Hankie Panky

Hillary's had quite a week. It started with that much-bally-boo-hooed cry in front of the camera. Was it real or was it crocodile? Or was it simply the frustration of working her tail off and still getting beat like a drum in Iowa?

Then she won the New Hampshire primary and Bill turned on the water. Oh why not, it works for Oprah. But we at your Lightning Round shed no tears as we sift through the net each week, except when somebody forgets to clean their contacts... the lenses, people, not those meat puppets in the Rolodex.

SILVER SALUTE. Listening to Barack Obama Tuesday night, somebody almost forgot to tell him he came in second. Once again, he stepped up and delivered the kind of speech that makes downtrodden patriots believe again.

As the AP reports:

"We know the battle ahead may be long. But always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change," Obama said.

"I am still fired up and ready to go," he said.

And...

"All the candidates in this race have good ideas and all are patriots who serve this country honorably," Obama said.

And further...

"In record numbers, you came out and you spoke up for change. And with your voices and your votes you made it clear that at this moment in this election there is something happening in America."

If he doesn't get the Democrats' nod, we're urging the next president to create the Department of Motivation and name him secretary. Who cares about big government when you have hope for the future?

Here's another motivator: when all the votes were counted in New Hampshire, Obama and Hillary ended up winning exactly the same number of delegates: 9. However, Hillary still has a wide lead in the overall Democratic delegate race because of superdelegates. Huh?

JOHNNY MAC'S BACK. On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain owned the night, leaving your Lightning Round editor-in-chief eating a genrous helping of crow... cold.

Early last year, with the Arizona senator trapped under the debris of immigration reform, donations drying up, and key campaign staff bailing out, I predicted his presidential aspirations wouldn't survive the new year. Yet McCain climbed out of the grave and rededicated himself.

The senator also took a page from the Obama playbook:

"For me, that greater cause has always been my country, which I have served imperfectly for many years but have loved without any reservation every day of my life," McCain said. "However this campaign turns out - and I am more confident tonight that it will turn out much better than once expected - I am grateful beyond expression for the prospect that I might serve her a little while longer."

We remind you McCain won New Hampshire in 2000 before losing the nomination to then-governor George W. Bush. So "little while" is still a little uncertain -- but we wonder if it will outlast the writers' strike.

POLL POSITION. The big losers in New Hampshire were the polls, the ones that had Obama sailing to victory Tuesday night. So what went wrong? ABC News polling director Gary Langer offers a theory or two, but also throws us this:

Prof. Jon Krosnick of Stanford University has another argument: That the order of names on the New Hampshire ballot - in which, by random draw, Clinton was toward the top, Obama at the bottom - netted her about 3 percentage points more than she'd have gotten otherwise. That's not enough to explain the gap in some of the polls, which presumably randomized candidate names, but it might hold part of the answer.

Looking at the long-list ballot, we have other questions: "People are still voting for vice-president?" and who exactly is "O. Savior?"

OPEN SEASON. The next main event on the political fight card is Super Duper Tuesday, February 5, when Arizona and more than a dozen other states hold primaries. But if you're a registered independent, you can't vote because of a quirk in the state's open-primary law. Arizona state senator Jack Harper is offering a quick-fix bill, but like a lot of his Republican cronies, he can't resist taking a cheap shot across the aisle, as reported in the Arizona Daily Star:

His proposal doesn't stop at just letting independents vote in one of the party primaries. It would also let Republicans vote in the Democrat primary.

However, Democrats, described by Harper as "people who would burn American flags in front of American soldiers and call that free speech," would not have the same crossover ability — although he later said he is willing to alter that provision to treat both parties the same.

For Harper, that may mean letting Republicans burn glossies of Hillary.

YOU EAT MY HEART OUT. Perhaps one can serve his political opponents in effigy, if not in love. Chidi Ogbuta of Allen, Texas had her wedding cake made to look like her -- life sized, with her veiled upper torso on top of several lower layers. She told her future hubby she wanted a "unique, personalized wedding."

Just what I want to see on my happiest day: somebody sticking a knife in me.

PASTA POLITICS. The sauce is red, but its consumer may be blue. The American Italian Pasta Company dug into it, offering its findings on partisan pasta eating habits.in a press release that crossed our wires:

Democrats, data shows, lean towards elbow macaroni, while Republicans tend to prefer long spaghetti.

We gather independents have the Lasagna vote.