Updates:

First, some Updates:

- If you were one of the 120,000 visitors who experienced the redirect before it was changed, post a comment below for the record.

The Redirect has been changed 5 times over 48 Hours:

-From the time this article was published, until 3:34 PM EDT (9.29.08), the redirect pointed to John McCain.com as explained in video and screenshots below. The redirect had received about 120,000 clicks just through GovGap by this time and had just started to be picked up widely by other blogs and media outlets (Washington Post, FireDogLake, etc.) when the redirect was changed.

-As of 3:35 PM EDT (9.29.08) The redirect has been changed to direct users to google.com

-As of 3:49 PM EDT (9.29.08) The redirect has been changed to direct users to a Wikipedia page about domain registration.

-As of 9:11 PM EDT (9.30.08) The redirect has been changed to direct users to a blog entry suggesting that the redirect was a simple prank.

-As of 3:02 AM EDT (10.01.08) The redirect has been changed to direct users to google.com.

Washington Post Picks Up Story, NYTimes Published list of RNC Owned Domain Names:

-Washington Post publishes an Article and requests comment from the McCain Campaign. McCain Campaign denies any involvement, suggesting the URL redirection was a prank they have nothing to do with, and no control over.

-The NYTimes published a verified list of opposition URLS owned by the Republican National Committee

[end of introductory update - more updates below]

Visit VoteForTheMILF.com and you will be redirected specifically to a video intro by Gov. Sarah Palin at JohnMcCain.com if you are hitting it for the first time. Note that the redirect sends you first to JohnMcCain.com and THEN to Palin.htm (Palin’s Video Intro) if you’re visiting for the first time, or if your cookies are cleared, or if you’re not accepting cookies. Here’s a video of this taking place:

- URL Registered within hours of McCain’s Decision to select Palin as running mate
- Redirect sends users specifically to a palin.htm file, but only on the FIRST redirect
- Whois Privacy Information Matches JohnMcCain.com Whois Privacy
- URL Held by same registrar
- Note that the .net and .org versions also redirect to the McCain Campaign Website.
Network Tools.com Trace Route:
- 64.203.107.149 (VoteForTheMILF.com)
- 64.203.107.149 (JohnMcCain.com)

It’s impossible to know if this is an intentional or unintentional error on the part of the McCain Campaign, but it wouldn’t be at all surprising. Seems they’re just learning to use the “internet/the google” to promote their candidate (as in: accidentally releasing ‘McCain Wins Debate’ ads 14 hours before First Presidential Debate and 4 Hours before McCain decided he was going to debate after all.):

More than likely, some underling in the McCain Campaign was told to buy up dozens and dozens of related URLS within the McCain Campaign GoDaddy account (perhaps all of the variations of John McCain’s name, Campaign Slogans, opposition URLS, etc) and just set them all to redirect to their main site which can be easily done within the GoDaddy control panel by selecting all the URLS and setting up a forward or simple redirect with a PHP header in any of those sites.

Whoever was in charge probably did not distinguish between the URLS they had bought for misspelled attempts to get to the campaign website / thematic redirects (IE: JohnMcCainForPresident.com), and the urls they had bought to deny the opposition territory to make anti-McCain websites; McCainSucks.com, etc.

It will be most interesting to see if this redirect changes. If the redirect is discontinued, it’s probably most certainly the McCain Campaign … (Hi Steve! Hey Rick! Say ‘howdy’ to John for me - and tell him good luck with his lousy sleazy campaign!) … if not, it’s someone trying to improve their page rank.
In either case, we’ll be monitoring the publicly available Whois information carefully.

More at: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/rnc-snaps-up-domain-names/

More Updates:

UPDATE 1:

As of 4:23PM (EDT) The Whois has been set to ‘Private’ for the .com and .net versions of this URL.

The .org, however, still retains an Arizona Address, albeit, still ‘Domains by Proxy’ - note that ‘Domains by Proxy’ is a company based out of Arizona, and has been for years. Domains by Proxy is GoDaddy’s company that handles its privacy, so any domain registered with GoDaddy’s Whois privacy are handled by Domains by Proxy:

Domain ID:D153964447-LROR
Domain Name:VOTEFORTHEMILF.ORG
Created On:30-Aug-2008 04:48:12 UTC
Last Updated On:30-Aug-2008 04:48:15 UTC
Expiration Date:30-Aug-2009 04:48:12 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:GoDaddy.com, Inc. (R91-LROR)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:GODA-052597126
Registrant Name:Registration Private
Registrant Organization:Domains by Proxy, Inc.
Registrant Street1:DomainsByProxy.com
Registrant Street2:15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Scottsdale
Registrant State/Province:Arizona
Registrant Postal Code:85260
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.4806242599
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+1.4806242598
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:VOTEFORTHEMILF.ORG@domainsbyproxy.com

UPDATE 2:

VoteForTheMILF.com address / proxy information matches Registrar and JohnMcCain.com Whois Privacy Company:

UPDATE 3:

SomeoneGNU (Digg.com) brought this to GOVGAP’s attention:

Little interesting fact - the first time you go to the link you’re actually redirected to: http://www.johnmccain.com/palin.htm which means they’re watching for that domain. All other times, you go right to the front page.

Either they’re reacting to this domain really well, or they own it.

UPDATE 4:

There’s some discussion going on in the Digg thread about the origins of the redirect:

UPDATE 5:

TrackBack Comment Round Up:

From: Washington City Desk

GovGap published a story last night revealing that www.voteforthemilf.com, www.voteforthemilf.net, and www.voteforthemilf.org all direct users to John McCain’s campaign website.

…

This is actually a pretty common means of anticipating counter information. When the American Dental Association, a proponent of water fluoridation, learned that an anti-fluoride group owned the domain name fluoridealert.org, the ADA bought the domains fluoridealert.com and fluoridealert.net, and redirected both addresses to the ADA page on the benefits of fluoride. If the McCain camp did indeed buy these domain names, we now know that the camp never really expected voters to view her primarily as a serious political or intellectual threat.

From Blog RPI:

UPDATE 6/7:

As of 3:35 PM EDT The redirect has been changed to direct users to google.com

As of 3:49 PM EDT The redirect has been changed to direct users to a Wikipedia page about domain registration.

Palin: ‘I’m the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can’t.’

AKA: “The Palin Doctrine”

Sarah Palin has been touting herself as fiscal watchdog throughout her political career. But Palin’s tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was characterized by waste, cronyism and incompetence, according to government officials in the Matanuska Valley, where she began her fairy-tale political rise.

“Executive abilities? She doesn’t have any,” said former Wasilla City Council member Nick Carney, who selected and groomed Palin for her first political race in 1992 and served with her after her election to the City Council.

Four years later, the ambitious Palin won the Wasilla mayor’s office — after scorching the “tax and spend mentality” of her incumbent opponent. But Carney, Palin’s estranged former mentor, and others in city hall were astounded when they found out about a lavish expenditure of Palin’s own after her 1996 election. According to Carney, the newly elected mayor spent more than $50,000 in city funds to redecorate her office, without the council’s authorization.

…

Carney confronted Mayor Palin at a City Council hearing, and was shocked by her response.

“I braced her about it,” he said. “I told her it was against the law to make such a large expenditure without the council taking a vote. She said, ‘I’m the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can’t.’”

“I’ll never forget it — it’s one of the few times in my life I’ve been speechless,” Carney added. “It would have been easier for her to finesse it. She had the votes on the council by then, she controlled it. But she just pushed forward. That’s Sarah. She just has no respect for rules and regulations.”

 

 

Without a doubt one of the most troubling statements made by Palin.  We’ll soon see if this applies to Public Records of Emails / Troopergate:

Alaskans question Palin’s e-mail secrecy

Governor routinely uses private account for state business

Moments after Gov. Sarah Palin’s first speech as Republican John McCain’s running mate, she sat with her kids backstage, thumbing one of the two BlackBerrys that are always with her. You can see them in photographs from that day on the campaign blog of one of McCain’s daughters.

The tech-savvy governor has one of the devices (which allow users to read and send e-mails) for state business and another for personal matters, but those worlds intertwine.

Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business. Others in the governor’s office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts, too.

The practice raises questions about backdoor secrecy in an administration that vowed during the 2006 campaign to be “open and transparent.”

Even before the McCain campaign plucked Palin from Alaska, a controversy was brewing over e-mails in the governor’s office. Was the administration trying to get around the public records law through broad exemptions or private e-mail accounts?

Activists, still fighting to obtain hundreds of e-mails that were withheld from public records requests earlier this year, say that’s what it looks like.

The governor’s Yahoo account is “the most nonsensical, inane thing I’ve ever heard of,” said Andree McLeod, who is appealing the administration’s decision to withhold e-mails.

“The governor sets the tone and the tone that has been set by this governor is beyond the pale,” McLeod said. “Common sense tells you to use an official state e-mail account for official state business.”
…
Some of her aides also routinely use Yahoo, but even messages sent from one private account to another should be public, if they concern public business, said Dave Jones, an assistant attorney general.

“The difficulty is finding out they exist,” Jones said.

It’s a new twist on an old problem: How to keep an eye on the government. And Palin’s expected absences from Alaska for the presidential campaign add urgency to the debate. Is she going to be running the state long-distance on her BlackBerry?

Some experts on open government say officials around the country escape scrutiny by either quickly deleting e-mails or using private accounts, as Palin has done.

“Where you’ve got a governor apparently using a Yahoo account for state business, that’s kind of a complete inversion of what ought to be happening in terms of public records,” said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and a Missouri journalism associate professor.

“E-mail that’s public business ought to be done on public accounts that can become public record,” he said.

Just how much of the state’s business does Palin conduct through her BlackBerrys? Her chief of staff didn’t respond to that question. But she often is glued to her devices.

Her Yahoo e-mails got the attention of political activists Zane Henning, a Wasilla resident and North Slope worker, and McLeod, a former legislative staffer and Republican who has run for state House and mayor.

In response to similar but separate public records requests, McLeod and Henning this summer received four banker boxes of e-mail and telephone records for two Palin aides: Frank Bailey and Ivy Frye. Henning was operating on behalf of the Valley group Last Frontier Foundation, which lists property rights and public records as among its core issues on its Web site.

“I think that it’s total hypocrisy from what she stood for at the beginning of her campaign,” Henning said. “Because she campaigned on open government, and she knew that using a private e-mail account would take it and basically hide stuff that people couldn’t see.”

Excerpts from:
From Salon.
From Juneau Empire.

CNN Takes the lead in Debunking McCain / Palin Lies in Back-to-back reports:

Obama wants to teach sex to kindergarteners? Lie.

Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere? Lie.

Palin hasn’t taken earmarks as Governor? Lie.

Alaska produces 20% of America’s energy? Lie.

Palin visited Iraq and Ireland? Lie.

From Darrel West:

Despite these historical precedents, the 2008 campaign has reached all-time lows in the use of misleading and inaccurate political appeals. Even Karl Rove, the architect of negative ads in previous campaigns, has complained about the tenor of this year’s campaign.

And:

And:

This imbalance has caused some soul-searching and second-guessing in newsrooms as reporters realize they are being successfully manipulated by the McCain campaign. “Stop the madness,” said TIME’s own Mark Halperin in an appearance on CNN to discuss the controversy. “I think this is the press just absolutely playing into the McCain campaign’s crocodile tears.”

By the weekend, many news organizations had mounted a backlash of their own, running prominent pieces accusing the self-branded “straight-talking” McCain of deceiving voters. “The ‘Straight-Talk Express’ has detoured into doublespeak,” announced the Associated Press, while the New York Times blared, “McCain Barbs Stirring Outcry as Distortions.”

And:

The backlash has not yet had an impact on voters’ perceptions of McCain’s credibility, though with the press emboldened, that could change.

And from CNN’s Report on this morning’s Palin-POW-wow in Ohio:

Palin’s claims aren’t exactly accurate: Obama would maintain the Bush tax cuts and offer tax breaks to individuals making under $250,000 a year. According to the non-partisan Center for Tax Policy, Obama’s tax plan would offer greater tax relief than McCain’s for low and middle-income earners, but McCain’s plan would lower the tax burden more across the board.

And this from TIME:

In the heat of a campaign, Schmidt understood that outrage could cut through the news clutter like a buzz saw. It didn’t matter much if the outrage was fueled by fact — better if it was fueled by emotion, which would tweak the fury of his base, leading to exciting exchanges on cable television and fresh chatter around the watercooler. Unlike health care or foreign policy, the emotional charge of outrage has a magnetic effect; voters are forced to take sides and respond, shifting the debate.

Now, four years later, Schmidt and the McCain campaign have returned to outrage, and there is little doubt that the tactic is again having the desired effect.