A perfect storm is brewing for the IPCC

Interesting, this isn't over.  HT: Ken

Telegraph

The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm – after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost.

The chief defence offered by the warmists to all those revelations centred on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. OK, they say, it might have been wrong to predict that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035; that global warming was about to destroy 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest and cut African crop yields by 50 per cent; that sea levels were rising dangerously; that hurricanes, droughts and other "extreme weather events" were getting worse. These were a handful of isolated errors in a massive report; behind them the mighty edifice of global warming orthodoxy remains unscathed. The "science is settled", the "consensus" is intact.

Misandry

Classical Values :: A mainstream meme that cannot speak its name

The Final Freedoms

Good grief this is syncretism at its worst.  Take something from every type of religious writing there is, throw them together and mix with the new progressive mind set and voila!

The Final Freedoms

Almost four years ago, a manuscript started circulating on the web titled The Final Freedoms. The ideas contained within it are profound and new not just to the public domain but to history itself, and however implausible this may sound to the modern mind, this small work may hold the potential for changing the very course of human history. The reason for such an audacious statement becomes self-evident to those who take the time to fully explore its insights.

The following three essays go some way to explaining just why this material is an imperative study for all progressives and anyone looking for the means to radically change in the existing political and cultural status quo, indeed for anyone able to imagine beyond the limits of what history has presumed possible. For that line in the mind has been moved, and to move with it, is to change the future of human civilization and planet.


review: The Final Freedoms©free

On the horizon is an approaching religious, cultural and scientific furore so contentious, any clash of civilizations may have to wait. On one side, a manuscript titled: The Final Freedoms, against all the gravitas religious tradition can bring to bear.

The first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the moral teachings of Christ is on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word and the Resurrection, this new interpretation questions the validity and origins of all Christian tradition; focusing specifically on marriage, love and human sexuality, it overturns all natural law ethics and theory. At stake is the credibility of several thousand years of religious history and moral teaching, and will certainly impact other fields of intellectual inquiry.

The Democratic Party is No Longer the Pro-Israel Part

This has become more apparent for some time now:

YID With LID:

As the far left progressive movement continues its stranglehold on the Democratic Party, the party faithful moves away from Israel to satisfy the progressives.

Progressive websites such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post contain some of the most vile Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic rhetoric on the web.

For example during the controversy surrounding the Charles Freeman appointment last year the following was posted on Huffington post:

The Name of God: Jehovah

Nice summary of how the term Jehovah became used.  It is an artificial construct and really should be avoided as it is inaccurate:

Dr. Claude Mariottini - Professor of Old Testament

The name Jehovah is not the real name of God. Let me explain. The word Jehovah, a popular English name used by Christians to identify the God of the Old Testament, was not used until after 1278 A.D.

In the Hebrew Bible, the name of God is expressed by four consonants: YHWH. These four consonants are also known in academic circles as the Tetragrammaton. The name of God was revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai:

The Boat Beneath the Pyramid

Fascinating:

Talking Pyramids: Ancient Egyptian Pyramids News

There are few new additions to that great web resource Giza Archives that readers will be interested in. Two of these relate to the solar boat of Khufu and the pit in which it was found in 1954.

The Internet? Bah!

Wonderful prescience circa 1995, heh.

Clifford Stoll: Why Web Won't Be Nirvana - Newsweek.com

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

Dems sneak in bill to punish CIA

Good grief.  At least they have been caught out, again:

 Washington Examiner

I just got an urgent call from a Republican source on the House Intelligence Committee. The House is about to debate the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act (H.R. 2701), and, with all eyes are on the health care summit, Democrats have slipped into the bill a new provision that would establish criminal punishments for CIA agents and other intelligence officials who engage in "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" during interrogations.

The Health Summit

National Review Online

Things could surely change this afternoon, but so far it is hard to see how the Democrats are doing themselves anything but harm with the health-care summit.

Beyond particular observations about individual exchanges or moments I would say the morning’s session suggests three broad points. First, the Democrats appear to have no particular purpose in mind for this event. They’re not driving anywhere, or making a clear individual case, while Republicans clearly want to get across the point that we should scrap the current bills and start over in pursuit of a few incremental steps. The Democrats may have thought that simply putting the spotlight on Republicans when the subject is health care would make the GOP look bad. But Republicans so far seem prepared enough and focused enough to avoid that, and to make the Democrats look rather aimless by comparison.

The Summit So Far - Yuval Levin - The Corner on National Review Online

Things could surely change this afternoon, but so far it is hard to see how the Democrats are doing themselves anything but harm with the health-care summit.

Beyond particular observations about individual exchanges or moments I would say the morning’s session suggests three broad points. First, the Democrats appear to have no particular purpose in mind for this event. They’re not driving anywhere, or making a clear individual case, while Republicans clearly want to get across the point that we should scrap the current bills and start over in pursuit of a few incremental steps. The Democrats may have thought that simply putting the spotlight on Republicans when the subject is health care would make the GOP look bad. But Republicans so far seem prepared enough and focused enough to avoid that, and to make the Democrats look rather aimless by comparison.

WSJ: Obama's 'Sneaky' New Tax on Investments

I'm afraid there will be more surprises yet to come:

TaxProf Blog:

The White House's new health-care proposal promises the "largest middle class tax cut for health care in history," which is a creative way of describing a vast taxpayer-subsidized insurance entitlement. Naturally, the fine print goes on to describe one of the largest tax increases for health care in history, too.

This new ObamaCare bargain would for the first time apply the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax to "interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents," so-called passive income that we are told includes capital gains, though the latter wasn't explicitly mentioned in the proposal. This antigrowth investment tax would apply to singles earning more than $200,000 and joint filers over $250,000 and comes on top of the Senate's 0.9-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax, which would bring the combined employee-employer share to 3.8%.