{"id":7278,"date":"2009-07-03T09:45:45","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T16:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=7278"},"modified":"2009-07-03T09:45:37","modified_gmt":"2009-07-03T16:45:37","slug":"wsj-whackos-in-denial-franken-stole-it-and-so-did-gregoire-in-04","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7278","title":{"rendered":"WSJ Whackos in Denial: &#8216;Franken Stole It (and So Did Gregoire in &#8217;04!)&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Images\/SenatorAlFranken_Office_med.jpg\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"3\" border=\"0\" align=\"right\">In an <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB124640687950076679.html\">unbylined <i>Wall Street Journal<\/i> editorial<\/a> (why a liar and sore-loser like <i>WSJ<\/i>\/GOP operative John Fund is so ashamed to put his name on his own writing we&#8217;ll never know&#8230;okay, maybe we do), the once-respectable paper shamelessly asserts: &#8220;Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In response, we&#8217;ll associate ourselves with <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2009\/07\/murdoch-press-blows-gasket-over-franken-victory.php?ref=fpa\">TPM&#8217;s Eric Kleefeld&#8217;s take on it<\/a>, calling it &#8220;an essay that is so full of factual errors and distortions about what happened, it can drive you nuts if you&#8217;d spent countless hours following all the gritty details like I did.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all par for the <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=6536\">cowardly John Fund<\/a> course, of course.<\/p>\n<p>But since the sore-losing, sour-grapes, tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorists of the <i>Wall Street Journal<\/i> 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&#8217;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 &#8220;fraud&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><i>Judge John Bridges&#8217; finding in the &#8217;04 WA contest, <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=1442\">as we noted in June &#8217;05<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">&#8220;There is no evidence that ballots were changed, the ballot box stuffed or that lawful votes were removed from either candidate&#8217;s ballot box,&#8221; Bridges said.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nOn the Republicans&#8217; 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.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\nThere is no evidence that the problems in King County had anything to do with &#8220;intentional misconduct or someone&#8217;s desire to manipulate the election&#8221; or &#8220;partisan bias,&#8221; the phrase Republicans used to allege wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There is no evidence before the court to question ballot security as to those ballots actually counted,&#8221; Bridges said, knocking down another Republican claim about King County.<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n[Republican Secretary of State Sam] Reed criticized the Republican efforts to claim vote fraud without producing convincing evidence.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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&#8217;t do that.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<p><i>And from the MN Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling in the &#8217;08 MN contest, <a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7275\">as we noted yesterday<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"media\">The 5 to 0 unanimous ruling of the bi-partisan Minnesota Supreme Court noted &#8220;[n]o claim of fraud in the election or during the recount was made by either party&#8221; and that &#8220;Coleman&#8217;s counsel confirmed at oral argument that Coleman makes no claim of fraud on the part of either voters or election officials.&#8221;<\/div>\n<p>In both cases, the Republicans were so thoroughly spanked by the court, that neither of the two candidates appealed the judges&#8217; decisions. Apparently the lack of any actual <i>evidence<\/i> of fraud presented by the Republicans in both months-long cases, is not enough to keep the cowardly Fund-ies from shouting &#8220;fraud!&#8221; any way.<\/p>\n<p>Wingnuts, the photo above right, taken yesterday in the halls of the U.S. Senate, again <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2009\/07\/frankens-new-capitol-hill-office-seals-final-victory-over-coleman.php\">courtesy of Kleefeld<\/a>, is for you. Get over it. Move on.<\/p>\n<p>Here endeth the 2008 Election. <\/p>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-START--><\/p>\n<div style=\"background:#f5f0e0; border:2px solid #6b5a2e; border-radius:6px; padding:10px 14px; text-align:center; font-family:Georgia,serif;\"><span style=\"display:block; margin:0 0 8px 0; color:#3a2e0e; font-size:0.95em; line-height:1.5;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.BradBlog.com\">The BRAD BLOG<\/a> covers your electoral system, fiercely and independently, like no other media outlet in the nation. Please support our work with <a href=\"https:\/\/BradBlog.com\/Donate\">a donation<\/a> to help us keep going.<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/Donate\" style=\"display:inline-block; background:#6b5a2e; color:#ffffff; padding:6px 18px; border-radius:4px; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; font-family:Georgia,serif; font-size:0.9em;\">Please CLICK HERE to help support our work today!<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!--BB-DONATEPITCH-END--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&#8217;ll never know&#8230;okay, maybe we do), the once-respectable paper shamelessly asserts: &#8220;Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election.&#8221; In response, we&#8217;ll associate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,8,122,106,270,188,219,233,426,257],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-7278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-al-franken","category-election-2004","category-election-2008","category-election-fraud","category-john-fund","category-mainstream-media-failure","category-minnesota","category-us-senate","category-wall-street-journal","category-washington-state"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7278"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=7278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}