This is all nice stuff but can we get back to the elections please? So John Kerry, please keep your word:

"I'm coming back to Washington today so that I'm not a distraction, because I don't want to be a distraction to these campaigns." -- Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), on the Imus in the Morning radio show, after canceling several campaign appearances today in the wake of his botched joke.

So we can talk about this:

A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

. . . The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.

. . . The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.