What more can be said than this:

I forget who it was who noted this, but it's a brilliant point. During WWII, Japan's government and media always claimed Japan was winning every single battle. But careful listeners could divine the way the War in the Pacific was really going by noting the locations of each of these "victories" -- each of these "victories" seemed to be occurring closer and closer to the Japanese mainland.

In a near-exact reversal of that situation, the American media laments each and every American "defeat"... but careful readers will note that the "Zone of Quagmire" seems to be radiating farther and farther out from US power centers and closer and closer to the heart of Al Qaeda/insurgent/Sadrist control.

We began by losing in Fallujah so badly our troops now say there are weeks that go by without hearing a gun shot. It's quiet there -- too quiet.

We then lost Baghdad catastrophically. You can tell we lost because there are so few reports of mortar attacks hitting the Green Zone. The enemy won there by moving further and further out from the city. You know -- surrounding us.

We then lost in Basra so dreadfully it apparently simply vanished from the map entirely, perhaps sucked into another dimension through an interplanar vortex.

Next up we lost in Sadr's last bastion of power -- the slum he's named for -- which you can see by fact that the Iraqi Army is now patrolling the streets and conducts house-to-house searches for weapons. But we lost, because two concessions were made to the Sadrists -- "light weapons" (pistols, rifles) could be kept, one per person, and no US troops would accompany the IA. That last point really stung us, because you know our boys are heartbroken that the IA gets the glamor duty of patrolling this slum. Glory denied.

And now we're losing in Mosul, of course.

If we lose in Iraq, it's going to be because the left decided that they wanted to.

Don't look for it from Barack Obama:

My colleagues on The Times’s editorial page called the [farm] bill “disgraceful.” My former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page ripped it as a “scam.” Yet such is the logic of collective action; the bill is certain to become law. It passed with 81 votes in the Senate and 318 in the House — enough to override President Bush’s coming veto. Nearly everyone in Congress got something.

The question amid this supposed change election is: Who is going to end this sort of thing?

Barack Obama talks about taking on the special interests. This farm bill would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. But Obama supported the bill, just as he supported the 2005 energy bill that was a Christmas tree for the oil and gas industries.

Obama’s vote may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. Moreover, it raises questions about how exactly he expects to bring about the change that he promises.

If elected, Obama’s main opposition will not come from Republicans. It will come from Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. Already, the Democratic machine is reborn. Lobbyists are now giving 60 percent of their dollars to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The pharmaceutical industry, the defense industry and the financial sector all give more money to Democrats than Republicans. If Obama is actually going to bring about change, he’s going to have to ruffle these sorts of alliances. If he can’t do it in an easy case like the farm bill, will he ever?

Via the corner

Al Qaeda in Iraq is pretty close to dead, according to al Qaeda in Iraq. Hence, it's the perfect time to elect the guy who wants to pull out of Iraq and reinvigorate al Qaeda in Iraq! Because if we don't have a war to protest, the lefties will all have to get rid of those cool "endless this war" bumper stickers.

What we have is jihadists virtually conceding defeat, while the leading Democratic candidate for president essentially campaigns on a way to turn that defeat into a victory by removing the obstacles to jihadi success.

To which I say, keep your chin up, al Qaeda in Iraq! After all, O! is promising hopeyness and changitude! — though for a while there, he had me convinced he was directing that message at the US electorate.

Instead, turns out he’s just pitching it toward our adversaries and the uninformed here at home — and of course, to those who feel that shows of US military strength are just part and parcel of an unsavory US international hegemony, one that needs to be thwarted so that we’ll learn our lesson about crass interventionalism (defined as interventionalism in our own national interests, rather than the kind that smacks of showy altruism); stick to ourselves, culturally speaking; and concentrate on important things, like how best to have the government regulate our thermostats, our medical care, our eating habits, etc., as well as how best to “put every American to work” in the service of the State — a small offering, if you will, to the Secular Godhead and His cult of personality.

Somewhere, Mussolini chuckles.

Very bad news:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy say he has a malignant brain tumor.

Doctors for the Massachusetts Democrat say tests conducted after Kennedy suffered a seizure this weekend show a tumor in his left parietal lobe. His treatment will be decided after more tests but the usual course includes combinations of radiation and chemotherapy.

There's no word in the story on Kennedy's prognosis, but malignant brain tumors are rarely a good thing. For what it's worth, best wishes to Senator Kennedy and his family as they embark on the difficult journey that they are about to take.

Can someone explain why it is, exactly, that Barack Obama is not a laughingstock?

A very good question indeed, in response to Obama's ridiculous assertions about Iran not being a threat to the US (although it should be noted that the very next day Obama was claiming that the threat from Iran is "grave").

What with all the "hope" and "change" being bandied about at those massive campaign rallies, I doubt that there's time to consider that perhaps Iran isn't the rational actor on the world stage that the Soviet Union was, and that perhaps negotiation and deterrence and all that nice stuff might not work as well on a truly nutty theocrat like Mahmud Ahmadinejad. And there's certainly no time in between all of the bashing of Bush the Warmongering Cowboy to note that over the last five years or so, Iran has been engaging in a diplomacy fest with Europe (of the type that Obama and his Democrat cohorts are all atwitter about) that has accomplished precisely nothing, being used instead by the Iranian regime as a diversion to buy time and advance their nuclear ambitions.

And this guy is very likely to be our next president. God help us.