On the verge of....something

Good Monday morning to all.  Hope the weather is agreeable where you are, and not causing problems for you and yours.

It seems that a number of things are moving rapidly toward a conclusion or some sort of inflection point where conditions will change dramatically.  And since I mentioned the weather, let's start there.

I live in central Kentucky, but earlier in the month, about eighty miles to the southeast of where I live, the residents of what's colloquially referred to as eastern Kentucky experienced rainfall totaling nearly three and a half inches in about seven hours.  This raised the level of the Kentucky River by about twelve feet in some locations, and massive amounts of flooding occurred throughout the region.

Thousands of residents either fled their homes or had to be rescued once they were cut off by the rising waters.  For those who have never visited this part of Kentucky, many parts are very hilly, bordering on mountainous, meaning that level ground exists primarily in the areas at lower elevation.  And that's where all of this rainfall ended up, causing all of this flooding.

Estimates indicate that it will take many years in some areas to restore normal life conditions to these areas.  And since the rainfall patterns here in Lexington are not much different from eastern Kentucky, I can say with confidence that it normally rains little if at all from about the middle of July until around October.  

So we can chalk this up to climate change, as with the drought conditions being felt in various parts of the country, the deluges that have beset the Southwest recently, wildfires and tornadoes and more.  It's real, it's already here, and we are woefully underprepared as a planet to deal with the aftereffects.

And now we turn to the former President.

First, in the midterm primary elections, Donald Trump has largely completed his mission of revenge against the ten members of the Republican caucus of the House who voted to impeach him in early 2021, as four decided to retire, four more were defeated by his hand-picked candidates and two managed to win their primaries.  Hard to know how these candidates will fare in the general election.

And it appears that a number of Trump-backed Senate candidates will not be successful in their bids to hold current Republican seats in the Senate.  Even stalwart Republican Mitch McConnell has conceded that some of these candidates will not win, saying that "the quality of candidates has a lot to do with the outcome" of these races.  And when you rely on political novices like Dr. Mehmet Oz, former venture capitalist and author J.D. Vance and former professional football player Herschel Walker, you're not assuring success.

And then there's the matters that don't pertain to Trump's time as President.  He pleaded the 5th Amendment more than 440 times in a recent deposition in a civil suit filed by the Attorney General of the State of New York.  The former chief financial officer of The Trump Organization pleaded guilty on Thursday to various financial crimes and part of his plea deal includes an obligation to assist with the ongoing investigation, and Trump is also involved in several other civil actions.

Several of his associates, including his former personal attorney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani have been compelled to testify before a special grand jury in Georgia regarding attempts to invalidate the results of the 2020 election there.

And then there's the recent search warrant executed at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in south Florida and the identification and removal of many, many cartons of materials that were supposed to have been provided to the National Archives.  Reports indicate that at least some of the materials were marked top secret and therefore should never have been removed from federal locations.  The penalties for mishandling of such documents can be somewhat severe.

Pretty likely that something will come of one or more of these situations.  Just hard to tell which at this point.