Something just occurred to me while reading a friend’s facebook page. There is a kind of person that actually exists who is both an agnostic atheist and a global warming alarmist. Hilarious. This person can’t bring himself to believe in God because there isn’t definitive proof, but yesterday seemed really warm, didn’t it? 

Yet another catch by the blogosphere that will take the media days to “break”. Iran released photos this morning of several missile test launches. The following is the image the super fact-checking media released to us without any hesitation:

Of course, readers from Photoshop Disasters and Little Green Footballs figured it out within minutes, and now we see this:

Ah yes, quite lovely, isn’t it? Good to know the Western media, holder of all that is truth, is quickly becoming the radical Islamic world’s very own PR wing.

Update: Interestingly, even when the media does pick up on it, it’s not a major story, but rather relegated to the “blog” section that nearly every major media outlet has in the last few years found necessary to keep on their website. The New York Times. The Daily Telegraph.

Update II: And now, apparently, the original image:

See the truck that wasn’t there before? And the dark mound to the right of the truck? Now go back to the faked image. Notice the dark mound has been partially reconstructed, most likely using the clone tool, to cover up the truck. 

Update III: Well that didn’t take long. Apparently it doesn’t take much information for Americans to immediately assume it’s the U.S. Government’s conspiracy. Too bad the faked image came from Iran’s state run media. Come on people, this is obviously Iran continuing to posture. They’ve seen how the international community reacts when the U.S. or Israel goes on the offensive. I’m not saying Iran won’t ever initiate aggressive operations, but I know they’d really prefer to just taunt us until we attack them. They want war, they just don’t want to have to start it.

I’m constantly frustrated by those people who seem determined to throw cold water on a good patriotic party. I’m talking about the type of over-intellectual person who behaves as if any sign of love for this country is some sort of a backwoods, redneck, “we’re America and we don’t do anything wrong” patriotism. What angers me most is that this particular kind of person is determined to point out our most egregious flaws at just the moment there is any hint of patriotic support. It’s not the criticism that I can’t handle; it’s the attitude behind it. Chesterton said it best (via WoC):

A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, “I am sorry to say we are ruined,” and is not sorry at all…

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises — he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things.

It’s as if they truly despise America, but are trying to hide this disgust inside patriotic critique. Being a true patriotic America doesn’t mean never having anything negative to say about our country. But it does mean that those critiques are wrapped in love and a desire to see us be even greater.

I like it when other people have already written a detailed account of how I’ve been feeling:

No, what really put me off Barack Obama was the increasingly creepy and pathological tenor of the relationship between him and his fans. I think it was in mid-February, a bit before the Jeremiah Wright story got really ugly, that I started to notice my “Never Again!” nerves tingling.

Why it’s not completely ridiculous to start seriously worrying about the whole Messianic complex surrounding Obama.

Be honest. We have NEVER seen this kind of thing in an American leader, and while it does not necessarily indict Obama as a fascist leader, the necessary dynamic for fascism is certainly present. And that’s a frightening thing. As much as Americans claim to remember the Holocaust and vow to never let it happen again, I don’t think we could actually prevent it. Not because our hearts aren’t in the right place, but because we’ve learned nothing from the “non-stop train of horrors” that is the twentieth century. If there’s one major fault I can project on the American citizenry as a whole, it’s the wholesale lack of historical understanding.

Oh sure, we’re all aware the Holocaust happened. Almost no one is denying that, except the real moon-bats. But we’ve learned to demonize the German people during that time as being horrible people that hated Jews and wanted to kill them. We forget that Hilter was a rightfully elected leader who, rather than usurp power by force, actually used the legislature and the laws in place to wield absolute power. He was essentially given full authority in order to find the terrorists who burned the Bundestadt and restore order– he just never gave that power back. This wasn’t by accident, of course. While in prison, Hilter wrote about his plans for the then outcast Nazi Party:

…Instead of working to achieve power by an armed coup we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the Catholic and Marxist deputies. If outvoting them takes longer than outshooting them, at least the results will be guaranteed by their own Constitution! Any lawful process is slow. But sooner or later we shall have a majority - and after that Germany.

Hilter knew that he needed the hearts of the majority of people behind him in order to really have any true kind of power. Once out of prison, he played on the fears of the people caused by the economic downturn and the negative international sentiment following the first World War that Germany. He promised to put Germany back in her rightful place as the leader of the world and bolster her economic standing. How could you not get behind a speaker with such power and promise of actual change?

I’m not panicked yet, because Obama is still a long way off from behaving like a megalomaniacal nut-job. But if the lives of people like Napoleon, Mussolini, or Hitler show us anything it’s that the road from Obama’s flavor of charismatic leader to tyrant is open, and dangerously seductive to the leader himself.

Certainly, most of his followers will see this as complete lunacy. But anyone with respect for history must be able to look at the current situation, compare it with uber-charismatic and tyrannical leaders of the past, and see why it’s so important that for America to be a land of secure checks and balances. During the presidency of George W. Bush, we’ve already seen a congress that’s willing to transfer it’s power to the president in the name of solidarity and support for finding the terrorists. And the FISA bill, criticized by groups across the political spectrum for enabling the Executive branch to authorize spying on the American people, has suddenly found support from Obama, a man who hopes to find himself at the helm of the presidency next year. Don’t worry though, the Leader has promised he won’t abuse the power.

Again, I’m not saying Obama is a fascist leader. And I’m not accusing Bush of being a fascist either, nor that the need to find the terrorists is anything less than an important one. I’m merely recognizing the elements that must be present for fascism to occur, and strangely enough, we’re seeing a lot of them here. We’ve been lulled into complacency over the years by a fantastic economy, incredible growth, and the general protection that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans bring. The motto of the useful idiot truly is, “That could never happen here!”

Absolutely it could.

No political leader merits uncritical devotion — neither when they are running for office nor when they occupy it — and there are few things more dangerous than announcing that you so deeply believe in the Core Goodness of a political leader, or that we face such extreme political crises that you trust and support whatever your Leader does, even when you don’t understand it or think that it’s wrong.

That sentiment is something that we’re already seeing by a wide, enthusiastic margin among Obama followers.

Sure, he’s got big plans for America, not the least of which involved undetermined amounts of Hope and Change, but what kind of preview does his rather short track record provide?

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

Yikes. Even if he did fight to “to make livable, affordable housing in mixed-income neighborhoods available to all,” it was still clearly a massive failure. Even more so, I would add, if he really did fight that hard. Can’t really blame it on a lack of trying, can you?

Get ready Husseins. This is the typical use of tax-payer money that you have to look forward to with your Anointed One.

Ironically enough, Ted Kennedy would probably be dead by now if we had the socialized health care that he’s been pushing at us for so long. More on just how wonderful it is to get a brain tumor in Canada:

UPDATE: Also, the British are now enjoying the new trend of Self Dentistry!