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President Obama: How Bad Will It Be?
Special to FreeRepublic ^ | 5 Nov 2008 | John Armor (Congressman Billybob)

Posted on 11/05/2008 7:51:34 AM PST by Congressman Billybob

Let us take two sources – the statements made by Barack Obama as a candidate and the lessons of history – combine them and make some predictions. The results are not pretty.

These three results -- a new World War, a new Great Depression, and permanent damage to the Constitution – are given in decreasing order of damage to the United States. That happens to be the reverse of their odds of happening. Though to me, as a student of the US Constitution, the last item is still critically bad.

Based on his repeated comments about Iran and Pakistan, Obama will coddle our sworn enemy, Iran, and will invade and antagonize our shaky but critical ally, Pakistan. Yes, I know we have done cross-border raids into Pakistan’s lawless border territory. But we have kept those in the lowest possible profile to avoid antagonizing a critical ally whose population is mostly Muslim and who possesses working nuclear weapons.

Either over a nuclear Iran, or as a result of an induced revolt in Pakistan, we are likely to be in a global war with the Muslims within a year of Obama being sworn into office. Pick up any book on the events which lead to World War II, Read the chapter on Neville Chamberlain. Then you will know more than Obama does about geopolitical reality.

Odds of a world war between the civilized nations and the uncivilized ones, 50 percent.

In the last quarter the Gross National Product of the US declined by 0.3 percent. It is a near certainty that the GNP report for the 4th quarter will also show a decline, meaning that we will actually be in a recession. But, as Dr. Thomas Sowell pointed out, it will at that point be a mild recession.

How does Obama propose to deal with this situation? He proposes protectionist foreign trade policies and higher taxes.

What does history teach us? Pick up any book on this history of the Great Depression in the US. Look in the index for taxes, Herbert Hoover, and the Hawley-Smoot Tariff. The policies that Obama says he is going to carry out are the worst choices to make, unless the intention is deliberately turn a mild recession into a bone-rattling, deep depression.

Odds of a new Great Depression as a result of Obama becoming President, 70 percent, though it may take more than a year to become evident to the editors of the NY Times.

Obama has made clear that he will appoint judges, and Justices to the Supreme Court, who will alter their decisions depending on who the parties in the case are. Senator Chuck Shumer, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee which reviews and recommends judicial appointees to the whole Senate, has taken the same position.

Everyone reading this is familiar with the statute of Justice as a woman in a flowing robe. In one hand she holds a sword, because justice represents the power of the state to decide between civil parties and to punish under the criminal law. In her other hand, she raises high a set of scales. These represent the idea that she will decide the case before her on the law and the facts, without fear or favor.

Most importantly, Justice wears a blindfold. This represents the idea that she will NOT decide a case based on who the parties are who appear before her. She will obey the law and follow the facts. No more, no less. Yet Obama has made clear his intention to appoint judges/Justices who will do the opposite.

Not just all judges, but all public officials at all levels, take an oath of office to preserve and defend the Constitution of the United States. That Constitution is, as it says in its text, “the supreme law.” Yet, Obama is committed to appoint judges who will not respect the Constitution, but instead will do whatever they want to do personally.

Odds that judges will be appointed who will wipe their feet on the Constitution, rather than preserve and defend the Constitution, 100 percent. Since judges serve for life, these judges willing to violate their oaths of office will remain on the bench for 30 years or so, far beyond the four years of the Obama Administration.

Millions of lives, billions of dollars, and the very future of the US Constitution are at stake. I hope my predictions prove to be wrong. But with the last one, I am certain with every fiber of my being, that I am correct.

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About the Author: John Armor practiced law in the US Supreme Court for 33 years. He now lives in Highlands, NC, and is working on a book on Thomas Paine. John_Armor@aya.yale.edu

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Foreign Affairs; Government
KEYWORDS: bho2008; constitution; greatdepression; obama; worldwar
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Went to bed early, thinking about this subject. Decided to file my weekly column three days early, since this general subject is, of course, lively today.

John / Billybob

1 posted on 11/05/2008 7:51:35 AM PST by Congressman Billybob
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To: Congressman Billybob
I am sorry to say that I fear you are right.

Obama's tax plan is going to cripple businesses and cause more unemployment.

His unwillingness to drill our own oil is going to bring back the high gas prices, plus leave us vulnerable to middle east manipulation.

His policies to coddle Iran and Muslim radicals is going to leave us open to an attack far greater than the one on 9/11/2001.

2 posted on 11/05/2008 8:00:07 AM PST by Jersey Republican Biker Chick (You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. - Abraham Lincoln)
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To: Congressman Billybob
There will be no invasion of Pakistan, but we will invade Sudan. This is an article by Anthony Lake and Susan Rice, Obama's top advisors:

Some will argue that the U.S. military cannot take on another mission. Our ground forces are stretched thin. But a bombing campaign or a naval blockade would tax the Air Force and Navy, which have relatively more capacity, and could utilize the 1,500 U.S. military personnel in nearby Djibouti.

Others will insist that, without the consent of the United Nations or a relevant regional body, we would be breaking international law. Perhaps, but the Security Council recently codified a new international norm prescribing "the responsibility to protect." It commits U.N. members to decisive action, including enforcement, when peaceful measures fail to halt genocide or crimes against humanity.

This genocide has lasted three long years. Peaceful measures have failed. The Sudanese government is poised to launch a second round. The real question is this: Will we use force to save Africans in Darfur as we did to save Europeans in Kosovo?

It will start like Iraq did with no-fly zones.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/01/AR2006100100871.html

3 posted on 11/05/2008 8:01:22 AM PST by Soliton (Faith is an act of love; Love is an act of faith)
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To: Congressman Billybob
Like all but a few here, you totally miss the most critical point. One of the first things that Obama and his new, larger majorities in House and Senate, with the collaboration of enough of the remaining Republicans, will do, is to legalize all current illegal immigrants.

When 30 million new dedicated Democrat/Socialist voters show up for the next Congressional elections, the United States of America will cease to exist, at least as anything remotely resembling what my ancestors fought to establish in the Revolutionary War.

The probable choices of what we will look like at the end of that road is either Britain or Mexico, but we WILL be a "democratic socialist" country with a "parliamentary democracy"---AT BEST. I suspect that the Hugo Chavez model is attractive to the "big O" and his Marxist minions and mentors.

4 posted on 11/05/2008 8:01:30 AM PST by Wonder Warthog ( The Hog of Steel)
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To: Congressman Billybob

Frankly, CBB, I think the danger to the Constitution is real but isn’t 100%. Hussein still, thankfully, doesn’t have a bulletproof majority in the Senate.

I know it is tenuous, but IF the Republicans can hang together (will Joe LIEberman join them?) in the Senate, they can stave off the worst of the Marxist leanings the Democrat party embraces.

Two years...two years until another election. We need to get our bearings and keep the monster that is socialism from gaining more power.


5 posted on 11/05/2008 8:01:54 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
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To: Congressman Billybob
All freepers that are non RINOs need to reconsider the future..
This election is big.. big meaning a sea change..

To RINOs; ignore this post.. for you will be quite at ease with whatever party is in control.. as you bend over to accept anything "they" do as positive.. being cowards like you are..

6 posted on 11/05/2008 8:02:19 AM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole....)
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To: Congressman Billybob

Sorry, he is not my president. He is not an America. He was elected through false representation. He will be a person in the White House placed there by questionable people who want to destroy the Republic.


7 posted on 11/05/2008 8:03:10 AM PST by Paige ("All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," Edmund Burke)
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To: Congressman Billybob

Sorry, he is not my president. He is not an America. He was elected through false representation. He will be a person in the White House placed there by questionable people who want to destroy the Republic.


8 posted on 11/05/2008 8:03:10 AM PST by Paige ("All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," Edmund Burke)
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To: Congressman Billybob

Sorry, he is not my president. He is not an America. He was elected through false representation. He will be a person in the White House placed there by questionable people who want to destroy the Republic.


9 posted on 11/05/2008 8:03:18 AM PST by Paige ("All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," Edmund Burke)
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To: Congressman Billybob
Odds of a new Great Depression as a result of Obama becoming President, 70 percent, though it may take more than a year to become evident to the editors of the NY Times.

Like FDR, Obama will blame the results on his predecessor - and the media will echo and enshrine it.

10 posted on 11/05/2008 8:03:57 AM PST by Oatka ("A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves." –Bertrand de Jouvenel)
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To: Congressman Billybob

What upsets me beyond my ability to express it, is that so many people could be so blind to what this ‘enemy-from-within’ plans to do to the very fabric of our Nation and voted for him. Shameful ... and a lot of other words I won’t post.


11 posted on 11/05/2008 8:04:30 AM PST by MissMagnolia (Obad. 1:15: As you have done, it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head.)
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To: Congressman Billybob

thanks Congressman Billy Bob....I awoke this morning with great heaviness thinking about future court appointments under the Dems...when my daughter first got out of law school she was a staff attorney with the 11th Circuit down in Atlanta....so I heard first hand the stories of the Clinton appointees and the Carter appointees before that....with Obama we will see judges in his likeness...lightweights with no judicial experiance....hope I’m wrong.
Stonewalls, from way up in Ashe County, NC


12 posted on 11/05/2008 8:05:47 AM PST by STONEWALLS
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To: Congressman Billybob

President Obama: How Bad Will It Be?
As bad as most of us sitting here in the comfort of our homes understand it to be, can you imagine how bad it must seem to our men and women fighting in the wars around the world?
They now serve for a person that has no faith in their mission, their duty, or them as the defenders of America.
They serve under a Socialist for the first time in our Nations history.
I can not begin to imagine the horror that these brave men and women feel and how turned on by the people that they defend they must feel.


13 posted on 11/05/2008 8:05:54 AM PST by SECURE AMERICA (Coming to You From the Front Lines of Occupied America)
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To: Congressman Billybob

How does Obama propose to deal with this situation? He proposes protectionist foreign trade policies

this is my biggest fear: that even conservatives will go along with this and start a war with China.


14 posted on 11/05/2008 8:06:44 AM PST by ari-freedom (So this is how Liberty dies... with thunderous applause)
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To: Congressman Billybob
Best case scenario: A third term for Jimmy Carter.
Worst case scenario: See Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe for reference.

Kool-Aid drinkers who are gloating at me today and will continue gloating until Oba Mao's agenda becomes apparent will get only a terse question in response: Who is John Galt?

15 posted on 11/05/2008 8:08:03 AM PST by Vigilanteman (Are there any men left in Washington? Or, are there only cowards? Ahmad Shah Massoud)
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To: Congressman Billybob
John, I disagree completyely about Pakistan. Now that he's elected Obama will show NO inteest in anything but disengagingfrom Afghanistan. His base, which made him, always opposed the war in Afghanistan and Obama will use the talks between Karzai and the taliban as a stepping stone to withdrawal. By 2010 the Talis will be back in the govt and probably in control. No war with Pakistan. Not a good situation of course, but not as extreme as a ground war with a nuclear armed enemy.

Iran is more troubling, but Obama's difficulty is his promise to respect the feelings of our allies. Well Sarkozy is the unofficial leader in Europe and he is adamant about a non nuke Iran. Obama may have to follow Europe in this regard.

His tax policies and especially the cap gains and dividend increases could be very bad news if people begin pulling their money out of the market and look for the tax free return of state and local bonds. The market could tank and that would lead to serious results, but it would play into the Congressional Dem hands of constructing a command economy.

Which leads to your last point. I think the dangers to the Constitution are paramount, given Obama's self described criteria for Justices. he will replace at least three with young activists who are determined to create a central, not federal govt, with the power to accomplish what they believe to be the Good. The Constitutional obstacles to this goal will be removed, leaving the U.S.A., at best, a Centralized European Socialist Democracy where the people's rights are no longer protected by the govt., but given by the govt.

16 posted on 11/05/2008 8:08:25 AM PST by xkaydet65
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To: Jersey Republican Biker Chick

I think Obama will be the first president to get approval ratings at the single-digit level. Harry, Nancy and Obama are the stupidest group of leaders at our most critical time since WW II. I predict they fail catastrophically.

Electing this moron will also cause harm to African Americans as this may create a stigma that would prevent highly more qualified AA from obtaining this office. What we have is Barack Obama :The Affirmative Action President. I hope those that elected him suffer the most by his policies which are doomed for failure.


17 posted on 11/05/2008 8:10:22 AM PST by DarthVader (Liberal Democrats are the party of EVIL whose time of judgment has come.)
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To: SoFloFreeper

I know it is tenuous, but IF the Republicans can hang together (will Joe LIEberman join them?) in the Senate, they can stave off the worst of the Marxist leanings the Democrat party embraces.


Exactly what did you see during the past 4 years that makes you think that the Republicans in the Congress have any spine for dealing with (now) Obama/Pelosi?
Even the Candidate they put up for President had no guts for taking them on forcefully.........


18 posted on 11/05/2008 8:12:37 AM PST by SECURE AMERICA (Coming to You From the Front Lines of Occupied America)
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To: Congressman Billybob

Only one thing:
It usually takes about 18 to 24 months for congressional action to translate into the economic reality that follows. If Obama and his collaborators in the Congress get their economic agenda accomplished early, the depression should be in full force for the next elections.


19 posted on 11/05/2008 8:12:37 AM PST by wolfpat (Revolt, and re-establish the Constitution as the law of the land!)
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To: Congressman Billybob
I do not think we will survive (as a nation) the four years.
Not pessimistic, just realistic - we have been judged, and Obama is our punishment the way the Babylonians were used by God as ancient Israel's punishment.
No time for fence-sitting - choose today who you will serve, the God of Abraham, or the pagan god Obama.....
20 posted on 11/05/2008 8:13:00 AM PST by Psalm 73 ("Gentlemen, you can't fight in here - this is the War Room".)
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