Denise O'Brien Was Misquoted, Cattle Still Died

2:30pm update from Denise O'Brien's campaign via Lee Enterprises:

A report published Friday incorrectly said Denise O'Brien was working for the Women, Food and Agriculture Network in 1987. The O'Brien campaign never said she was working for the group at that time. The error is because a reporter misunderstood a comment from O'Brien's campaign manager. O'Brien worked for several agriculture advocacy groups in the 1980s, but she didn't found the Women, Food and Agriculture Network until 1994. The Lee Enterprises Des Moines Bureau regrets the error.

This was concerning a Dan Gearino story published recently in the Quad City Times and other Lee Enterprises newspapers.

Nevertheless, cattle still died.

Meanwhile, over at the Des Moines Register, "reporter" Lisa Rossi devotes space to the O'Brien campaign's shock and horror that fellow Ag Secretary candidate Bill Northey (take a deep breath here...) supposedly was a member of a group that invested indirectly in Brazilian land in order to create ethanol, or something like that. Whatever it was, it was a pretty awful thing. Maybe. Even Northey isn't sure if he's still a member of the group.

Yep, that's obviously a much worse thing than starving cattle to death.

And at the South of Iowa Blog this morning:

To the folks that think I'm just following the party line: I switched party affiliations in June to vote for both Ed Fallon and Denise O'Brien in the primaries. I serve on a board with Denise (although I haven't seen her at board meetings since the campaign started). I've worked at another organization (now-defunct PrairieFire) where she was on the board of directors. Up until this point I have had nothing but respect for Denise and Larry.

However, the charge and her response (or lack thereof) has caused me to loose respect for her. And out of respect for the position of Secretary of Agriculture of Iowa, I believe it would be wise for her to drop out of this race. She will not garner respect in her office because of this history, and it could tarnish the SOA position for years.

It looks like this O'Brien cattle story will die, or at least be starved to death by Iowa's lamestream monopoly corporate media outlets who are rooting for a Democratic landslide.

Just spin, spin, spin, or bury, bury, bury.

I still contend that if it was a Republican Secretary of Agriculture candidate who had starved cattle to death at anytime in his or her past, the newspapers would be all over this. And the thing is, I'd bet that most Republicans would be calling for that person to step aside. Democrats, as we all know, are obsessed with winning at any cost, no matter how flawed the candidate truly is. That's not to say that Republicans don't do this, they do, but you see more of this happening with Democrats in recent years.