Palin Smears Debunked

Anatomy of a smear, exposed -- The Jawa Report's Rusty Shackelford, aided by a number of other astute conservative bloggers, has uncovered numerous circumstantial links between a notorious Sarah Palin smear video and the Obama campaign.  Michelle Malkin sums up what he found:

Rusty Shackleford — with help from Jane of Armies of Liberation, Stable Hand, the Jawa team, Dan Riehl, Ace of Spades, and Patterico – traced a Palin-bashing YouTube video to a Democrat public relations firm, Winner and Associates, and one of its employees, Ethan S. Winner. They believe the voiceover for the ad — which spreads the lie that Sarah Palin belonged to a fringe third party, the Alaska Independence Party — was done by a professional whose voice they believe was also featured in several Obama ads and other spots produced by Obama top strategist and astroturfer extraordinaire David Axelrod’s firm.

In case you're not familiar with the term "astroturfing," it's political slang for a professional marketing firm creating phony grassroots outrage over a particular issue.  Shackelford notes that the original Palin smear video was posted by YouTube user "eswinner," and that within hours of his expose, the "eswinner" account and all its videos, as well as another related account, "gocamerica" had both disappeared.

But other YouTubers cached the smear video and reposted it:

Because you should never allow the enemy a second chance to make a good impression - Sarah Palin has officially been disinvited to an anti-Iran rally organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.  Steve Schippert at WizBang thinks the whole thing was orchestrated by Barack Obama's people, and makes a compelling argument as to why this is so.