The continuing investigation into the the release of a video designed to smear Republican Vice Presidential Nominee, Governor Sarah Palin has led the Obama campaign to blame John McCain. Writing at The Atlantic, columnist Marc Ambinder states that an Obama spokesperson denied that the campaign was involved with the video and claimed that the investigation into it came from the McCain camp. Ambinder quotes Tommy Vietor as stating that “Neither our campaign nor any of our consultants had any involvement with this YouTube video, and the McCain campaign should provide a shred of believable evidence before advancing false allegations and misleading voters yet another time."
This Obama camp allegation is a flat out falsehood. After I wrote about the initial investigation conducted by The Jawa Report blog and other bloggers (which I read about on those blogs), I continued investigating the matter on my own in my capacity as a freelance investigative journalist. I then released my findings in this column.
Speaking for myself I have never had any contact with the McCain campaign or the Senator about this issue. To be honest, I'm not a particularly big McCain supporter. But, if I had contact that would be a front and center disclosure in my writing. Several months ago I listened in on a McCain conference call in anonymity, and I never conversed with any of the participants. I didn't waste my time on any more of those calls after that.
As for the other investigators, I asked The Jawa Report if they had any contact with the McCain camp. "Rusty" denied it was involved. No part of this investigation was orchestrated by the McCain campaign. In fact, Rusty told me that the McCain campaign refused to comment when contacted for comment about the matter. The Obama campaign is firing blindly in it's denial.
What that investigation did and did not say
The investigation discovered that the Palin video had been distributed to left-wing fringe blogs by executives with the Winner PR firm. Ethan Winner, an executive at the firm later admitted it had originated with him and denied that anyone else had a hand. The question then became “was anybody else involved?”
It was noted that the methodology involved in posting and distributing the ad was similar to a process called “astroturfing”. It was also noted that Obama media advisor David Axelrod is a recognized authority of this PR tactic. This raised the question of David Axelrod's involvement in the matter. In addition, the “viral” video pushed by Ethan Winner had similar production values as Axelrod produced Obama campaign videos. In my research, I found evidence that Axelrod had worked with a Winner PR firm in a previous campaign.
In my writing, and at The Jawa Report, nobody has claimed to have direct evidence that Axelrod handed Winner the video or even gave him a “wink..wink” to make it happen. That would be an assertion that nobody outside the principles could ever support without an admission by them. But the evidence supports that conclusion though not definitively: a pre-existing relationship between Winner and Axelrod has been established, similar production qualities in the videos, and certainly the motivation was there as the Winner clan includes big Obama supporters.
In his column, Marc Ambinder tries to dissuade readers from the evidence: Ethan Winner did not do a good job of hiding his identity. He claims that if Axelrod has been the originator than it would be stupid for him to use the same voice-over artist. It's easy to create professional looking videos. The video is too slick to have been meant for a viral campaign, which usually contain defects that make them memorable.
His argument boils down to Ethan Winner being dumb. That's not a a great argument for Ambinder to hang his hat on, but let's address that. Maybe Winner isn't dumb, or more to the point too dumb to have done it for the Obama campaign, it's just that Winners posted the videos in order to distribute them to left-wing blogs. He personally contacted those blogs wanting to be identified as being down with the cause until it blew up in his face. In addition, he had no reason to suspect his PR firm would be identified by investigation and further tied to Axelrod. That was a very unique happenstance.
As to creating professional looking videos. Yes, anyone can call up Axelrod's voice-over talent, slip her a few bucks and get an ad out there. That seems to be Ambinder's logic anyway. Or is it more likely it was done by the same production company that used her voice in other ads? You be the judge on what makes sense to you.
Yes, everyone with photo shop and a video editor application has million dollar contracts to churn out high quality political adds, right? The truth is, it takes skill, time, money, and connections to make ads like this. As Ambinder himself notes, viral videos are often flawed (at the same time he notes that this perfectly produced video could have been done by anyone).
If like me, you suspect that this video was an Axelrod production, it leaves you with two reasonable theories. First, the ad was possibly produced by Axelrod before The New York Times retracted the claim carried in the video. Then Axelrod shelved it. At that point, Winner probably had the ad from Axelrod and was either told to sit on it and he disobeyed or told to release it as a viral video.
Take note of the Obama spokespeson's denial. He said we had nothing to do with this "YouTube video". Let's parse that statement. By characterzing the video as a "YouTube video" he can disassociate the general act of making the video from the act of uploading it to YouTube. In fact, this does not expliciately deny that Axelrod's company or another contractor produced the video for the Obama campaign. Too fine a point? Does what the meaning of "is" is ring any bells?
Or, perhaps, as Ethan Winner claims, he was completely responsible from top to bottom for the ad. Of course, a sleazy ad like this would harm any professional PR firm's reputation. What would his motivation be to damage his own reputation?
Comments
Ray, this guy Ethan Winner works for a major PR firm. In fact, he's a high-level exec in that firm. In that capacity, he probably has access to the kind of production equipment that would be used to make a professional-looking video ad. It's not unreasonable to suggest that this is what he probably did.
That's another way of looking at the facts as we know them.
As for 'astro-turfing' and Axelrod's mastery of same -- well, maybe, but it's not like he invented the promotion of stuff on the Internets.
Cialis did, if I recall correctly. So maybe we should be looking at Lilly ICOS, LLC.
What does this have to do with national defense? And why haven't you also exposed this http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/behind-the-obam.html
This article should be labeled opinion, because it's clearly biased. This Examiner should be ashamed for continuing to label this information as true. Sad, very sad.
Ray, the claim of all this just being too dumb to have been done by Axelrod bring to mind the saying "hiding in plain sight".
Axelrod has always felt that his Chicago Way tactics were so smart that they would never been outed. The problem is that Axelrod, never having run a national campaign and only being a player in the hood, forgot one thing; expect the unexpected.
One of the "unexpected" was the explosion of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. You see, that was not on Axelrod's radar. Up until now, Axelrod had managed to do damange control in a controlled environment, Chicago. Nor did Axelrod expect James A. Johnson's history with CountryWide to come out. Or for Tony Rezko to have been indicted yesterday on (tah-dah) mortgage fraud.
But the closer the election gets, the more people are going to dig into the history, and actions, of a man the media has never really bothered to vet. And all I can say is "It's about damn time."
Denial ain't a river in Egypt. The video was traced DIRECTLY to an Obama operative. Then, they scrambled for cover when they got called on their BS. They're stupid, but entertaining.
You're analysis may indeed have nailed it becasue a second "toned down" version of the video emerged today.
FIGHTING WITHIN OBAMA CAMP,
OBAMA AND BIDEN AT ODDS OVER ADS/PUBLIC COMMENTS- BIDEN PUBLICALLY ANNOUNCING, OBAMA ERROR, THAT SENATOR CLINTON WOULD CERTINALLY HAVE BEEN THE BETTER VP PICK! Once again Obama shows POOR judgment. WASHINGTON: Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joseph Biden said in an interview that a campaign ad which mocked Republican John McCain's was "terrible." veteran Delaware senator, who adds foreign policy that is clearly missing from inexperienced Barack Obama, asked about the controversial political commercial in a CBS news interview. "I thought that was terrible said Biden, "I didn't know we did it, and if I'd had anything to do with it, we would have never done it," Biden said. Obamas inexperienced appears again with VP pick, who doesnt even agree Obama is ready to lead our country! WAKE UP AMERICAN, BEFORE OTS TOO LATE
"I think he can be ready, but right now I don't believe he is," Biden said in 2007. "The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training." In debate among Democratic hopefuls, moderator George Stephanopoulos pressed Biden whether he stood by a recent quote. Biden said, "I stand by that statement."
CNN & MSNBC Saintly Obama seems to grow smaller the closer we approach him and find out the truth that cable news pundits can’t seem to find and or report…No longer can Americans trust the media, which was given special constitutional privileges to look out for the folks."Obama is an empty suit. From the day he was sworn in to the Senate to the date he declared his run for the presidency, is only 145 days on the job. He has literally no experience. (Not figuratively, literally!) He's not qualified to run a Dairy Queen. Recently, we witnessed the disgusting treatment of Hillary Clinton, including not being named Barack Obama's running mate in spite of the fact that she drew 18 million votes. No Republican has mentioned race, but it has been the trump card for the Obama campaign even to the point of accusing Bill Clinton of racism. The savage treatment of Sarah Palin by the Democratic attack machine has gone beyond the pale even involving reference to her Down syndrome baby So, Jonah Goldberg hit it right on the head in his Sept 25 column. What possible reason could there be not to vote for Obama? Maybe because he isn't the right man for the job, regardless of race.
Proven Obama has most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. Obama is to the left of Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy and Barbara Boxer. That's extremely difficult to do. Obama is a textbook big-government, tax-and-spend liberal. He plans to raise income tax rates, capital gains tax rates, Social Security taxes (by virtue of eliminating the cap), dividend taxes, inheritance taxes, and introduce a slew of new taxes. His plan will destroy this country
To ALL the obamakins and of course the bias CNN & MSNBC I have one simple request. Please spare me the hope and the change bull, and the Bush's third term, McSame etc… Please just tell American voters what qualifies Barack Obama to run this country. What qualifies him to oversee our $14 trillion economy, the largest on earth? What qualifies him to be commander-in-chief of the U.S. armed forces in a time of war? Please just give me one single solid qualification. And race does not qualify!! That would be one more than anyone including cable media has provided to date. WE ALL HAVE GROWN EXTREMLY TIRED OF MEDIA SAINTED OBAMA….
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Nigerian Stock Exchange Chief Executive Officer Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke is being investigated after holding a fund-raising event linked to U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama, Agence France-Presse reported.
U.S. electoral laws forbid donations from foreigners to electoral campaigns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ0cq4Nytu8
Obama keeps reaching back to Chicago political past for policy advisers, and pulling one despicable, vile, and even evil “rabbit” after another out of his hat.
The list of Barack Obama’s radical associations is long and it keeps getting longer. Some are now well-known, but many are not. They need to be.
23 years at TUCC with Jeremiah Wright and James Meeks. racist sermons on Youtube.
He chose the most radical church in the country; chose to immerse himself in hard-core ideological radicalism. Never before has this country considered such a radical leftist for its chief executive.
Michael Pfleger and his hateful and race-hating ramblings, Obama met while carrying out his own radical social activism as community organizer at ACORN, (radical organization)
Penny Pritzker, heads Obama camp National Finance Committee was president of Superior Bank - massively failed and she literally bought her way out of jail paying $460 MILLION fine; was the very epicenter of subprime loan scandal” that would come to eat this nation’s financial system alive.
Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, former head of Obama’s vice presidential selection committee, discovered he benefited from sweetheart loans from subprime king Countrywide.
Tony Rezko certainly and his federal indictments and financial dealing with Obamas of course and William Ayers, US terrorist bomber, Obama-co-lecturer, fellow board member, neighbor, and friend.
Communist Frank Marshall Davis, obama mentor; Saul Alinsky and Gerald Kellman (Kellman’s Woods Fund is how Obama hooked up with terrorist William Ayers)
Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi, appointed as Obama camp national coord for Muslim n affairs also stepped down after news about his stint on the fund’s board - which includes fundamentalist imam - prompting The Wall Street Journal inquiries about relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood and his long personal relationship with Hamas Jamal Said.
Obama desperately needs voters to forget hes the son of a Muslim father who served an incredibly brutal and corrupt Kenyan government; to forget he attended a madrassa in Indonesia and practiced Islam; forget that he campaigned in Kenya on behalf of Raila Odinga, who relied upon chaos, corruption, and violence in his campaign; numerous associations with radical Muslims; forget the photographs of Obama in traditional Muslim clothes, hanging with Muslim radicals such as Mazen Asbahi and anti-Semite Rashid Khalidi.
The mainstream media has frankly put the security of our great country at risk with an Obama coronation media like CNN & MSNBC is the only way Obama managed to steal the Dem nom. It’s extremely concerning that so many Americans could care less about who their candidate really is?? simply amazing and frankly scarey.
PLEASE WATCH AND SHARE WITH EVERYONE ASAP
"The Last 100 Days"
Hon. James David Manning, PhD.
www.atlah.org/broadcast/ndnr07-28-08.html
www.dontvoteobama.net
http://savagepolitics.com/?p=1345
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