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.

Ace has a very good list of things that the MSM has "decided" for us about the Obama!/Jeremiah Wright mess:

Obama's 20 year political partnership with Wright may raise questions about his judgment, but it is wrongful for his political opponents to raise such questions in campaign ads. Some questions, it seems, are properly raised, but silently, in deep personal meditation, perhaps on an alpine hill while reading Rilke. Certainly we do not need to audibly ask questions about a presidential candidate. That's just hurtful and corrosive of our political process, which relies, at its core, of utter trust in our political leaders without question.

The only reason my wife and I subscribe to the Grand Rapids Press is for the Sunday grocery ads. And the only reason that we get the Press during the week is because the practically pay us to take it. I have no idea how they're making money, and I highly doubt their claims about increasing circulation. (If the claims are true, my guess is that they're true because they, well, give the paper away.) These thoughts pop to mind as I read this stinging editorial on the gradual demise of another hometown paper, the Kansas City Star:

The Project for Excellence in Journalism began its 2006 annual report by asking, "Will we recall this as the year when journalism in print began to die?" The answer preceded the question. A business that exists solely to give credibility to a minority point of view just isn’t a smart proposition. The Pitch, KC's left-wing tabloid, already does a better job reaching the Star’s market than the Star does, and they do it for a lot less money. Meanwhile, newsroom Darwinists can look past the Pitch to craigslist.com and see the local paper of the future.

So conservatives worked up over the Star’s coverage or its editorials or its story selection or its letters column should just take a shower, pop a soda and relax. A friend of mine, the late George Leinwall, a Joycean scholar and a bibliophile, once advised me against wasting energy on getting angry at a guy who had done me wrong. “His punishment,” Leinwall said, “is his life.” Same with the Star, except for the "life" part.