives were lost, but we took a direct hit on our democracy.  One which may have more consequences than we could ever imagine.  It does not take a giant leap of mental gymnastics to determine the Russian influence on our presidential election.

Following the bouncing ball down the yellow brick road:

• Did the Russian hacking of the DNC, John Podesta's personal emails  and subsequent release of that information by Wikileaks influence the presidential election? 
• Did then candidate Trump encourage Russia to continue their interference into the presidential campaign ( I love Wikileaks)?
• Did the Republican nominee, Trump ask the committee at the RNC convention to officially alter its stance on the Ukraine?
• Who is  Carter Page and what is his connection to Russia?   
• Did Michael Flynn collude and/or  encourage the Russians to interfere in our democratic process  as well as make promises regarding the dropping of sanctions prior to Trump's inauguration? Note that Flynn is now listed as a foreign agent for Turkey and has been working for them since August 2016 receiving over $500,000 in payment from their government.
• Was Michael Flynn properly vetted by the new administration prior to being offered the role of security adviser?
• The three Trump advisers who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the Republican National Convention are Jeff Sessions, Carter Page, and J.D. Gordon. 
• Paul Manafort ???
• Why is Trump  pro-Putin?  
• Why is Trump not speaking out about the hacking and infiltration of the CIA's intelligence procedures?  It is common knowledge that Wikileaks is an arm of the Russian government.  Is he not speaking because of Wikileaks connection to Russian?
• What is Trump hiding in his income taxes?
• What does Trump owe Putin besides his thanks for handing him the presidency? 
• Do we have a road map of all the possible conflicts of interest Trump has with his businesses and Russia?
• Is Trump capable of telling the truth?
• Where does Trump begin and Steve Bannon end? 

THE BIG QUESTION:  WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?

Apparently, most of the Republicans, conservatives and right-wingers feel that the "end justifies the means."   Have we really taken our government and  the American way of life so much for granted that we are willing to put our heads in the sand? 

      

By the way, how's that "sitting out" the election because you don't like either candidate working out for you?  For those who cast their vote for a third party candidate, feeling proud about that, are you? As for any Republican, especially those who call themselves Christians or evangelicals, but still voted for Trump, I have no words.
   

I do have some advice.  Learn Russian  (said with a bit of sarcasm, a nod and a wink a la Elizabeth Warren).  I grew up during the Cold War.  I remember that once a week, my hometown practiced their civil defense alarm system.  I think it was every Wednesday at noon.  The alarm was to be used to alert the residents in case of an attack..  I also remember the civil defense drills we had in school, the old  "duck and cover."   Our high school even had a teacher who taught Russian.  How many schools today still teach Russian? 

  

What exactly did the  Russians want to achieve by interfering with our presidential election and helping Trump become the president?  Aside from Putin's hatred of Hillary Clinton, I think the answer is obvious.  They wanted to diminish our country in the eyes of the world, to make our democracy look ludicrous.  The truth may hurt, but Trump has made us the laughingstock of the world.  Keeping score?  Russia won.

  

Steve Bannon at CPAC:

“The third, broadly, line of work is deconstruction of the administrative state. ... If you look at these cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason and that is the deconstruction. The way the progressive left runs, is if they can’t get it passed, they’re just going to put in some sort of regulation in an agency. That’s all going to be deconstructed and I think that that’s why this regulatory thing is so important.”

    

     

Barefoot and Pregnant

The far right of the conservative movement is working very hard to turn back the clock.  Those good ole boys want to keep their women barefoot and pregnant, with their foot firmly planted on the necks of all women.   White men are feeling the pain, their confidence eroded and their manhood in question.  Can you believe a black man actually became president of these here United States?  Thank God, the Russians put a stop to putting that bitch in the White House.  For too long, white men whether privileged or not have been getting by, by the skin of their teeth.  Let's be clear,  women and people of color have had to perform at a much higher level than a white man.  Women have been trying to prove their worth for centuries.   Because of this imbalance, white men became sloppy, self-indulgent  and relied on their feeling of entitlement to get by.   But then they found a hero who could make it all better, change the landscape, take rights away from women, scapegoat all the minorities and throw us back into the fifties.

Don't get me wrong.  There are plenty of women who voted for  the "tweeter in chief" for reasons that I simply cannot comprehend.  Some women have said they want to go back to a simpler time where father knew best and life was full of happiness, bigotry, sexism, prejudice, segregation and misogyny; where jokes about ethnic groups were made and people laughed without fear that it was politically incorrect albeit immensely offensive; where only the newest group of immigrants were labeled, slandered and told to "go back to where you came from."  If you grew up in the fifties and sixties, you heard all the derogatory   names that the  Italians, Jews, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Irish, Polish, etc. were called.  It was a time where a Catholic ran for the presidency and all the protestant churches were having prayer meetings to pray that this Catholic would not win because if he did, he would be running the country at the behest of the Pope.   What a wonderful world that was where this Catholic, John F. Kennedy did become president, only to be assassinated by a man, Lee Harvey Oswald who was enamored with the Soviet Union/Russia.  Men were men and women were women and God help anyone who didn't fall into their respective gender patterns.  Women's prospects were so limited that it seems redundant to even mention them here.  Equal pay for equal work was not even on the horizon so obviously a  woman's right to make her own health decisions seemed even more remote.      

After years of fighting for a more progressive government and a supreme court decision on Roe v. Wade,  that made abortion legal, let's fast forward to the  2016 presidential election.  Men and women evangelicals were willing to put aside their Christian common sense and vote for a man who had few if any redeeming values or virtues; was completely unqualified but who said with a "wink wink" that he was pro-life.   As Michael Moore said, "if you don't believe in abortion, don't have one."  And if you feel that strongly about abortion, why not volunteer to mentor women through their pregnancy as a  pro-life  advocate or foster an abused or  unwanted child; donate money or time to programs for at-risk children.

It was July 1959 when I saw the movie, Blue Denim starring Carol Lynley and Brandon deWilde.  Back in those days,  I practically lived in the only movie theater in my hometown.  

            
The movie dealt with  issues of teenage pregnancy and at the time, illegal abortion.  About a year before I saw this movie, the daughter of a local minister had told me the "facts of life" while walking to school...  No adult ever discussed sex education with me and in those days, it was not part of any school curriculum.  What I learned about sex was from other kids, books or movies.  Before my friend gave me the real details, I had determined based on the movies of the times that  kissing and then lying down with a boy would almost certainly lead to pregnancy.   

If you lived in a small town which I did, everyone knew if a "girl got in trouble."  Some girls disappeared for six months or so visiting relatives;  a few dropped out of school and found themselves married at 16 or 17.  No one talked about abortion as an option.  Abortions were being done, but it was what we called a "back alley" procedure done by disreputable "doctors"/people.  Some girls tried to abort by their own hand in desperation that was fueled by the fear of social stigma.   It was widely known that wire hangers were used for this purpose.  It makes me shudder to think of the many teen girls who were irreparably harmed or killed by either a "back alley" or a wire hanger abortion.  I am reminded of another movie/song from 1961, A Town Without Pity.  Small towns were indeed, towns without pity back in the fifties and sixties.  I think I will pass on those good ole days.   

Think about this:

• Recently I read that a state was considering a bill that would allow rapists to stop their victim from aborting a baby that had been conceived through the rape.  

• Does a husband still have to give permission if a woman wants a tubal ligation?

• In January Trump signed an executive order blocking foreign aid or federal funding for international nongovernmental organizations that provide or "promote" abortions. The so-called Mexico City policy, established by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1984, blocks federal funding for international family planning charities that provide abortions or actively promote the procedure.

• Planned Parenthood* -- Abortions accounted for 3 percent of the nearly 10.6 million total services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics in 2013, according to its annual report.

Some services it provided in addition to abortions were:

• 4.5 million tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections
• 3.6 million contraception related services
• 935,573 cancer screenings including breast exams and Pap tests

*Figures are from FactCheck.org

Do we really want to go back in time?  Do we really want our daughters, granddaughters, and nieces to live in a barefoot and pregnant world; where decisions regarding their bodies, education and future must be made only with permission from a male dominated society.  We have come too far to allow this backward administration to sideline and destroy the work of  the women rights movement.

RESIST!