Sunday Scan

Jihad week is coming to the University of California Irvine, according to Red County:

In what will be a counter to the non-existent Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, The Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine will be rolling out a series of racist and anti-American speakers next week. Featuring British-born journalist Yvonne Ridley, the infamous Amir Abdel Malik-Ali, and Shaykh Khalid Yasin, this school year's inaugural hate week won't disappoint the aspiring jihadist.

Here's the event program. If you want a hint of the jihadist jist of the theme, look no further than the blurb for Shaykh Khalid Yasin's little talk:

He was considered one of the most influential men to walk the Earth. Today, over a billion people adhere to what he preached. 1400 hundred years later, his message and story are still the center of an intense controversy - as evidenced by the Danish cartoons.

The Danish cartoons?! If we want to look at what's controversial about Moe-hammed's message, let's take a gander at 9/11, the infitada, Ahmadinejad's calls for the extermination of Israel and the oppression of a third of the world's women.

Oh. Scratch that last one. Feature speaker and Stockholm Syndrom poster girl Ridley is going to talk about how the Koran is "a Magna Carta for women." Uh huh. She's also called Israel a "vile little state" and praised Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Chechyen martyr mass-murderer Abdallah Shamil Abu Irdis.

If you're still looking for proof that the Muslim student associations in America are firmly in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Saudi Wahhabists, look no further than UCI this week.

Nothing Funny in Denmark

In the home of those notorious Mohammed cartoons, all eyes not on the big storms that are whipsawing coastal Europe are on November 17 and the upcoming election:

Since 2001, Denmark has been governed by a center-right Liberal/Conservative coalition under Prime Minister Rasmussen. This coalition has been supported in parliament by the right-wing populist Danish People's Party in exchange for implementing key demands, such as strict policies on immigration. In the most recent opinion polls, Denmark's two main parties -- the opposition Social Democrats and Rasmussen's center-right Liberals -- are running neck and neck, each with roughly 25 percent of the vote. (Spiegel)

Particularly interesting is who Spiegel is calling the "king-maker" of this election: Naser Khader, Denmark's first Muslim, first immigrant MP. Spiegel quotes polls that show Khader's party will get about six percent of the vote -- enough to play some serious politics if the Social Democrats and Liberals split the vote, as anticipated.

Insurance for Illegals

You know the GOP electeds are in real danger of losing the base when James Carville understands the immigration issue better than George Bush:

“Just as many workers with moderate incomes, uncertain employment and health insurance could not understand why they were being taxed to subsidize the long-term idleness of those on welfare,” Carville and [Stanley] Greenberg write, “many Americans are just as perplexed that this country has lost control of the borders and winks at illegal employment, taxing the resources of local schools and hospitals.” The frustration extends to health care. One voter lamented: “We can’t afford to do anything because we’re paying for health insurance,” yet illegal immigrants “just go in and get it free.”

The quote is from a Town Hall article on SCHIP by Michael Frank. The only thing that may save the GOP on immigration is that the Dems are lost even deeper in the forest of denial:

When rumors circulated that House leaders were contemplating language to require tough proof-of-citizenship requirements for SCHIP enrollees, representatives of the several race-based congressional caucuses as well as other “progressive” members jumped into action. They sent Speaker Nancy Pelosi a strongly-worded letter warning against further concessions, especially, CQ reported, “on immigration issues.”

“We are deeply concerned,” they wrote, “by the continued compromises we may be asked to make on behalf of our communities.” “Such compromises,” they warned, “cause us to question our support for the overall package.”

These members like the vetoed SCHIP bill because it would weaken the citizenship and identity verification requirements in current law to prevent illegal immigrants from enrolling in SCHIP.

It bears repeating: SCHIP is Hillarycare; Hillarycare is SCHIP.

Connectivity Drives Code

That's the mantra of Thomas P.M. Barnett of The Pentagon's New Map fame. It basically means if you want to participate and prosper in the global marketplace, there are rules to follow. If you want to live Kaczynski-like in a cabin in the woods, you can free yourself of a lot of the code, but at the cost of removing yourself from the material, intellectual and physical benefits of connectedness.

In his weekly column, Barnett tells us of the increasing difficulty with the Kaczynski lifestyle, which is also the bin Laden lifestyle: We are getting better and better at forcing people into the grid. His subject is fascinating: Nanotechnology and better fingerprinting. It's typical Barnett; taking a seemingly narrow and arcane subject and globalizing it:

In this increasingly connected world, it's our inability to finger bad actors that - in the end - allows them to create the most terror. Make better fairy dust, crack tougher codes, connect more dots, create more transparency, and you've got fewer bad actors.

Nano-fairy dust is interesting stuff; trust me.

Human Obliteration Watch

You may not need to put a fresh coat of paint on your "The End Is Near" sign, but here's a bad news from Wyoming (which, it seems, usually falls far short of its bad news quota):

The Yellowstone "supervolcano" rose at a record rate since mid-2004, likely because a Los Angeles-sized, pancake-shaped blob of molten rock was injected 6 miles beneath the slumbering giant, University of Utah scientists report in the journal Science. ...

The upward movement of the Yellowstone caldera floor -- almost 3 inches (7 centimeters) per year for the past three years -- is more than three times greater than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923, says the study in the Nov. 9 issue of Science by Smith, geophysics postdoctoral associate Wu-Lung Chang and colleagues.

The Science Daily article assures us there's no reason to worry; caldera go up and down all the time without massive explosions, horrific extinction, an ash-packed atmosphere with nuclear winter-like effects, and longer waits at Starbucks.

Hillary Waffles; Obama Taxes

Barack Obama has been politely pounding Hillary for not giving straightforward answers, but when he comes up with an answer, it leaves you wanting some waffling:

Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday he will push for higher Social Security taxes if elected, viewing it as the best option for improving the retirement program's finances. ...

[D]uring an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama said taxing more of a person's income was the option he would push for if elected president. He objected to benefit cuts or a higher retirement age.

"I think the best way to approach this is to adjust the cap on the payroll tax so that people like myself are paying a little bit more and people who are in need are protected," the Illinois senator said. ...

Currently, only [only?!] the first $97,500 of a person's annual income is taxed. That cap is scheduled to rise to $102,000 next year.

Obama's proposal could include a gap or "doughnut hole" to shield middle-income earners from higher payroll taxes, he said.

Doughnut holes ... waffles -- I wish the Dem prez candidates would go on a low-carb diet.

Image: Cox & Forkum