In the second Star Trek pilot, circumstance grants Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell amazing powers. He’s unstoppable. He has unlimited power. A consequence of the power was that he became cruel, ruthless and egomaniacal. At a moment of weakness when he finds his power gone, the old Mitchell is back and you can see the anguish in his eyes. That was exactly the same moment Hillary had in new Hampshire minus the creepy, silvery contact lenses.

“You should have killed me while you could, James. Command and compassion — a fool’s mixture.” — Gary Mitchell

The Republican Michigan primary is today. This is Romney’s home state and it’s do-or-die for his campaign. A number of polls show him ahead.

NBC is hosting a debate tonight at 9pm ET with Edwards, Obama and Clinton. The debate organizers are excluding Dennis Kucinich and the Associated Press just reported that a judge has ordered NBC to let Kucinich into the debate. Good for Kucinich. I hope he gets in. It was wrong for Fox to block Ron Paul in a previous debate and it’s wrong to block Dennis here. NBC is fighting the judge’s ruling.

* USA TODAY/Gallup Poll suggests two huge leaps: Hillary regaining her lead nationally and McCain up 19% from a week ago. This would, I’m sure, freak out all the campaigns so it’s a good thing opinion polls are now meaningless.
* Speaking of meaningless polls… A Research 2000 poll of Nevada voters shows a virtual three-way tie among Obama, Clinton and Edwards. McCain has an edge over Giuliani.
* SurveyUSA Poll suggests McCain taking a lead in Florida. McCain 25, Giuliani 23, Huckabee 18, Romney 18, Thompson 9, Paul 4
* And not a meanlingless poll… Christopher Hitchens makes The Case Against Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton appeared on Meet The Press on Sunday and was forced to deal with almost nothing but the alleged racially-charged remarks made by her and her surrogates (including Bill Clinton). For the record, her remarks and Bill’s seemed sloppy but mostly harmless - but other remarks by her agents did appear to cross the line. Obama hopefully puts an end to it with…

“I don’t think it was in any way a racial comment,” Obama told ABC News. “That’s something that has played out in the press. That’s not my view.”
– Barack Obama

The pseudo-controversy over race obscured a more glaring bit of Hillary’s nastiness… during Meet The Press, Hillary yet again made the same bullshit argument justifying her terrible war vote. Hill and Bill spread the exact same lies in New Hampshire before the primary. The New York Times calls her on her lying in a piece titled, In Defending War Vote, Clintons Contradict Record…

Mrs. Clinton repeated the claim Sunday during an interview on “Meet the Press,” saying “Chuck Hagel, who helped to draft the resolution, said it was not a vote for war.”

and

In the original proposal Mr. Hagel had backed, force was authorized only to secure the destruction of Iraq’s unconventional weapons, not to enforce “all relevant” United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq, which was the language in the version that ultimately passed.

And that is the version is Hillary voted for. Hagel, the Republican, voted against it!

Whoever voted FOR that bill sent more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers to their deaths and wounded tens of thousands more for, literally, for no good reason. That terrible decision and Hillary’s reluctance to distance herself from it make her completely unqualified to be President.

If you voted for that war and don’t have the conviction to call it what it was - a huge, horrible, tragic mistake - you just don’t have the character to be president.

Reader Pat O writes…

Sooo, Hilary wins NH because women came out in big numbers to support her due to the fact that they felt she was being unfairly dismissed by the media (who were reacting to the polls leading up to the primary) and they just couldn’t turn their backs on a female candidate regardless if they agreed with her or not? And…Obama could be in biiig trouble if he doesn’t win SC due to the fact that African American voters are waiting on the sidelines to see if an African American candidate can “really” win, and, even if Obama continues in the race, if they don’t see a clear Obama victory possible they either don’t vote or go Clinton? I know there are a lot of other factors swimming around in this but these are two that caught my attention and my reaction was…really?

I think those are definitely the two narratives the press is trying to construct. In the end, the media has no idea how Hillary won New Hampshire. The exit polls they are using to break down what happened are the same polls that showed Barack leading by a solid margin. That means the data is pretty damned useless - or at least has HUUUUGE flaws. That, of course, doesn’t stop them from using that proven-false data to concoct a bazillion theories why it went down the way it did.

Here’s my take on what happened with the Democrats in new Hampshire…

* During the joint Dem-GOP debate in New Hampshire, McCain made a case against Obama. Negative remarks from Hillary really hold no water but John McCain, in New Hampshire, is someone independents listen to. Everyone watched the double-debate and that moment - more than anything else during the debates - could’ve tipped more than a few independents away from Obama.
* Hillary had her emotional moment. What I love about this is that when we say, “Hillary’s emotional moment,” everyone knows which moment we’re taking about because there haven’t been any others. I thought the folks that believed Hillary staged that moment were confined to Tucker Carlson’s and Bill Kristol’s padded corner of the world but even Bill Moyers said he wasn’t sure if she was genuine. That says something. I however spring to her defense and say I believe that moment to be a genuine crack in her viciously cold, calculating, power-hungry, Sarlacc -pit of an ego.
* Hillary’s camp sent out a ton of bastardly hate mail suggesting Obama doesn’t support a women’s right to chose. Of course, he does but I’m sure stuff like that had a big effect.
* And then there’s this bit of weirdness: Clinton’s Favorable Placement on Ballots May Account for Part of Poll Mistakes. ABC has an opinion piece by Jon A. Krosnick, a professor at Stanford, suggesting that with 21 Democrat names on the ballot, the ballot’s design favors those at the top. “Until this year, New Hampshire rotated candidate name order from precinct to precinct, which allowed us to do that analysis. This year, the secretary of state changed the procedure so the names were alphabetical starting with a randomly selected letter, in all precincts. The randomly selected letter this year was Z. As a result, Joe Biden was first on every ballot, Hillary Clinton was near the top of the list (and the first serious contender listed) and Barack Obama was close to last of the 21 candidates listed.”

As I mentioned previously, DailyKOS is advocating democrats vote for Romney in today’s Michigan primary. Here’s a great ad for that.

The Daily Show, Colbert Report and Bill Maher are back and I missed them all. I still miss their writers.

– Steve

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