cenzorrll

A dog whistle in this context is saying or implying something that could be easily denied, but was intended for a certain specific audience to understand, like how a dog hears the whistle but the owner can't.

So I could say "at around 14:00 I helped an 88 year old man at the protests, we should all start doing the same"

That alone is just a statement about an old man at the protests, the dog whistle is "I was counter protesting with my Nazi friends and we need more of us involved". Since 14 and 88 are Nazi codes, they're put in as unnecessary details that wouldn't normally stand out or really be mentioned in a normal conversation.

It's quite rare to not have red touch white

http://www.militarywives.com/index.php/chart-of-us-medals

The question I'm constantly asking myself, is this incompetence or Russian influence?

The answer I usually come up with is "probably both".

I see the design choice since the background is blue. But the answer is you change the background or separate the flag colors from it. You don't go transparent because the background is the color you want. It's a separate thing and it's always red-white-blue. This is like wearing a green tie if you're a weather person, except they're usually competent and do it on purpose.