Tuesday Mashup (1/8)

A group called the California Nurses Association ran a full-page ad in the New York Times yesterday correctly stating that “everyone deserves Cheney care”; to learn more about the group, here’s a Daily Kos diary providing background and further information about HR 676 here, which calls for “Medicare For All” (Edwards is probably closest to supporting something like this among the candidates).

Man, how would you like to be Mark Penn these days?

I mean, the guy not only gets “taken to the woodshed” by Kagro X here for spinning poll results decidedly giving an advantage to Barack Obama (though, as Glenn Greenwald noted earlier, “trend” stats favor John Edwards – sorry for dwelling on numbers like this, an easy trap to fall into), but his “union-busting” division at mega-PR firm Burson-Marsteller (which he heads, of course) gets exposed for all the world to see by Mark Schmitt here (day-old news, I know).

And on top of that, it turns out that, according to this Parade Magazine article by Gail Sheehy, he was hired by Benazir Bhutto to “(play) up to Musharraf” (nothing further need be said there, I realize).

Penn has obviously lived on the high wire for some time and was due for a fall, but I cannot imagine how it could have come at a worse time for him or his most visible client; we’ll see what happens with “Obama-rama” of course, but for now, he’s got to help HRC to start getting some primary wins, and somehow I think he’s going to need a lot more than “Mom-Fluentials Research” (Schmitt explains) to get it done.

Update: At least Penn, Hil and company can take a bow for now.

Shed no tears for Trent Lott, by the way, as he departs to the private sector and thus cashes in from his years in government; an ideological transition from A to B will take place as you might expect with Repug Gov. Haley Barbour’s appointment of Mississippi U.S. House rep Roger Wicker to fill Lott’s seat - here.

And where will Lott go? Why, to work with former Democratic Senator John Breaux to form their own “consulting” group (here - some of Breaux’s shilling for the utterly ridiculous Medicare Part D drug plan is noted here).

And file this one under “Let’s Not And Say We Did,” OK? It looks like Hugo Chavez, during the course of an interview with Naomi Campbell, asked the supermodel to “touch his muscles” (no word yet on whether or not Chavez has been chastened by his recent electoral setback).

Luckily he didn’t ask her to hand him the phone (ba-dump!).

And by the way, “Happy Birthday” Lynndie England (she’s actually due to get out of prison later this year, believe it or not – maybe she could get sent back to Iraq?).