NY Times: “Sunnis Agree to End Boycott, Rejoin Iraq Government”.

“Our conditions were very clear, and the government achieved some of them,” said Adnan al-Duleimi, the head of Tawafiq, the largest Sunni bloc in the government. Mr. Duleimi said the achievements included “the general amnesty, chasing down the militias and disbanding them and curbing the outlaws.” … The official government television channel, Iraqiya, appeared to confirm the deal, following a meeting between Mr. Maliki and David Miliband, the visiting foreign secretary of Britain. Iraqiya said the prime minister “said that reconciliation has proved a success and all political blocs will return to the government.”

If this does pan out, it’s not difficult to see that the Democrats are toast come November.

Yglesias hails this ad as a good one:

As I frequently note on these pages, I don’t have a TV so I don’t have a good sense of what quality political advertising looks like these days. To my untrained eye and ear this one seems flat. People might argue that “McCain=McSame” is a catchy phraselet. To me, it’s as catchy as this—yes, it gets stuck in my head, but I resent it being there.

But putting those quibbles aside, what struck me about the ad was its use of Photoshop as the main metaphor of the ad. Does your average person know that there are programs which allow you to select parts of images and cut them out? That transparency is denoted by a black and white checkerboard design? Yes, the ad gets its message across just fine, but couldn’t they have used a metaphor more immediately recognizable to a wider range of people?

Since I don’t own a TV, I get to miss the debates. Therefore I tend not to get as annoyed directly by them as some people. Instead, I end up getting annoyed based on YouTube clips, morning NPR wrap-ups and stills like the one on the right.

Clinton would probably not be the worst president, but good god do I viscerally dislike her. Her laugh, her demeanor, her fakeness all drive me up the wall. She’s like Bill without the charm.

The thing is, it’s quite likely that my assessments, based as they are on second-hand, edited material, are no less valid than those of people who actually sit through these things in their entirety. The debates are set up to be as vapid as possible—a venue for sound-byte grandstanding.¹ It’s a sad state of affairs.