The billboard on Louisiana Avenue reads, “Did you know that Joseph Cao secured over $1 million for neighborhood redevelopment?” It refers viewers to DidYouNOLA.com, which redirects them to the website for the Republican’s campaign to win re-election to Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District.

One MILLION dollars. That’s more than three bucks per resident!

It’s an unintentionally damning claim, especially for a congressman who prides himself on pork and earmarks. With anemic numbers like that, I can just see his new campaign slogan: “A quarter chicken in every pot.”

If you visit the DidYouNola site you’ll see it actually reads, “Did you know that Congressman Joseph Cao has brought over $1 BILLION in funding and investments to the Greater New Orleans area?” That’s obviously the better claim to use. But how could the meticulous Cao allow such an oversight? Does Dr. Evil have a hand in Cao’s re-election advertising?

There’s really nothing like a campaign shorn of bad signage. It’s breathtaking, really. Mr. Cao, I suggest you try it.

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Now, conservatives like Frank Gaffney might say my analysis misses the mark. The million/billion dollar confusion is hardly the worst thing about Cao’s sign. Look at the ominous crescent that surrounds and absorbs the fleur de lis. What are we to make of that symbolism?

This year, critics on the right raised questions about curved images associated with the Obama administration, such as the logo for the Nuclear Security Summit. Frank Gaffney’s reaction to Obama’s new Missile Defense Agency logo was galactically… something. I’ll let you decide:

Team Obama’s anti-anti-missile initiatives are not simply acts of unilateral disarmament of the sort to be expected from an Alinsky acolyte.  They seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah.

What could be code-breaking evidence of the latter explanation is to be found in the newly-disclosed redesign of the Missile Defense Agency logo. …[T]he new MDA shield appears ominously to reflect a morphing of the Islamic crescent and star with the Obama campaign logo.

Gaffney knows it’s important to break the code, therefore “Cao’s Crescent” deserves scrutiny.  Some would dismiss the whole thing by saying New Orleans is known as the “Crescent City” – but isn’t that a convenient cover story! Did they consider that Cao’s crescent might be a coded message to Obama saying that he will gladly serve as his Islamo-liberal infiltrator into the GOP? Where’s the outrage?

While it’s true that Obama endorsed Cao’s Democratic opponent, Cedric Richmond, maybe that was part of the plan. Obama knows his stock is so low right now that his endorsements harm candidates more than they help them. Thus, we should interpret his public support for Richmond as a coded signal of support for Cao. Liberals should follow Obama’s wink and vote for Cao the saboteur, while conservatives should thwart the president’s ploy by voting for Richmond.

To be an informed voter you can’t just study the issues and candidates. Sometimes you have to dig deeper and read the signs.