Actor Slim Pickens, riding a nuke to destruction
in Dr. Strangelove, or How I learned to stop worrying
and love the bomb
The right 'wingaloos', via Wonkette, because the right really IS crazier than anything you could make up. Sadly, this is increasingly the norm on the right.
Rick Santorum took a few questions from the audience at last weekend’s South Carolina National Security Action Summit, an annual Gathering Of The Wingaloos sponsored by conspiracy theorist, rightwing hack, and Islam-panicked freak Frank Gaffney. So it’s not too surprising that Santorum got this long “question” from a nice lady named “Virginia.” She started by explaining John Boehner’s secret deal with Obama to let illegal aliens into the country, and eventually built to a beautiful crescendo of Pure Weird.Obama?
Nuking Charleston?
What the HELL?
That this woman was a teacher explains a lot about why red states drag this nation down in comparison with other nations educational outcomes. It's not the only reason, but it is a contributing factor. The party of Stupid is dumbing down America.
So where did THIS insanity come from this time? Sane people want to know who's feeding the crazy.
And sure enough, it's the right wing propaganda machine.
Via Bloomberg News Whoa, Conspiracy Theories:
That's easy. In September 2013, the conspiracy news site InfoWars published an "exclusive" story, citing "a high level source inside the military," about the transfer of nuclear warheads to the East Coast. The story was shared nearly 25,000 times on Facebook, aided by a video introduction by Alex Jones and by a follow-up that quoted South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham's worry that a military build-up would lead to nuclear weapons moving through the port of Charleston. "This ultimately reeks of yet another false flag being orchestrated by the United States government in order to send us into war," Jones wrote in a follow-up.
In October 2013, the European Union Times—a "news" site that combines real stories with rumors -- cited a "Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin today" to report that a nuclear weapon had been detonated off of Charleston's harbor, as proven by an Oct. 8 earthquake that happened hundreds of miles from the coast. This, according to the website, was a botched "false flag" attack, which was carried out, strangely, in the middle of the government shutdown. On Reddit, discussion swirled that the "false flag" attack led to the dismissal of US Navy Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, US Air Force Major General Michael Carey, Major General Charles M. Gurganus and Major General Gregg A. Sturdevant.
The appearance of those names in the story recalled the scam in Paper Moon, in which the names of the recently deceased were used by a salesman to sell Bibles to the surviving family members. Giardina was sacked, but this was later found to be related to a poker-rigging scheme that had been uncovered by the Navy's Inspector General. Carey was removed from his job after an investigation into a drunken bender that took him around Moscow; though Carey remains a special assistant to the commander of Air Force Space Command. Gurganus and Sturdevant were forced into retirement in September 2013, after a yearlong investigation into a Taliban attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Both men were removed, in other words, before the alleged "false flag" attack—and neither had anything to do with nuclear security.
And it goes without saying that the "false flag" attack, according to an alleged Russian intel report as translated by a fringe site, happened fifteen months ago, hundreds of miles from America's coastline. Santorum's questioner swore that it had happened "a few months ago" and "in Charleston." If the potential 2016 candidate was wondering if he missed a major news event, he shouldn't. He didn't.
