I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic… (From the Oath of Enlistment)
It honestly kind of slipped my mind at first, that Monday morning was the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack on the United States. It’s been 22 years since that horrible day. I had other stuff purely personal concerns on my mind.
For one, every single thing that I had to say about 9-11, I said, wrote and posted ages ago … and why re-run, one more time? There’s just nothing more to say, any more than there would be anything more to say about the shock of the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 one more tedious rerun of a recollection of where I was, what I was doing. It’s been a lifetime, in a way and for high-school and college graduates this year, it’s been all their lifetimes.
The other thing a more recent tragic anniversary which looms closer in time is the disastrous and humiliating withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan, and the Abbey Gate suicide bombing there which killed more than a hundred civilians and thirteen American service personnel. Those deaths meant so little to President Biden that he kept looking at his watch during the ceremony at Andrews AFB when their coffins were unloaded. Those thirteen were the merely last American military lives frittered away in almost two decades of seemingly endless and pointless deployments to Afghanistan, culminated in a departure so botched that I’m still shocked that only a single commissioned officer resigned in protest. Sec Def Austin and General “Thoroughly Modern” Milley apparently feel no shame over bungling their responsibility to the Nation so horribly.
And this a demoralized, gutted military isn’t something that happened at the hands of foreign enemies. Our so-called leadership of the so-called elite gives every indication of hating at least half the American citizenry; it’s as if there is a secret contest on for who can come up with a notion to make our lives even more miserable, by banning gas stoves, gas-powered gardening tools and automobiles; limiting air conditioning, efficient toilets, appliances and heaters, and limiting living in detached suburban houses with a generous garden attached. Those same political and social elites also appear to cheer on a new race war and all with the full and enthusiastic cooperation of academia and the national news and entertainment media … those who have taken some time away from cheering on the sexualization of elementary-school-aged children.
Those of us paying attention suspect, with considerable reason for it, that our political leadership (mostly on the Donk side, but a few of the Heffalump persuasion when campaigning for reelection) have been bought and paid for by international and/or corporate interests to the detriment of the interests of voters and American industries alike. Our national borders seem to have been erased in the interests of importing a more compliant population … and political opposition to all of this and the above has been criminalized. We even have our own gulag and collection of political prisoners. In the meantime, the national news-reporting media have degenerated into a partisan collection of bootlickers, toeing the party line and exclaiming rapturously over how much they love-love-love the luscious taste of authoritarian boot-polish.
The horror of 9-11, and what enemies foreign did to us, more than two decades ago? That was bad enough … but not nearly as damaging as what our ruling elite have done to us since.
Discuss as you wish, and while we still can.
The enemy is inside the gate — no doubt about it. Obvious solutions:
(1) No more lifetime self-enriching political class. People can be elected to any specific office only once in their life, and any person who currently holds any elected office is prohibited from running for any other office. And no elected politician ever gets any pension — not even the President. Plus the elected official’s (and their family’s) financial affairs are open to public scrutiny.
(2) End universal suffrage. The right to vote has to be earned.
Of course, those solutions will not be put into effect. Well, maybe they will be considered after the collapse.
“(1) People can be elected to any specific office only once in their life, and any person who currently holds any elected office is prohibited from running for any other office.”
(I take this to mean one’s term of office must be fully concluded prior to engaging in seeking another office but there is no prohibition against running for other offices or limitation of the number of different offices that may be sought and/or held. “Conclusion” should be defined as “end of the elected term” to prevent resignation prior to concluson of the term to seek a different office.)
(1b) No one may serve in elected office in the United States more than three terms or portions thereof.
(1c) Any service in elected office in the United States constitutes lifetime disqualification from serving in any non-elected governmental capacity in the United States or receiving remuneration or benefit, in any form, from any government in the United States, save salary, benefit and retirement commensurate with rank in the Armed Forces of the United States.
(1d) No one shall receive remuneration from any government in the United States for more than 12 years in total, nor shall any retirement allowances other than those funded by the employee, be offered for any governmental service in the United States.
And, as long as we’re discussing things:
The 16th Amendment is hereby repealed; no federal levies, in any form, shall be collected save those agreed upon by each legislature of the several States, and paid by legislative levies upon the citizens, residents and guests of each of the several States in such a manner and amount as each state legislature deems appropriate.
By inclusion of “in the United States” extends limitation to non-federal offices; this is necessary to eliminate reoccurrence of “the career political class” who start in local elections and eventually wind up in federal office.
I recently discovered a 1984 interview with a former KGB agent named Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov who claimed in 1984 that Russia has a long-term goal of ideologically subverting the U.S. He described the process as “a great brainwashing” that has four basic stages. The first stage, he said, is called “demoralization,” which would take about 20 years to achieve. Yuri’s predictions have mostly come true.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/16hyr6d/this_39yr_old_interview_on_ideological_subversion/?share_id=TtTDG3NgK1Wafpkfm35Cr&utm_name=ioscss
Our national borders seem to have been erased in the interests of importing a more compliant population
No, it’s not, really. They can so very easily dumb down the population we have a little bit more that they don’t need to import “more compliant” populations.
No, the idea is to make the USA indistinguishable from every other country. It’s our uniqueness – as part of Western Civilization and within Western Civ – that makes us the major blocker to a globalist empire. It’s to dilute the idea of “American” to the point there’s not enough of us left to object to the imposition of another government over top of ours.
I don’t see any peaceful way out of this, especially if the Deep State leviathan isn’t taken down a whole bunch of notches.
If the Democrats keep the presidency and one chamber, the Unites States is finished (and I expect they will, via massive cheating). They will use the Deep State to complete our descent into a leftist Hell. And if we fall, Europe is also finished, and with it, any last vestiges of Western Civilization. Christianity will be eventually snuffed out. A new Dark Age will descend upon the world.
Obviously, I am not optimistic about our future.
Franklin and Gavin…
Yes, 16th and 17th Amendments need to be repealed to return us to a republic of states.
I will admit the idea of term limits en grosse didn’t occur to me. I usually advocate for a 12 year limit on both House and Senate. Limiting it to, say, 3 terms of any office, in toto, brings some different dynamics to the game.
I think those dynamics could be argued against as wrongly limiting the individual, instead of the office. Might even be a form of bill of attainder in some people’s eyes. But I don’t think that argument would hold water in the long run.
I do think you would have to limit it to federal office, though.
I’m not sure I like the idea of 12 years and out, in certain specifics. You would entirely eliminate the current career progression of the military. Perhaps they could be a carve-out. The elimination of the military pension would also cause a lot of righteous heartburn. It is seen as due to the member because of the particular circumstances they face (combat). It would also require a lot of much younger (and therefore more infested with “new ideas” that ignore military history and lessons learned) “senior” officers*. I think solidifying the cult of youth into the military would be very bad.
(* Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of bad senior officers with “bright ideas” right now. But decreasing the career length would simply make that MUCH worse.)
I do want to see the civil service smashed. I think your answer might be a good one after it’s smashed, in order to restrain it going forward. I’m not sure it would help solve the immediate problem. (On top of basically having to fire something like 90% of the civil service if it were implemented. The hue and cry about that would prevent that plan from being implemented – so alternative needed.)
GWB: “I do want to see the civil service smashed.”
What we suffer from is a permanent Political Class who spend their entire lifetime sucking on the taxpayer teat and a non-fireable cadre of senior long-term bureaucrats with unaccountable power. Both groups need to be eliminated when the time comes to rebuild society after the coming inevitable collapse.
There are different ways to do this, and lots of room for discussion. But the end result must be clear — no more Joey Bidens spending their entire life grafting in the DC Swamp, and no more faceless bureaucrats in the IRS playing politics.
As far as the politicians go, we need to end elected politicians running for re-election or running for another office. They are elected to do a job; they should do that job, and then go back to private life. I like the idea of politicians having to get 50%+1 of the votes of registered voters to be elected; if no candidate hits that mark, then the office is filled by someone selected at random from the voter roll. That is why it is important that voters should have to earn the right to vote — since they might find themselves drafted into elected office.
As far as the bureaucrats, I do like the old Chinese idea of taking the occasional corrupt or incompetent bureaucrat down to the soccer stadium and shooting him — although the Chinese seem to have backed down on that procedure in recent years.
The military is definitely a special case. The original Constitutional idea of no standing army is not practical today. But when we see the vast incompetence and cowardice prevalent in the senior ranks of today’s military, it is clear that drastic change is required.
These are great proposals, but we have been down this road before (rememebr Contract with America?) so we need to up our game. I’ve got some ideas based on my observation that we send too many people to Washington based on their promise to “drain the swamp” but who then find out it’s a hot tub.
1) Ban AC in DC. That should slow things down for about half the year. Well, probably couldn’t do all of DC with all the embassies and such, so let’s just make it federal buildings with one exception. You can have AC at the National Archives Museum where they display the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, if the Congressional critters go there to cool off that might be as close as they ever get to those documents.
2) Limit elected officials and political appointees annual personal expenditures equal to the national median household income (post-tax) based on a three year rolling average. We’ll call it the John Kerry Law based on the fact that as climate envoy he enjoys a playboy lifestyle funded by his wife’s inheritance (which she got from her dead Republican 1st husband) while telling us we have to cut back.
Note those are expenditures based on household, if your spouse is pulling in $200K as a lawyer you can keep it, but you can’t spend it. If you take any gifts, those count toward expenditures All those subject to the law will have to submit an annual report that is subject to audit. So Senator Schumer you want to live better? Either quit or make the average American wealthier. No more private schooling, no more foreign vacations, hello Wal-Mart
3) All elected legislative members will, while in Washington, live in government-provided housing. Specifically in dormitories of no more than 500 SF and located in Ward 8, the worst place to live in DC but conveniently located to the Capitol. Members will not be allowed to use private companies or the Capitol Hill police to provide security for these residences but instead must rely on the DC police department. Good luck getting your 911 call responded to
4) All elected legislative members will travel from their districts to DC by electric vehicle. No flying, you travel like you mean the Green New Deal. Hey Nancy, have fun traveling from San Francisco to DC in a Tesla trying to find a charger If you have been following Secretary of Energy Granholm’s four day adventure in an EV you know this will be good. Sort of like the Muppet Movie when Fozzy and Kermit travel across country but less lovable
5) All federal departments and agencies will be forced to move out beyond a distance no less than a 300-mile radius of the DC area. Every single one, the only thing left is the White House and Congress. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States_ ten of the 25 wealthiest counties by median household income are in the DC metro area, time to spread the wealth created by our tax dollars. Send the FBI to Pie Town, NM
6) There won’t be too many federal departments to move because we’ll eliminate all except Defense, State, Justice, Treasury, and Interior (well move all federal lands there) All other functions will eliminated and returned to the states which can then decide whether either to keep those services. What New York you don’t have the money to fund transportation on your own? Sure you do, think of all those unrealized savings when you stop doing stupid projects like funding NFL stadiums and wind mills. Maybe even get to thinking creatively about education and medical care. Anyway time to stop shipping money to DC just so it can be funneled back to the states in order in an elaborate political shell game.
Think of the available land in DC we can then use to expand the National Mall for additional monuments and memorials. We can bulldoze the Justice and FBI buildings to create Ashley Babbitt Plaza which will hold the Jan. 6 Memorial for the Victims of Political Persecution. Oh and that new $1 billion palatial headquarters that the FBI wants to build? Pie Town, NM.
This will take a while, a decade or two, but we can get started and that new FBI headquarters is the first one to go. We also see the mechanism to do it, we’ll call it the Gaetz-Tuberville maneuver where motivated legislators can use unique political circumstances to ram through systemic political reforms. I really don’t care much personally for either of them (I hate Auburn and SEC football in general) but L love what they’re doing. Gaetz is using that narrow majority in the House to force McCarthy’s hand on impeachment and government shutdown while Tuberville is using his privilege to deny a voice vote for Pentagon promotions over Defense’s violation of the Hyde Amendment. Not to mention that any move to get around Tuberville’s maneuver will mean gumming up the Senate for months and subject all those woke generals and admirals to scrutiny. Next showdown means we ship the FBI out of town
Life in the DC is actually pretty good, so if you want to change the way Washington works you have to make life there worse.
Keep in mind that the original drive to create a professional Civil Service was one of the goals of the ‘good government’ Progressives (of both parties .. the more things change… ) and subsequently weaponized by Woodrow Wilson to facilitate the creation of Government By Experts rather than Citizens.
GWB: regarding military pensions. They’re moving away (and may have completed the transition) from a defined benefit to a Thrift Savings Plan, in which each member tucks something away monthly and the government matches up to a point. This way, if you punch out before 20 years (the old minimum point at which you can get a retirement benefit), you’ll have something. And I think it’s supposed to be portable to your future job. In the long run, this relieves the government of a long-term obligation.
You can’t have a representative republic without representation. When the present Constitution was adopted, there were something like 4 million people with 87 representatives and 26 senators. Today there are something like 330 million people with 435 reps and 100 senators.
That just isn’t enough. It would be ludicrous to think that the Constitution would have worked as well as it has for as long as it has if it had started with 1 senator and 6 reps- but that’s roughly the ratio we have today.
It plainly isn’t working very well now, and I’d argue it cannot work well.
In the meantime, the national news-reporting media have degenerated into a partisan collection of bootlickers, toeing the party line and exclaiming rapturously over how much the love-love-love the luscious taste of authoritarian boot-polish.
A few nights ago I happened to be present when the late night TV show Nightline was playing, due to a minor spot of bad luck. It happened to be the day that the impeachment inquiry against Zhou was announced.
The topic of the show? Something about botox, and women who dress up for their kid’s picture day at school.
I found this to be oddly hilarious, appalling, and exactly what I expected.
They don’t dare mention reality, lest their bubble pop.
I rather think that everybody preceding this one is being optimistic. And I include OCCASIONAL COMMENTER at 0950 hrs. in that. We have an administration that has most consistently demonstrated that there is no longer a rule of law. Or for that matter the Constitution. Electoral integrity is most notable by its absence. And there is no effort to fix that. In the absence of honest elections and the rule of law the Social Contract is gone.
I am also beginning to fear that there will not be honest primary results either. On the Democrat side there is another candidate besides Biden, albeit he is far behind Biden. Specifically one Robert F, Kennedy Jr. Yes, the son of Bobby Kennedy who was assassinated when running for president in 1968. Interestingly enough, it was the 1968 assassination that drove a change of the law that gave Secret Service protection to functionally all serious presidential candidates. The administration has refused to respond to Robert F. Kennedy’s formal request for SS protection for 88+ days.
Yesterday, the 15th, an unknown person wearing a US Marshal’s neck lanyard ID and a belt Marshal’s badge with two pistols in shoulder holsters and extra magazines tried to bluff his way past the private security that Kennedy had been forced to hire. They stopped him and held him for the police. https://abcnews.go.com/US/armed-man-arrested-rfk-jr-campaign-event-los/story?id=103245782
This struck me personally because the event where this imposter [with Federal ID] was in Los Angeles where Bobby was killed in 1968. In my younger days I was more liberal than I am now. I was a volunteer for Bobby’s campaign in Hastings, Nebraska. Those of us high school kids who were known to have pistols were asked by the local campaign to come to Bobby’s campaign appearance. We got him through the crowd in the park, spread through the park watching the crowd during his speech [our watchwords were that they were not going to get Bobby the way they got John], and then got him through the crowd on the way out. We went to the airport where we were introduced to him [and promptly were forgotten I’m sure]. The next primary after Nebraska was California where he was killed.
This campaign’s series of events makes me wonder how much effort the Secret Service would in fact put into protecting any candidate running against Biden or other alternate Democrat presidential candidate. I hope that President Trump and Governor DeSantis have similar questions. This feels like the fall of a dynasty.
Subotai Bahadur
Don’t listen too closely to what the Democrats and media say. Watch what they do. They are spending enormous effort and political capital on lawfare campaigns to keep Trump off the ballot. It looks like they think he can win reelection.
Conservatives should learn from the Left and stay in the game. It’s never over.
Right-wing media benefit from gloom-and-doom as much as left-wing media do.
Okay, nobody bit on my breezy comment so I’ll follow on SB and SGM post. Long atory short, I’m very pessimistic that the upcoming election will be held in anything short of chaotic conditions which will in turn lead to an unprecedented post-election aftermath. If you go back and read Michael Anton’s essay in Compact (https://compactmag.com/article/they-can-t-let-him-back-in) over year ago, you have to pretty much agree 1) that there is no way that they can let Trump back in office and 2) he pretty much got the decision-making matrix correct even back then.
The problem going forward is that the Democrats, Establishment, whatever you want to call it has embarked on an escalation ladder, not so much with Trump directly, but with their conception of Trump and MAGA. The current step up that ladder is their political use of indictments to both goose the Republican nomination and win the general election. The thing is, it’s not working and the Democrats are both panicking and facing the decision right now if they want to escalate further.. and they will, they have no other option. You cannot make Trump out to be the second coming of Hitler without doing everything in your power to stop him.
How? The Democrats/Establishment have enormous resources available from tons of money, control over the electoral machinery, allied with the security services and media, and the organization to put a lot of people on the streets. To top it off they have no attachment (as SGM pointed) to the Constitution and they’re panicking because they no they cannot afford to lose. All told that almost guarantees that those resources will be used up to and beyond the election. In short the logic of the past 7 years, let alone the last few months, guarantees they will put the country at risk to stay in power.
I find it amusing (though coincidental) that this past week the last of the Michigan defendants entrapped by the FBO in kidnapping Whitmer were acquitted.
As an aside, I am very disappointed in what’s going on in New Mexico with Grishaw suspending carry laws. Yes there is an injunction and nobody believes (including her) that her decision will stand, but we are letting her and the Democrats off the hook. Nobody on the Democrat side is defending this and in fact I have noticed that our very anti-gun media is giving this almost no coverage, not so much because it’s a loser but because this is premature. Also can you think of an issue that would generate a more emotional reaction on our side than a Democrat openly violating the Constitution to ban guns? Our response was not to put thousands of protesters on the streets of Albuquerque, but rather go through the courts. I know Albuquerque is 400+ miles from anywhere and there was a small protest (around 150) last weekend, but this wasn’t the Defcon 1 it needed to be. We didn’t show the organizational strength this demanded that weakness needs to be addressed before next summer when the Democrats really go after guns; believe me this was noticed by the D’s
The Democrats will probably escalate their use of election fraud, mob violence, and official abuses of power. These tactics have worked so far. Maybe they will continue to work. But the more the Left escalates along these lines, the more it stirs up opposition that eventually may make such tactics self-defeating.
As someone pointed out here, the Democrats’ political opponents aren’t like the Jews under the Nazis. It was easy for the Nazis to marginalize, persecute and eliminate the Jews at less than 1% of the German population. But a large fraction of the US population opposes the Obama/Biden regime and its policies.
To win, the Left needs to avoid making mistakes. But the Left is already overplaying its hand and making mistakes. It knows it can’t gain power on the merits of its policies, and so always tries to win by lying and subterfuge before the mass of voters catches on.
The Democrats are clearly worried about their ability to win in 2024. It will probably be a dirty election like never before. The aftermath may be chaotic. Conservatives should not cede the election to the Left before it happens.
I am also beginning to fear that there will not be honest primary results either.
I heard on a podcast the claim that RFK jr. cannot set foot in New Hampshire, or else the party will take any delegates he wins and assign them to Zhou. No idea if it’s actually true, but it sure seems like it would be.
Yesterday, the 15th, an unknown person wearing a US Marshal’s neck lanyard ID and a belt Marshal’s badge with two pistols in shoulder holsters and extra magazines tried to bluff his way past the private security that Kennedy had been forced to hire.
Conservative Treehouse has more:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/09/16/what-a-coincidence-potential-rfk-jr-assassin-had-same-last-name-as-el-chappos-wife-who-was-released-from-federal-prison-the-day-before/
I’m reminded of the federal agent caught fleeing the scene of a failed mass shooting in Garland, Texas years ago, and the various mass shootings that have been claimed to have some sort of law enforcement connection, and the mass shootings that enabled governments of other “five eyes” countries to ban guns, and the murder of RFK jr’s uncle and father.
I dislike being so tinfoil, but it has just become really odd how often crazy people manage to commit massacres- often with weapons they shouldn’t have been able to afford or obtain legally- that advance a gun-banning agenda that would otherwise not have any real chance of success. And looking back, how much the murders of JFK and RFK fit into that pattern.
Our response was not to put thousands of protesters on the streets of Albuquerque, but rather go through the courts.
The left strives to whip its ignorant supporters into a frenzy, always, all the time. Thus they can generally find a willing mob whenever they need one- not least because they can almost always be certain they won’t do hard time for myriad crimes that would get a conservative sent to prison for decades.
I note that the guy who murdered a Trump-supporting teenager got 5 years, the January 6th protester who moved a fence somewhere got 17 years. Some people are just more equal than others, in the eyes of the regime.
I think many potential protesters have noticed that sort of thing- and further noted that the political party they’d be showing up to support has nothing to say about any matter they’d be showing up to protest. And won’t have their backs when they get targeted because of their protest, either.
The Geee Ohh Peeeeeeee goes to court in the hope that it will lose, so it can then tell any potential supporters that there was nothing it could do. To quote Mark Steyn, the party of why nothing can be done.
Worthless, always and forever.
I find it amusing (though coincidental) that this past week the last of the Michigan defendants entrapped by the FBO in kidnapping Whitmer were acquitted.
I doubt it is coincidental. Once upon a time, when everyone believed the FBI was the gold standard of law enforcement, no one would seriously believe that it would entrap people to create a political narrative to help the left win an election. Then events saddled up, and we’ve seen that yes the FBI would.
We didn’t show the organizational strength this demanded that weakness needs to be addressed before next summer when the Democrats really go after guns; believe me this was noticed by the D’s
So what are they going to do? Issue another decree? Murder another schoolroom full of toddlers? Uncork another lecture about guns are bad?
No, if the New Mexico decree wasn’t simply another example of overreaching idiocy it was yet another trick. Plenty of demonrats piled on against the NM governor, piously explaining that the Constitution doesn’t allow public safety exemptions. We’re all supposed to nod our heads, in agreement, believing that they respect the rule of law, too. Then, after their endless vote fraud gets them the presidency again, and when they get another supreme court justice or two, they’ll suddenly discern that the Second Amendment really meant that only the people the government paid to have guns could have them, when required, because that’s what militia means.
We will then be expected to accept this, because Rule of Law, and we will be reminded of how various radical leftists expressed disagreement with the plainly lawless decree made by the governor of New Mexico.
Trust nothing these people do or say.
To GWB and others:
RE: Military service length and pensions – my fault, I was remiss in mentioning that, but I don’t have a good proposal for either; the military is a Very Special Case – AFAIK, with the possible exception of federal law enforcement there is no other federal governmental employment where the possibility of death or maiming is clearly understood as a possibility right from the outset. Exactly how such employment, and benefits, as that is dealt with is a quite complex issue.
My point was that government service – and I specifically mentioned “government…in the United States” to include local, state and federal government in the proposal. We have allowed the creation, and perpetuation, of a Government Employment Class of People who, by their attitude and employment, severely distort not just certain jobs, but the vast spillover effect their on-the-job actions create. If the United States is to continue as a Representative Republic that must be eliminated. There are several ways to do that, but limiting such employment – in every government agency and office in the United States, not just federal agencies – to a mandated short maximum term shifts, or I hope it would shift, government service to an opportunity to serve one’s country, learn some skills useful in the private sector, and drive employment desires from government to private enterprise.
Government service should be looked at as temporary and contributing to one’s community and country, not a lifetime sinecure with a gold watch at the end.
Why should it apply to “every government agency in the United States”? First, the 14th Amendment incorporates Constitutional action to all the several states, and second, if one can work in a state government agency for 12 years, the skills and contacts developed there would be attractive to a federal agency, and we’re right back to long-term career employees all of whom operate with the same mindset. 12 years in city government, then 12 in a state government and then 12 with the feds, what would be the difference from what we have today? If it’s “12 and out for life,” especially without a guaranteed employer-funded retirement cushion, I suspect many, if not most, especially younger people, would leave before the full 12 years were used up; learn stuff, develop contacts, and move to private enterprise. In fact, 12 years might be too long; given that there are only very few federal agencies fully authorized by the Constitution, federal government employment should be a small fraction of what it is today.
And that “12 and out for life” also works for elected office; if one is resrticted to 3 terms, in whatever offices one seeks, with a mandatory maximum of 1 term per each office, 12 years more than covers all options.
RE: Occasional Commenter: ” I don’t see any peaceful way out of this, especially if the Deep State leviathan isn’t taken down a whole bunch of notches.”
I think that is entirely correct; those in power today will not willingly relinquish that power, we will have to take it back from them. That includes state-level power and I’m specifically referring to New Mexico; Grisham made her proposal fully expecting there would be no consequences to such utterance. There must be, very preferably within the existing Constitutional and legal structure, ie., impeachment, conviction and banishment from office, however that is conducted under the New Mexico state constitution. I seriuously doubt anything like that will happen, and I expect Grisholm to remain governor for as long as she wants despite the sturm und drang over her proposal and intent.
I do not expect any corrective action to occur, at either state or federal levels, because Democrats are now the Doers’ Party and Republicans the Talkers and Observers Party. Kindler and Gentler should not be the order of the day: firm, ruthlessly applied Constitutional and legal remedies should be. Biden, for example, should have never been elected, but since he was – whether fradulent or legitimate matters not at the moment – Congress should have effectively dealt with his corruption issues well before now. I believe Biden will still be living in the White House come 05 November 2024 if he so desires, and probably for some time after if the DNC, and Obama, accept the idea (I suspect the DNC may be engaged in a struggle to find someone acceptable to Obama because I’m sure he wants a fourth term).
Government size, and service in it, can be tamed by Congress, whether a President agrees to it or not: the Constitution clearly states all financial activity originates in and is controlled by the House of Representatives. Without House support no federal agency gets funding, no expenditures of whatever size become authorized.
Should a President, or the Senate, express exception and condemnation to that, they are so entitled under the Frist Amendment. If, however, they take deliberate action to ignore or bypass it then it becomes a Constitutional crisis, a true one, not one fabricated by a Democrat-supportive media. Should such occur there are other remedies that can be pursued and for which the Constitution allows.
Politics is not “raised eyebrows and mild throat clearing among gentlemen” it is blood sport of the First Order. Right now, it’s our blood on the floor, drop by drop, while the opposition probes for the aorta.
Bear in mind that the intel orgs (CIA & FBI) cooperated in the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s to overthrough governments they didn’t like. They admitted it and were reproached (Church Commision).
No one was ever punished.
So of course they accepted the slap on the hand and will never, ever do anything like that again. Ever. Pinky swear.
Well, they were foreign governments after all, so not exactly the same as if the CIA or FBI were plotting to overthrow the US government… as may or may not more lately be the case. I don’t object to aggressive foreign policy as such.
The question would be whether or not any of those measures were authorized by the president of the day, and whether or not that falls under his constitutional powers of foreign policy. If the answers to the first is no, that’s a complaint against those agencies. If yes to the first but not the second, that’s more a complaint against that president than against the agencies.