Monday, April 7, 2008

Your Morning News 4.7.08

Posted by Josh in Charlton Heston, hillary clinton, March Madness, mark penn, privacy, voter registration, Your Morning News

Mark Penn, the much-maligned chief strategist to the Clinton campaign, has announced he is stepping down (getting canned) from his leadership position on the Clinton campaign. I don’t know if we have mentioned Penn before, even though we love to malign people, so here is all you need to know about him: He has been the chief architect of Senator Clinton’s campaign and most people inside and outside of the campaign blame him for her decline. Many people were puzzled that he didn’t quit his day job as president of a PR and lobbying firm when he started with the Clinton campaign. That decision has finally caught up with him as it came out this weekend that last month, while Senator Clinton was campaigning largely on jobs and the economy in Ohio, Penn was meeting with officials from the Colombian government to discuss a trade agreement. Whoops. Anyway, this is a good factoid to bring up at work to prove how much you know about politics. Just say that fairly or unfairly (editor’s note: fairly) Penn will be blamed for Clinton’s decline. Speculate that removing him might be too little, too late. The endless democratic primary campaign is producing some benefits for the Democratic Party.

Primary states are showing massive increases in voter registration and numbers of voters changing their registration to “D”. Turnout will likely continue to break records. This story is worth reading since many people are debating whether or not this primary is destroying the Democrats. If it comes up at your office, you will be prepared to argue that it isn’t.

Medical Records, Basketball, and Heston after the jump It is a bad month to be an low-level employee who is bored at work. Apparently a UCLA medical center worker sneaked into the medical records of dozens of celebrities and politicans. This is similar to what happened a few weeks ago when we found out that State Department employees looked up hte passport files of all the Presidential candidates. Guys, if you are bored at work, I recommend you play the addicting freerice.com rather than commit misdemeanors by looking up the details of Farrah Fawcett’s cancer treatment

March Madness ends tonight as Kansas and Memphis square off in the NCAA final. Memphis’ fast-moving offense will be a challenge, but Kansas beat North Carolina by 28 points this weekend and are really goddamn good; it should be fun to watch.

Finally, Charlton Heston, the man who made it OK to hate goddamn dirty apes again, died this weekend. He also starred in such films as the 10 Commandments, Ben-Hur and, more recently, Bowling for Columbine (thanks, folks, I’ll be here all week). it looks like he will be remembered equally for his films roles and for his conservative politics (he was the head of the NRA for a while). You can mention either if he comes up at work.

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