WHEN IDEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY is not enough.

GENERAL PETRAEUS VISITS BAQUBAH: Michael Yon reports. And more questions about why this isn’t getting more coverage.

UPDATE: Here’s more. And note this post from Hot Air and this from Bob Owens on the Associated Press’s coverage.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:

So let’s see. Mr. Bush and al Qaeda’s Ayman al Zawahiri agree that Iraq–not Afghanistan–is the central front in the war between them. But GOP Senators looking ahead to the 2008 elections have decided that the real front in the war lies not in Baghdad or Baquba but in the Beltway, and that a “bipartisan” redeployment is a worthier goal than backing the current battle plan. The irony is that this political retreat is taking place even as General David Petraeus’s military offensive is showing signs of progress.

We have better soldiers than politicians. Then again, we have better everything than we have politicians. . . .

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “For a self-congratulatory culture issuing moral lectures on everything from global warming to the dangers of smoking, the silence of the West toward the primordial horror from Gaza to Anbar is, well, horrific in its own way as well.”

GEORGE WILL REVIEWS Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man: A History of the Great Depression. (Via the InstaWife).

THOUGHTS ON MEN’S RIGHTS, from Bryan Caplan.

UPDATE: Related item here.

JONAH GOLDBERG: “I can only assume the folks at the NEA have let their comments section weed-over with spam because they are being so diligent with our tax dollars elsewhere. ”

Meanwhile, the private sector steps up.

SYRIA INVADES LEBANON.

IMPORTANT Harry Potter news!

REMINDING COLIN POWELL of what he said then.

I know some people still like him for President, but he seems to have a history of saying what people want to hear at the time. And sometimes he does it retroactively . . . . And if he was just “being loyal” then, does that make him more credible now?

UPDATE: Ross Douthat said it better:

Maybe had Powell won more bureaucratic battles, everything would have gone swimmingly in Iraq, and the fact that it didn’t is all Donald Rumsfeld/Dick Cheney/George W. Bush’s fault. But given that he was present at the creation, not just part of the government that took us to war but one of its leaders, there was something a little off-putting about his self-justifying explanation that he tried to stop it, and besides it was the right thing to do, and anyway the fact that it fell apart is somebody else’s fault.

Yeah.

DID RUMSFELD BLOW A CHANCE at getting Zawahiri?

UPDATE: Andrew McCarthy says not so much.

JAMES LILEKS: “I’ve noticed that most people who romanticize the French Revolution are a little unclear on the details, particularly how it turned out.”

IN THE MAIL: Michael Barone’s new book, Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America’s Founding Fathers. Looks quite interesting.

RANK INGRATITUDE.

CARNIVAL-O-RAMA: The Carnival of Cars is up! So is the Carnival of Homeschooling. And there’s always the Carnival of Feminists if those don’t float your boat. Plus, the Carnival of Recipes.

I’ve been pretty lame about covering carnivals lately, but there’s always BlogCarnival.com, which covers the carnival scene better than I can anyway.

JULES CRITTENDEN FINDS a new reason to live.

A LOOK AT DUTCH CENSORSHIP.

ERIC SCHEIE: “I’d rather not take the New York Times surrender plea seriously, and I cannot believe that any sane human being would.”

Meanwhile, Hot Air notes that the New York Times’ editors might want to start reading their own paper.

RASMUSSEN ON LIVE EARTH:

The Live Earth concert promoted by former Vice President Al Gore received plenty of media coverage and hype, but most Americans tuned out. . . .

Skepticism about the participants may have been a factor in creating this low level of interest. Most Americans (52%) believe the performers take part in such events because it is good for their image. Only 24% say the celebrities really believe in the cause while another 24% are not sure. One rock star who apparently shared that view is Matt Bellamy of the band Muse. Earlier in the week, he jokingly referred to Live Earth as “private jets for climate change.”

Only 34% believe that events like Live Earth actually help the cause they are intended to serve. Forty-one percent (41%) disagree. Those figures include 10% who believe the events are Very Helpful and 20% who say they are Not at All Helfpul. Adding to the skepticism, an earlier survey found that just 24% of Americans consider Al Gore an expert on Global Warming.

Given a choice of four major issues before the United States today, 36% named the war in Iraq as most important. Twenty-five percent (25%) named immigration, 20% selected the economy and only 12% thought Global Warming was the top issue.

As I’ve suggested in the past, turning the hype-engine to 11 has probably done more harm than good. (Via NewsAlert). As Jack Shafer writes, in journalism, green is the new yellow.

Plus, a global-warming bet from Professor Scott Armstrong.

UPDATE: British TV ratings were a bust.

Plus, a Live Earth environmental assessment.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Howard Kurtz discovers that it’s not media bias if they believe in it:

NBC and its cable networks devoted a total of 35 hours of air time Saturday to the Live Earth concerts, organized by Al Gore to call attention to what he calls a global warming “crisis.”

The worldwide series of concerts, featuring 150 artists from Madonna to Red Hot Chili Peppers, was also designed to raise money for the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit group chaired by the former vice president. Commercials aired at a reduced rate.

Doesn’t this strike a discordant note? Wasn’t NBC, whose news division covers the debate over climate change, providing a huge platform for advocates on one side of a contentious issue? And isn’t the network helping a prominent Democrat — who granted “Today” an interview last week in which he was asked again about his presidential ambitions — raise money?

Dan Harrison, an NBC senior vice president, does not back away from the message. He calls the Gore effort “an initiative we believe in,” including parent company General Electric. “I really don’t think climate change is a political issue,” Harrison says.

Really?

Green is the new yellow. Except that I think Hearst and the Yellow Journalists knew what they were doing. These guys are so clueless that they really believe there’s nothing political about causes they agree with. Or maybe I’m giving them too much, er, credit.

DREAMING OF A heroically liberal Supreme Court.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GLASGOW TERRORISTS, from an Indian Muslim. (Via Amit Varma, who has more here).

THE USS Robert A. Heinlein?

MICKEY KAUS: “Wasn’t Jacqueline Bouvier kind of a ‘trophy wife’? Just asking!” When Democrats do it, it’s “glamor.”

UPDATE: Ouch: “In 2004, America came fairly close to electing a trophy husband.”