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. First time redirects from a given ip address are greeted by a video of Sarah Palin—not the campaign home page. Second and all subsequent redirects are taken to the McCain-Palin campaign home page.
– URL Registered within ~36 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)
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 it never really expected voters to view Palin primarily as a serious political or intellectual threat.
Hat tip to Chris Evans.