Frank Gaffney is still nuts:
Frank Gaffney, a protégé of Richard Perle and an influential figure in right wing national security circles, has firmly entered the world of right wing tin-foil hat paranoia.
Media Matters documents the development of a new right wing conspiracy theory, claiming that the Obama administration manipulated the redesign of the Missile Defense Agency to look like his campaign logo.
This should surprise no one- here is Gaffney last year on Hardball accusing Obama of speaking in code:
Breitbart enterprises is the gift that keeps on giving.
Bubblegum Tate
Andy Breitbart sez: “That logo is IN-YOU-END-DOUGH!”
Xecky Gilchrist
That isn’t code, Gaffney, it’s just English spoken by someone with a better-than-third-grade vocabulary.
Zifnab
Remember when we used to joke about what Republicans would say if Bush ate a kitten on national TV? Now there are a bunch of wingnuts running around claiming Obama secretly eats kittens and WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
*sigh*
So much fail.
dmsilev
When do we get to hear the phrase “sap and impurify our Precious Bodily Fluids” used in all seriousness? And by who?
I’ll take Sarah Palin, by the end of the year.
-dms
cleek
but hey, that’s from the liberal FOX News. so you know it can’t be trusted.
Mr Furious
Can anyone in the fucking media confirm the statement by the Pentagon spokesman that the logo has been around since 2008?
As in, BEFORE OBAMA WAS PRESIDENT!
It was right there in the goddamn FOX News story, fer crissakes. If that is in fact the case, then this story is over.
RSR
haha, Missile Defense Agency and Pepsi.
It *is* the choice of a new generation, you know…
http://www.pepsi.com/
Zam
I’ve said this before but conservatives are obsessed with codes. Had one guy explain to all the secret shit that was in a Pelosi speech one day that he claimed was meant for liberal ears only but he was so damned smart he figured out the code. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about it. I guess they got so used to using codes for racially charged statements that they assume everyone does it.
SpotWeld
Has this guy ever seen the state flag of South Carolina?
Midnight Marauder
@Mr Furious:
HEY! Watch your tone, good sir! You can’t just go around demanding that professionals go about their duties and responsibilities in a competent, substantive fashion! What do you think this is, Zimbabwe?!
gwangung
That’s because they project. They have their own dog whistles and they think liberals have them, too.
(Well, we do, but they’re nowhere near as obscure as conservatives think they are, ’cause the conservative dog whistles aren’t nearly as obscure as THEY think they are).
Mnemosyne
@Zam:
Our old friend Republican projection at work. You can always tell if they’re doing something because they immediately accuse their opponents of doing it, like when Newt Gingrich was cheating on his wife and then going on TV to denounce Bill Clinton for … cheating on his wife.
If a Republican denounces it, they’re doing it themselves.
robertdsc
Missile defense. What a fucking joke. I died a little inside when Obama mentioned being for it during the debates.
That said, I like the new logo.
dmsilev
This is the same group of lunatics that looked at a plan for a 9/11 Flight 93 Memorial and saw hidden Muslim symbols.
They either need to start writing bad Dan Brown novels (yes, yes, a redundancy there) or seek help from a Freudian psychologist. Or better, write bad novels about a Freudian psychologist who uses hidden phallic symbols to solve an ancient mystery.
-dms
Comrade Dread
So Obama guts missile defense and it’s proof that he’s a Russian appeasing sell out who hates America.
Obama decides to put anti-missile system in different countries and he’s an Islamist appeasing sellout who hates America and is bragging about it with a logo design incorporating secret code.
Does Frank recycle his own urine and drink only grain alcohol and rainwater?
Jon H
Gaffney also spotted a crescent in the same logo.
Keith
So this means that Obama is *not* going to shoot down terrorists’ ICBMs? First he takes away our pirate-killing F-22 stealth fighters, and now this outrage.
cleek
@Comrade Dread:
recycle? no. he likes it straight from the tap.
freelancer
I saw this yesterday on BG, and this comment is just perfect:
jenniebee
He really thinks all muslims are pretty stupid if he thinks that they think that Obama has pledged to submit the US to Sharia law.
With the amount of hyperventilating these Cheneyites do, it’s no wonder they have heart problems.
RSR
fuck, 2012 summer blockbuster…
beltane
But I don’t want this gift no matter how much it keeps giving. If we are to be given an endless supply of crazy dolls, does that mean we can at least have fun pulling their heads off?
Elvis Elvisberg
This has the ring of nutpicking… except this guy was a kinda high-ranking official in Reagan’s Defense Department, as well as being a member in good standing of the Mighty Wurlitzer today.
The GOP is rotten from top to bottom.
Midnight Marauder
@Elvis Elvisberg:
Which is what makes the nutpicking so fun, silly!
But in all honesty, you can close your eyes, pick an inane, horrifically misguided and ignorant quote out of a hat, and you’ll have no idea if it was some local GOP county commissioner or one of their A-list, aspiring presidential candidates. There is no difference anymore between the rhetoric of the haves and the have-nots on the Republican side.
Comrade Dread
And a certain brand of Republican is obsessed with conspiracies. They see them everywhere.
Clinton was going to send out his black helicopters and FEMA (Try not to laugh) to get us all into American concentration camps in the 90s.
I guess it was only inevitable they’d come out of the woodwork again. I’m not surprised. Just disappointed that anyone takes them seriously.
I mean, what’s even more surprising to me is that these lunatics can imagine these grand conspiracy scenarios but can’t possibly conceive of laws like the Patriot act being abused or can’t imagine that letting the President call someone an enemy and lock them up without habeas might ever be used against them and is a very bad idea.
Mike Kay
Gaffney is also a birther
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Gaffney is a true believer amongst the neo con tribe. A lot of others have economic, or other geopolitical reasons for war mongering in liew of diplomacy. Sometimes it’s Israel and a misguided need to protect her by killing as many brown people as possible. Others are connected to various international big bidness profiteering exploiters. But Gaffney believes in warfare to solve most problems, deeply so. He likes it, and that is what makes him and others like him dangerous motherfuckers when his kind are in power.
jl
I first read that the nutcase Gaffney charged that the new logo had a hidden message of submission to Islam. Maybe you could interpret part of it as a crescent?
Now it is a hidden Obama campaign logo? That is a twofer.
But the old logo had something that looked like a green flowing banner in it. Why is that not a hidden symbol of Islam?
Gaffney is a nut or a reactionary psyops hack. Or maybe both.
Rick Taylor
Michael Moore is still fat.
Svensker
@Comrade Dread:
Go figure, huh?
cat48
This is nothing really for Gaffney. The Mooney Times oped he wrote explained why O was “secret Muslim.” The Repugs have 2 key words they are using to run against O…..arrogant and unamerican………..nice…….over and over at CPAC these words used by each speaker…….
asiangrrlMN
The hilarity over at Tbogg on the subject.
The sad/scary/funny part is that anything you make up about Obama would be believed by these asshats because he is their bogeyman. He has them pissing themselves in terror as they clutch their blankets of freedom, whimpering for their mamas to turn on the light and check under the bed. What a bunch of pathetic wimps.
Mike Kay
Gaffney is also ANOTHER gutless Vietnam chicken hawk.
DougL
Apparently, I missed the announcement that the use of red, blue, white, and roundish elements in logos are now reserved solely for the use in association with all things Barack Hussein Obama.
OT
I, for one, welcome our shiny new BJ permalinks! (incorporating the post date and post title in the permalink URL as opposed to the old “?p=12345” permalink URLs)
Looks to me like they were instituted on 2/10, so I’m only a bit late in noticing.
Zam
A McDonald’s?
Surreal American
Here’s Gaffney when he channelled the ghost of Ronald Reagan to inform Ron Reagan that Daddy would be ashamed of him:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMOBQZwDMAE
Gaffney is what Krauthammer would turn into after a series of shock treatments.
Kryptik
You know, if this was true, then there’d be only one fact that you could take away from this:
Barack Obama has to be the worst secret Muslim ever. I mean, not only does he not observe Islamic practice ever, but he keeps leaving coded imagery that even nuts like Breitbart and Gaffney can crack! I mean, that’s some sloppy, compromised shit right there.
Or…you know, he could not be a secret Muslim and they could all be cooks, but that’s too simple of an explanation. You know, Beck’s Razor. The simplest solution is obviously the most wrong.
asiangrrlMN
@Kryptik: Beck’s Razor. The exact opposite of Occam’s, I assume.
And, no kidding about how bad a “secret” Muslim Obama is.
PurpleGirl
Haven’t read the thread so far yet, but… it looks like a Vulcan Idic to me.
Yes, I watched the original Star Trek series; not exactly a Trekkie but close.
Zam
@Kryptik: Obviously that is part of the secret code. Leave clues that any whackjob can see that way we think it is only a wacky conspiracy theory and ignore it. Thank God we have level headed people such as Glenn Beck who can give this issue some credibility among the reasoned and well educated.
Kryptik
@asiangrrlMN:
Yep.
Occam’s Razor – The simplest explanation tends to be the best one.
Beck’s Razor – The simplest explanation is necessarily the wrong one because everything is coded by the damn libercommies!
Mark S.
@Kryptik:
I don’t think most secret Muslims who want to impose Sharia law let their wives dress like this.
Unless . . .
This is 11D chess designed to make us complacent!!
OT–This mescaline I scored from Gaffney is DA BOMB!!!
Martin
@freelancer:
Or what? He’ll spit in Obama’s lunch 3 seconds before a dozen Secret Service give him a Beretta enema? Why do all wingnuts say lines that writers could only believably give to Daffy Duck?
danimal
As Kevin Drum noted, this whole crescent thing is a wide-ranging conspiracy.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
OT
And speaking of raging right wing paranoia. All of this rubbernecking over namby pamby health care summit was really for democrats to launch a sneak attack on the CIA while no one was looking.according to the sticky neural net of Andy Mccarthy. What’s he talking about. Well, seems weine libtards are harshing his torture mellow.
Only in Wingnutville would banning cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment be something to mourn.. Your moment of winger zen.
cleek
that has been the playbook since Nixon was running for Congress in the 50’s.
Just Some Fuckhead
Frank Gaffney isn’t Jewish so he has to work harder to maintain his neocon bonafides.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: That’s part of the diabolical plot! Obama is counting on his enemies saying, “Oh, a real Muslim would not let his wife dress like that” and dismissing the very idea. It’s the twelve-dimensional chess-playing again.
By the way, I really admire Michelle Obama–and I am glad that she hasn’t started dressing frowsy and dumpy since becoming First Lady.
@Kryptik: I like Beck’s Razor. We need to put that in the Lexicon.
kommrade reproductive vigor
The new sheriff’s a [bell rings]!
You know what’s going to be fun in a painful sort of way? This summer when the tourists from certain parts of the country flock to the city and they crowd onto the trains and they look even more shit scared than usual because D.C. is full of teh scary brown peeples! Oh noes, teh muslins!1
Maybe I’ll start growing dreads.
IanY77
He got us. Frank nailed that thing like a Larry Bird three pointer. It was our evil plan all along. We gave birth to Obama in a lab as the unholy love child of Saul Alinsky and Jane Fonda. We planted a fake birth announcement in the Honalulu paper. We secretly funded his radical Marxist education in Hawaii and Harvard. Then we got him a job as a law school professor, then state senator, then US senator. We then used mind control rays to manipulate the white librul guilt of independents everywhere. And now that we’ve snuck Obama into the Oval Office, we can finally reach our dream, comrades!
We HOPE to CHANGE the logo of an obscure governmental department so that it kinda, sorta looks like the Obama campaign logo.
WHOOO!! WE DID IT!!! SUCK IT, AMERICA!!!
Good Lord. I think it might be easier to list the Republicans who aren’t functionally retarded (which Sarah Palin said I am allowed to say as long as I am being satirical, which I very clearly am).
Svensker
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
My God! The horror! I expect the entire CIA to challenge the Democratic Party to a duel at this slap at its honor.
Dog is My Copilot
Good God – these people cannot be serious. How embarassing.
JGabriel
Frank Gafney:
Isn’t that, all by itself, sufficient to establish his ‘crazy’ bona fides?
.
freelancer
I’m going to repost a modified comment I made in an earlier thread that gets to the absurdity of HSA’s and tort reform, gov’t takeover fear-mongering and every proposal they had:
Anyone notice the GOP blindspot here? It is universal, but it’s as if, in any policy discussion, the unspoken a priori reply inherently contains the assumption,
“Pfffft! WTF are you talking about? Who the fuck in this country can live on less than $100K a year?! This is America, no one can do that. I never met anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year! You’re making that up!”
They blatantly issue out-of-hand dismissals toward anything that might concern middle/lower class citizens. It’s absurd.
ETA: Wow, the next guy (Roskam) makes my point FOR me. “Medicaid doesn’t work for anyone”.
KG
@dmsilev:
Twenty bucks says that novel would spend a year and a half on the best seller list and get optioned for a pic that would then lead the box office for at least two weeks.
gnomedad
NBC teevee just said the HCR bill will cost $900 Trillion. With a “T”.
Tax Analyst
OT, but the California legislature has passed a resolution calling for a “Cuss-Free Week”.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35585018
I guess they don’t have anything more important to do.
Everyone I’ve mentioned that to so far has either said “Fuck that” or “Bullshit”.
Midnight Marauder
@Dog is My Copilot:
Mistake. Those are Very Serious People and they can never be embarrassed; just momentarily ashamed.
Zam
@Tax Analyst: Are daring people to swear more or something? That is going the be the end of this.
asiangrrlMN
@Tax Analyst: Yes, because California doesn’t have any other more pressing business on their fucking slate. Cussing is the gateway to bullying and drugs? That’s some serious messed-up shit.
Zam
@asiangrrlMN: Actually I think it’s just that Cali can’t pass anything more serious than this with their shitty structure.
geg6
Zam @60: This.
Mike Kay
ya know, on second thought, there no difference between Gaffney and Greenwald. Each wears a tin foil hat, only Greenwald weaves his anti-obama conspiracy theories from the left.
asiangrrlMN
@Zam: Yeah, true. This makes them think they are accomplishing SOMETHING. Gold star for the Cali Congress.
jeffreyw
Yay! Mrs J returns with good news! Eli haz a new doggie daddy!
Comrade Kevin
@asiangrrlMN: Legislatures in every state, and Congress, pass this kind of stuff all the time. I’d be willing to bet that your state’s legislature has done something like this in the last week as well, if they’re in session.
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: Aw, I love a happy ending!
@Comrade Kevin: Hmmmm….now I must look it up.
El Cid
@gnomedad: Yet another news organization says FUCK YOU CBO, which of course calculates A GODDAMN NET COST of about $600 billion OVER 10 FUCKING YEARS for the unmodified Senate bill and LESS for the House bill.
Mike E
@asiangrrlMN:
It should be called, “Beck’s Taser”.
jeffreyw
@asiangrrlMN:
Now this is a happy ending.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Billion, trillion, po-tay-toes po-tah-toes.
@Mike E: Nice! I like it.
Comrade Dread
To feel shame, one must have a soul, and I’m not entirely convinced that these neocons do.
It honestly wouldn’t faze me in the slightest if this guy or Cheney or some of the Fox News guests tore off their faces to reveal their reptilian lineage ala V.
It wouldn’t really surprise me if they were still invited back to share their opinions the following week.
“Well, I disagree with the eating of kittens and draining all of the water from humans, but he makes a great point about the threat that is Iran.”
Teejay
Cole, dude, you’re a riot. “What’s the frequency…?”
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: I am drooling over the shrimp and mung noodles.
@Comrade Kevin: I did find this:
Choose Life.
If this passes, I will submit a ‘Choose Death’ license plate bill.
mr. whipple
I go out to run the snowblower, come inside and the American women are losing to the Canadians in hockey?
This won’t stand!
jeffreyw
@asiangrrlMN:
Read all about it!
asiangrrlMN
@jeffreyw: Num num num. I love mung bean noodles.
Midnight Marauder
@Comrade Dread:
Neither am I, which is why I went with “momentarily.” Maybe I should have used “fleeting” instead. Either way, the moments we are talking about are incredibly rare, not to mention few and far between.
cat48
OK, it is on……already ad on CNN “to tell DEMS to start over”…….there is repug answer I guess…..spec interest group
Carrie
So i guess there won’t be an olympics ladies hockey open thread?
Tax Analyst
@Zam:
Yes. It’s either that or shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic, for which they’d have to be underwater in some place other than Sacramento.
But I think it would have been smarter for them to just STFU and not put out bullshit to remind all their constituents of just how feeble and ineffectual they are.
Tiparillo
Someone needs to tell Gaffney to be taken seriously he needs to wear a pimp costume
RedKitten
@Carrie:
Good point. Where’s our women’s olympics hockey thread, JC?
OT, but sad: it looks like they found Andrew Koenig’s body in Vancouver. Poor bugger — fighting depression, struggling as a working actor, and forever known as “Boner” — that’s just damn sad.
John O
Gaffney is in bad need of a top-tier therapist, not to mention some Thorazine. That the man appears on my teevee once in a while makes me laugh in my better moods.
“Shoulda been a professional crazy,” I regret with amusement.
So he’s high on my “Automatic Channel Turn” list, not unlike Ron Christie or Newt Gingrich, who some people think is an idea man.
“Feed tuna mayonnaise.”
Mike in NC
Sadly, Frank has to collect wingnut welfare. In the alternate universe where senile President McCain sits dozing in the Oval Office, Gaffney is Deputy Secretary of State or Assistant Secretary of Defense, where he gets to pick out all the juicy targets to be nuked. Damn you to hell, Obama!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@RedKitten: Yep, that is very sad. harkens back to Spalding Gray in NYC a few years ago. Chronic depression takes lives when not effectively treated. RIP Mr. Koenig, and condolences to his family, especially to pappa Chekov.
Carrie
@RedKitten:
I suggest we take over.
Did you see Gretzky and Harper in the stands?
That’s the second time i saw poor Wayne looking like he wanted to be somewhere else in as many weeks.
Anne Laurie
@beltane:
I LOLed!
RedKitten
Damn, and Cole’s not signed into gmail, so I can’t beg him for a new thread.
Anne Laurie? Tim? DougJ? I can haz women’s hockee game thread naow?
Brian J
The fact that goons like this will be given a voice in a Palin administration is reason enough to keep me voting Democratic for a long, long time.
Anne Laurie
@jeffreyw: Yay, Eli! (But if he’s that big already… I’m thinking if his momma was a cattle dog, his daddy must’ve been something in the retriever family. Or, as someone suggested earlier, Australian Shepherd. As long as he’s got a good home, doesn’t matter!)
Jeffro
Yes, no difference whatsoever between the two…one is on Hardball essentially smearing his own feces on himself, the other is a (sometimes annoyingly) tenacious muckraker who puts principles over party.
No difference.
Anne Laurie
@RedKitten:
Well, I tried. But first FYWP locked me out, and by the time it relented, Cole had decided to start with the food pr0n. Just so’s you know I wasn’t ignoring you…
Zuzu's Petals
And predictably, Ed Morrissey grabs the nutty torch and runs with it.