08' Election: Radio Smears Not Solely Reserved for Obama

Media Matters is reporting on the nation's conservative radio hosts (aka Rush Limbaugh inc.. ) and their coverage during the 2008 election. From their study it appears they were equal opportunity smear spreaders going after groups such as women, minorities and even children with disabilities. MM says the "smear ran the gamut." Check out the full list of smears they have compiled.

Attacking politicians is one thing, but groups with little access to defend themselves or are unwillingly attacked (such as children with autism) provides little to intelligent public debate. Conservative radio hosts have a huge influence on millions of Americans and they should remember this as journalists and as public commentators.

Some Excerpts, as per MM :

Michael Savage:

[Y]ou turn on the cable news, they're covering again a missing child. Not a missing country but a missing child. ... We hear about the rape of a woman, but not about the rape of the Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty is crying, she's been raped and disheveled -- raped and disheveled by illegal aliens.

Chris Baker:

While discussing Palin's assertion that Obama was "palling around with terrorists" on the October 6 broadcast of his radio show, Baker called Obama a "little bitch" who "won't even stand up to a smoking-hot chick from Alaska.

Network Scramble

An article by Politico's Mike Allen highlights what media executives will do in the event that election night is an Obama blowout. People, this is serious. If there is no horserace to call, what will the media do? Actually talk about the issues, instead of pandering back and forth over who will win, who is inching ahead in what swing state, and all the other trivial things they talk about.

According to the Article:

But executives are already mulling how clearly they would want their anchors and analysts to state the obvious, since networks have been criticized for depressing turnout by calling elections while polls are still open for several more hours. But they must also decide how they are going to fill air time, since networks are planning to be on the air until 2 a.m. on the East Coast.

Very Interesting.....Rating's wise networks benefit from 2000-like voting catastrophe. They usually need the boost from election night because after the election is over what will they get viewers to turn in for? Car chases, Hurricanes or Paris Hilton?

More on ACORN

The media, including the AP are continuing to mismanage and get the facts wrong on the ACORN story. Either they do not get it, or they are choosing to ignore the facts. A new report put out by MediaMatters found that of 54 reports on ACORN ran by CNN between October 6 and 15th, they left out vital information about states where there had been voter-fraud in registration applications. Only three of these reports included details of one or the other, but never both important facts.
They failed to mention that:

1) that the statutes of most of those states require third parties registering prospective voters to submit all registration forms they receive; and 2) that actual instances of illegal votes being cast as a result of registration fraud are extremely rare.

Bad reporting by the MSM on an important topic, help propagate the lies told by politicans, allowing McCain to get the facts wrong about alleged voter-registration fraud at ACORN.

FBI Set to Probe ACORN

ACORN has become the latest Republican obsession over the past couple of weeks, as was evinced by John McCain's attack of it during Wednesday night's debate only . It is no suprise that the GOP feels alarm towards any voter registtration group at a time where they are losing countless voters to the Democratic party, who has registered an unprecedented amount of voters.

The AP has sources that are 'leaking' that the FBI has begun an investigation into voter-registration fraud at ACORN only weeks before the election.
Fromer US Attorney David Iglesias, spoke to TPM, and said he is shocked by this AP article saying:

"Based on what I saw in 2004 and 2006, it's a scare tactic." In 2006, Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney thanks partly to his reluctance to pursue voter-fraud cases as aggressively as DOJ wanted -- one of several U.S. attorneys fired for inappropriate political reasons, according to a recently released report by DOJ's Office of the Inspector General

Wasilla Resident Speaks Out

Interesting letter being circulated by Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla, Alaska resident

Interesting that Palin ran for Mayor of Wasilla and Governor of Alaska as a'fiscal conservative.' And boy did she ever, she fit the model perfectly: wasting and spending money under the cloak of cutting taxes and saving the common people money!

The Following Quotes are from a letter being circulated by Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla, Alaska resident who has claims to have known Palin since 1992:
http://www.andrys.com/palin-kilkenny.html

"The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administrationweren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowedmoney was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left itwith indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encouragethe voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she saidshe supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or anew library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of amulti-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a pieceof property that the City didn’t even have clear title to. "

And in case you were wondering....

"While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her officeredecorated more than once."

According to TheNation:
She is, as well, someone who has clashed with Palin. More than a decade ago, when Palin was campaigning to ban books, Kilkenny says, "I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship."
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/354444/the_word_from_wasilla