You may be right, curmudgeon. There are many possibilities. I just have a gut feeling that the Clinton machine, which I think is the machine with the most connections in the Democratic party heirarchy, is inclined toward very corrupt tactics, and I think we are going to see some really odd stuff being done by them during this campaign, and that not all of it will be aboveboard.

Keep in mind that on a personal level I've always rather liked Hillary Clinton, so my views on this are not colored by a personal hatred of her...as is so often the case with those who attack her campaign.

To the contrary, it's not that I don't like her...I don't like the machine that chose her and is backing her as their favored candidate. I think it's a rotten political machine through and through...about as rotten as the Bush machine (though not as crazy).

I think that they were very perturbed at the possibility of Obama eclipsing Hillary Clinton this early in the primaries, and that they started going through their bag of dirty tricks to see what they could possibly do to avoid that happening. They scrambled, in other words, to do everything they could think of through the media in the last couple of days in New Hampshire to turn it around.

They probably planted those guys in the crowd who yelled, "Iron my shirt!" in order to generate an angry sympathy vote for Hillary. I mean, hell, it's just too damned convenient when stuff like that happens. And then they made sure that the press would get the story out to as many people as possible. Same possibility with the "tearing up" episode...quite possibly planned and set up and then covered for maximum effect.

That sort of thing is done. There are highly paid consultants who dream up all this kind of dramatic nonsense in order to manipulate public response and affect people's voting. They also sift through every word that another candidate ever says in order to find something, anything they can twist or quote out of context in order to get people to think badly of him or her. It's a game...a very dirty game...and a game that's played for the highest stakes, so it attracts some pretty sharp and ruthless players.

I smell a rat in New Hampshire. Maybe vote fraud...maybe not...maybe other kinds of manipulation done through the media.

I may be mistaken.

But it is a definite possibility, that's all.