If you weren't on the Internet last week, you'd probably be surprised to learn that Michele Bachmann accounted for a third of all blog links for the week ending on July 1st, according to the Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism. For those of you that were, you may be inclined to roll your eyes when recalling the two main Bachmann stories that the wayward internets were fixated on: her gaffe mixing up hometown serial killer John Wayne Garcy with the not-so-homegrown but much more family friendly legend John Wayne, and the slightly more substantial but certainly less humorous story about the benefits Bachmann has received from federal subsidies. This woman was born to be blogged about!

The number two story, according to the PEJ, was San Francisco considering banning the sale of pets. Then came Al Gore, fresh off a byline in a wave-making piece in Rolling Stone accusing the media of missing the boat on climate change and inevitably falling into the media's own crosshairs around his work on global warming. We round this out with stories about the California budget, and the European economy. As you're looking at these, note the strong California bias (San Francisco, the environment, the budget in Sacramento, not to mention that the second Bachmann piece was an LA Times scoop). We're not complaining--it is after all, our most populated and priority-driven state. Still, a fascinating theme.

To compare: the number one story on the Twitter-net last week was Google +.

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Eli Rosenberg