Limbaugh claims Franken "stole" MN Senate race, cites WSJ editorial to claim "[t]hey're counting votes twice"
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SUMMARY: Rush Limbaugh baselessly claimed that Democrat Al Franken "stole the race" for Minnesota's Senate seat and asserted that "The Wall Street Journal has a story on this. They're counting votes twice -- votes that were rejected, all kinds of things." However, the Journal "story" Limbaugh referred to was an editorial, which simply asserted that there was double counting -- echoing the accusation by the incumbent, Republican Norm Coleman -- and did not cite reporting to support its claim.
On the same day that the Minnesota Canvassing Board certified the results of the November 4 election, resulting in Democrat Al Franken's apparent victory in the state's U.S. Senate race by 225 votes, nationally syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh baselessly claimed that Franken "stole the race" and asserted that "The Wall Street Journal has a story on this. They're counting votes twice -- votes that were rejected, all kinds of things." However, as Media Matters for America noted, the Journal "story" Limbaugh referred to was an editorial, which simply asserted that there was double counting, echoing the accusation by the incumbent, Republican Norm Coleman; it did not cite reporting to support its claim, only quoting State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, a member of the canvassing board, who the Journal said "has acknowledged that 'very likely there was a double counting.' "
From the January 5 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks' The Rush Limbaugh Show:
CALLER: Thanks, and many other of them. Hey, Rush, the reason I'm calling is when you started talking about Caroline Kennedy -- I'm starting to really get pissed off about a lot of different things going on here. And -- and, you know, we talk about Caroline Kennedy, we talk about Al Franken, and it's been building up for a while.
You talk about the Blago thing. You talk about everybody else. And what's really starting to frustrate me is the lack of accountability on the American electorate. We can't keep blaming Blago. We've gotta start blaming the people that are putting these people in office, and start holding us to accountability. And that's what has me frustrated. It hasn't been talked about a lot. And Rush, I tell you, you've told me one thing that I've always held to heart.
LIMBAUGH: Yes.
CALLER: Is you said you always have faith -- always have faith in the American people.
LIMBAUGH: I do.
CALLER: And I -- and I'm trying to believe in that. But we keep electing -- we keep electing these officials, and help me dissect that.
LIMBAUGH: We did not elect Al Franken. He stole the race. They are stealing the race up there blind in front of everybody's nose. They are counting absentee ballots. The Wall Street Journal has a story on this. They're counting votes twice -- votes that were rejected, all kinds of things. That's just -- the Democrats are stealing the election up there. The Democrats run Illinois and Chicago. Of course they elected Blago and Obama and everybody else. That is -- that's not gonna change.
What, he thinks the People of Minnesota are too stupid to count and recount accurately, their own ballot?
I don't.
wonder if the rotund one could pass a civics test ?
Here's a two question civics test, with the answers at the bottom...
1. Who has the sole absolute sovereign power and authority, to elect Minnesota's delegate and representative (thier U.S. Senator) to the U.S. Senate?
2. Who has the sole absolute sovereign power and authority, to Swear in and Seat the People of Minnesota's delegate and representative (their elected choice for U.S. Senator) into the U.S. Senate?
Answers...
1. The People of Minnesota.
2. The U.S. Senate.
Rash Lamebrain is a big fat idiot -- seeing that majority view first is WHY Franken felt the fame to cross the campaign road and get to the other side. Now he is Al Franken, US Senator, and Lamebrain that big ignorant buttinski, is not.
It don't take no stinking 'civics test' Gold Star to be qualified to plug the UNtruthiness from WSJ editorial liars. Facts-on-the-ground repudiate all the echo chamber hogwash, as 538 totally spells out:
FiveThirtyEight.com/2009/01/did-wall-street-jorunal-fire-their-fact.html
Monday, January 5, 2009
Did the Wall Street Journal
Fire their Fact-Checkers?
"... The Journal's editorial, however, has several basic facts wrong, makes several other assertions based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence, and generally has little understanding of the process that has taken place to date.
Let's go through the editorial paragraph by paragraph.
..."
Lamebrain should share some Oxycontin with O'Reilly; he's going to need to chill out ... like, room temperature.
LIMBAUGH: We did not elect Al Franken.
- the Democrats are stealing the election up there. The Democrats run Illinois and Chicago. Of course they elected Blago and Obama and everybody else.
I see Rush is using the Royal WE again, unless he is from Minnisota. Somehow the Democrats "up there" who run Illinois and Chicago elect everybody else too. It makes about as much sense as anything else he says.
Which isn't much.
Absentee ballots are folded by voters to fit into envelopes.
Folded ballots can't be put into optical-scan machines.
Therefore, election officials are supposed copy the choices on a ballot, and write the word "Duplicate" on the copy and feed it into the machine.
During the recount, the number of originals and duplicates didn't always match. But it's not clear if that is because some ballots weren't marked "Duplicate" and counted twice, or because some originals weren't copied at all and weren't counted the first time.
It's difficult to tell if a ballot was counted twice or once in these circumstances,
Limbaugh and the Wall Street Journal are misleading by pretending that it's easy to tell.
The "Duplicate" ballots weren't done because the originals were absentee ballots, but because the original ballots were damaged (whatever the source) and duplicated for counting purposes.
Do you remember who fmbanker87 was in a prior life?
Here's a hint.
He's as comfortable rubbing elbows with the common folk at the Staples Center as he is dining with the corpse of or a spouse of a Supreme Court Justice, I don't remember which..
Hmmm... was he killed in VietNam as well? If so, I think I'm ready to solve.
Or is he the one with the plan to have zombie fetuses impose prison sentences on the parents who aborted them? That guy was good, too.
He was around before christmas telling stories of the rich & famous and he doesn't use caps, so i jumped to a conclusion.
hey, i'm not using caps either.
You're ready to solve? I think it was in the hall, by Col. Mustard, with the candlestick.
You were so close Snoop.
The answer we were looking for was HSTYBUF6553 in the Clinton thread. He bored the corpse to death with his constant droning about a cousin who once flew coach and sat next to a very peeved Barbara Bush, and when the flight landed, he and his starlet wife had to rush over to Chuck Heston's house for a dinner consisting of fresh killed wild bore.
Knowing that Chuck used to shoot his own bore's, Hyssyfit hightailed it out of there. Not wanting to be that evening's feature dinner.
EL FLUSHBO is crying now but I seem to remember that he didnt bother to complain about a "stolen'' election back in 2000.
what was his renewal contract for? $400 million? Ever wonder if he pulls in that much and more in advertising?
Today on Limbaugh's show he made a point of saying that nobody got in touch with him over the holidays to comment on the " The Barack Magic Negro" flap.
It is because, Rush, you have become irrelevant
Sorry folks, long day - that would be - "Barack, The Magic Negro."
the caller says: "we've gotta start blaming the people that are putting these people in office.."
ok dittoheads, take the responsibility for voting for not only the most incompetent, but most dangerous, president ever. not even reagan comes close to comparing with this blithering idiot.
Wasn't Coleman the one who claimed that pursuit of the outcome through the court system was disgraceful?
He should sit himself down and have a little heart-to-heart with Norm...really listen to himself on this one...
What is the WSJ doing writing numerous anti-Franken editorials? This whole business has become WSJ just supplying un-sourced flimsey editorials just for the purpose of providing grist for the AM radio / Hannity hate mill.
That's exactly why Rupert Murdoch bought the WSJ.
rush never talks about this, the fact that gore was ready to concede florida on election night 2000 because a precinct in volusia county had registered a 16000 negative vote for him. that was along with a negative vote of a few thousand in a precinct in nearby brevard county. no one has ever explained what happened, except for the real possibility that someone loaded a second counting card illegally. who knows how many votes "disappeared" in smaller quantities in other counties?
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0310/S00211.htm
I can't blame Limabaugh alone. He and his pals are trying to hang on to the flimsiest reasons to stay in business.
I hate those freaking Illinois Dems, moving Minnesota into Chicago!
This is what passes for "news" these days: A candidate who can't accept the result of an election says his opponent cheated. This statement is echoed in an op-ed piece in a heavily biased paper. A shock jock, not mentioning that he got it from the editorial page, announces the "fact" that was in that paper. The MSM reports on the jock's blathering and all of a sudden we have a "story".
The signal-to-noise ratio is fast approaching zero.