Crumble, Crumble

Early Bonus Latin American Roundup: Let me say that politically, I'm completely on-board with the pro-choice, pro-women-in-the-workplace, pro-gender equality agenda in practically every respect.

That said, I'm still a straight male, and while I don't think I need to burst arteries to prove it, putting ones heteronormativity on display once in a while doesn't seem like the end of the world, as long as it's not motivated by the desire to antagonize. With that, I give you the following headline and La Tercera article, "Monica Bellucci to play Sonia Gandhi in her next film". Yes, there's a photograph, and yes, it's work safe.

That is all.

John McCain just snubbed Brian Bilbray (R-CA 50), cancelling a planned appearance at a fundraising breakfast. This all started because Bilbray criticized McCain's immigration plan. Meanwhile, Francine Busby is running ads touting her support for the bill. This is a brilliant grab of the center; Busby has now positioned herself as a "McCain Democrat" while leaving Bilbray out in the cold. Meanwhile, someone has been working to attack Bilbray from the right as well. It may not be enough—this is a heavily Republican district after all—but it's great stuff.

It's tempting to have Democrats run a lot of ads in support of John McCain, which may be good in 2006, but may make life very hard in 2008. Should McCain win the primaries, it would be to be very hard to run the "John McCain, Just Another Politician" campaign after the party just spent months touting their support for his ideas.