The other day I found an article about Barack Obama. Actually it wasn't really an article, it was a short piece that linked to a YouTube video, source by "The Right Perspective" radio show. I use the term "radio" loosely - it's really just Frank & John from New York, and is broadcast on WWCR 3.215 MHz Shortwave.
Anyway, the YouTube video is of some toothless crackhead dealer named Larry Sinclair who alleges that in 1999 he did crack cocaine with Representative Barack Obama, while giving him oral sex.
OK, so all that is nary worth a mention here - not even as a warning. But this is interesting ...
There appears to be substantial proof, however, that this is originating and/or being perpetuated from the Ron Paul support base.
The first blog to report this "story" was the blog anndavis.blogspot.com. Ron Paul Supporter.
In all, the viral video and story originated at no less than a dozen Ron Paul supporter websites.
DO NOTE that I am not implicating Ron Paul himself or the Ron Paul campaign in anything. I am simply documenting, through links on these sites, that every site out there that is pressing this issue has identified themselves as Ron Paul supporters.
This all came to my attention via a Newsvine story seeded by "NewsGuy." Blogger DearMurray (also a new kos user), who found the above mentioned ties to the Paul Supporters, noted that every search result for NewsGuy2005 (nic used on other sites such as RedState to spread this story) also included a reference to The Right Perspective. Is NewsGuy2005 Frank or John, is he a dedicated listener, or a paid shill? For the record, "NewsGuy" at Newsvine flatly denies any connection.
If, indeed, this is an orchestrated campaign by the Ron Paul supporters, their tricks are not limited to slander. (Wired, October 2007)
If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, [/snip]
"This is clearly a criminal act in support of a campaign, which has been committed with or without their knowledge," says Gary Warner, the University of Alabama at Birmingham's director of research in computer forensics. [/snip]
The spamming allegations are based on a slew of e-mails captured by contributors to the university's Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project, a research venture that receives 2.5 million spam messages a day, and selects about 100,000 a week for analysis. The project receives its spam from other researchers with ties to ISPs, and in some cases from "trap" addresses that have never been used for any other purpose.
Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said this about the emails:
"If it is true, it could be done by a well-intentioned yet misguided supporter or someone with bad intentions trying to embarrass the campaign. Either way, this is independent work, and we have no connection."
To be absolutely clear, I'm not saying Paul or his staff are behind any of these shenanigans - only that shenanigans can be traced back to his supporters.
UPDATE:
"R. James" is a frequent caller to the show, he will identify himself as Peter Goodman or NewsGuy.