In an unbylined Wall Street Journal editorial (why a liar and sore-loser like WSJ/GOP operative John Fund is so ashamed to put his name on his own writing we’ll never know…okay, maybe we do), the once-respectable paper shamelessly asserts: “Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election.”
In response, we’ll associate ourselves with TPM’s Eric Kleefeld’s take on it, calling it “an essay that is so full of factual errors and distortions about what happened, it can drive you nuts if you’d spent countless hours following all the gritty details like I did.”
It’s all par for the cowardly John Fund course, of course.
But since the sore-losing, sour-grapes, tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorists of the Wall Street Journal have taken the opportunity to propagandize the transparent Franken/Coleman election results by comparing them to the 2004 Washington state Gubernatorial race, where the Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire defeated Republican Dino Rossi during a long, sloppy post-election contest and court case, let’s remind folks for the record, here in the reality-based community, what the judges in each case found in regard to the keyboard wingnut claims of “fraud”…
Judge John Bridges’ finding in the ’04 WA contest, as we noted in June ’05:
…
On the Republicans’ fraud charge, the judge repeated the fact that there was no official fraud claim in the case, but then said that in any case, he saw no evidence of fraud.
…
There is no evidence that the problems in King County had anything to do with “intentional misconduct or someone’s desire to manipulate the election” or “partisan bias,” the phrase Republicans used to allege wrongdoing.
“There is no evidence before the court to question ballot security as to those ballots actually counted,” Bridges said, knocking down another Republican claim about King County.
…
[Republican Secretary of State Sam] Reed criticized the Republican efforts to claim vote fraud without producing convincing evidence.
“I think if they were going to allege fraud, they should have done it in the initial filings of the case and I think they should have had proof of fraud, and obviously they didn’t do that.”
And from the MN Supreme Court’s ruling in the ’08 MN contest, as we noted yesterday:
In both cases, the Republicans were so thoroughly spanked by the court, that neither of the two candidates appealed the judges’ decisions. Apparently the lack of any actual evidence of fraud presented by the Republicans in both months-long cases, is not enough to keep the cowardly Fund-ies from shouting “fraud!” any way.
Wingnuts, the photo above right, taken yesterday in the halls of the U.S. Senate, again courtesy of Kleefeld, is for you. Get over it. Move on.
Here endeth the 2008 Election.
Of course Franken stole the election. Those of us who oppose idiots like Al Franken, aren’t stupid. Nationally, millions of illegal aliens and dead people voted for obama. Those same millions of illegal aliens and dead people voted in state and local elections, as well. The people of Minnesota will come to be ashamed of the asshole they are sending to Washington, that is, if the majority is not already mortified.
Paul Mosley
Paul, would you quit typing downstairs and come up and massage my corns. You spend all day on that computer, and I’m tired of paying all the electricity bills so you can rant and rant. I TOLD you you should have gone to college!
Paul Moseley, (whoever he may be) is nuttier than Granny Palin AND John Fund.
“…sore-losing, sour grapes, conspiracy theorists…”
Real funny coming from your camp. You just described yourselves to a T.
Once again, Republicans have shown, in their posting, that honor is something they wouldn’t recognize if it bit them in the ass. And their asses aren’t hard to miss. It takes up the vast majority of space within their skulls, extending downward, stopping at their legs. Basically, they are asses with legs. LYING M.F.ing shills! Shameless, lying gas bags! I can’t even express the extent of my disgust with these Repugnant party shills. RNC plays dirty always!!! %#&%!!!! GRRRRR!!!
I’m glad Al Franken is our new senator, but he’s not very progressive. I think he’s a nice guy, but let’s understand something — some of the votes were rejected for reasons I don’t understand. Some other ballots were accepted for reasons I don’t understand. Accepting or rejecting ballots seemed rather subjective and up to the whim of whoever looked at it. Both sides made ridiculous claims at points in the recounts. Things did seem stacked against Coleman legally. Both men are not from MN and both are basically New Yorkers, although Franken lived here longer. Still, it would be nice, from a MN perspective, to have a senator from Minnesota from a change. And many liberals did not vote for Franken, because he’s not a liberal person, and for a while he wasn’t even against the Iraq war. What has been won here? HOpefully, health care. I’d be happy with that. But don’t expect a Paul Wellstone from Franken.
“Lying gas bags…etc…”
We tell the truth. You can’t handle it.
Poor Damail, you need some TUMS, don’t ya?
Just so you know, nobody will be taking you seriously. I think it is the R part of your character. Get lost.
Errr, I meant to say, the R part and lack of character. That’s all.
Shelly T., you say Franken is not really from Minnesota, yet he was raised there. He left for a while, yes, as many people leave the places where they grow up, but he returned in order to run for office. It remains to be seen whether he’ll be a good, bad, or indifferent Senator, but he is committed enough to his home state to have gone back to serve its people.
Nothing more then a liberal blog. You’re wrong, we.re right, end of story!
“Get lost.” – Bluebonnet
No. I won’t. You will hear the truth.
>”…sore-losing, sour grapes, conspiracy theorists…”
>Real funny coming from your camp. You just described yourselves to a T.
See, mail-man, you missed the irony. That’s how election-integrity advocates were described following the shameful, unverified debacles of the last ten years. Never mind that we’ll probably never know who actually should have won some of those elections; we were “sore losers” for opposing their mismanaged, secrecy-clouded counting processes (and absurd machine-distribution schemes, and disenfranchising identification laws, and . . . )
Now we have Minnesota–one of the five best states for electoral verifiability–seeing through a beautifully transparent process to a constitutionally satisfactory conclusion, and you nutbags are out making claims that Coleman’s own attorneys didn’t. And based on what? Your dislike for the guy who won and unofficial, irresponsible election-night tallies.
So tell you what, if you know some unassailable, non-mystical, fact-based truth–if, like Paul Mosley, you know that millions of corpses climbed out of their graves to vote for center-right Democrats–file charges. Take your truth before a judge and get Franken and Obama and whoever else subverted the constitution impeached and hanged. Find all those falsified registrations, all those people who would commit a felony to go into a voting booth a second time. You’ll be doing the American people a service. You’ll be a national hero.
But as long as your only recourse for a disappointing loss is sniping in blog comments and proclaiming a haughty, inexpressible “truth,” you are exactly the opposite. You are opposing a reliable and fair process in pursuit of unreasonable partisan sentiment, being shrill for shrill’s sake.
We undertsand you want to throw the baby out, but the bath water in this case is pretty damn clean.
Isn’t WSJ Rupert Murdoch’s Totally Unbiased, 100% American, completely truthful news?
I didn’t find anything objectionable about the WSJ article. There were a lot of questionable calls in the recount. What I think it shows is that we have to take the politics out of recounts, and the only way to do that is not have them if the race is too close. Secretaries of State are elected officials, and guess what party the SOS of Min. is? If he were a Republican, do we think the results might have been different? Probably. I believe that if a race is within say 5%, do a recount, but if it’s less than 1 or 2%, then do a re-vote. It may be a pain, but it will insure the will of the voters, because many people often get buyer’s remorse after an election.
A re-vote only introduces additional issue to contest. Imagine the disputes just regarding absentee votes in such a case.
And the margin may still remain under 2%.
Mr. Reasonable……..Sam Reed the SOS in the Gregoire case was a Republican. Jon In Iowa is spot on in his comments to the douche bag Paul Mosley. If you personally think there was fraud then file charges. And you far right extremists say Franken is the clown. Go figure! Watch out far right extremists because Homeland Security has there eye on you….you can thank your former boss GWB for that one by the way.
I just dislike mentioning the transparency of all the ‘questionable’ ballots and in the end all legally cast ballots were counted. Had everyone been following the count process (as Brad so diligently did), there would not be so much blissful ignorance run rampant on the right.