�It's not who votes that counts. It's who counts the votes.� --Attributed to Joseph Stalin

Something doesn't ring true about Hillary's �upset� victory in the New Hampshire primary. It just doesn't pass the smell test.

All the exit polls showed Clinton trailing Obama by significant margins. In fact, in the Gallup Poll taken just days before the election, "Crocodile tears" Hillary was down by a whopping 13 points. Her �turnaround� was not only unexpected, but downright shocking. The results for the rest of the candidates -- excluding Clinton and Obama -- were all within the margin of error. Clinton was the only anomaly. Surprise, surprise.

If this election had been conducted in any other country in the world, the Bush administration would have immediately dispatched an independent team of election observers and demanded a recount. But not in the good old USA, where stealing elections is replacing baseball as the national pastime. Would it surprise you to know that, according to Black Box Voting, the marketing and sales director of the company that tallies the votes (LHS) �was arrested, indicted, and pleaded guilty to "sale/CND" and sentenced to 12 months in the Rockingham County Correctional facility, and fined $2000.� That would be LHS Sales Director Ken Hajjar.

Here's an excerpt from Bev Harris's Black Box Voting web site: �The Diebold ballot printing plant at the time we got records on the overages [that is, more ballots than needed for election] was being run by a convicted felon who had spent four years in prison on a narcotics trafficking charge. No, not New Hampshire's voting machine programming exec Ken Hajjar, who cut a plea deal in 1990 for his role in cocaine distribution. This was another convicted felon, John Elder, who ran the Diebold ballot printing plant; he's now an elections consultant.�

Still feel confident about the election results?

Then why not spend 5 minutes perusing this YouTube demonstration that shows how anyone with a screwdriver and a brain the size of a walnut can transform a 'humiliating defeat' into a miraculous Clintonesque �comeback."

The YouTube video also shows LHS's owner defending the dubious record of his optical scanning hardware in court. The reader can decide for himself whether we're dealing with a man of impeccable integrity or another flannel-mouth opportunist who has enriched himself at the expense of our basic democratic institutions.

Bradblog's Dori Smith reports that Sales Director �Hajjar totes memory cards around in the trunk of his car and defends the practice of swapping out memory cards during the middle of elections.� Nice touch, eh?

Smith also adds this revealing tidbit: "Other LHS staff members we spoke with, including Mike Carlson and Tom Burge, provided similar comments. They said they would open machines up during an election and swap memory cards as needed. This is illegal under Connecticut law and Deputy Secretary Mara told us she has since informed LHS that such actions were in violation of Connecticut election laws.�

So what's all the fuss? I'll just slip this little card in the slot and -- lookee here -- Hillary's a winner; just like I figured.�

Activist Nancy Tobi provides a great summary of the backroom machinations in her article �Democracy for New Hampshire� which came out the day after the primary: �81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots. People like to say 'but we use paper ballots! They can always be counted by hand!'

"But they're not. They're counted by Diebold. Only a candidate can request a hand recount, and most never do so. And a rigged election can easily become a rigged recount, as we learned in Ohio 2004, where two election officials were convicted of rigging their recount. (Is it just a funny coincidence that a Diebold spokesman is named Mr. Riggall?)

"We need to get the count right on election night. Right now, nobody in New Hampshire, except the programmers at LHS Associates and Diebold Election Systems, knows if we are getting it right or wrong.�

Good job, Nancy.

Does it seem to you, dear reader, that we could save the taxpayer a lot of money and trouble by just returning to the �old system� of letting nine judges on the Supreme Court chose our leaders? Why do we continue with this pointless sham?

Look, our elections are being run by corporations that have an obvious stake in the outcomes. There's a heap of money involved and nothing is left to chance. The media's job is to make us feel like we have a choice. We don't.

The only reason the farce continues is because the ruling elite believe that perception management is the cheapest way to control the bewildered herd. And, of course, they're right. Pulling a lever every four years is a type of political empowerment. It makes us feel like we're part of the decision-making process, which makes it easier to accept the �shittier and shittier paying jobs,� the curtailed civil liberties and the endless wars. (Thanks, George Carlin)

This year we can choose from a slate of so-called "front-runners"; all of whom are members of the secretive Council on Foreign Relations; and all of whom are wholly committed to the off-shoring of businesses, the outsourcing of jobs, the expansion of police-state powers, and the obscene enlargement of the already over-bloated War Machine. The only exceptions are Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich who are treated like pariahs by the establishment media.

As for Hillary; she won nothing. The results are completely bogus. Her weepy performance before the balloting was orchestrated to create a credible narrative to explain the fraudulent shifting of votes away from Obama. It was exactly the same trick that Karl Rove played in 2004, when he had the entire corporate media standing behind his cockamamie story that 3 or 4 million Christian fundamentalists -- who had never voted before in a general election -- suddenly poured down from the mountains to cast their ballot for their champion, George W. Bush. This absurd narrative was spouted from every media-soapbox in the nation until it was generally accepted as fact. The media then proceeded to quash any investigation of the massive vote fraud which took place across the country (particularly in Ohio) while discrediting critics as conspiracy theorists.

�Conspiracy theorists?�

Is it a conspiracy to think that the same guys who abduct foreign nationals off the streets of cities around the world and take them to black sites --here their eyes are gouged out and their finger nails ripped off---would get squeamish over something as trivial as ballot stuffing?

Get real!

Clinton's tearful antics were right out of Karl Rove's �Dirty Tricks Playbook.� Chapter one: Invent a believable storyline, run it through the Propaganda Ministry (the media) and stick with it no matter how ridiculous it sounds.

I carry no brief for Obama or Clinton and I don't see any substantial difference between either of them. They are both water carriers for their far-right constituents. It is the system that's important. And the system is broken.

The primary was stolen. End of story. It's our move now.