Did the marketing team at Dove make a mistake by portraying a mildly chunky soccer-momish woman as “normal sized” in its first ad for the “Campaign for Real Beauty” series? They seem to have pulled back from the billboard characterization on their website, with several models whose “real curves” have very narrow pavement, if you get my drift. I look at Dove’s dueling moves here.

Over at The Reaction, I’ve just posted on the Democratic Leadership Council’s meeting in Columbus, and I begin to address the big-tent theory of party politics that seems to elude Democrats. I tend to side with the DLCers against, say, the Deaniacs (hey, I’m a moderate!), but I worry that Democrats are engaging in yet another victory-preventing civil war. You know, the usual squabbles over ideological purity at the expense of electoral success. Republicans are so good at the unity...

A biiiiiiiiiiiiig debate is underway on the centrist blog The Yellow Line over a hypothetical horror question posed and an answer. A SLEW of comments which are worth reading themselves. Alan Stewart Carl’s post begins: A week ago, U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) was asked in an interview what he thought should be the U.S. response if terrorists used a nuclear weapon against us. He responded: ”Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States,...

Just when you thought we might have a Congressional election based on the actual issues facing the country, actress-and-60s-anti-war-activist Jane Fonda is handing the GOP a thoughtful gift: Herself. On a bus. Next March. Crossing the country. In an anti-war tour. That’ll be a huge issue on talk radio. That’ll probably be used as a wedge issue (”Harry Reid should repudiate her now!”) against the Demmies. Here are the details (you can see THIS big controversy with all the...

Wrong #1: Alabama wants to castrate sex offenders Wrong #2: But they think it would be unconstitutional. So they probably will drop the proposal. However, if they examine the current constitutiona sterilization doctrine (I can’t believe we even have that), they’ll find they probably could craft a constitutional policy (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn the relevant cases, which they might). For once, I hope Alabama legislators remain ignorant.

TMV will be going on the road 7/27 – 8/8. During this time he will (as usual) post using his trusty laptop. On Wednesday and Thursday TMV will be travelling and also somewhat out of pocket. But he WILL post. And our co-bloggers may be doing a bit more than usual. Our posts today may be erratic (versus erotic) but we will be posting today. Our Around The Sphere will likely resume after the 27th but we may try to get one on the site for the 27th. So check back often. But realize our posts may...

Has a new twist has emerged in the nomination of John Roberts as Supreme Court Justice? Does it mean there storm clouds on Robert’s confirmation horizon? Or maybe a tiny cloud or two? Is this the kind of issue that (a)the vast majority of Americans will care about, (b)will derail his so-far-so-good prospects to sail through confirmation? YOU decide (although we may try to sway you with our pithy comments): Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. has repeatedly said that he has no memory of...

This story is huge, and it’s quite incredible that the media, at least on this side of the pond, have largely ignored it: According to British Defence Secretary John Reid, British forces will be withdrawn from Iraq over the next 12 months. There are currently only 8,500 British troops in Iraq, mostly in the more peaceful south, but Britain is clearly the #2 allied presence there (and America’s #1 ally, period), and one wonders what a withdrawal will mean for America’s Iraq policy...

The conventional (media) wisdom continues to shift and solidify on New York Senator Hillary Clinton — that she’s continuing an adept and systematic campaign to foster ties with the political center: New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is cementing her ties to moderate voters, reaching out to centrists that some of her backers argue Clinton never really abandoned. Clinton scheduled a high-profile speech Monday to the Democratic Leadership Council, a centrist group that helped pave...

It’s obviously too little too late, but Bill Clinton has apologized for not doing enough to stop the genocide in Rwanda. But at least his heart’s in the right place and he’s now working to alleviate the scourge of AIDS in Africa. Let’s just hope we don’t have to wait a decade for a Hotel Darfur or a Hotel Bukavu to show us what we could have stopped.

The suicide bombings in London and Egypt this week aren’t quite a wake up call to U.S. police officials, who always feared it could happen here. It’s someone shaking them and pulling them out of bed: Inside a former Starbucks warehouse, this city’s bomb squad headquarters, the police chief and 15 captains and sergeants – accompanied by a robot that can extract explosives from packages and pin down a suspect – huddled the other day to tackle a topic suddenly urgent to...

…at Jeff Jarvis’ newly redesigned site The Buzz Machine. If you haven’t read Jarvis already, you should. With his extensive high-level experience in media writing and management (plus being the creator of People Magazine), Jarvis has a particularly fascinating viewpoint and often takes a long-view of events. But that’s not to say that he can’t give you a quite decisive take on a breaking event, controversy or anything else that comes up. Jarvis is a master at stepping...

Despite the best efforts of the French rail system to deter me (with a 6 hour train ride that was supposed to have lasted less than 3 hours), I have posted my first impressions along with some photos and a brief movie from the final stage of the Tour de France today, at my weblog, Random Fate. I hope to post more impressions of the race and the day surrounding it later, after I get some sleep, because it’s almost 3:00AM here! (TMV NOTES: This post is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED so click on that link!) UPDATE:...

A word of caution. This is for adults only. I recently found a curious story in Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading newsmagazine. It has to do with a young Norwegian couple that has taken a new approach, shall we say, to environmentalism, specifically to saving the rainforests. For more on this, see my full post at The Reaction. I link there to this young Norwegian couple’s website, “F— for Forest,” which, as the name suggests, links pornography to environmentalism. If you...

If you got a weird sense of deja vu reading about the London terrorist attacks and the carnage in Egypt it probably was not your imagination: experts also think the seemingly coordinated nature of these attacks indicate Al Qauda is very much in control: The back-to-back nature of the deadly attacks in Egypt and London, as well as similarities in the methods used, suggests that the al Qaeda leadership may have given the orders for both operations and is a clear sign that Osama bin Laden and his deputies...

If Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was a submitted movie script, he’d be in production by now. And if he opens his mailbox on Monday, it’ll probably be crammed with Valentines…. Every day a new tidbit comes in where he wins praise from quarters where you’d either least expect it or expect a cautious sounding statement. This time highly enthusiastic praise — coupled with info about how he’s perceived by many Democratic lawyers — comes from NPR legal correspondent...

No where can you see the dilemmas facing government officials and security officials in the ongoing war against terror clearer than in London where police have apologized for the tragic killing an innocent Brazilian man suspected of being a suicide bomber — but underlined the fact that suspected suicide bombers will be shot in the head. “There is no point in shooting somebody’s chest because that’s where the bomb is likely to be. There is no point in shooting anywhere else...

Who else would award poor execution, incompetent quality control and substandard practices in medical care with more money than your friend and ours, the governement? In Medicare’s upside-down reimbursement system, hospitals and doctors who order unnecessary tests, provide poor care or even injure patients often receive higher payments than those who provide efficient, high-quality medicine. “It’s the exact opposite of what you would expect,” said Mary Brainerd, chief executive...

In recent years the start of a new televisions season has become more of a time of dread than eagerly anticipate. So few new series really catch on, so many seem cookie-cutter-hack jobs, and so few seem to take dramatic or comedic standards to new levels. But now, heading into this new season, there is a series out there that is generating a ton of great buzz — “Everybody Hates Chris,” Chris Rock’s new semi-autobiographical comedy series poised to debut on UPN. Just note the...

Sometimes, the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) misses the larger point in their quest to preserve fundamental liberties. While their goal is noble, on occasion they are misguided. — For additional information on the difficulties involved in this balance, see this recent article at The Christian Science Monitor.

A controversy is brewing in Great Britain where a man shot by police as a terrorist bombing suspect is now said to have nothing to do with the bombings. The BBC reports: A man shot dead by police hunting the bombers behind Thursday’s London attacks was unconnected to the incidents, police have confirmed. A Scotland Yard statement said the shooting was a “tragedy” which was regretted by the Metropolitan Police. The man was shot dead after police followed him from a south London...

This is from reader Jae Grenier of San Angeleo, Texas: If I knew how to post this on your blog, if that’s what it’s called, I would. Unfortunately, I am a little old lady in ballet flats, who barely manages to find your “moderate voice.” However . . . I really do wish you (not to mention everyone else) would stop saying “claims responsibility” or “claims credit” for the assorted atrocities that occur on practically a daily basis. “Claim”,...

The bombings of the Tube in London have sparked a tightening of security measures on several mass transit systems in U.S. cities — including random searches of passengers travelling on the New York subways. Ever since 911 (and earlier) experts have warned that the U.S. transportation system was a security Achilles’ heel. And since the July 7th bombings of London’s subways and a double-decker bus city and security officials have been scrambling to find ways to put extra protection...

Terrorists have attacked Egypt again killing 62 in incidents that involved suicide bombers…and a group tied to Al Qaeda later claimed credit for the operation. This was not the first time Egypt faced an Al Qaeda-related threat. The scene this time: the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik. The setting: a hotel and coffee shop. The event: Saturday morning normality shattered when a bomb ripped through the hotel, murdering 62 people. The AP reports: The reception hall of the luxury Ghazala Gardens...

We read a lot of blogs (we USED our blogroll by the way and read all sides) but somehow didn’t know until just now that on June 8 due to one of our posts we were inducted by Shrillblog into the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill. Here’s the intro: Joe Gandelman is a professional voice. His schtick on the internet is that of a professional moderate voice, someone who is reasonable, who avoids the excesses of partisanship, who takes a deep breath and realizes that there are two...