You Bet Your Vote!

A recount is now underway in New Hampshire, where Democrat Dennis Kucinich is among many raising flags about disparities between machine-counted and hand-counted vote totals. The recount won't lift him out of the basement, but it might lift more eyebrows if there's a lead change at the top, where Hillary beat Barack by two percentage points. And that might just have people demanding to use pencil and paper again at the polls. We likely won't know the results for several weeks, but in the meantime, another voting irregularity is cropping up in the west.

FIVE-TO-ONE ODDS. Some of the voters in Nevada's Democratic Caucus will do their thing at the Bellaigo hotel, as the Washington Post reports:

Just before noon, the hotel's dishwashers, cocktail waitresses, porters and bellhops will go on break and gather in a 30,000-square-foot ballroom to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama or maybe John Edwards to be the Democratic nominee for president.

A similar scene will play out in eight other casinos on or near Las Vegas's Strip as Democrats caucus in Nevada, the next stop in the party's fiercely competitive presidential race. There will be more than 1,700 caucus precincts across Nevada, but estimates are that the votes cast in the casinos could be more than 10 percent of the statewide total.

Right down the hall, the sports books have Obama by two, but the odds are far from even according to a lawsuit from Nevada teachers who claim the locations are way too convenient to be fair to all candidates. Hillary's hubby had a mild hissy fit with KGO-TV reporter Mark Matthews about it:

Clinton: "This is a one-man one-vote country. I'm amazed. You should be offended by this. You think that one persons vote should count five times as much as another's?"

Mathews: "I think it looks as though it's the Clinton supporters --"

Clinton: "When you ask me that question, your position is that you think that the culinary workers vote should be easier for them to vote than anyone else in Nevada who has to work on Saturday. Second, when they do vote, their vote should count five times as much as everybody else? That's what the teachers have questioned. If that's your position, you have it. Get on your television station and say 'I don't care about the home mortgage crisis'. All I care is that some voters have it easier than others, and when they do vote, their vote should count five times as much? That is your position. If you want to take that position, get on the television and take it. Some people in Nevada are old fashioned. They think the rules should be the same for everybody and everybody's vote should count the same. I had nothing to do with that lawsuit and you know it."

A judge decided the house had no edge. But while the Dems caucus Saturday, maybe Bill will be in the ring at Ceasar's Palace for the main event.

FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE, YOUR PRODUCTIVITY MAY BE MONITORED. Microsoft may be developing the ultimate spyware application: software and hardware that watches how hard you're working. As London's Times Online reports:

Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.

The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.

We also understand this software will reboot you if your output suffers or grinds to a halt.

OH, RATS! Scientists have grown a heart from cells of rats, paving the way for a lab-grown human heart in the future. As The New York Times Reports:

With modifications, scientists should be able to grow a human heart by taking stem cells from a patient’s bone marrow and placing them in a cadaver heart that has been prepared as a scaffold, Dr. [Doris] Taylor [of the University of Minnesota] said in a telephone interview from her laboratory in Minneapolis. The early success “opens the door to this notion that you can make any organ: kidney, liver, lung, pancreas — you name it and we hope we can make it,” she said.

Okay, Dr. Taylor, what about brains?

TRAGICALLY HIP. Where are the fashion police when you need them? Taking a look at what's coming down the runway, your Lightning Round staffers wonder if the design world is playing a gigantic ongoing joke on us all.
A man in a tutu?
A lady wearing her intestines!
Geek chic.
Masked madness.
Plus, when veils attack!
But the handbag's not bad.

A TRUE PATRIOT. Finally, your Lightning Round editor tips his tricorn and bows humbly to 14-year-old Anna Grant, who stood proud in the midst of egregiously bad sportsmanship this past Sunday. The finalist in the NFL Pepsi Punch, Pass & Kick title was booed by fans in Indianapolis during the Colts-Chargers game because she was wearing a New England Patriots jersey.

Naturally, it made YouTube:



No need here for a lecture on boorishness by people who call them the "Hate-riots." As Anna told the New Hampshire Union-Leader:

"My parents said to expect it, so I just laughed it off, but it was definitely obvious they were booing."

And for her honorable display, she'll be honored on the field before Sunday's game against the Chargers in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where she is sure to receive thunderous huzzahs. So thanks booers, you just gave a fine young lady a priceless moment.