“Had we launched an investigation of Hasan we’d have been crucified.”

“Backlash in California: Muslim at mall kiosk tears crucifix from shopper’s neck, shouts ‘Allah is power.’”

When you stare into the Nielsen ratings, the abyss stares back at you. As Kate of Small Dead Animals writes, “A funny thing happened on the way to insulting the audience….”:

Meanwhile, in the undersea world of dead tree publications, the chasms appear even deeper:

What, if anything can be done? That’s the topic of a recent edition of PJTV’s Trifecta, starring Steve Green, Bill Whittle, and Scrappleface’s Scott Ott.

One of Ann Althouse’s commenters quips, “He gets the Nobel Peace Prize one week, the next week he’s declaring war on Fox News and gay bloggers.”

The former have begun to fire back at Anita “Ron Ziegler” Dunn. First up, in video form, here’s Brit Hume:

So I’m hearing an awful lot about how the White House communications director hates Fox, really, really hates Fox. Anita Dunn saying, and I think I got this quote right, “Let’s not pretend they’re a news network.” She just said that on CNN after saying the same to Time magazine. Lately, it’s been her schtick, her game.

So, Ms. Dunn, let’s continue playing it, shall we? Let’s pretend you’re serious. Let’s pretend you’re not a tad, oh I don’t know, thin-skinned. Let’s pretend you get your facts straight on whether we thoroughly reported Republican Nevada Senator John Ensign’s affair which we did, or only trash Democrats and not Republicans, which we do not. Let’s pretend you are open to criticism. Let’s pretend you see alternative points of view on healthcare. Let’s pretend when someone opposes your view, they might have a point and when you simply refuse to accept it, you’re the one who may not have a clue. Let’s pretend you have a memory and recall Fox programs like this one disparaging last year’s financial rescues and whether they were pouring good money after bad. Let’s pretend you know history and recall that a Republican was in the White House back then, and a Republican treasury secretary refused to come on this very show back then. Let’s pretend you are aware that on Fox Business shows, in particular, this isn’t about this president or the last president. This is about your money, our money, all of our money. Let’s pretend you are interested in that and not dismissing that.

Let’s pretend you work for the President of the United States and not some left-wing blog in the United States. Let’s pretend you are as big as the historic place you work and not as petty as the less than historic words you spout. And let’s pretend you care about all of our independent viewers and aren’t being just careless about those viewers’ cares. So let’s pretend you’re focused on the issues that matter and not the petty squabbles that do not, just as we should pretend you’re not overwrought and snapping. Maybe you’re just overworked and snippy.

(Newsbusters has video of Cavuto’s rebuttal.)

To borrow from the rhetoric of master strategist Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, Roger L. Simon believes that the don is slipping:

For a guy who just won the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama is sure suddenly playing rough with his enemies.

First he goes after his left flank, sending out minions to accuse liberal bloggers who criticized his administration on gay issues of being pajama-clad children or something; now he’s going after the right-wing devil-incarnate — Fox News – all in less than two days.

Wow, things must be pretty insecure Chez Obama. Wouldn’t it have been easier to fire Axelrod or Emanuel (pick one)? This strategy, seemingly ripped from the Clinton-Morris-triangulation playbook, actually appears weak in this instance. And if I were Roger Ailes, I’d be laughing up my sleeve. As Brit Hume just said on the network, Fox News may be the most powerful of the cable news outlets, but it has nowhere near the power of the presidency. Having the executive branch go after it, just puts Fox on the same plane as the president.

But that’s Media 101. Why did these supposedly smart guys not know that? Or am I missing something? Perhaps, I am, but I doubt it. Obama looks to be ‘runnin’ scared,’ as they used to say in the Village Voice. His healthcare program – or is it Max Baucus’ – is taking body blows. It could crash and burn or diminish to so little not even the slavish MSM will be able to find anything good to say about it. And then what’s left? Cap-and-trade? Given the way global warming currents have been cooling, I wouldn’t place any heavy bets on that – or any bets at all.

So I can see why the Obama people are slashing around, firing frantically in all directions. But at times like this especially, they should realize it’s necessary “to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” I’m surprised those guys from Chicago, of all places, didn’t read The Godfather more closely.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning president is certainly comfortable with its rhetoric; does he view the book as a how-to guide?

Update: Related thoughts from Ronald Radosh.

Patterico posts an update regarding the producer of a recent pro-Polanski documentary who was spamming his blog with comments defending Polanski and attacking those repulsed by his actions:

Ms. Sullivan has identified herself as the author of the post and apologized personally to me. She stresses that she was writing in a private capacity — without the knowledge of her former production team. She has also apologized to the producers for any embarrassment or misunderstanding caused.

Read the whole thing here.

Related: At the Washington Examiner, Glenn Reynolds writes, “Technologically and market-wise, Hollywood is in the weakest position it’s ever been, and yet it is also more arrogant than it was in its Golden Age.”

Jeffrey H. Birnbaum of the Washington Times writes:

ACORN, calling the actions of some of its employees “indefensible,” has suspended advising new clients as part of its service programs and is setting up an independent review to see what happened.

ACORN chief executive Bertha Lewis said in a written statement that she was “ordering a halt to any new intakes into ACORN’s service programs until completion of an independent review.”

How bad is the heat on what Rich Lowry calls “The E. F. Hutton of Prostitution” right now? Even Jon Stewart is making fun of them — and the MSM who’ve been asleep at the wheel on this story for partisan reasons.

Elsewhere, Ace of Spades has your headline (not to mention photo) of the day: “Hannah Giles Poses in Hot Pants — And Also, NYC Freezes ACORN Funding”

(Via, appropriately enough, James O’Keefe and Big Government.)

Steve Green is gobsmackingly gobsmacked! Err, not so much:

Wow, I hadn’t heard that Andrew Sullivan got busted for possession of pot. Charges were dropped, questionably, according to the judge involved. It seems the DA insisted the charges be dropped.

Oh, I could go on a rant here, tick off the usual complaints. Here they are in handy list form:

1. It’s amazing the kind of protection you can buy if you switch sides.

2. Briefly consider (then dismiss) “other team” joke relating to 1.

3. Make point about the media feeding frenzy if, say, George Will had been busted for pot.

4. Get distracted at mental image of Will, stoned out of his mind, giggling mindlessly at Harold & Kumar, Chee-toh stains on his bow tie.

5. Get so distracted by 4. that planned rant gets dropped in favor of handy list.

My mental image of Will includes him getting all flustered and demanding of everyone around him, “But what does “pulchritude” mean? What does it mean?”

UPDATE: A retired “felony weight” pot distributor is ready to throw the book at Andrew. “Anybody stupid enough to get busted for dope is a danger to himself and others and should be locked up for the good of society. Dude, if you can’t outsmart a narc . . .”

Dude, indeed.

And while writers such as Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker were able to leverage the…occasional altered state to enhance their writing, I’m not sure how much the high tides and/or green grass are benefiting Sullivan.

Mark Hemingway writes:

Carl M. Cannon has a terrific and thoughtful column on Ted Kennedy’s failings that really must be read. He does his best to acknowledge Kennedy was a generous man and competent politician, but ultimately Cannon says he’s concerned that many are trying to whitewash his profound failings:

Liberals in the media pretend not to see this. Or rather, they blame those who feel aggrieved. This very morning, my old friend James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly employed the usual euphemisms about Kennedy’s behavior in his post – and then launched a preemptive strike against anyone who might view Teddy’s life with gimlet eyes. “A flawed man, who started unimpressively in life — the college problems, the silver-spoon boy senator, everything involved with Chappaquiddick — but redeemed himself, in the eyes of all but the committed haters, with his bravery and perseverance and commitment to the long haul,” Fallows wrote.

I like Jim Fallows, and stand in awe of Kennedy’s effectiveness as a politician myself. But hold on a minute: The “college problems” were serial cheating. The “silver-spoon” stuff, I suppose refers to, among other things, the speeding and reckless driving that ominously foreshadowed Chappaquiddick. And that phrase “redeeming himself in the eyes of all but the committed haters,” well, the problem with that is that to many people, redemption implies that a sinner has come clean.

Further, Cannon makes the salient point that the actual facts involved in the Chappaquiddick rarely enter the debate over Kennedy because they are so indefensible and uncomfortable for liberals. He goes into the whole incident in detail:

Kennedy got out of the car alive, Mary Jo Kopechne did not. He said he dived down several times to try and rescue her, before walking back to the cottage where his friends were staying. To do so, he passed at least four houses with working telephones, including one 150 yards from the accident with a porch light on – as well as a firehouse with a pay phone. When he got to the cottage, none of the women were told what happened. According to the 763-page coroner’s inquest, this was just the first of a series of appalling decisions Kennedy made that night, decisions that stretch credulity.

But read the whole piece. You won’t be disappointed. And on a related note, Robert P. George wrote an excellent (as usual) column for NRO on Chappaquiddick just a few weeks ago. It’s also highly recommended.

Meanwhile, “ABC Buries Harsh Kennedy Obit, One That Labels Him a ‘Failure,’ in the Middle of the Night.”

(With apologies to Harry Stein for the headline.)

Stacy McCain reviews some of the obits yesterday for Bob Novak and ponders “Things they never write about dead liberals.”

Or as Melissa Clouthier dubs it, “Compassion and indifference.”

Meanwhile, Allahpundit explores the latter half of that equation in depth:

If nothing else good came of this, at least Gates’s daughter got a chance to meet Crowley’s daughter and then comment snottily about her overuse of eyeliner in an op-ed — a bit of jackassery that made even the lefties at TNR blanch. More healing, please.

And less finger pointing from the White House: Dan Blatt (found via Steve Green on PJTV) does some superb juxtaposing with these two quotes:

“And one of the things that I’m trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame.”

– President Barack Obama
The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (March 2009)

“Prez Blames Media for Cops Remark Dustup.”

– Today.

By the way, I am the only person who never wants to hear the words “teachable moment” uttered by an American president (from either side of the aisle) ever again? Last time I checked “First Teacher” wasn’t part of the job description.

Update: Don Surber does a little juxtaposing as well, this time involving photos of past and current presidents.

More: “I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing…this picture becomes a metaphor for ObamaCare. The elderly are left in the back, with only the kindness of the Crowleys of the world, the stand up guys, to depend on. The government has other priorities.”

Found via California blogger FullosseousFlap on Twitter, USA Today reports, “Poll: Schwarzenegger hits bottom”:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger earns the worst approval numbers of his tenure, according to a new poll, becoming another governor whose ratings have been dragged down along with the battered economy.

Today’s poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows just 28% of Californians give a thumbs-up to Schwarzenegger’s job performance. Those are the lowest numbers for a Golden State governor since August 2003, when former Gov. Gray Davis was facing a recall election.

Only 14% of those polled say the state is headed in the right direction, and three out of every four residents say they expect bad financial conditions over the next year, according to the poll.

Of course, it’s not the best time to be a governor these days, what with the struggling economy hampering state budgets.

Actually the second half of that sentence is a complete inversion of reality: it’s California’s massive budgets, and the leviathan state government they fuel, that’s hampering its economy and furthering the state’s Rendezvous With Scarcity.

Still though, Arnold will always be loved where it really counts: in the pages of Time magazine.

Related: Hugh Hewitt on “California’s Man Made Drought.”

As documented by noted psychotherapist Robert Stacy McCain in his headlines sidebar:

• HOT AIR: Walter Cronkite is dead
• ED DRISCOLL: I’m not saying that Walter Cronkite being dead is a good thing, but . . .
• JOHN PODHORETZ: Let’s face it, Walter Cronkite might as well have been Jane Fonda
• DAN COLLINS: OK, so Walter Cronkite was a commie traitor, but he sure as heck was avuncular, wasn’t he?

He was indeed sir, he was indeed.

T. Boone Pickens finds himself with unexpected transmission problems:

Horrors! Can it be possible? Texas multi-billionaire T. Boone Pickens- falling victim to a “boone”doggle? And worse, one of his own making?

But in any event, Mr. Pickens has now been left holding the bag: 687 giant (30 ft.) wind turbines- each costing a “cool” 2 million apiece.

Everyone recalls the ‘folksy” Mr. Pickens from his glorious TV commercial from last fall:

Pickens- ever the optimist- would appear on the screen, touting …”Windmills will be America’s new ‘clean energy’ answer;” and then the obligatory…”plus reduce our dependency on foreign oil.”

But after blowing $1.5 billion of his own money, the Texas T-Bone will no doubt be reducing his dependency on  Barack Obama, who seems to have reneged on part of a secret deal.

On paper, Picken’s “can’t-miss” idea looked uttterly Utopian:

a) construct a giant windfarm in Texas’ desolate, windy Panhandle area
b) transmit wind-powered electricity to cities in the central & southern part of the state
c) rake in the profits

But then arose (supposedly) a problem of the “missing link:” How to get electricity from point A – the Panhandle-  to point B, the urban areas, where the power was needed.

In talking to the media, Pickens - trying to appear un-perplexed- claimed, “There were technical problems in getting transmission lines built”…and…”I’m putting the project on hold for now.”

Read the whole thing.

Weasel Zippers dusts off an oldie but a goodie, a story that’s apparently become an staple part of life in 21st century France:

French “Youths” Torch 317 Cars in One Night…

Look on the bright side, France. Muslim “youths” in the UK try and blow them up (usually around crowds of infidels)…..

(ANSAmed) – PARIS, JULY 14 – Some 317 automobiles were burnt last night in Paris on the eve of Bastille Day. The number of vehicles burned, according to an initial police estimate, was up 6.73% compared to the previous years.

This type of violence and vandalism have become a sort of “fashion” for youths in the hinterlands of large cities during holidays, particularly that at year’s end. On the night of last December 31, a total of 1,147 cars were burned, up 30.64% compared to the previous year.

Fausta Wertz flashes back to previous Car-B-Ques in France and dubs them, “The Never-ending Arson.”

Meanwhile, in other, entirely unrelated news back in the States, Ed Morrissey notes, “Two men charged in Minneapolis terror investigation”, and Ryan Mauro writes that “Intriguing bits of evidence suggest that a major terrorist attack was thwarted on June 4″ at Tampa International Airport.

Inspired by the late cinematic maestro of the montage, over the past year and a half of producing the Silicon Graffiti videos, I’ve employed a handful of techniques to hopefully match the title to the theme of each video, including at times its animation and font. For those who also produce DIY video, that’s a topic I explore over at Videomaker magazine.

Jules Crittenden spots “Good Stuff Done” by “he who must not be named or even indirectly referenced. Not without dismissive derision”:

Christopher Hitchens, who was for liberating Iraq before he was for the guy who wanted to abandon it, comes out for the liberation of Iraq and subsequent elections there as the inspiration for the pro-democracy movement in Iran.

Hey, whose idea was all that? Don’t worry, you can get through this Hitchens article at Slate without having that shoved in your face:

Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about “the liberation of Iraq,” he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran’s regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media. Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a “let’s pretend” election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself.

The whole article includes a lot of inside Qom baseball, which is as interesting and enlightening as we’d expect of Hitchens, though I can’t help but suspect it serves another purpose. Because what is fascinating is how Hitchens manages to get through the article without mentioning who brought democracy to the Middle East at such great cost. Maybe Hitchens feels it is important not to alienate much of his audience by naming he who must not be named without the prerequisite dismissive derision.

On the other hand, as another revolutionary leader who endured his own phase of being HWMNBN shortly after leaving office has been quoted as saying, “There’s no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”

Related thoughts from Austin Bay here.

Update: Events Witnessed.

The Binkmeister is loaded for bear once again. Click here, and then keep on clicking.

Yes, posting has been a bit light since the latter half of the past week. My wife and I have been vacationing in Alaska; I’ll be back in the Northern California Command Center of EdDriscoll.com on Wednesday night. (Friends are staying there in the interim.)

Yesterday we finally discovered the Bridge To Nowhere:

It’s actually a gangplank in the strangest intermodal facility I’ve ever seen — connecting the sleek modern cruise ships that dock in Skagway with the narrow gauge White Pass & Yukon Railroad built at the turn of the 20th century, which we rode to Fraser, British Columbia and back:

My wife has been liveblogging the trip (or as near as live as our ship’s spotty wi-fi service allows) and you can read her blog here. (it’s a stock GoDaddy design; don’t let the somewhat Telegraph style message headers throw you through; they connect to a series of fun posts with a fair amount of photos, such as the above.)

As I said, I’ll be back to fulltime blogging Wednesday night, but will be posting sporadically in the interim as time allows.

Ann Althouse notes that #CNNFail is “a trending topic in Twitter.” She links to CNet’s Daniel Terdiman, who writes:

For most of Saturday, CNN.com had no stories about the massive protests on behalf of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who was reported by the Iranian government to have lost to the sitting president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The widespread street clashes–nearly unheard of in the tightly controlled Iran–reflected popular belief that the election had been rigged, a sentiment that was even echoed, to some extent, by the U.S. government Saturday….

Increasingly, Twitter has become the go-to source for breaking news about any kind of notable event, be it an earthquake, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, or post-election riots in Tehran. Yet many Twitter users found CNN’s lack of attention to what could end up being one of the biggest stories in years appalling…..

But some of us on Twitter, as Glenn Reynolds notes, linking to a post written in 2004 by your humble narrator, aren’t exactly surprised.

Groundbreaking news from Yahoo’s Tech column: “Study: Top 10% of Twitter users do 90% of the tweeting.”

If you’re on Twitter already, click here to follow us. And click on the video below if you’re new to the whole Twitter thang*:

As of the time of this post, the Wichita Eagle is reporting:

A suspect in this morning’s fatal shooting of George Tiller is in custody in Johnson County.

Authorities have yet to release more information about the arrest in Gardner. Wichita police have scheduled a 4 p.m. news conference to discuss the case.

Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation.

Tiller was serving as an usher at the church, one of six ushers listed in the church bulletin. He was handing out bulletins to people going into the sanctuary minutes before being shot.

A church member who did not want to be identified said the gunman threatened another person at the church after the shooting.

Tiller’s family issued a statement through Wichita attorneys Dan Monnat and Lee Thompson.

“Today we mourn the loss of our husband, father and grandfather. Today’s event is an unspeakable tragedy for all of us and for George’s friends and patients.

“This is particularly heart wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace.”

Police had said they were looking for white male who was driving a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB. The vehicle is registered to an owner in Merriam, which is in the Kansas City area.

Also blogging on this topic: Hot Air (source of the above link), Gateway Pundit, Don Surber, and R.S. McCain, who links to a variety of additional bloggers and news reports.

Update: But of course: “Liberal Blogs Quickly Link Doctor’s Murder to Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck.”