If you doubted something new was coming, you were wrong, Barack Obama said in his S. Carolina victory speech, even as he was being compared to JFK by Caroline K. in NYT. 

However, if JFK told us to ask what we could do for our country, Obama tells us to ask what our country can do for us.

Such as to “make college affordable or energy cleaner” and rid us of “crumbling schools . . . shuttered mills and homes for sale” and get us “a health care plan . . . better pay” and help “struggling homeowners [a]nd seniors,” to put “an end to a war” and achieve “jobs and justice.”

Millions for tribute to economic expectations, nothing (not a word) for defense against worldwide Islamic radicalism.  That will come later, we trust, when he’s in office and disaster strikes.  Meanwhile, the base requires economic salvation-by-government, and this man promises it.

Great oratorical skills, better speech-writing, with beautifully located shots at the Billary campaign.  He has the tools of inspiration of the masses, as did Caesar per Wm. Shakespeare, Casca telling Brutus:

I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown (yet ’twas not a crown neither, ’twas one of these coronets) and, as I told you, he put it by once. But for all that, to my thinking, he would fain have had it. Then he offered it to him again; then he put it by again. But, to my thinking, he was very loath to lay his fingers off it. And then he offered it the third time; he put it the third time by; and still as he refused it, the rabblement hooted and clapped their chopped hands and threw up their sweaty nightcaps and uttered such a deal of stinking breath because Caesar refused the crown that it had almost choked Caesar, for he swounded and fell down at it. And for mine own part, I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and receiving the bad air.

This fellow also had a way with words, did he not?

More:

From Powerline Blog:

No doubt some will characterize [Obama’s speech] as eloquent, but I think a better term is vapid. If you strip away the vaguely high-minded generalities, only two policy positions are (more or less) clearly stated. Obama wants to fail in Iraq, and he wants government-run medicine here at home. It’s hard to see anything either noble or unifying in these goals.

And:

Obama’s speech was virtually content free. Obama declared that “there are real differences between the candidates,” but then failed to cite even one policy disagreement between him and his Democratic rivals.

A shell game.

Yet more, from the inimitable Mark Steyn:

Re: Caroline Kennedy

Obama is Kennedyesque in one respect: on the stump with supporters (in my experience), he’s cool and a little remote and detached – and, like JFK pre-death, oddly unknowable. Maybe it’s just in comparison with that oozing phony Edwards touting the same old mawkish driveling anecdotage from town to town.

Anyway, I don’t suppose that’s what Miss Kennedy means. All she’s saying is that a big chunk of the country (and not all of them Democrats) want someone new, young and glamorous – and, if he’s a member of an approved minority group, so much the better.

The new, the young, the glamorous.  From Chicago?

Bill was no help at all in S. Carolina, says John Dickerson for Slate, so much so that:

A big question facing the Clinton campaign is whether to put the Big Dog, Bill Clinton, back on the porch. The Himbo eruptions before the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucus appeared to help Hillary. . . .   [A]fter South Carolina we might see Bill Clinton suddenly dispatched to solve some new crisis in a country with no satellite trucks and no cell towers.

This from the subscription-only Wall St. Journal “Political Diary” gives me a chill:

What a treat for viewers who tuned into the South Carolina debate on Monday night and caught a glimpse of the real Hillary Clinton. Whether it was calculated or not, the senator cleared up any doubts that, for her, winning the presidency is about revenge. Forget about veiled threats. She’s already taking names.

It’s not always clear who Hillary thinks she owes a kick in the pants to. But it’s very clear that, should she get into the White House, baby, it’s payback time. “They’ve been after me for 16 years, and much to their dismay, I am still here. And I intend to be still here when that election comes around and we win in November 2008,” she declaimed.

Whoever “they” are, you certainly don’t want to be one of “them” come January 20, 2009. For instance, apparently men and/or employers can expect the boom to be lowered for numerous injustices they have wrought. “We obviously still have problems of gender equality. You know, equal pay is not yet equal,” she warned her audience.

Also in line for punishment are those who humiliated Mrs. Clinton during her first attempt to administer a heavy dose of government-run health care whether Americans wanted it or not. “I think that the whole idea of universal health care is such a core Democratic principle that I am willing to go to the mat for it. I’ve been there before. I will be there again. I am not giving in; I am not giving up…. I am not running for president to put Band- Aids on our problems. I want to get to universal health care for every single American.” Get in her way and you’re toast.

At least she made no effort to hide her hostility, which apparently emerges from being a victim for so long. “I’m used to taking the incoming fire. I’ve taken it for 16 years.” And now, she let us know on Monday, the tables are about to turn. Be afraid.
— Mary Anastasia O’Grady

This fits with my contention that Hillary is the devil we know, Barack O. the one we don’t know, except that in this case the one we know is so bad I’d be willing to risk the other if I had to choose — which, God willing, I won’t.

Leave it to The Onion to capture the moment.

Here’s the crux of the matter, in a Dutch official’s warning about anti-Muslim film whose showing is expected to cause rioting:

‘It is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of expression doesn’t mean the right to offend,’ said Maxime Verhagen, the Foreign Minister, who was in Madrid to attend the Alliance of Civilisations, an international forum aimed at reducing tensions between the Islamic world and the West.

How so?  Because freedom to offend is at the heart of free speech.  Rubber does not meet the road when no one’s offended, no one objects, only when someone objects.  Else it’s meaningless.

If he had talked up “fire” in a crowded theater, there would at least have been arguments to make.