Who's Behind Anti-Palin Smear Site?

[AZXD]

An interesting find and use of technology from Little Green Footballs.

Who's Behind Anti-Palin Smear Site?

Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 10:57:26 am PST
Suddenly appearing among the Google search results for “sarah palin gay,” a web site titled: Sarah Palin Supports Gay Rights.

Sarah Palin (GOV-Alaska-Republican), supports gay rights, says Anchorage Daily News.

Quote “Gov. Sarah Palin vetoed a bill Thursday that sought to block the state from giving public employee benefits such as health insurance to same-sex couples.”

Quote “”It is the Governor’s intention to work with the legislature and to give the people of Alaska an opportunity to express their wishes and intentions whether these benefits should continue,“ the statement from Palin’s administration said.”

Coghill said he’s interested in a new plan that would allow state employees to designate one person — maybe a same-sex partner, but also possibly a family member or roommate — who would be eligible for state-paid benefits. But the employee would have to pay to add that person to his or her benefits.“

Sarah Palin’s veto gave gays the same rights as married couples in Alaska.

A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for gay marriage.

Interesting. There’s nothing else on the page. This sure looks like the work of the dastardly right-wing anti-gay attack machine, doesn’t it?
But look who’s really behind this.

In the Linux console, if you enter the following commands, you can learn the secrets of a political dirty trick. First, look up the host of ‘sarahpalingayrights.com’ to get the site’s IP address.

host sarahpalingayrights.com
sarahpalingayrights.com has address 74.208.74.232

Then use the same command to look up the domain name pointer of that IP address.

host 74.208.74.232
232.74.208.74.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer obamadefense.com

Well, well. “Obamadefense.com,” eh?

And what happens if you enter obamadefense.com on your browser’s address line?

Why, you’re redirected to none other than FightTheSmears.com, the official Barack Obama site that’s supposed to be defending him against smears.

Looks like they may have a second purpose: to generate a few smears of their own.
(Hat tip: sk.)

UPDATE at 8/30/08 11:14:12 am:
Here’s another site that traces back to obamadefense.com: ObamaTaxCut.com.

UPDATE at 8/30/08 11:24:46 am:
Two more web sites that share the IP address of obamadefense.com:
John McCain opposes the new GI Bill, but why?
John McCain Prefers War

UPDATE at 8/30/08 12:39:29 pm:
Please note that this is not proof that the Obama campaign is behind this deceptive web site; that’s why the title ends with a question mark. But it’s definitely not what it seems.

UPDATE at 8/30/08 2:16:54 pm:
There is apparently no connection between these attack sites and the official Obama campaign; to get to the bottom of it I emailed the owner of an associated site, and here’s his reply:

I run ObamaTaxCut.com, or actually alchemytoday.com/obamataxcut
I think the person who registered the domain and forwarded traffic to it also owns/ran ObamaDefense.com — this used to be a separate site with short defenses of various factually inaccurate charges against Obama during the primary, but the owner changed it to redirect to Obama’s site after the campaign made one themselves.

UPDATE at 8/30/08 3:20:31 pm:
One last comment on this: the point still stands that it’s more than a little slimy to be a supporter of the “progressive” campaign of Barack Obama, then turn around and use Sarah Palin’s pro-gay rights positions against her in a creepy anonymous web site (that suddenly turns up highly placed on Google).

But this is one area in which Palin could actually appeal to many disgruntled Hilary supporters—so anything goes in the wonderful, tolerant world of the left.

UPDATE at 8/30/08 7:14:27 pm:
The ‘sarahpalingayrights.com’ site is now being redirected to Wikipedia.

UPDATE at 8/30/08 8:51:01 pm:
And now it’s being redirected to ObamaTaxCuts.com.

[justgotback]

Basically what this boils down to, is that the Obama campaign does not know how to respond to the Palin pick by McCain. Therefore they are attacking her from behind what they think is a cloak of invisibility of the internet. The Obama website's IP address is linked to these false stories on Palin. They are making this stuff up and throwing it out there to try and get people to believe it.

They do not know how to attack her because she is such a great American story. They are at a loss, and I am sure things are quite dramatic in the Obama campaign right now. It must be for them to stoop to this level....

[AZXD]

Stooping to this level doesn't surprise me.

They realize McCain made a very good choice and are now running desperation plays in a futile attempt to discredit Palin.

I like the exposure, and expect the McCain/Palin campaign to demand a public apology

It's the right thing to do!

Then again .. A commercial exposing the disinformation and lies from Obama would be better. Especially if they mention Rezko and Ayers for historical evidence of an anything to win tactic.

Make him drown

[KEVWYO]

Originally Posted by AZXD

They realize McCain made a very good choice and are now running desperation plays in a futile attempt to discredit Palin.

Why is Palin a better choice than Lieberman?

[justgotback]

Originally Posted by KEVWYO

Why is Palin a better choice than Lieberman?

That is a softball question...

Because she fires up the base!!! Lieberman would not have...

[XDConvert9mm]

Originally Posted by KEVWYO

Why is Palin a better choice than Lieberman?

The way I see it, he had the chance to either shore up a pissed off Conservative base (Palin) or to take a chance on some moderate Dems crossing over (Lieberman). I think he made the smarter of the two choices.

That's "change" for you.

[Frenchy]

Originally Posted by KEVWYO
Why is Palin a better choice than Lieberman?

Originally Posted by XDConvert9mm

The way I see it, he had the chance to either shore up a pissed off Conservative base (Palin) or to take a chance on some moderate Dems crossing over (Lieberman). I think he made the smarter of the two choices.

That's "change" for you.

You're slipping KEV,,,Pretty obvious answer.

[KEVWYO]

Originally Posted by XDConvert9mm

The way I see it, he had the chance to either shore up a pissed off Conservative base (Palin) or to take a chance on some moderate Dems crossing over (Lieberman). I think he made the smarter of the two choices.

That's "change" for you.

Do you really think a VP choice such as Palin is really going to make difference in how the con base is going to perceive him? Is the con base thinking that if he dies while in office then they finally have a true con in the office? Not being sarcastic ... I am really wondering.

From my perspective the Lieberman choice made much more sense in that there are some Dems who probably would've crossed over as well as it would've probably garnered some independent voters as well. Instead his choice seems to have further polarized an already very polarized choice.

No repub was ever going to vote Dem. But there are independents and some centrist Dem's that would've crossed over a few days ago. Now .... I highly doubt if there will be any fence sitters.

[justgotback]

Originally Posted by KEVWYO

Do you really think a VP choice such as Palin is really going to make difference in how the con base is going to perceive him? Is the con base thinking that if he dies while in office then they finally have a true con in the office? Not being sarcastic ... I am really wondering.

From my perspective the Lieberman choice made much more sense in that there are some Dems who probably would've crossed over as well as it would've probably garnered some independent voters as well. Instead his choice seems to have further polarized an already very polarized choice.

No repub was ever going to vote Dem. But there are independents and some centrist Dem's that would've crossed over a few days ago. Now .... I highly doubt if there will be any fence sitters.

The more ladies get to know Palin, the more they will support the ticket, to include Hilary supporters that are pissed off at Barry....

[Frenchy]

Originally Posted by KEVWYO

Do you really think a VP choice such as Palin is really going to make difference in how the con base is going to perceive him? Is the con base thinking that if he dies while in office then they finally have a true con in the office? Not being sarcastic ... I am really wondering.

From my perspective the Lieberman choice made much more sense in that there are some Dems who probably would've crossed over as well as it would've probably garnered some independent voters as well. Instead his choice seems to have further polarized an already very polarized choice.

No repub was ever going to vote Dem. But there are independents and some centrist Dem's that would've crossed over a few days ago. Now .... I highly doubt if there will be any fence sitters.

It makes him more palatable to the loyal core.