Bush Admin: losing me cut-by-cut

I don't know what is losing me faster from Bush 43 - bending over backwards on illegals for the slave-labor lobby and the La Raza racists - or bending over forwards for the likes of the German-American Bund ... errrrr ... C.A.I.R.

Andrew McCarthy, take it away:

The Transportation Security Administration is the executive agency created after 9/11 to protect American travelers. Yet, Americans viewing its website this weekend could not have felt very protected. Aghast, instead, would have been the proper response to this posting. As if snuggling up to CAIR, coercing our law-enforcement and intelligence professionals to endure CAIR’s Islamic “sensitivity training,” and inviting CAIR to weigh in on our nation’s foreign policy were not enough, we now have a Bush-administration agency publishing an unedited CAIR press release on publicly subsidized, official government Internet space.

In this instance, right under TSA’s emblem and a memorial banner depicting the late President Gerald R. Ford, Americans were treated to a news announcement beneath the big blue headline, “CAIR Welcomes TSA Hajj Sensitivity Training.” If you have the stomach for it, compare this TSA posting to the official CAIR press release from which it cribbed. They are identical.

Read it all.

The BNP Ballerina

Like most Americans, when I hear about the British National Party I think of SkinHeads like we saw from The Wall - or a bunch of yob'ish soccer hooligans from Eurotrip.

As is often the case, the truth is a little more complicated. Over in Ole Blighty, there is much naval gazing, gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes over the wonderfully named Simone Clarke.

Giselle is perhaps the most romantic of the classical ballets and always among the most popular. It is a tale shot through with passion and fear as the heroine, a naive peasant girl, is first seduced and then betrayed by a fairytale prince.

So when gifted lead dancer Simone Clarke takes the title role in the English National Ballet production at the London Coliseum next week, all eyes will naturally be on her.

But she will not be under the spotlight for her bewitching elegance and poise alone. No, the audience have a startling extra reason to focus their attention on Simone - because just days ago she was named as the BNP Ballerina.

The dancer's membership of the British National Party was exposed by a Guardian reporter who had gone undercover to join this unpleasant organisation and it came as a nasty surprise all round.

Sneaky reporters. Go figure.

So, what was it that made her shift to the "repugnant right?" (sic)

"I joined about 18 months ago," she says. "Yat and I were watching the television. As usual I was moaning about something that I had seen on the news and he just said, "Well, stop moaning and do something about it."

"I didn't really know anything about the BNP but they had come up in conversation a few times because they had just won some local council seats.

"We went on to the computer and we looked them up and I read their manifesto. I'm not too proud to say that a lot of it went over my head but some of the things they mentioned were the things I think about all the time, mainly mass immigration, crime and increased taxes. Those three issues were enough to make me join so I paid my £25 there and then.

She is part of a growing trend.

Simone is certainly honest. More to the point, she is increasingly typical of the albeit tiny band of seemingly respectable, middle-class voters that the reshaped, carefully 'branded' BNP is anxious to woo.

The tatooed skinheads who once dominated the party are nowhere to be seen, in public at least. Instead it is led by a savvy Cambridge graduate in a suit.

That leader, Nick Griffin, advocates the repatriation of Muslims, denies the Holocaust and believes that black footballers who represent the national team cannot be classed as English.

Yet crime and immigration are real and understandable fears, and they provide a fertile recruiting ground for the BNP that extends well beyond the traditional ranks of the deprived and disaffected.

By focusing, instead, on the politics of Middle England, Griffin has managed to win 55 council seats in England. According to a recent ICM poll the BNP could attract seven per cent of the UK's total vote in a General Election.

The veneer of respectability might be paper-thin but it is enough to attract people like Simone.

Why? Well, where else does she have to go? Cameron's Tory party is trying to be New-New Labour. If the BNP can keep the loons away - watch it grow. Heck, if "Reformed Communists" and Socialists can have a party, why not the BNP?

Oh, who is Yat? Her boyfriend? A racist, anti-immigrant white supremist who will prove that she isn't just a Skinhead, but sleeps with one as well?

Two weeks after she was named by the Guardian as a card-carrying member of the far right group, the ballerina hit out at her critics, voicing her belief that the BNP seemed to be the only party "willing to take a stand" against immigration. She claimed that her boyfriend Yat Sen-Chang, who is also an acclaimed lead dancer, encouraged her to join the BNP. Sen-Chang is of Chinese-Cuban extraction.

Oops. Try again. And admit that the fact that though she is a good looking ballerina is nice enough - The fact that she is a BNP Ballerina just makes her that much more hot. Admit it.

Hat tip Powerline and The Brussels Journal.

NMCI Tech Support

I think they moonlight at the Post Office as well.
Hat tip KTCat.

How bad do you need A-time?

Come on Lex, I know you want a A-4 - but wouldn't you have been happy if Santa to left this in your stocking?

Middle School Marxists

Do you have someone in your local school bureaucracy that has a graduate degree from Columbia's Teacher's College? Do you wonder what passes for enlightened thought in the teaching world? Read this.

Long War SITREP

I was about to type out a long post on where I think we stand, but Bill Roggio has hit it all in the 10-ring. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Iran, North Africa, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, The Philippines, Indonesia, Bandladesh, and Thailand.

Starting the New Year right

Happy New Year!

Where to start '07? I wanted to go goofy (those perhaps later), but no. On second thought, being that many of the 'regulars' seem to like hearing about who I consider heros or examples to use as a benchmark - perhaps it would be best to start the new year with one man who should be in the Pantheon of freedom - if one existed.

I can't believe I am recommending something from Frontline again. I have had for over a decade a framed poster of The Tank Man. This man is in the Top 20 of the 20th Century for me. I've always challenged myself in wondering, "Could I do that? Would I do that?" Talk about brass balls.

Anyway, Frontline has done his memory and act justice. Watch the whole thing here. If you want to know what a totalitarian government can do to a nation's memory when Western IT companies like Google, MicroSoft, etc help them - see clip 6 - and get angry.

After that, remind yourself how lucky you are to live in the West.