Chris,

I have read a couple of your article and it seems everyone is right on about you, you fix on Ms. Clinton is somewhat surprising. Ask her tough questions, like tell the truth about Rose Library some of us haven't forgotten that, she hasn't come clean about the paperwork that appeared about two years to late. What really happened to Mr. Foster. How is it you guys give her a pass on everthing, you might watch out for another candiate to appear more candid than she is, Ms. Clinton is a fake and without the name Clinton she would be nothing.

Chris,
Your blog is very partisan and what this country and this blog needs is a postive thinking and not a negative one. It's getting too old. Don't you think ? Think of ways to have an open minded diaglogue.

US President Tim Kalemkarian, US Senate Tim Kalemkarian, US House Tim Kalemkarian: best major candidate.

We need a President who is well liked abroad and can speak intelligently.

Hillary would make a great President. The other candidates are boring and cannot be elected. I am also a college student here in DC and will be voting for the first presidential election in 08.

Chris is entitled to his opinions as are all of you. I doubt many or any of you have sit down and given the speeches any actual consideration before assuming Clinton was horrible and Obama was brilliant. I am an Obama-supporter, and I am open-minded enough to realize that Clinton has strengths and moments of true superiority. Had Chris outright slammed Clinton, you may be justified in your indignation, but he has at least taken the time to outline each's strengths in a professional manner before offering an OPINION (which he's entitled to do in an editorial blog).

That is more than I can say for the posters behind the childish bickering above. Try to understand that things are a little more complex than good-or-bad.

Instead of trashing Chris for calling Hillary the winner, maybe you should all take the time and acknowledge the incredible amount of work Hillary has done on behalf of firefighters. It is very impressive. Are you suggesting Chris doesn't have the right to acknowledge this?

Obama? What has he done? Don't rush to respond.

Hillary is an unattractive candidate. She poll-tests everything she says, and then delivers her lines in a flat, engine-like whine. I have never gotten the sense that she is telling us what she believes, and never that she feels compelled to say it, rather than having decided with her advisors the night before that based on the latest survey, the time was ripe to exploit this or that swing in the public's mood in this or that way. That is why I cannot and will not support Hillary.

Did any of you dolts who are calling CC pro-Hillary even read the post? His post makes it sound like Obama gave the better speech. I am glad for my middle-of-the-road status, the ridiculous tendency to see bias anytime someone's preferred candidate is even slightly criticized cripples the ability of people to make objective decisions about what is happening, on both sides of the aisle and within both parties.

"All you old men really need to get over yourself and accept that a woman might be your next Commander-in-Chief. The young men of this country are ready for a woman president and are very excited about it. She speaks intelligently, Obama? BORING! Rudy? STUPID" - Mark

Mark, it's not that HRC is a woman that bothers lot of those that are not for her. Those "old folks" who have been watching her for the past 15 years have a base for their opinions.

Those that support her and any other candidate solely on the basis of their speeches do so at their own peril. Take a look at the Clinton campaign organization; doesn't it seem a lot like the Rove approach to politics except from the Democrat's side?

A new day has come. The GOP will pay for all their mistakes. Hillary will be President and Bill Clinton will be Secretary of State. Go! Hillary. Go!

It would help to watch the speeches given
at the Firefighter's Forum by all of the
candidates. Certainly, we want to know
what THEY said and how THEY were received
by a potential group of supporters.
I watched on C-SPAN. I can see why Chris
made the comments that he did. While many
of the candidates who spoke struck issue-
buttons with the firefighters: alternative
minimum tax, federal retirement, proper
equipment, Veterns and the War. It was
Sen. Clinton who brought the to their feet,
three or more times. Check it out!
For me, it is still early in the process.
Folks, we are not at war with each other.
By the tone of some of these blogs...Hm.

It would help to watch the speeches given
at the Firefighter's Forum by all of the
candidates. Certainly, we want to know
what THEY said and how THEY were received
by a potential group of supporters.
I watched on C-SPAN. I can see why Chris
made the comments that he did. While many
of the candidates who spoke struck issue-
buttons with the firefighters: alternative
minimum tax, federal retirement, proper
equipment, Veterns and the War. It was
Sen. Clinton who brought them to their feet,three or more times. Check it out!
For me, it is still early in the process.
Folks, we are not at war with each other.
By the tone of some of these blogs...Hmm.
Anti-Clinton rants, Anti-Obama inuendo, are
not going to cut it. Journalist and com-
tator characterizations of an event or what
a candidate SAID are just influential in the potential to undermine a candidate's
impact. Sen. Obama is good speaker, sometimes better than that but, I want to hear more substance on a number of issues.
Then he might get my vote.

Context is vital in speech making. Obama talking inanities about Iraq to an audience of fire fighters displays extreme insensitivity. Here are people who were the first to enter the inferno after 9/11 and paid with their lives. Instead of offering them succor, Obama talks about Iraq addressing the gallery outside the gathering of fire fighters. Is this sensitivity? Hillary in contrast commiserated with the fire fighters (incidentally their Union is 50% Republican!)and got standing ovations. Hillary got overwhelming support of Republican upstate New York in her Senate elections because of her success in getting funding to rejuvenate their moribund economy. She will get the votes of centrist Republicans which the leftist Obama will not!!

All you old men really need to get over yourself and accept that a woman might be your next Commander-in-Chief. The young men of this country are ready for a woman president and are very excited about it. She speaks intelligently, Obama? BORING! Rudy? STUPID

I don't agree with roo, but she/he used the word *possibility*

Hillary is like Hemmingway's bull, can put up a fight but the end is sure, certain, and not in her favor. Should we get to October 2008 and Hillary looks like the frontrunner and the Republicans don't appear to have much chance, I would expect a lot of Republicans to cross over and vote for Obama just to keep Hillary and Bill safely out of the WH. This worked in CT with Joe Lieberman and it will work in the US in 2008, if needed. It would be better to go with the untested and untried "rookie," than the aging veteran with a spotty record, a strange bedfellow, and no future.

roo: I am glad to see at least one of the anti Hillary crowd admit they really know deep down she will be the next POTUS. Try the political cartoons, they are good for a laugh no matter where you are politically, there is something for everone. Hope this is taken for what it is, have a laugh at yourself.

lylepink--You are absolutely right. Many of us fear the possibility of Hillary Clinton becoming president.

In a year and a half, we will be calling him President Barack Obama.

thomas: The anti Hillary folks are out in full force, as usual, any time Hillary is mentioned by CC they come out of the woodwork. The "Fear Factor" that I have spoken about so many times is becoming more apparent every day. This is something that most of them will not admit, even in their own mind. Earlier polls were mentioned, and each of us can, and will, use them to our advantage, however that may be.

you know what people?

DON'T COME HERE!

if you don't like it then get the hell out of here and leave chris alone. Someone said it right above, if he thought Obama had won then people would have been cheering him on.

You people disgust me. It's a blog, he's adding his thoughts and also reporting on news, nobody is forcing you to read it. The anti clinton diatribe says more about you than it does about chris.

Every time I read this blog you are talking all Hillery and giving Barack very little in your talking points. Why dont you leave this news paper and join Clintons campain. I think you would be very happy there.
I am a woman and a democrate and I would not vote for her and she will be done after the primaries. How can she be elected when most women will not vote for her plus the blacks will come to Baracks corner before the election. Hillery is a phoney period.

Every time I read this blog you are talking all Hillery and giving Barack very little in your talking points. Why dont you leave this news paper and join Clintons campain. I think you would be very happy there.
I am a woman and a democrate and I would not vote for her and she will be done after the primaries. How can she be elected when most women will not vote for her plus the blacks will come to Baracks corner before the election. Hillery is a phoney period.

OBAMA only of all presedential candidates is able to rule Ame rica.Hillary is weak and not desicive to lead largest Economy.Hillary herself supported war in IRAQ.SHAME ON HER FOREVER!

OBAMA only of all presedential candidates is able to rule Ame rica.Hillary is weak and not desicive to lead largest Economy.Hillary herself supported war in IRAQ.SHAME ON HER FOREVER!

obama is calm and deserved to be presedent of U SA.Hillary is acoward and cannot DEFEND AMERICA from TERROSISM AND GLOBAL PROBLEMS.IF AMERICANS WANTS TO DIE THEN ELECT HILLARY. WILBERFORCE is aparliamentary aspirant in KENYA.

Ugh. Please stop diluting the election to Obama vs. Clinton. What did the lesser-known candidates at the forum say? And why does this blog and all other Washington media outlets focus so intensely on Obama-Clinton while giving short shrift (or a pass, depending on how you look at it) to the Republicans. At this rate, the electorate is going to be so burnt out on these two that neither will have a chance in hell of winning and we STILL will have no clue what they stand for and what policies they would enact as president.

I wish people like Chris in Washington had been better athletes in school so maybe they'd have become sports reporters and had the chance to could cover real horseraces and prizefights instead of getting jobs as political reporters and treating this extremely important election as if it was a game.

I've enjoyed The Fix for many months now, but this sort of constant fawning over Clinton is making me reconsider. At least explain why you thought Clinton had the better performance. Simply stating she was more "feisty" doesn't really cut it in terms of analysis.

You Obama fans are so sensitive it makes me laugh! I can't believe how paranoid you all are about Chris's slaint. Wake up! Obama is just an OK politician and just because a reporter doesn't drool over him does NOT mean they are for hillary. Grow up you are not going to change any one elses minds by your whining.

The governmental deceit is so immense that those members that see the truth now think that is the deceit. When it has come so far that members of government have indeed become schizophrene, the American governmental system is likely to collapse soon because of lack of reality. This collapse will induce a civil war in the U.S..One could say that the U.S. has started sneezing and the rest of the world catches a horrendous cold. And because no one likes to catch a cold they all support the deceit. I was just wondering how long one could keep this upright ??

Chris,

I believe it is time that the Post put somebody with real skills running this blog. Your Hillary bias is amazing as are your ability to always agree with the "Washington" insiders...Do the right thing...as Gonzalez should do...resign before Len Downie kicks you out the door and the only place your could get a job is this Hillary campaign...

Chris, Chris, Chris,
I've watched you on MSNBC sucking up to Hillary & now to read it too. Why don't you just report what you hear & see. What I saw & read of Senator Obama's speech, I thought was great. He did set a serious tone to his speech probably because of who he was speaking to & what some had gone through in NYC on 9/11. Firefighters put their lives on the line everyday & some are now or have been serving in Iraq. This war that should have never happened, but thanks to people like Hillary & John Edwards did & now we are stuck. They both should have known better, but they made political decisions instead of what was best for this country & the Middle East. Listen to what Bob Shrum has been saying about Edwards. It was all political.

So, Chris, do you work for the Clintons and not for a sorta non biased paper?
Your constant cheerleading for Clinton leads to read your column less and less as I cannot trust what I'm reading is actual unbiased commentary or if it more licking of Hillary's boots.
Careful, cause being a clintonista may not work out so well for you when Obama is up there in Jan. 09 taking the oath of office.

something tells me that CC would have been criticized a lot less had he said that Obama won.

Obama supporters are really starting to annoy me. Look, Obama has a lot of things going for him. He may win the nomination. He isn't nearly as good of a speaker, however, as people seem to think he is. He also isn't some amazing new breath in American politics, and he's just as manufactured as any one else. Point this out, however, and these people act like you shot bambi.

I like reading this blog to see just how slanted Chris will be next. There is no end to it, it's the Clinton-Fix.

chris,you seriously need to get some new perspective on news reporting. don't sell yourself short

Im outraged by this guy's steady drumbeat for pandering Hillary.Those of us who were around when President Kennedy was alive know we have a special one in Obama.This Chris guys' comment about the unimportance of Obama's pre-Iraq war stance assumes Obama would have been perfectly willing to send these men and women to their deaths if his career depended on it no matter how wrong he knew it was. He was still calling it stupid when the statue of Saddam was being pulled down.Like Hillary,Cilliza has no substance.

HRC, ceo of the Clinton era, has a paltry resume, nothing of consequence, except the exporting of jobs down south, courtesy the one bit of legislation she got through, NAFTA.
If shipping jobs away from poor people in this country is a qualification for high office, she meets that criterion. If hillbilly brothers selling pardons for over a half million is qualification, if slandering the monicas, the jennifers, the anitas et al is a qualification for office, give HRC plaudits. But even more -- if squelching invistigation of Sandy Berger's theft of national security documents is another commendation, then the poor retards of this country deserve her. If she can buy black ministers, pay shill bloggers, then for a penny she can delude the ignorant of this country. The vast left wing conspiracy does not want her -- she is no good for the country and worse for the democratic party. The sooner she goes back to renting motel rooms, she is qualified for that because of her experience letting out the Lincoln bedroom to her bundlers, the better for the nation. We do not need poseurs or any ersatz politicos in DC any longer.

To Paul Solomon,

Chris Cilliza's journalistic idol is Matt Drudge.

What did you expect? The days of serious news is over. Gossip, low brow, third grade level news rule the WPost, network news and cable news.

so what serious stuff did obama say? poor obama, he says serious things and folks are only thinking, gosh, how does his ass look like? the "serious stuff"? is the news.their style of delivery is known to everyone. we the readers deserve to get more for our buck!

who's better in bed? obama or hillary. i can't wait for that one.

i heard some of what clinton said on the news on my way home. platitudes, platitudes, delivered in that nasal whine which sets my teeth on edge. she seems to research the probable reaction to everything before she says it, and then says it - bleats it - using the wording and emphasis determined by her advisors to appeal to the broadest cross section of voters. fake, fake, fake.

this is not new(hence not news). we haven't learnt anything new about the two from this article.

I didn't think it there was much of any analysis here between the two candidates by Chris. Opps! This is news reporting.

The Washington Post has become the new National Enquirer of the gasbag pundits. Haven't you had ENOUGH of this media-genereated and very silly "Clinton-Obama" fight? Can't you lazy talking heads focus on substance for a change instead of pettiness all the time????

Gosh, I'm so sick and tired of the stupid Maureen Dowd type catty attitude that is infesting the the media.

I wonder if videos of these speeches will be up on youtube so people can draw their own conclusions. Obama doesn't tend to pepper his talks with canned applause lines, and he has a sober, calm demeanor. If the "old rules" of politics were still in full force, it would be a poor speaking style. But I don't think those rules hold any more after the spin control and stupidity put out by this administration. A large bloc of people, particularly younger people, want something more direct, genuine, and intelligent.

It's good to hear that Hillary is acting more "feisty." The competition is good for her. Maybe someday she'll even say something that hasn't been carefully focus-grouped first.

One thing about Obama, he has not, to date, been the recipient of funding from the outsourcing giants. Hillary recives money from the same globalization sources that funded Bush's campaign. The last thing this country needs is another President willing to sacrifice the country and American jobs and security for their personal enrichment or political jobs. Clinton is just Bush in drag. We need a President who will campaign on a platform to outlaw H1B and L1 visa's and work permits of every other sort that take jobs from American workers, who will tax the snot out of goods and services produced as a result of outsourcing, who will add special punitive taxes to corporate officers of companies that are located off shore but live HERE, who will actually study the effects of legalizing 20 million or so illegal immigrants before doing it and ask for the public's opinion to boot! Hillary can never be MY President because she doesn't represent me or the American people. She sold her very soul to the wealthy swine that funded Bush's and her campaign. Compared to that, Obama is a breath of fresh air!

Chris,

Why don't you just take that toupe of yours and work directly for the Hilary campaign and stop hiding behind this "non-partisan" blog.

Less salons and more saloons and get your heads out of the polls.

Representative Duncan Hunter (CA-50?), former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, current ranking GOP member.

Has been in COngress since 1980.

Solidly conservative.

I think one of the interesting things to watch going forward is how commentators like Chris end up evaluating Obama's speeches. Although he has a reputation for being a good speaker, in many cases it appears that Obama is actually just like Chris describes: serious, calm, often somewhat casual.

Of course, that has generally worked for Obama--people often seem to get the impression that he is serious, thoughtful, sincere, not talking down to them, and not trying to pander. But as I noted, it will be interesting to see if people like Chris try to hold him to a different set of expectations.

Not that I expect it to matter--by the time they are voting people will undoubtedly end up seeing enough of Obama to form their own opinions, for good or ill.

The Army Corps of Engineers, rushing to meet President Bush's promise to protect New Orleans by the start of the 2006 hurricane season, installed defective flood-control pumps last year despite warnings from its own expert that the equipment would fail during a storm, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The 2006 hurricane season turned out to be mild, and the new pumps were never pressed into action. But the Corps and the politically connected manufacturer of the equipment are still struggling to get the 34 heavy-duty pumps working properly.

The pumps are now being pulled out and overhauled because of excessive vibration, Corps officials said. Other problems have included overheated engines, broken hoses and blown gaskets, according to the documents obtained by the AP.

[...]

The drainage-canal pumps were custom-designed and built under a $26.6 million contract awarded after competitive bidding to Moving Water Industries Corp. of Deerfield Beach, Fla. It was founded in 1926 and supplies flood-control and irrigation pumps all over the world.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps. And Eller has donated about $128,000 to politicians, the vast majority of it to the Republican Party, since 1996, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

MWI has run into trouble before. The U.S. Justice Department sued the company in 2002, accusing it of fraudulently helping Nigeria obtain $74 million in taxpayer-backed loans for overpriced and unnecessary water-pump equipment. The case has yet to be resolved.

Duncan Who?

Come on, Chris, don't short-change us here on the presidential politics. Last time I looked, the guy sandwiched between these two Democratic heavyweights is running for president himself. So, how did Hunter do before this crowd? Did he fare better or worse than his potential rivals?