Can Obama's amnesty of illegal aliens save America?

The response of conservative experts and politicians to Obama's latest decision was expected - they are outraged, upset and disgusted. While I can understand their emotions, I disagree with their conclusions. In fact, Obama may have inadvertently acted as a savior of the Republic. 

This Friday morning I accidently overheard my colleague, who I will call JC in order to preserve his anonymity, talking in his cubicle about the unconstitutionality of Obama's "edict" to amnesty 5 million illegal aliens. In all fairness, by that time I already knew what I wanted to write in this post, but I could not resist jumping right in the middle of this discussion to express me opinion on the subject. I fully sympathize with the argument that Obama's decision is unconstitutional, but that by itself is hardly an argument which can win a lot of supporters among American people. A careful recitation of the Articles of the Governing Law of the Republic will most likely put to sleep a  majority of our semi-literate population, while upsetting probably another 20%. And in all honesty, these numbers may well hold true for our Supreme Court. More importantly, the real issue is that our Constitution has been dead since at least the 1930ies and FDR's New Deal, if not even earlier with Woodrow Wilson. No fair person, knowledgeable of the letter and spirit of the Constitution and the history of its adoption would agree that the major building blocks of today's federal government - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, most of labor laws and even environmental laws satisfy the limited role of the government envisioned and codified by the Founding Fathers. In other words, our Constitution is dead and buried, and most of the people do not care, so it's useless to appeal to it.

What's worse, is that the oppressive role of the federal government, the "welfare socialism", as well as extreme environmentalism are slowly but steadily suffocating the Republic. If the current trajectory is not drastically altered, America will eventually become a pseudo-socialist state, with lobotomized population brainwashed in government-controlled schools and universities. Conservative debate about the niceties of the Constitution in light of this debacle seem to be incredibly naïve - and reminds me of two apocryphal stories about the well-meaning British. Apparently, before WW1, the British intelligence refused to intercept German radio and written communications. The argument was that "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's letters". During the start of WW2, the British initially refused to bomb German factories, because that could cause the damage to private German property and was apparently unfair. Today's Republicans in many ways remind me of the same - and what's worse, they tend to treat the Democrat Party as a well-meaning but somewhat confused dear friend of theirs.

But still, you may ask, how does Obama's amnesty have to do with this? Well, once we acknowledge that the Constitution is essentially dead, and this country is going to hell, we must ask ourselves - what can be done about it? Even president Reagan, who was elected twice with the promise of cutting federal government and privatizing Social Security and eliminating Medicare was unable to achieve this. President Bush attempted a moderate reform of Social Security and he too was stopped. It is also widely acknowledged that American welfare state is soon to go bankrupt, and there is apparently no attempt to be made to rescue our country. Congress, even with Republican control is unable to break the Democrat obstruction, as the past has shown.

And yet, let's not forget that the foundation of the liberal regime in this country is federal power to prosecute the people who attempt to withdraw their monetary support of the welfare state. You have to support it with your taxes - or you will be sent to jail. Same applies to environmental laws, labor laws and the like. Until today, the executive branch was expected to prosecute all the dissenters from the welfare state, and the president was powerless to stop this. But what has happened this Friday? President Obama is now demonstrating that the motivated president can refuse to uphold the law, and prosecute the people who openly violate it. In other words, he is setting the precedence that the enormous federal power to prosecute (which is the foundation of American liberalism) can be simply set aside by the President. As it stands today, the President cannot arbitrarily prosecute his opponents, but he can, if he so decides, remove the entire oppressive power of the federal apparatus. This means that the sole pillar of liberalism, the threat of federal violence has been dramatically weakened, and Republicans can remove it if they elect a conservative president. It is no longer necessary to have a complete control of Congress to reform the welfare state - the president can simply declare that people who refuse to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes will not be prosecuted. Moreover, he may unilaterally cut federal taxes, union laws and environmental regulations without the need for a protracted and most likely unsuccessful struggle in Congress.

Does it mean that we won? No, but it means we now have an opening. In order to satisfy his narcissistic desires to "fundamentally change the country", as well as his angry response to the rejection by American voters, Obama removed a major defense wall around the welfare state.
Will the Republicans use Obama's error? If we make sure that the man we elect to serve in the White House has the guts to defend this country, and people in Congress won't surrender, we may have a chance to stop this country from falling into the abyss. The only other alternative would be to appeal to the Armed Forces and remind them they took an oath to protect this country from all enemies, foreign and domestic - but that is the step few people are ready to call for.

More shoes to drop

Now that the elections are over, it's time for reality to re-assert itself. Obama administration was able to postpone some of the things after the elections in order to limit the damage, but the clock is up.

Obamacare is here again
As Karl Marx liked to say, "It's no accident", that Obamacare enrollment was postponed until after the elections. Moreover, insurance companies were told not to disclose the prices for premiums. Well, starting yesterday, Saturday, November 15th, the Obamacare exchanges were up. Expect the obvious - the premiums will be higher, the website will have bugs, and the deductibles will be higher than before. And employer insurances will be expensive too. In short, there is a reason why Obama postponed the sign-up time this year by 1.5 months - and it's not because he had so much confidence in it.

Deadline on negotiations with Iran

The official deadline to reach a deal on Iranian nuclear program is November 24th, which is just a few weeks after the elections. Do not forget that Obama unilaterally, without consultation with Congress, shut down the sanctions against the "Islamic Republic" in naïve hopes that it would appease the Mullahs, and they would stop their efforts to build nuclear bombs. Of course, the Mullahs correctly understood this as American surrender. It's quite clear that Iran will not cease its nuclear efforts, and any treaty will be meaningless. Of course, after boasting about the success of his negotiations with Iran, Obama is in a tough spot now.

Ebola in America
It's been widely reported that the media complied with the regime's demand to seize reporting on the spread of Ebola in the USA. The problem is - there are about 150 people coming to the USA from Ebola-infected areas in Africa each week. Moreover, thousands of American soldiers will at some point have to come back. If only 1 out of 100 Africans coming to the USA have Ebola, that means we have 3 Ebola cases each two weeks. And don't forget that the chances of surviving Ebola in Africa are less than 20%, and American borders are wide open. Is it too difficult to imagine that at some point every middle class African, who suspects he has a case of Ebola, would be stupid not to try to come to America. Moreover, the flu season is upon us, and there will be thousands of suspected cases of Ebola. Is our medical system ready for this? Clearly not. And don't underestimate the frustration of thousands of unionized medical workers, who will strike if they suspect they are in danger. The next two-three months may be quite interesting...

The war against ISIS
Only a few months ago, the smartest president of all times, announced that ISIS was a mere JV team. How quickly things change. Today, ISIS is simultaneously advancing in Syria and Iraq, destroying everything that stands in the way. Obama has finally responded to  this onslaught with a few pinpricks, and delayed fighting back until after the elections. Well, the elections are over, and it seems the situation is calling for more than a few bombs dropped into the camel's behind. If America does not want to see the fall of Baghdad, American troops will have to take the fight into their own hands. In other words, Obama's withdrawal from Iraq was a strategic mistake and must be reversed.

Illegals bringing deadly diseases
It's been widely reported in the media that since the latest inrush of illegal immigrants from South of the border, there was an explosion in new deadly diseases. The federal government refuses to speculate whether these diseases were brought to US by the illegals, but the chances are that they were. The media refused to discuss this before the elections, but it is very likely that this story will get a life of its own in the near future.

Finally, the economy
The federal bank is slowly raising interests rates, which is most likely due to the fears of the run-away inflation. At the same time, Europe is still in recession, Russian tanks are fighting in Ukraine, and the Middle East is more combustible than ever. The oil prices are going down, which is helping the US economy, but the employment is still well below historic levels, and the federal government is run by unusually incompetent people. It's quite possible that America will enter another recession by the end of 2015.

IRS and other dirty games
Apparently, the IRS did not even attempt to find the "missing" emails of Louis Lerner, the government bureaucrat who organized the illegal targeting of conservative groups. This became known only a few days after the election. I hope the Republicans in the House and Senate will finally wake up and put some pressure on the IRS to reveal the details behind the secret operation to silence the opposition. It can be expected that in the next two years, we will find a lot of new facts about the IRS war with conservatives.

And one more thing. It's been reported that the polls were widely inaccurate leading to the 2014 midterm elections. While the media outlets offered a number of explanations for this puzzling case, there was one hypothesis that was not discussed. What if some conservative voters hesitated to share their political views with the pollsters? What if some of them decided that some of the liberal polling groups may be sharing the data with the IRS in order to punish the enemies of the president? It may seem far-fetched, or does it?

Who to blame for the Russian invasion of the Crimea

I often hear these days a constant refrain among liberals that Republicans put too much blame on president Obama for the actions of Putin. After all, it's the Russian strongman who invaded Crimea, not Barack Obama. I think this view is emotional and ahistorical. Vladimir Putin is a former KGB officer, a man with clear and unambiguous views on communism and Russian nationalism. He is a predator, a killer, a man who will take what he wants by force or deceit.  It is in his nature to attack the weak if it profits him. To blame Putin for the invasion into Ukraine is like blaming the fox for stealing your chickens. The person who is truly to blame is the man who let the barn open, who let Putin think  that he could take Crimea with few consequences. And that man is Obama, the president of the United States, the very person whose weak foreign policy made the Ukrainian invasion inevitable.