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Time Is Up. What Options Do We Have Left? [1]

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Date: 2025-04-11

It is time to talk about end games. What are our options because this cannot continue. In case you may have missed Stephanie Ruhle says she is scared as she exposed America’s crisis and potential bankruptcy., read/view it (again). We are into this less than 90 days and things are getting really bad.

I got an email from the Canadian manufacturer of our recently sold RV trailer. They are wonderful people and we loved camping in our Escape RV since 2011. It was sad to let it go but we’re not the recently retired folks we used to be and it was time to let someone else enjoy it. But that is another story. Instead, here is a email from them to new customers, Navigating Tariffs Together — An Update. In their update you can see the chaos 47 is causing. It feels like the Sack of Rome which is the appropriate image for today. Note the Senators to the right who tried to bribe Alaric to go away. Sounds like Schumer et al does it not? Just in case Stephanie didn’t scare you and the simmering anger and Elbows Up from our Canadian cousins hasn’t caused you worry, think about the unnecessary turmoil he and his “DEI free”, i.e. White, Male, and blazingly Incompetent, team is causing worldwide as outlined in the email from Escape Trailer. This is lasting harm and like any attempt to on-shore lost manufacturing it will take decades to repair, assuming our country will last that long. But maybe there is a way out in a hint from dear friends in the UK:

I saw it, read it, and raged in sympathy with you. Here, it’s being called 45/47’s “Liz Truss moment”. I hope his outcome will be as hers, only more so, though it may take longer in his case. Not a day goes by without my thinking of you, family and dogs included. Stay close, take heart, and send me puppy and family news. Survival is everything.

For the record, Liz Truss holds the current record for the shortest term of a UK Prime Minister — just 44 days, barely one pay period. Note that the record goes all the way back to before Magna Carta in 1215. The Tories then lost the next election by a landslide, a real one, such that “Reform”, the British equivalent of an upper class “Tea Party” and up to then the fringe of the far right fringe, is now as big as they are…

Our friend’s email has a hint of a way out. In the case of Liz, the Conservatives used an intra-party procedure to force her out as leader and replace her with an equally clueless but less incompetent leader — and PM — to try and stop the hemorrhaging support for the government. But we don’t have that. A Parliamentary system only has an upper limit on a term, not fixed ones like (only) us. In the UK, that is five years; in Australia it is three. But the important point is a “snap election” can be called at any time for any reason, often called by a still popular government to update its expiry clock for another five or three years but it can also be forced by a “vote of no confidence”. They can flush their occasional stupidity when necessary whereas we are stuck with “midterms” or the next Presidential year, almost four years from now. Another stupid (in hindsight) idea from 1789.

Our only choice now is either Impeachment or a mutiny/coup. Of course, there is the 25th — there is plenty of evidence for it — but that is still inside the administration by crazies and then we get Vance who is so popular that he has to sneak in and out of Greenland of all places. JD has all of the Project 2025 baggage but none of the MAGA charm of 47 — and that is important. MAGA gets its “Whites Only” hit from the Old Man but JD is just a tech bro and that doesn’t cut it with anyone other than fellow bros.

So what are our options?

Well, there is mutiny. This can take multiple paths to the same result. One case, Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported illegally and POTUS has ordered his return. If it comes down to the judge in the case finding the government in criminal contempt, he will order U.S. Marshals to to enforce his order. Depending on what they do, either obey the court or obey the DoJ, that clearly determines whether the courts have any (residual) power. If that test continues, it will progress to either law enforcement or the military refusing to obey an “illegal order” including intervening to stop the illegal action by others, i.e. a mutiny. A coup is similar except there is no existing chain-of-command that refuses. I don’t know how things like this would go down since such action is outside any government process/procedure we have accepted since 1789 (with the exception of “The War of Recent Inconvenience” in 1860). What I do know is that the Law of Unintended Consequences and the resulting lawlessness will take over and that rarely ends well.

So that leaves us with Impeachment. But we tried that — twice. However, this path does keep us within the confines of the law. 47 could be convicted this time and JD’s Veep, using the Agnew to Ford precedent, could be appointed, not by JD, but by Congress as in, “Sure pick your own but we will only consent to _______”. The threat could possibly force 47 to just resign; less trauma but also less likely. Having made that assertion, Congress would also have (appropriate) power of the purse and “If we did it once, we can do it again” leverage to stop and purge the crazy. But this is a long shot in the face of history, the Hail Mary of all Hail Mary passes. It all depends on courage in Congress members, both sides. There are the well known nihilists who would miss bringing their hotdogs to the fire but there are also the moneyed “corporates” who are seeing their holdings melt. The former will howl to high heaven if the bonfire is cancelled but the corporate types will have to reckon with the hard reality that their holdings only make sense if the U.S. Dollar remains a reserve currency and does not take the path of the Ruble into bankrupycy.

We do not have much time, let alone much goodwill left outside the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. We are in the midst of our own “Liz Truss Moment” and time is running out with what friends we still have. The only question is what are the people who are way closer to the center of power than any of us ordinary folk going to do about it? My pay grade doesn’t qualify. This is like what I learned back in my Air Force days; there is a minimum altitude at which it is still safe to eject and depend on your parachute. We are that close. I am not keen on my grandchildren being collateral damage in a crash we could have prevented.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/11/2315945/-Time-Is-Up-What-Options-Do-We-Have-Left?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web

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