As part of part of Hillsdale
College’s DC-based Kirby Center for the Constitution and Citizenship
“First Principles on First Fridays” lecture series, John Bolton spoke at the Heritage Foundation today.  9/11 is of course a somber anniversary for our country, and a fitting moment to reflect on how how American foreign policy is being shaped in the post-George W. Bush era.

In Ambassador Bolton’s view, it is not a pretty picture.  He graded President Obama’s performance as ”absent.”  As Bolton pointed out in his remarks, the administration is pursuing a course of “Neo-Isolationism,” the point of which appears to be withdrawing American forces and refraining from using American influence around the world because such actions might be objectionable to the global community.  Ambassador Bolton noted that while President Obama has declared he believes in “American exceptionalism ,” the President followed up that assertion by saying he believed in it just as he suspects “that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”  By this logic all countries are exceptional in their own view–which should make everyone feel good–but the problem is that then no country is truly exceptional, including America.  This approach, Bolton surmised, has been the guiding principle that unites the President’s repeated offers to negotiate directly with Iran, enabling of the dog-and-pony show that was former President Clinton’s visit to North Korean, and eagerness to cede power to the International Criminal Court–while presiding over the evisceration of the Defense budget.  Ambassador Bolton was particularly outspoken on the current situation in Honduras, in which the administration is siding with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro and against Honduras’ constitutional process.  He gave that situation “an F.  No question about it.  This is a disgrace.”

After the lecture, Ambassador Bolton graciously granted Redstate an exclusive interview to follow up on the formation (or lack thereof) of foreign policy by President Obama’s national security team, Hugo Chavez’ mischief-making around the globe, and the ramifications of the Obama administration’s policy towards Israel.  Click here to listen to the full podcast.

Mark it down.  President Obama’s “make or break” speech, as the media is portraying it, will be widely viewed as a success among the chattering class.  It will be groundbreaking, visionary, full of clarity, and a “game changer,” as CNN has already labeled it.

But sit tight, that’s just for a while.  Patrick Rufini had it right on Twitter last night.

Tmrw’s speech will be widely praised for resetting the debate on #hcr. And then everything will go back to exactly how it was within 96 hrs

Exactly.  What Patrick realizes, that the MSM does not, is that short term gain is all the president’s speech is intended to do.  If the speech was to be anything like what the media is previewing, the White House would not be making it known that Obama does not plan to offer any real specifics, and plans to be “non-committal” on the central question of the whole debate, the so-called “public option.”

No, the speech is nothing more than an “operational pause,” to borrow a military term of art.  The aftermath is meant to be the calm before the storm.  Next week, the real advance begins.

So as you read the headlines tomorrow, and watch the tingling commentators tonight, remember that it’s all just part of the plan.  And steel yourself for the coming fight.

The White House’s actions in the health care debate have made clear the fundamental change from the Bush administration’s way of doing things that President Obama has brought to the White House.

The Bush administration treated America’s enemies as dangerous threats bent on destroying the country and used every resource at its disposal to defeat them while respecting American citizens’ right to disagree with its policies.

The Obama Administration tries to appease America’s enemies and uses every possible opportunity to cower to them while treating American citizens that disagree with its policies as dangerous threats bent on destroying the country, using every thuggish tactic at its disposal to silence them.

If you want to figure out what a politician is up to, pay attention to what he accuses his opponents of doing.  Chances are, the accuser is probably doing it himself.

It is with that thought in mind that we take a look at President Barack Obama’s now infamous determination from afar that the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “acted stupidly,” in arresting Harvard Professor, and Obama friend, Henry Louis Gates.  The president has since re-calibrated that remark, offering in his pre-eminent law enforcement opinion that Gates should not have been arrested for verbally assaulting Sgt. James Crowley and causing a public scene in front of his home in protest of the police coming to protect him and his property from potential vandals.

But the “acting stupidly” comment still hangs over the incident and over the White House like a dark cloud.  Obama put it there with his inability to restrain himself from commenting on the Gates affair at last week’s White House press conference.  And in so eagerly labeling the Cambridge Police, Obama has unwittingly provided the lens through which to view his first six months as president.  For the Obama Administration has been acting stupidly almost since the very first day of his presidency.

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I know it’s redundant to tell people to read Charles Krauthammer - really, you are doing Friday wrong if you don’t read his column every week - but he boils down the essential stakes in Iran neatly, and reminds us that this isn’t just about Ahmadenijad vs Mousavi. Samples:

[T]his incipient revolution is no longer about the election. Obama totally misses the point. The election allowed the political space and provided the spark for the eruption of anti-regime fervor that has been simmering for years and awaiting its moment. But people aren’t dying in the street because they want a recount of hanging chads in suburban Isfahan. They want to bring down the tyrannical, misogynist, corrupt theocracy that has imposed itself with the very baton-wielding goons that today attack the demonstrators.

As Bill Clinton might put it: it’s the mullahs, stupid. Krauthammer, as always, looks at this from the broader perspective of regional/global strategic dynamics. The stakes, if the regime falls:

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The Obama Administration’s response to protests against the Iranian regime’s contempt for even its own thin facade of democracy has been markedly muted and tentative; even the French Government has spoken out more clearly against the fraudulence of the presidential election and the mullahs’ suppression of the Iranian people than has President Obama. One conclusion we can draw from Obama’s failure to offer support for the Iranian people against their theocrat masters is that it eviscerates the entire point of his Cairo speech to the ‘Muslim world’.

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has come under fire for the following controversial comment that she made in prepared remarks at the University of California-Berkeley.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Both the Obama Administration and the nominee herself have said that the comments would have been better “restated.”  If by “restated” the Administration meant “repeated,” then the revelation that Sotomayor made nearly the exact same remark twice before and twice after the 2001 Berkeley speech would not be a surprise.  As it is, however, Sotomayor’s views on the role of gender and ethnicity in her judicial decision making process has never been in more doubt.

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The closing of Chrysler and GM dealerships is going to be an expensive process for Americans. The taxpayers have already been fleeced of billions of dollars to put Chrysler and GM under the thumb of the federal government, but it will be difficult to estimate the additional costs of closing 789 Chrysler and 1200 GM dealers.

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Since we last checked in on the Dealergate fiasco, the new media has been busy doing the work old media reporters should have been doing all along. Obama sycophants on the Left end of the blogosphere continued with their “nothing to see here, folks” defense of their beloved savior-president. And Chrysler dealers on the closed list offered evidence in court that most had sales figures and customer satisfaction ratings above the norm for all MOPAR dealers. But could all this just be trees, and could they be obscuring our view of the forest?

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At The Truth About Cars, Ken Elias posits that though Monday’s announcement of the GM bankruptcy was a bad day for the once dominant U.S. automaker, it was an even worse day for Toyota. His theory is that GM, bolstered with taxpayer dollars and free from creditors’ demands, will come roaring back with bold new products and lower fixed costs, more competitive than ever:

Toyota (or Honda) products have been the default choice. That “Easy Button” is starting to get harder to press for buyers. Yep, Americans will begin to come back to consider Detroit products (at least GM and Ford), and that’s not good for Toyota. And we’ve really never left Detroit for our big pickups and SUVs, while the Japanese are still mostly playing catch up.

Yep, it’s a bad day for Toyota and a great day for America. You can look forward to a new Detroit that will be competitive, if not lead, in cars and trucks for mass market Americans. Count on it

This is pure fantasy. Elias’ equation is missing two critical variables.

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Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made the rounds on Capitol Hill today, meeting with Senators of both parties. According to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), Sotomayor addressed her controversial “wise Latina” remarks from 2001 during their meeting. Leahy would not say whether the nominee acknowledged that she misspoke when she made the comments, but her attempt to explain them only adds more confusion.

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Those wondering how long it would take for the first act of terrorism to be perpetrated on American soil under President Barack Obama did not have to wait long. The murder of a U.S. military recruiter by a Muslim convert in Arkansas yesterday marks the return of the war on terror to America after just four months of the new Administration’s systematic dismantling of the policies and programs that kept the nation safe for over seven years under the Bush Administration.

Some may take issue with that characterization, noting the slaying of abortionist George Tiller by an apparently militant domestic terrorist on Sunday. President Obama certainly was quick to condemn that killing; and his Administration quick to take action to protect other abortion providers. Tiller’s murderer, though a cold-blooded killer, is not a terrorist of the kind that the United States has been fighting since the September 11th attacks. If every murderer were a terrorist, the United States would have to invade most liberal-run cities to put down the violence.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly Carlos Bledsoe, is, however, exactly the kind of terrorist that has been prevented from carrying out acts of violence against Americans, until now. Still, the president has not made a statement about the killing.

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Since our update yesterday, it has come to light that the dealerships that dodged (sorry, couldn’t resist) Chrysler’s silver bullet have circled their wagons minivans and are doing their fair share of PR work for the government-controlled reorganization of what was once the country’s third largest automaker.

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White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday began the Obama Administration’s walkback of controversial comments made by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. At the daily press briefing, the perpetually over matched Gibbs attempted to explain away Sotomayor’s comment that a “wise Latina” would necessarily make better judicial decisions than a “white male” judge because of her gender, ethnicity, and life experience. But Gibbs never learned the first rule of being in a hole, and his explanation raises more uncomfortable questions for the nominee.

“I think she’d say her word choice in 2001 was poor. She was simply making the point that experiences are relevant to the process of judging. Your personal experiences have a tendency to make you more aware of certain facts and certain cases, that your experiences impact your understanding.”

The only facts that a judge has any business considering, of course, are the facts at issue in the case before the court. Gibbs’ assertion is an admission that the Administration wants judges who will decide cases not based upon the facts and the law, but on their personal preferences.

But Gibbs wasn’t done digging, and used a quote from Justice Samuel Alito to try and bolster his position.

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Since we last checked in, here are the latest developments in the rope line of strange occurrences Doug Ross has dubbed Dealergate (Some bloggers prefer Mopargate, but many non-motorheads won’t get it. Dealergate it is).

In another of the many pesky coincidences to be found in this story, car czar Steven Rattner, the real head of President Obama’s auto task force, is married to Maureen White, a former fundraising chair for the Democratic National Committee. Need dealer donor data? No problem…

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President Barack Obama nominated Second Circuit appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor as his first nominee to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor, when she is confirmed, will become only the third woman and the first Hispanic to serve on the Court, replacing the retiring Justice David Souter. No word yet on the reaction from Pyongyang.

Pyongyang? Yes, Pyongyang. North Korea test fired not one, not two, not even three, but five new missiles yesterday and today in response to the United Nations Security Council’s condemnation of its recent nuclear test. The two moves have sparked a new international nuclear crisis that has implications for Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.  This is North Korea week in capitals around the globe from Tokyo, to Beijing, to Seoul, to London, Moscow, and even Tehran.  But not in Washington.  The Obama Administration’s response is essentially to change the subject and distract media and public attention from the one thing it does not want to talk about, foreign policy.

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Is the Obama administration punishing Chrysler dealers for their politics? A preliminary analysis by Doug Ross suggests that could be the case.

There were too many things about the selection of dealerships to be closed that just didn’t add up. Some of the dealers chosen to be terminated were among the more successful outlets in the Chrysler dealership network, and many of them had been loyal Chrysler and Dodge agents who had maintained an excellent working relationship with the Detroit automaker for decades.

Some dealers who got a thumbs down from Obama’s automotive panel told compelling stories about their situations that raised doubts about the process of selecting them for closing. One example, a dealership in Alvin, Texas, had increased its new car sales by 50% in the first four months of 2009, while other MOPAR dealers’ sales were in the tank. Another in Melbourne, Florida, had, at Chrysler’s insistence, totally renovated its facility financed by incurring millions of dollars of debt in the form of a bank mortgage. The are just two of many stories which highlight the incongruities to be found on the list of dealerships not deemed worthy to remain in operation.

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Where demanded by justice and national security, we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders — namely, highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety.

President Barack Obama, May 21, 2009

Authorities in New York have discovered that the four alleged terrorists arrested last week while planning to blow up a synagogue and shoot down a U.S. military plane were all converted to Islam while in prison.  The four were attendees at a Newburgh, NY, mosque, where Imam Salahuddin Muhammad is the spiritual leader.  Muhammad also serves as a Muslim prison chaplain.

The revelation comes just two days after President Obama uttered the words above, announcing his plan to bring some of the terrorist detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay into the United States to be held in the U.S. prison system.  The president assures that no one has ever escaped from one of the federal Supermax prisons.  But as the case of the New York terror cell demonstrates, escape is not the only issue.

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If you’ve used put gasoline in your tank recently, you’ve noticed the per gallon price steadily rising:

The national average pump price increased nearly 3 cents overnight to $2.391 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service. Gasoline prices ticked higher every day this month.

A good part of the reason for the escalation is seasonal in nature. Pump prices always rise just before the Memorial Day weekend which marks the start of the summer “driving season.”

But there’s more to it than that. Various factors are at play, including recent refinery fires, optimism in the equities markets and the strength of the dollar. A new report from the U.S. Energy Department on Wednesday said crude-oil stockpiles dropped by 2.1 million barrels for the week that ended Friday. One factor keeping prices lower was the glut of oil sitting in storage tanks around the nation. As those supplies get drained down, we should expect to see gasoline above two dollars for quite a while.

With oil above $60 per barrel and climbing, the oil companies are talking about ramping up exploration and production activities again. Once the price moves into the $70 to $80 range, they move beyond just talking and start doing. But they will be looking for and extracting oil in pretty much the same places where they left off when oil prices dropped through the floor.

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It is fitting that President Barack Obama’s much-hyped and anticipated speech on his plan for the detainees currently held at Gunatanamo Bay was delivered in the rotunda of the National Archives building.  Throughout his speech, the argumemts of a petulant child stubbornly refusing to accept any responsibility for his actions could be heard echoing around the marble hall. The president’s speech was not courageous, uplifting, or forward looking. It was a small speech, especially in comparison to former vice president Dick Cheney’s address immediately after, and revealed the true stature of the man giving it.

President Obama is the master of the political trick of decrying a given act while engaging in it. Throughout this speech, Obama made overtures to looking ahead all the while dwelling on the past. He said he did not want to engage in refighting the battles of the last eight years over enhanced interrogations and Guantanamo Bay, then proceeded to do just that, explicitly and implicitly criticizing decisions of the Bush Administration as misguided, illegitimate, and “hasty.”

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