The One of Mind Inferno, 64th Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): The Carter Center is sponsoring a 39-Mile Walk Challenge to get people to walk 39 miles in the month of March in honor of our 39th president. Today, I walked a Tyler, our 10th president, bringing my March total up to U.S. Grant, our 18th. In other words, I walked 10.7 miles today, bringing the total miles walked this month up to 18.96. 

What's lost in the misgivings about the way Zelensky was ambushed by Mumps and Vance is that the United States is contractually obligated to defend Ukraine per the Budapest Memorandum of 1994. The Memorandum was signed three years after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and at the time, Ukraine had the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world behind the United States and Russia. To get Ukraine to disarm and transfer its arsenal to Russia, Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, and Great Britain's John Major assured Ukraine of its sovereignty and defense in exchange for eliminating its nuclear capabilities. Russia broke the treaty, however, first by annexing Crimea in 2014 and then by invading the rest of Ukraine three years ago. Putin feels no more obligation to abide by a treaty signed by Yeltsin than Mumps does to honor an agreement made by Obama or Biden.  

But rather than defend the nuclear-free Ukraine, Mumps chose to side with Russia by falsely blaming Ukraine for starting the war and by demanding that Ukraine get on its knees and beg the U.S. for assistance that, under the Budapest Memorandum, we should have been providing anyway. If Ukraine still had the world's third largest nuclear arsenal, Russia would never have invaded and Trump wouldn't be trying to extort the nation for its mineral resources. 

But amerika has broken treaty after treaty with Indigenous American tribes over the past 200 plus years, and turning its back on Ukraine is very much in keeping with the more unfortunate aspects of our national character. Allies like Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, and Japan should be prepared for the worst because, under MAGA control, we cannot be trusted to uphold any treaties that benefit anything other than Mumps' own personal benefit. 

Also lost in the conversation is that cutting off congressionally approved aid to Ukraine is illegal under the terms of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act and is also unconstitutional because the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to set government spending and to make laws. The president’s job is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” 

It was for a similar impoundment of congressionally appropriated funds for Ukraine, holding them back until Zelensky agreed to smear Joe Biden, that the House impeached Trump in 2019. It's easy to imagine that Trump chose to repeat that performance, in public this time, as a demonstration of his determination to act as he wishes regardless of laws and Constitution.