Right-wing freakshow claims Pres. Obama
ordered removal of this flag before ceremony
(Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
So here's the latest two conspiracy theories from the right wing loon factory:
- After the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama ordered his campaign team to exploit the outpouring of patriotic sentiment for political gain by creating a website claiming credit for the killing.
- On Thursday, President Obama ordered the removal of the United States flag from the backdrop before yesterday's ceremony at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza.
In other words, the freakshow is claiming that President Obama is simultaneously directing his campaign to wrap himself in the flag while ordering his White House staff to remove it from public view. That doesn't make any sense at all, and as you might guess, neither accusation is based in reality.
I hesitate to even bother with the details, but because you're probably curious, here's the short version.
On the website, somebody anonymous bought the domain "gutsycall.com" through GoDaddy.com. They redirected the traffic from there to BarackObama.com. The DNC has made it clear it had nothing to do with the domain purchase, and because it was anonymously purchased, there's no way to know who bought it. That's the sum total of the evidence on the first charge.
On the flag, several hours after Obama left the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, Jake Tapper was about to do a live shot when a flag that had been hung for the ceremony was being removed. He tweeted about the flag going down just before his live shot, and idiot right-wingers misinterpreted what he had said as a sign that Obama had ordered it removed before the ceremony itself.
But you didn't need to know those details to know they were full of crap. And by the way, with respect to gutsycall.com, the bin Laden mission was a gutsy call, and everybody knows it.
And you can damn well bet that if Bush had done it, he'd be claiming Mission Accomplished. Of course, he was distracted, wasn't he?