Post 615 - May 31, 2024

Some days are slow news days. Nothing much seems to happen. Sometimes, you can look back on such days and see that something seemingly insignificant at the time occurred that later proved to be important. Other times, though, it ends up that nothing much really happened. We woke up, we went about our usual tasks, and we went to sleep. All we’ve done is move on to the next box on the calendar

Yesterday, was not one of those days.

We don’t know what yesterday’s news is going to mean yet. Things happened that have never happened before. Decisions were made. The course of human events made a turn. There are going to be consequences.

Yesterday, approval was given to Ukraine to fire US missiles into Russia. Up until now, Ukraine has not been allowed to use the weaponry that we’ve sent them outside their borders.

The fear, of course, is that Russia will perceive any direct attack that uses our rockets against them as us declaring war on them. Should that happen, the United States could get pulled into this conflict further than we already are. We could end up having to send troops over to the region.

Ukraine is not part of NATO. Were it a member of NATO, an attack against it would mean that all the other member nations would be obligated to defend it. Putin does not want that at all. To him, it would be as if for us the Taliban took control of Canada. The enemy would be on his doorstep. Knowing that, Western nations are doing their best to keep their distance.

President Biden did not give the Ukrainians permission to send long-range missiles into the heart of Russia, instead, what he is allowing them to do is to use them against troops and munitions centers just inside Russia’s border in a specific region. They are not allowed to use them against civilians or civilian infrastructure. Their targets must remain military.

Something untoward, however, is bound to happen. As we’ve seen in the fight in Israel, you can’t attack weapons installations and control centers without collateral damage. The second a Russian civilian is killed; Putin will use it as an excuse to escalate what he’s already doing.

President Biden gave President Zelensky the ability to use our missiles because, recently, Ukrainian forces in the area in question have been suffering setbacks. The US is walking a tightrope between not wanting Ukraine to fall to the Russians and at the same time, not wanting to become embroiled in a direct war with Russia.

Yesterday’s White House decision was a major reversal. What the effects might be remains to be seen. It is something that we all should keep an eye on especially considering the coming election.

Let’s not forget that during his tenure in office, our former president threatened to withhold aid to the Ukrainians unless President Zelensky came up with the goods on President Biden’s son Hunter. That was probably the first time that most of us had given Ukraine a second thought. Our former president has made no secret of the fact that he greatly admires Russian President Putin. Election interference from Putin and his government may have even helped put the former president into office.

Were our 45^th president to become our 47^th president, the United States’ stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine would flip 180 degrees. What would that mean? Nothing good, I fear. Nothing good for the Ukrainian people and, likely, nothing good for us.

In other news yesterday, our former president was convicted of 34 felony counts by the State of New York. He is now a felon. He is the first president in United States history to be judged so.

Despite all the testimony of the sordid details of the former president’s sexual encounters with the porn star Stormy Daniels while his wife was pregnant, and the stories of his incontinence by a former ally, none of that was what he was indicted for. The trial was at its heart a very dry examination of finance manipulation.

Our 45^th president was convicted of falsifying business records in the first degree. Eleven of the counts were about faking invoices. Eleven more were for checks paid for fictitious legal services. The final twelve were for creating imaginary ledger entries for these imaginary legal expenses. Each of these offenses was tied to a specific invoice, check stub, and accounting entry. From all accounts, that was business as usual for the former president.

What’s going to happen? Nobody knows.

Potentially, he could go to jail for up to four years for each of the convictions. The judge could decide to string the jail terms out one after the other for 136 years or he could have the ex-president serve them all at the same time. Or the judge could decide not to send the ex-president to jail at all.

There is nothing in the United States Constitution preventing a felon from running for President of the United States from jail. Under New York State law, a felon can only be barred from voting if they are incarcerated. If the former president is fined instead of imprisoned, he could still vote for himself.

The Secret Service would still need to guard him around the clock.  They would, essentially, be jailed with him. He would need to be kept separate from other prisoners. There is no template in place for how any of this would work.

He’s been convicted of state crimes, not federal ones. He could only be pardoned by Governor Kathy Hochul. She’s a Democrat, so that doesn’t seem likely, but she’s also a politician, so who knows?

How will this affect the election? What happens if he is in jail, and he gets elected?

His most fervent supporters have stood by him long after any rational thought on their part should have driven them away. There’s no reason to think that this should change anything. The ex-president’s problem is that his most fervent supporters aren’t enough to get him elected. We saw that in the 2020 elections. He needs more support than that if he’s to have a chance of winning.

President Biden’s support of Israel has driven some Democrats away from him. Given a choice between Biden and a felon will they come back? Robert Kennedy, Jr. could have benefitted from these events but that no longer seems likely. In this political climate, felony convictions might not derail supporters, but brain-eating worms?

Yesterday was a busy day both for us and for the news outlets. We’d spent the Wednesday before with my mother in Florida checking in on MSNBC and CNN every hour or so. All the commentary was just an endless rehash of speculation. We flew home on Thursday without getting enough sleep, so we weren’t listening to the news. I watched a movie and Michael slept.

Nobody paid much attention to the Ukrainian developments because we were all fixated on the jury deliberations in New York. The longer they went on, it was thought, the better the results would be for the defendant. We were all on edge. While I was walking, I didn’t notice the alerts on my iPhone until about half an hour after the verdicts were announced. Social media had exploded.

It was only then that I noticed the Ukraine story and let it sink in.

Thursday, May 30^th, I think, is going to go down in history as a pivotable day. Things are going to change for us and for our country. There may be waves generated by these events or merely gentle ripples, but, in either case, the water won’t remain calm.

To find out what it all means, we will just have to wait and see.