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Weekend approaches - 09 October 2008
Oct. 9th, 2008 11:56 pmI’d hate for a weekend to go sour while I am simply laid up and sick, but if that’s the way things go, then so be it, I guess. I’m hoping that I can get the blockage and phlegm all out and be back to my happy, healthy self by tomorrow. If not, I’m probably sitting it out for the weekend and recovering. Admittedly, this is the first full-blown cold that’s gotten to me, so it’s a good thing. Must have been the first set of really nice rain that did it. Funny how the element that refreshes me the most is also the one that tends to make me sick. One hand giveth, the other smacketh me upside the head. Perhaps at some point in my life, I’ll have wine coming out of my water tap, but for now, I’ll just have to try and get healthier.
Internationally, Missiles are apparently on the North Korean docket.
In domestic matters, one in four children of a survey thought it was illegal for anyone other than a white male to become President, while at the same time recognizing that a reason we haven’t had anything else is the use of racial and gender discrimination tactics against those who are running. More bad news: Many of those children argued that another reason it hasn’t happened was because the others were in some way inferior to the white men. More good news: Those children believe firmly that the Presidency should be open to everyone. So what happened here? Well, nobody told them. Lacking an explanation as to why it’s always white dudes on the Presidency, children exercise their creative thinking and their logical minds, developed as they are to that point, and come up with a pretty simple solution set, some of which includes “It must be illegal.” Based on the evidence and information they have, it’s not a faulty conclusion in any way, it just happens not to be correct once you add the missing knowledge. The best news out of this, and what we need to take to heart: Children are smarter than they appear. They know lots, they’ve paid attention, and they’re working things out in their own minds. It’s up to those of us with more knowledge to supplement theirs and not think that any topic is really beyond their reach. I have had very young children in my library, having just finished studying World War II, looking to get a thorough understanding of the Cold War. To the dedicated learner, no things are beyond them.
The defendant in the case of hacking Governor Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account pleaded not guilty, moving the case to a trial on the charges of accessing her e-mail without authorization. Why there hasn’t been a probe into seeing whether the Governor was indeed conducting official business away from her official e-mail, I don’t know. The "Troopergate" results and investigation will go on as planned, despite efforts to stop it, so the Governor could be hurting soon.
AIG continues to get new cash, even as it fields questions about the executive retreat put on not too long ago. All around the economic world, the prevailing emotion is panic, apparently. Even as central banks cut interest rates, the stock markets are not recovering or stabilizing. And even after it passed, bitter wrangling about whether bailing out companies with government money was proper, or whether it was proper to let the market savage everyone it could. But, now that it’s there, it doesn’t mean that the Republican candidate won't try to wield it to political advantage, offering a plan to use nearly half of the bailout chunk to buy up bad mortgages and hold them. It’s not a new plan, according to his opponent, but one worth considering. The economic crisis doesn’t stop others from trying to warn us of a threat they see - in fact, it makes them feel more afraid that through "Sharia-compliant finance", radical groups and companies will be able to buy up large shares of American companies and use them to force America to become a radically Islamic country or fail. Mm-hmm. And Latin Christendom worried that the Jewish moneylenders would be able to take over the whole thing, right? Even for less extreme positions, columnists complain that the mainstream media is bending over backwards to absolve Democrats of any responsibility for the crisis, because it was through their [Democratic] policies, profiteering off of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (in the same vein that all the private enterprises also profited), and forcing lenders to give bad loans to people who didn’t deserve them that the crisis appeared.
Although, it is a bit heartening to realize that the situation can be explained to a fourteen year-old girl using Pokemon cards as an example.
And because we haven’t heard from the Department of Fear-Mongering, err, Homeland Security, for a while, let’s see what they’re up to. Recommending restrictions on the visa waiver program because terrorists will exploit expansions, yes, very classic. Putting up spy satellites without checking to see if it violates privacy, that’s right in the playbook. Be sure to wave and flip them off if you suspect they’re looking at you. At least they’ve caught up to what we knew some time ago - widespread data-mining and sifting, hoping to catch terrorists, is totally unfeasible. Congratulations. Now, if you’d get on the study that says, “No, really, spying on Americans without a warrant or probably cause is also illegal”, we could talk. And while you’re at it, could you tell the National Security Agency to stop listening in on our soldiers' calls, especially the one where they're having phone sex with their significant others?
The Maryland State Police have been taking lessons from DHS, as 53 peaceful activists were classified as terrorists and entered into the databases by the State Police in the past, but now their names are being purged from the rolls. Those who did the classifying defended their decision, claiming the First Amendment had no sway over those who want to disrupt government and calling the people on the list “fringe people”. Perhaps to the view of the person putting them on the rolls, they are dangerous fringe people, because they advocate against the continuation of wars and death. To the rest of us, however, those "fringe people" are nuns and other peace-loving people.
In a case of the news following the columnists, as best I can tell, now we hear that the state of Missouri is looking into registrations sent in by ACORN, checking for fraudulent and duplicated registrations. Apparently, ACORN’s drives have been successful by their own numbers in recruiting working-class and poor person, who tend to vote Democratic, which may have prompted closer scrutiny by the opponents of Democrats, and thus the Obama-ACORN link attack. The way this is unfolding is pretty backwards, though, first the link, then the articles.
In the opinions, a new way of thinking about production and design - if, instead of aiming to be a mass-produced megahit, letting True Fans make input into the design, and then buying the product they've collaboratively made at the end, one could potentially make a living doing the design and manufacture of such things for the Thousand True Fans that one would need. Maybe some of those True Fans will only buy certain lines of things, so it might be five hundred Hardcore and finding a set of five hundred from the others who are interested only in one set, but still, it could work. Having the ability to invest in the design and help shape the product into the thing that you would want to buy would make it more likely to use, rather than waiting for someone at Big Box Widget Corporation X to create something that’s almost, but not quite, tea and telling you that’s the best they can do, so the masses need to buy it up. If, instead, you get to tell someone you’re a fan of English Breakfast, at the end it might be Irish Breakfast, but at least it’s honest-to-Prime tea.
Candidate opinions opens with a billboard. A billboard that shows the owner knows nothing but has enough money to advertise it. The “Obama is a Muslim/terrorist” thing continues to zombify, despite the fact that it shouldn’t have lived in the first place. And, as far as I know, Senator Obama has not actually come out in support of homosexual marriages, it’s just his opponents rushing to tar him with all the hot-button, knee-jerk issues they can. The Republican candidates are letting the worst excesses of their political base speak uncensored, which invites the more deranged of their bases to take action, where the possibly real consequences of a poor political gambit could be someone who thinks killing is the appropriate solution to the created problem of Senator Obama. At least this time, Thomas Sowell goes for how he feels that Barack Obama is beholden to teacher's unions and will actively block any real educational reform, rather than spending time jawing about whether he thinks Senator Obama is a Muslim.
But, if we’re going to talk about the personal lives and associations of the candidates... Sarah Palin still has connections to people who would love to see their theocracy in control (a transcript along for those who would read rather than hear). If we’re bringing up old stuff, let’s revisit Heather Mallick's denunciation of Palin as McCain's choice, for which the dittoheads of Fox Noise and their rabid rabble acquitted themselves in an appropriately FAIL manner, even gettting The General to take satirical issue with her comment about how the Republicans have no sexual staying power. And The Foo Fighters just joined the parade of artists telling Senator McCain to stop using their songs without permission. The McCain campaign has claimed that because they paid their fees to the copyright companies, they can play those songs. Well, they can, but if the Foo Fighters don’t want you using their song, it would be a good idea to stop.
All of that wraps up in a conclusion for In Contempt that I can’t really deny, and may possibly share some of: I Hate October. I’m definitely not fond of someone who files a column all about the differences between the ways the campaigns are run with the implication that one campaign should be voted for because it accommodates the press more, in his opinion, but I don’t know if that crosses into hate.
Actually, no, it doesn’t.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiredfairy has a succinct post on opposing parental-notification laws for teenage abortions and supporting homosexual marriages, the latter of which the Latter-Day Saints oppose to the point of contributing lots of cash and volunteer time to the effort to pass the proposition banning homosexual marriage. Being a large church, of course, not every member of the LDS believes it, but being the person that I am, I tend to give more weight to the forgiveness and tolerance part than the fire and brimstone part. Still, I find it odd for any church to declare an expression of love between two people something that must be only accorded to a few.
In our scientific realms, the possibility of turning microblogging toys into actually useful work tools, if someone can find a reason to do so and a way of making the feed work so as not to overwhelm the already overwhelmed worker who can barely keep up with e-mail, the recipient of a two-arm transplant is doing well with his new limbs, quantum encryption about to hit commercial usage, more medical information going live to databases, teaching computers to look for pictures based on linguistic representations of their contents, or, describing in words to a computer what to find and letting it go look at pictures until it finds one that matches, more studies proving the line between genius and madness is very fine, and an opinion that human evolution has stopped, because older fathers are not having children, based on the higher incidence of mutations that could be beneficial in fathers over 35.
Last for tonight, Pirate Pass-Off, with the optional Ninja Pass-Off addition, representing a realm of games that are easy to pick up, but can be changed midstream to make them more difficult to play and win at. In some ways, it’s a simpler version of Fluxx. Additionally, adding and changing album art and then reselling it as art, which fetches quite the high prices, because a lot of the art is good art and a good remix. And an interview with William Gibson, about Science Fiction, Burroughs, and the writing method.
And Google Transit, for planning routes when you have no car.
On the long tail end, painting broad strokes of members of other religions, because we also haven’t heard much for Islamic terror fearmongering lately (see above with “Sharia finance” for the economic version, and follow for the political version), Robert Spencer decries Islam as teaching "violence and supremacism" from authoritative sources, and saying Christianity does not, in his insistent calls that Muslims denounce their militant coreligionists, in a way that he will accept, with a very nice ten-point list of requirements that all have to be done before he will consider anyone a moderate Muslim, having already decreed that there isn’t going to be anyone who qualifies as a scholar properly fit to do exegesis on the original works, rather than making commentary on the commentary.
Well, now. That’s an invitation I can’t resist. Let’s have a look at them, shall we?
1. Acknowledge the existence of and repudiate the traditional Islamic imperative, taught by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence that Muslims recognize as orthodox, to impose Islamic law upon non-Muslims, whether by force or by stealth.
2. Renounce any intention, now or in the future, to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law.
[So, will all Christians also renounce their claims to replace the Constitution with their version of Christian law and cease their efforts to impose their brand of Christianity on others before they can be called moderates? If so, I’d be kind of happy, because then I wouldn’t have to worry nearly as much about theocrats and Dominionists and all the Christian domestic terrorists being taken seriously as upstanding people who we should all be following.]
3. Clarify, and call upon other Muslims in America to clarify, what is meant by the words “terrorism” and “innocent” in Muslim condemnations of terrorism, so that it is clear that what is being condemned is the murder of American and other non-combatants by Muslims acting in the name of Islamic jihad.
[And we’ll be fighting against the bombing of abortion clinics as the murder of innocents and other non-combatants by Christians acting in the name of God? Excellent! I’m liking this agreement already.]
4. Repudiate the idea that Muslims have a divine mandate to force, when possible, Jews, Christians, and other “People of the Book” to pay a special religion-based tax from which Muslims are exempt (Qur’an 9:29).
[And get rid of that tax exemption for all churches, too, considering it’s a religion-based principle as well. Oh, and did I mention the part where it’s probably only in the most fundamentalist countries that such a tax would even be thought of as a possibility, much less be collected, so most Muslims have already moved on from that?]
5. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching the virtues of the non-establishment of religion, and teaching directly against Islamic supremacism and the idea that Muslims must fight against Jews and Christians until they “feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).
[Sure, and let’s get rid of the homeschooling and the Catholic school system, too, since there’s the possibility for the teaching of those vices there, too.]
6. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching against honor killing, and against the idea -- which is enshrined in Islamic law -- that a parent faces no penalty for killing his or her own child (see ‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).
[Recall that a venerable institution such as the Bible did not discourage the taking of slaves as well as exterminating all of one’s enemy men and impregnating their women with your seed. Not all that is written is followed to the letter here, so why should you expect it there? Besides, I’d wager most of the Muslim world does frown on honor killings and the like, and how many of them happening in America are there?]
7. Call upon Muslims worldwide, including in Saudi Arabia, to end all institutionalized discrimination against and harassment of non-Muslims, and to allow churches and other houses of worship to be built in majority-Muslim countries with an ease comparable to that with which mosques are currently built in Western countries.
[Meaning with the protesters and the chemical-sprayers and the Fred Phelps clan and the bigoted people who don’t want whatever the equivalent of “towel-heads” in their country and the constant possibility of being a terror target? If you say so...]
8. Repudiate the idea that a Muslim who renounces Islam and adopts any other faith or no faith at all should be killed -- as is the teaching of Muhammad and all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence -- and call upon Muslim groups in America to teach the freedom of conscience as a God-given right in American mosques and Islamic schools.
[And you’ll be modifying the teachings of Christianity, then, to remove the damnation and punishment of hell to those who leave the faith, and encourage members to respect their decision, instead of “love-bombing” or almost constantly reaching out to them to try and pull them back into the fold, the point of ruining their lives and driving them toward suicide or into hiding? If that doesn’t work, see my point above about how everything written is not necessarily everything followed. Apostasy-killings will happen in the same places as honor-killings, where there are other reasons why the ruling class wants to keep everyone else down. In America, you’ll still be charged with murder, no matter whether you claim he was an apostate or not.]
9. Call upon Muslims in America and worldwide to drop the traditional and authoritative Islamic prohibition of marriage between non-Muslim men and Muslim women, and to repudiate and teach against the idea of divinely sanctioned wife-beating (Qur’an 4:34).
[And you’ll be calling for Christians to ignore the part about child-beating, the duty of wives to be submissive, and the sanction that can be read in the Christian scriptures that would give a man a right to beat his wife to discipline her? And you’ll tell them that they should stop insisting that people who marry into the religion convert, as well?]
10. Condemn Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist organizations, and the Islamic Republic of Iran for its continuing the barbaric practice of stoning people to death. Call upon Muslim groups to teach against stoning as a punishment for adultery or anything else in American mosques and Islamic schools.
[Ah, the political aspect, and the stoning part. Again, where are these things happening? In places where there are vested interests in keeping classes and genders underfoot.]
So, really, he’s taking the worst excesses of the places that are highly interested in oppression, and then assuming that anyone who doesn’t formally and publicly repudiate them is assenting to them and approving of them, and would happily do them in their own homes here in America? If that’s the case, then we have a serious problem with all the wife-and-child-beating, homosexual-killing, card-carrying Klansmen and women theocrats who are calling themselves Christians, because they haven’t publicly denounced Phelps, the KKK, the Dominionists, and all the other worst excesses of the Christian fringe. In fact, since I haven’t seen Roberts do that, I must assume that he is not a moderate Christian, or a moderate American, for that matter.
Which, of course, he is not. And, if I were to denounce all the things above, would probably make me a liberal, by American standards, especially in the standing-up-for-the-gays part. If that’s true, and only liberals are moderates, then what does that make the conservative block? (Whee! Watch as I probably commit logic and thinking errors all over the place to get to my chosen conclusion! It’s FUN!)
Internationally, Missiles are apparently on the North Korean docket.
In domestic matters, one in four children of a survey thought it was illegal for anyone other than a white male to become President, while at the same time recognizing that a reason we haven’t had anything else is the use of racial and gender discrimination tactics against those who are running. More bad news: Many of those children argued that another reason it hasn’t happened was because the others were in some way inferior to the white men. More good news: Those children believe firmly that the Presidency should be open to everyone. So what happened here? Well, nobody told them. Lacking an explanation as to why it’s always white dudes on the Presidency, children exercise their creative thinking and their logical minds, developed as they are to that point, and come up with a pretty simple solution set, some of which includes “It must be illegal.” Based on the evidence and information they have, it’s not a faulty conclusion in any way, it just happens not to be correct once you add the missing knowledge. The best news out of this, and what we need to take to heart: Children are smarter than they appear. They know lots, they’ve paid attention, and they’re working things out in their own minds. It’s up to those of us with more knowledge to supplement theirs and not think that any topic is really beyond their reach. I have had very young children in my library, having just finished studying World War II, looking to get a thorough understanding of the Cold War. To the dedicated learner, no things are beyond them.
The defendant in the case of hacking Governor Sarah Palin's personal e-mail account pleaded not guilty, moving the case to a trial on the charges of accessing her e-mail without authorization. Why there hasn’t been a probe into seeing whether the Governor was indeed conducting official business away from her official e-mail, I don’t know. The "Troopergate" results and investigation will go on as planned, despite efforts to stop it, so the Governor could be hurting soon.
AIG continues to get new cash, even as it fields questions about the executive retreat put on not too long ago. All around the economic world, the prevailing emotion is panic, apparently. Even as central banks cut interest rates, the stock markets are not recovering or stabilizing. And even after it passed, bitter wrangling about whether bailing out companies with government money was proper, or whether it was proper to let the market savage everyone it could. But, now that it’s there, it doesn’t mean that the Republican candidate won't try to wield it to political advantage, offering a plan to use nearly half of the bailout chunk to buy up bad mortgages and hold them. It’s not a new plan, according to his opponent, but one worth considering. The economic crisis doesn’t stop others from trying to warn us of a threat they see - in fact, it makes them feel more afraid that through "Sharia-compliant finance", radical groups and companies will be able to buy up large shares of American companies and use them to force America to become a radically Islamic country or fail. Mm-hmm. And Latin Christendom worried that the Jewish moneylenders would be able to take over the whole thing, right? Even for less extreme positions, columnists complain that the mainstream media is bending over backwards to absolve Democrats of any responsibility for the crisis, because it was through their [Democratic] policies, profiteering off of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (in the same vein that all the private enterprises also profited), and forcing lenders to give bad loans to people who didn’t deserve them that the crisis appeared.
Although, it is a bit heartening to realize that the situation can be explained to a fourteen year-old girl using Pokemon cards as an example.
And because we haven’t heard from the Department of Fear-Mongering, err, Homeland Security, for a while, let’s see what they’re up to. Recommending restrictions on the visa waiver program because terrorists will exploit expansions, yes, very classic. Putting up spy satellites without checking to see if it violates privacy, that’s right in the playbook. Be sure to wave and flip them off if you suspect they’re looking at you. At least they’ve caught up to what we knew some time ago - widespread data-mining and sifting, hoping to catch terrorists, is totally unfeasible. Congratulations. Now, if you’d get on the study that says, “No, really, spying on Americans without a warrant or probably cause is also illegal”, we could talk. And while you’re at it, could you tell the National Security Agency to stop listening in on our soldiers' calls, especially the one where they're having phone sex with their significant others?
The Maryland State Police have been taking lessons from DHS, as 53 peaceful activists were classified as terrorists and entered into the databases by the State Police in the past, but now their names are being purged from the rolls. Those who did the classifying defended their decision, claiming the First Amendment had no sway over those who want to disrupt government and calling the people on the list “fringe people”. Perhaps to the view of the person putting them on the rolls, they are dangerous fringe people, because they advocate against the continuation of wars and death. To the rest of us, however, those "fringe people" are nuns and other peace-loving people.
In a case of the news following the columnists, as best I can tell, now we hear that the state of Missouri is looking into registrations sent in by ACORN, checking for fraudulent and duplicated registrations. Apparently, ACORN’s drives have been successful by their own numbers in recruiting working-class and poor person, who tend to vote Democratic, which may have prompted closer scrutiny by the opponents of Democrats, and thus the Obama-ACORN link attack. The way this is unfolding is pretty backwards, though, first the link, then the articles.
In the opinions, a new way of thinking about production and design - if, instead of aiming to be a mass-produced megahit, letting True Fans make input into the design, and then buying the product they've collaboratively made at the end, one could potentially make a living doing the design and manufacture of such things for the Thousand True Fans that one would need. Maybe some of those True Fans will only buy certain lines of things, so it might be five hundred Hardcore and finding a set of five hundred from the others who are interested only in one set, but still, it could work. Having the ability to invest in the design and help shape the product into the thing that you would want to buy would make it more likely to use, rather than waiting for someone at Big Box Widget Corporation X to create something that’s almost, but not quite, tea and telling you that’s the best they can do, so the masses need to buy it up. If, instead, you get to tell someone you’re a fan of English Breakfast, at the end it might be Irish Breakfast, but at least it’s honest-to-Prime tea.
Candidate opinions opens with a billboard. A billboard that shows the owner knows nothing but has enough money to advertise it. The “Obama is a Muslim/terrorist” thing continues to zombify, despite the fact that it shouldn’t have lived in the first place. And, as far as I know, Senator Obama has not actually come out in support of homosexual marriages, it’s just his opponents rushing to tar him with all the hot-button, knee-jerk issues they can. The Republican candidates are letting the worst excesses of their political base speak uncensored, which invites the more deranged of their bases to take action, where the possibly real consequences of a poor political gambit could be someone who thinks killing is the appropriate solution to the created problem of Senator Obama. At least this time, Thomas Sowell goes for how he feels that Barack Obama is beholden to teacher's unions and will actively block any real educational reform, rather than spending time jawing about whether he thinks Senator Obama is a Muslim.
But, if we’re going to talk about the personal lives and associations of the candidates... Sarah Palin still has connections to people who would love to see their theocracy in control (a transcript along for those who would read rather than hear). If we’re bringing up old stuff, let’s revisit Heather Mallick's denunciation of Palin as McCain's choice, for which the dittoheads of Fox Noise and their rabid rabble acquitted themselves in an appropriately FAIL manner, even gettting The General to take satirical issue with her comment about how the Republicans have no sexual staying power. And The Foo Fighters just joined the parade of artists telling Senator McCain to stop using their songs without permission. The McCain campaign has claimed that because they paid their fees to the copyright companies, they can play those songs. Well, they can, but if the Foo Fighters don’t want you using their song, it would be a good idea to stop.
All of that wraps up in a conclusion for In Contempt that I can’t really deny, and may possibly share some of: I Hate October. I’m definitely not fond of someone who files a column all about the differences between the ways the campaigns are run with the implication that one campaign should be voted for because it accommodates the press more, in his opinion, but I don’t know if that crosses into hate.
Actually, no, it doesn’t.
tiredfairy has a succinct post on opposing parental-notification laws for teenage abortions and supporting homosexual marriages, the latter of which the Latter-Day Saints oppose to the point of contributing lots of cash and volunteer time to the effort to pass the proposition banning homosexual marriage. Being a large church, of course, not every member of the LDS believes it, but being the person that I am, I tend to give more weight to the forgiveness and tolerance part than the fire and brimstone part. Still, I find it odd for any church to declare an expression of love between two people something that must be only accorded to a few.In our scientific realms, the possibility of turning microblogging toys into actually useful work tools, if someone can find a reason to do so and a way of making the feed work so as not to overwhelm the already overwhelmed worker who can barely keep up with e-mail, the recipient of a two-arm transplant is doing well with his new limbs, quantum encryption about to hit commercial usage, more medical information going live to databases, teaching computers to look for pictures based on linguistic representations of their contents, or, describing in words to a computer what to find and letting it go look at pictures until it finds one that matches, more studies proving the line between genius and madness is very fine, and an opinion that human evolution has stopped, because older fathers are not having children, based on the higher incidence of mutations that could be beneficial in fathers over 35.
Last for tonight, Pirate Pass-Off, with the optional Ninja Pass-Off addition, representing a realm of games that are easy to pick up, but can be changed midstream to make them more difficult to play and win at. In some ways, it’s a simpler version of Fluxx. Additionally, adding and changing album art and then reselling it as art, which fetches quite the high prices, because a lot of the art is good art and a good remix. And an interview with William Gibson, about Science Fiction, Burroughs, and the writing method.
And Google Transit, for planning routes when you have no car.
On the long tail end, painting broad strokes of members of other religions, because we also haven’t heard much for Islamic terror fearmongering lately (see above with “Sharia finance” for the economic version, and follow for the political version), Robert Spencer decries Islam as teaching "violence and supremacism" from authoritative sources, and saying Christianity does not, in his insistent calls that Muslims denounce their militant coreligionists, in a way that he will accept, with a very nice ten-point list of requirements that all have to be done before he will consider anyone a moderate Muslim, having already decreed that there isn’t going to be anyone who qualifies as a scholar properly fit to do exegesis on the original works, rather than making commentary on the commentary.
Well, now. That’s an invitation I can’t resist. Let’s have a look at them, shall we?
1. Acknowledge the existence of and repudiate the traditional Islamic imperative, taught by all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence that Muslims recognize as orthodox, to impose Islamic law upon non-Muslims, whether by force or by stealth.
2. Renounce any intention, now or in the future, to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law.
[So, will all Christians also renounce their claims to replace the Constitution with their version of Christian law and cease their efforts to impose their brand of Christianity on others before they can be called moderates? If so, I’d be kind of happy, because then I wouldn’t have to worry nearly as much about theocrats and Dominionists and all the Christian domestic terrorists being taken seriously as upstanding people who we should all be following.]
3. Clarify, and call upon other Muslims in America to clarify, what is meant by the words “terrorism” and “innocent” in Muslim condemnations of terrorism, so that it is clear that what is being condemned is the murder of American and other non-combatants by Muslims acting in the name of Islamic jihad.
[And we’ll be fighting against the bombing of abortion clinics as the murder of innocents and other non-combatants by Christians acting in the name of God? Excellent! I’m liking this agreement already.]
4. Repudiate the idea that Muslims have a divine mandate to force, when possible, Jews, Christians, and other “People of the Book” to pay a special religion-based tax from which Muslims are exempt (Qur’an 9:29).
[And get rid of that tax exemption for all churches, too, considering it’s a religion-based principle as well. Oh, and did I mention the part where it’s probably only in the most fundamentalist countries that such a tax would even be thought of as a possibility, much less be collected, so most Muslims have already moved on from that?]
5. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching the virtues of the non-establishment of religion, and teaching directly against Islamic supremacism and the idea that Muslims must fight against Jews and Christians until they “feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).
[Sure, and let’s get rid of the homeschooling and the Catholic school system, too, since there’s the possibility for the teaching of those vices there, too.]
6. Call upon Muslims in America to institute comprehensive, honest, and transparent programs in mosques and Islamic schools, teaching against honor killing, and against the idea -- which is enshrined in Islamic law -- that a parent faces no penalty for killing his or her own child (see ‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2).
[Recall that a venerable institution such as the Bible did not discourage the taking of slaves as well as exterminating all of one’s enemy men and impregnating their women with your seed. Not all that is written is followed to the letter here, so why should you expect it there? Besides, I’d wager most of the Muslim world does frown on honor killings and the like, and how many of them happening in America are there?]
7. Call upon Muslims worldwide, including in Saudi Arabia, to end all institutionalized discrimination against and harassment of non-Muslims, and to allow churches and other houses of worship to be built in majority-Muslim countries with an ease comparable to that with which mosques are currently built in Western countries.
[Meaning with the protesters and the chemical-sprayers and the Fred Phelps clan and the bigoted people who don’t want whatever the equivalent of “towel-heads” in their country and the constant possibility of being a terror target? If you say so...]
8. Repudiate the idea that a Muslim who renounces Islam and adopts any other faith or no faith at all should be killed -- as is the teaching of Muhammad and all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence -- and call upon Muslim groups in America to teach the freedom of conscience as a God-given right in American mosques and Islamic schools.
[And you’ll be modifying the teachings of Christianity, then, to remove the damnation and punishment of hell to those who leave the faith, and encourage members to respect their decision, instead of “love-bombing” or almost constantly reaching out to them to try and pull them back into the fold, the point of ruining their lives and driving them toward suicide or into hiding? If that doesn’t work, see my point above about how everything written is not necessarily everything followed. Apostasy-killings will happen in the same places as honor-killings, where there are other reasons why the ruling class wants to keep everyone else down. In America, you’ll still be charged with murder, no matter whether you claim he was an apostate or not.]
9. Call upon Muslims in America and worldwide to drop the traditional and authoritative Islamic prohibition of marriage between non-Muslim men and Muslim women, and to repudiate and teach against the idea of divinely sanctioned wife-beating (Qur’an 4:34).
[And you’ll be calling for Christians to ignore the part about child-beating, the duty of wives to be submissive, and the sanction that can be read in the Christian scriptures that would give a man a right to beat his wife to discipline her? And you’ll tell them that they should stop insisting that people who marry into the religion convert, as well?]
10. Condemn Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist organizations, and the Islamic Republic of Iran for its continuing the barbaric practice of stoning people to death. Call upon Muslim groups to teach against stoning as a punishment for adultery or anything else in American mosques and Islamic schools.
[Ah, the political aspect, and the stoning part. Again, where are these things happening? In places where there are vested interests in keeping classes and genders underfoot.]
So, really, he’s taking the worst excesses of the places that are highly interested in oppression, and then assuming that anyone who doesn’t formally and publicly repudiate them is assenting to them and approving of them, and would happily do them in their own homes here in America? If that’s the case, then we have a serious problem with all the wife-and-child-beating, homosexual-killing, card-carrying Klansmen and women theocrats who are calling themselves Christians, because they haven’t publicly denounced Phelps, the KKK, the Dominionists, and all the other worst excesses of the Christian fringe. In fact, since I haven’t seen Roberts do that, I must assume that he is not a moderate Christian, or a moderate American, for that matter.
Which, of course, he is not. And, if I were to denounce all the things above, would probably make me a liberal, by American standards, especially in the standing-up-for-the-gays part. If that’s true, and only liberals are moderates, then what does that make the conservative block? (Whee! Watch as I probably commit logic and thinking errors all over the place to get to my chosen conclusion! It’s FUN!)
