Sunday Link-O-Rama

I have collected several day's worth of stories to comment on.

First up, there is this disturbing poll from ABCNews.com.

Amid broad public unfamiliarity with Islam, doubts about the religion's tenets have grown. More than a third of Americans now don't think it teaches respect for other beliefs, and nearly a quarter believe Islam encourages violence against non-Muslims.

If this were Christianity instead of Islam we were talking about, Ann Coulter's head would explode.

...visualizing...

Others echo my "Oh Goodie, Muslim sniper" reaction.

Said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations: "It's like a ball in your stomach. 'Oh God, here we go again.' Every time we seem to make some advancements, it's like we take one step forward and two steps back."

Next, Al Gore, who I didn't know was a cultural commentator, discusses the very Clockwork Orange-sounding News Plus.

News has become routine and cheap," Gore said. "It's becoming more standardized and homogenized." ..."[The networks] are having to sell a new kind of hybrid product - news plus. News plus entertainment, news plus attitude, news plus opinion," Gore said.

I'm beginning to wish I had taken his class.

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Not to be outdone, Arianna Huffington of Salon has a piece about a Anti-Oil campaign to mirror the new, completely retarted Anti-Drug campaign.

Imagine a soccer mom in a Ford Excursion (11 mpg city, 15 mpg highway) saying, "I'm building a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein." Or a mob of solo drivers toodling down the freeway at 75 mph shouting in unison, "We're buying weapons that will kill American soldiers, Marines and sailors! Yahoo!"

I think that's excellent.

*UPDATE* Apparently, there's talk of actually producing this ad, which I think is even more excellent.
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Last but not least, Tapped marks an important distinction.

Bush's lies are Big Lies. They are important lies. The difference between his lies and Gore's lies is the difference between saying you had a hot dog for lunch on Tuesday when you actually had one on Wednesday, and saying a tax cut is aimed at the middle class when in actuality 40 percent of it goes to the top one percent of Americans.

I've always felt that Democrats are skwered by the "liberal media" for their small lies (I didn't get oral sex, and movie plots were about me, and the internet) while Republican big lies are quickly forgotten or glossed over (I don't remember if I traded arms for hostages, Iraq has nuclear weapons, No New Taxes). But what do I know, I'm not a pundit.

That's all for now, folks.