REPORTING FOR DUTY
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Aug
30
OBAMA’S DIGITAL BROWNSHIRTS
August 30, 2008 | 8 Comments
LGF does it again. This time Charles has busted the Obama campaign producing fake websites posing as ultra-conservatives against Palin for supporting gay rights.
Is that the kind of change they are talking about??? Disgusting!
Obama Campaign 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.
Little Green Footballs – Obama Campaign Behind Anti-Palin Smear Site?.
UPDATE: Here is a screen grab of one of Obama’s fraud smear sites!
UPDATE: A site called Digital Conquest is questioning the sluething powers of Charles Johnson
Amature Internet Sleuths
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31096_Obama_Campaign_Behind_Anti-Palin_Smear_Site/comments/
obamadefense.com isn’t using the same registry info as fightthesmears.com. The IP for obamadefense.com also hosts mccainfailure.com and mccainwar.com. One could reasonably expect the latter two to have hidden registrations, but what would be the impetus for privatizing the info on obamadefense.com if it’s owned by the Obama campaign? If I were so inclined, I could create gayorgy.mkronline.com and make it look like it’s part of any other website.
It just doesn’t seem to add up.
UPDATE: There may be a PUMA or a Republican connection?
A Suzanne Hendrix is mentioned in PUMA PAC.
UPDATE: From LGF comments section-
#164 Locke/Demosthenes 8/30/2008 11:33:52 am PDT
I have no idea if this means anything, but you mention that Suzanne Hendrix is the head of Obamadefense.com as well as sarahpalingayrights.com.
The CNN blog you link to says that she is also the head of pumapac.
Pumapac.org was registered on June 4, 2008.
Guess what else was registered on June 4? fightthesmears.com
Taking a deep breath here. As Charles points out, there is no confirmation that the Obama campaign is behind this. It just seems so plausible considering all of the lunatics the Obama campaign has allowed to populate its internet community. With these folks, anything is possible.
UPDATE: Do we have it all wrong? Is this site not connected to the fight the smears website? We’ll see, and if we are wrong, we will cop to it. Stay tuned….
UPDATE: Charles comments on his own thread -
Again — we haven’t proved that the Obama campaign is behind it. All we know is that it’s a deceptive site. Whoever is running it could have redirected obamadefense.com to the FightTheSmears site, without being actually connected to it.
But something smells funny, because obamadefense has no actual site of its own, and the domain name is apparently not publicized anywhere. So why redirect it to FightTheSmears?
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Charles has changed the title to his post to “Who’s Behind Anti-Palin Smear Site?” and has posted the following comment:
I emailed Zach Hensel and asked him directly if he’s the owner of the site.
Who is Zach Hensel? This is from the Obama Biden Website:
Why I support Barack Obama: I was a University of Illinois student when he ran rip shod over downstate Illinois despite being the one primary candidate then willing to question Bush’s (and Clinton’s, Kerry’s, etc) assertions about Iraq. I was also in Boston doing research during the DNC and saw the enthusiasm of the few, young Obama volunteers that were around at the time. I started hoping he’d buck convention and run for President ASAP right around that time–just before he spoke at the convention. His speech, in contrast to almost every other Dem running safe at the time, cemented that thought for me.
UPDATE on Zach Hensel:
Zach owns the website ObamaTaxCut.com. The name sever look up for this site returns:
; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P1 <<>> ObamaTaxCut.com ns +multiline +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +nostats +search
;; global options: printcmd
ObamaTaxCut.com. 86400 IN NS ns58.1and1.com.
ObamaTaxCut.com. 86400 IN NS ns57.1and1.com.
ns57.1and1.com. 83797 IN A 74.208.2.9
That is the same name server return as sarahpalingayrights.com
; <<>> DiG 9.4.2-P1 <<>> sarahpalingayrights.com ns +multiline +nocomments +nocmd +noquestion +nostats +search
;; global options: printcmd
sarahpalingayrights.com. 86400 IN NS ns57.1and1.com.
sarahpalingayrights.com. 86400 IN NS ns58.1and1.com.
ns57.1and1.com. 83699 IN A 74.208.2.9
I am not that tech savvy, but I think I smell a duck. Again, we will correct if we are wrong.
FINAL(?) UPDATE: From Charles-
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.
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 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.
The end(?) of the story here seems to be that we were dead wrong jumping to the conclusion that this was a site directly related to the Obama Campaign. It is only indirectly connected by a loose canon supporter of Obama. I’ll keep the title of the post the way it is as a reminder of the perils of jumping the gun.Not an excuse, but just as a way of adding context, it is hard not to think the worst when it comes to Obama’s website.
Comments
8 Comments so far
OBAMA SUPPORTS PUBLIC DEPRAVITY !
(and supports the “rights” of little kids to view it!)
Google “Americans for Truth,” click on “Zombietime” [or go directly to: http://www.zombietime.com, then click on “Up Your Alley Fair”! After recovering from the uncensored photos, Yahoo “God to Same-Sexers: Hurry Up” on the “ucmpage” listing (even Jesus told Judas to hurry up – John 13:27). Also Yahoo “Dangerous Radicals of the Religious Right.” See all of this before the predicted California earthquake happens a la Rev. 16:19 (”the cities of the nations fell”) – and before hurricanes and other conscience-stirring disasters occur elsewhere!
Dr. Know
(Obama, Pelosi, and Newsom did NOT approve of this message.)
Digital Conquest is correct, but understates the point
There is no reason at all to think that obamadefense.com is owned by the Obama campaign.
Whoever owns obamadefense.com just made it redirect to fightthesmears.com.
It’s an obvious IP spoof. One would think that Johnson would see this off the bat. He’s clouded by his anxiousness to bash the Obama camp. Too bad.
It gets weirder.
Looking up “suzanne hendrix obama” on the web yields some stuff back in June where it looked like she was setting up fake PUMA sites for Hillary supporters.
They claim she’s a registered Republican.
Ok, nevermind…wild goose chase. Looking up any address registered by DomainsByProxy gives that address. Even when I look up LittleGreenFootballs.Com.
I don’t think Suzanne owns that. :)
From Charles at LGF:
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.
[...] II: Founding Bloggers has a round-up on the search for the owners of the smear [...]
As per my e-mail to LGF, I only own alchemytoday.com and made the ObamaTaxCut.com site; someone else (not affiliated with the Obama campaign) owns the ObamaTaxCut.com domain, forwards it to my site, and may very well own all those other domains for all I know.
Also, I’m wearing a brown shirt today and have no clue how making a website that regurgitates boring calculations in the field of tax policy qualifies me as a loose canon.