The “Military Performing Pop Sensations” meme is apparently still going strong, and it appears that our troops become better and better performers with every new viral hit. After releasing breathtaking renditions of Lady Gaga‘s “Telephone” and Ke$ha‘s “Blah Blah Blah,” the latest single to come out of Afghanistan is Britney Spears‘s “Hold It Against Me”: an impressively elaborate affair.

Earlier this afternoon, a man with a knife stood outside San Diego police headquarters. Eventually, he made a movement towards the officers, and they shot him. This all went out on a live feed on KFMB-TV CBS 8′s website. Only after the shooting did the news crew learn that the man was shot with non-lethal bullets. However, until that confirmation, it seemed like a man had just been blown away with shotguns and a news site had aired it all live.

Its a time-honored tradition for news sites and media blogs to throw up a “lets give thanks” type story in Thanksgiving Day.

And so, following are the images and descriptions of some of the top media stories, narratives and personalities that have made Fall such an interesting, exciting and yes, well-trafficked season for Mediaite. Happy Thanksgiving!

Glenn Beck returned to live air tonight after a weekend of dealing with health issues (everything is apparently fine) and spent the first 15 minutes of the show discussing the horrific anti-gay Bronx attacks (in gruesome detail) from this weekend, calling them “anti-human” and “bigotry for sport”. He didn’t stop there.

We’ve heard no end of how Jihadists, either here or abroad, have been radicalized through the Internet, particularly Internet message boards aimed at young Muslim men. A new study out from the Quilliam foundation called ‘Cheering for Osama’ looked specifically at the “ideological content of these websites…to show how pro-jihadist individuals interact on the sites.” The results are interesting…to say the least. See if any of this sounds familiar.

Glenn Beck returned to the airwaves last night after a week-long vacation, during which he picked up a puppet dressed in Chinese military garb Mao puppet at Disney Land. Beck’s latest grumble after a week away — other than the fact the country apparently went nuts while he was off the air — is Net Neutrality and the FCC hearing that is taking place this week regarding the latest Net Neutrality bill. He’s against it.

Not even the White House can compete with the power of the Google. TechPresident picked up on this subtle use of phrasing by the White House blog to optimize the SEO of their posts…basically how to show up a higher on Google search results.

I love technology and man is it helpful. But it also means you’re always on. Always findable. Always available to “just take five minutes” to answer an email, tweet a link for someone, check in quickly on FourSquare. And our reflexes have developed accordingly. (This I know well after a week of SXSW!) So that’s why I’m strangely pumped to embark on the National Day of Unplugging, to take some time away from tech to celebrate life IRL. (That’s “in real life” for those of you who don’t speak nerd, yo.).

We are about to head into six weeks of non-stop, end-of-decade countdown and highlight lists. Granted it’s been a helluva a decade. Or, according to Time ‘The Decade From Hell,’ which is the moniker they’ve apparently opted to give it.