Sedition - Poor Norman News

The bizarre rise of the QAnon fantasy cult in the United States of America.

Norman Gregory — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 02:24:40 +0000

I do not purport to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I did minor in psychology in college but that is about it.

I have been watching with great interest as millions of Americans through social media have become involved with and brainwashed by the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theories. From Democrats doing mass molestations and killings of babies, to all sorts of bizarre fantasies, these people who believe this false fantasy crap, seem to be and truly are out of their minds.

Any sane educated person or so I thought, could see right through the BS. It is kind of like the flat Earthers, most sane adults know full well the earth is not flat, yet there are people out there that believe it is flat, even when presented with all the evidence in the world that the earth is round.

Most sane adults in the United States thought at first that these people were just joking around and that they cannot be serious. After the recent attack on the United States Capitol, and after hearing all the wacko doodles being interviewed outside of the riots, we have now all come to realize in horror that there are millions of Americans that have been brainwashed into believing fantasy propaganda and are seriously out of their friggen minds.

Now this is an opinion editorial so I may be a little loose with my language on this one because when writing about millions of Americans who believe basically something analogous to the boogie man is hiding under your bed or that Santa Claus is real, how do you comprehend that millions of supposedly publicly or otherwise educated adults in this country are out of their minds?

I have contemplated this as a layman. I believe what has happened is someone comes up with a fantasy premise on social media or through other types of media, they spread the fantasy or propaganda, and either people who are lonely and are seeking to belong in the group, or are weak minded people for whatever reason, whether it be for entertainment or other Interest, start to give approval to the fantasy so that they can fit into the group, and eventually the fantasy becomes reality to these people in masse.

I would like to believe that some people in the group know that what they are discussing is not real and that they are simply just trying to be part of the group for whatever reason, but it is becoming very apparent that the majority of these people actually start to believe that the fantasy is real. Then as with other cults what happens is members of the cult or persons who adhere to the fantasy beliefs, start to add more and more fantasy stories onto it so that it becomes like a time bomb. If a member tries to tell other members that something is not real, they are attacked by other members. It is a self fulfilling quagmire. Eventually many will leave the cult and find some other group to belong in, who knows.

There is no difference between QAnon or the Salem witch hunt where a bunch of young girls driving off each other made up fantasy stories which ended up causing multiple women to be hanged as witches. Recently a couple of girls made up a fantasy about Slender Man, a fictional character off of the internet, and driving off of each other believing ultimately, he was real, sought to kill one of their girlfriends to please the fictional Slender Man.

There are other cults like the Branch Davidians, the People’s Temple with Jim Jones, and another group in San Diego who all members collectively killed themselves for their fantasy belief that was perpetrated by the group.

QAnon is much more dangerous because they are using the First Amendment right to free speech to spread their fantasy propaganda, and millions of Americans now believe the fantasy BS that they are spreading is real. As a collective group with their numbers, they are a danger to our nation.

Some of these people invaded the capital building with the intent to take down the United States government.

In my opinion the United States government has to treat these QAnon cult members as dangerous domestic terrorists, as well as far-right wing white supremacist extremist terrorists, as enemies of the state no different than ISIS or Al Qaeda. We can no longer just ignore them like they are some kind of curiosity. Unlike ISIS or Al Qaeda, these whack jobs live amongst us, there are here.

We need to take serious action against these people, attempt to cut off their ability to communicate using private mainstream social media vehicles, and prosecute them when possible and necessary.

This is way beyond First Amendment freedom of speech. These people are trying to take down the United States government. They are spreading lies and disinformation to do so. We should maybe look at some of the European models, and even Australian models, and limit certain speech by these people that is aimed to take down our government.

By Norman Gregory

The post The bizarre rise of the QAnon fantasy cult in the United States of America. first appeared on Poor Norman News.

The United States House of Representatives delivers articles of impeachment to the Senate.

Norman Gregory — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 00:24:26 +0000

Poor Norman News, January 25, 2021, Washington DC

The impeachment managers from the United States House of Representatives have delivered articles of impeachment against Donald Trump for incitement and insurrection against the United States government.

This would make Donald Trump the first president in United States history to be impeached twice. The Senate failed to convict Donald Trump the first time he was impeached.

Certain Republican senators have expressed that they do not support the present impeachment because Trump is no longer in office. They state that the second impeachment would serve to divide the nation further.

However, other Republican senators have stated that they would support impeachment under the circumstances because of the severity of what Trump is alleged to have done, i.e., incitement of insurrection against the government.

Most legal scholars agree that impeachment even after the president has left office is legally constitutional, because he was impeached while still in office, and the impeachment would serve to disqualify Donald Trump from ever holding office in the United States.

A minority of legal scholars’ state that it is not constitutional to impeach Donald Trump because he is no longer in office.

It does appear there is precedent for impeachment of a person once they leave office on the basis that a person who is impeached could simply resign without having to face the consequences of their actions and could potentially hold office again.

Whatever the case, there have been only four presidential impeachments in United States history, and now Donald Trump holds half of those four.

It will now be up to the Senate to determine the trial rules, and the timing of the trial. The House of Representatives will be the prosecutors in the impeachment.

By Norman Gregory

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With incoming President Joe Biden there is hope for our nation’s future.

Norman Gregory — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 02:35:15 +0000

I watched with disgust over the last four years as Donald Trump and right-wing media sowed hatred and demonized the half of America that identify as liberal and/or Democrats. Never before have I heard an American president calling their political rivals radical, communist, socialist, etc.

Frankly, this same type of brainwashing of one group or members of a country against another was done by the Nazis in World War II against their perceived political rivals. We know what happened in that situation, 6 million Jews were murdered, Gypsies were murdered, political rivals were murdered only God knows how many people were murdered due to the brainwashing divisive and demonization that was done by the Nazi propaganda machine.

The same thing is going on here in the United States through right wing media. Anytime a news organization that is not really a news organization but a political entertainment machine, spews constant seven day a week 24 hour a day mistruths and disinformation, people will eventually start to believe the lies that they are mean told.

Over the past four years the president instead of representing all of the United States people, pandered to his so-called base with constant divisive and hate filled propaganda to the extent that by the time the election came, his supporters honestly believed that the country would go under if the Democrats took the presidency. Imagine that these people have been brainwashed to such an extent that they do not believe the Democrats can run the country without destroying it.

Never mind the fact that Bill Clinton ran the country for eight years just fine, or Barack Obama ran the country for eight years just fine, Donald Trump and the right-wing propaganda machine convinced these people that the Democrats are so bad that they would destroy the nation.

There are educated people on the right that came to believe the propaganda message. The end result was that some of these zealots have become domestic terrorists and attacked their own United States Capitol building and the United States Congress itself with the aim of reversing a democratic election and thus ruining United States Representative democracy.

I will say it again, these people have been brainwashed to such an extent that they would destroy the United States to keep a man like Donald Trump in office. We have a major problem here in this nation.

Now I am all for free speech, but maybe it is time for return to the fairness doctrine for media outlets, and require media or so-called media, to give equal time to both sides or all sides, so that their watchers of the news hear all sides of the political argument.

One thing is certain, a blue-chip investigative panel needs to be put into place to confront the right-wing domestic terrorist that now in a threat our nation. It has been left alone for far too long. With Timothy McVeigh in the Oklahoma City bombing, with the attacks in Charlottesville, the Branch Davidians, Ruby Ridge, the right-wing extremist takeover of federal property in the north over grazing rights, the attack on the United States Capitol, armed militias attempting to suppress state governments by parading around with weapons at government buildings, etc. it has gone too far.

If we do not do something now, we will lose our nation. The people that have become radicalized, are capable of horrible atrocities. They will not conform to the rules of war, they are out of their minds. Just like Al Qaeda and ISIS, United States right wing domestic terrorists are just as radical and probably even more dangerous.

We fought a civil war against the Confederates once, seeing the rebel Confederate flag at the attack on the US Capitol a couple of weeks ago and a domestic insurgent walking a Confederate flag through the capital, makes me think that we are still fighting the Confederates except this time they infect all 50 states.

We must find a solution before it is too late.

By Norman Gregory

The post With incoming President Joe Biden there is hope for our nation’s future. first appeared on Poor Norman News.

Donald Trump is impeached for a second time

Norman Gregory — Thu, 14 Jan 2021 01:13:31 +0000

Poor Norman News, Washington DC, January 13, 2021

Outgoing President Donald Trump was impeached for a second time today by the United States House of Representatives, for inciting sedition related to the attack on the United States Capitol building.

History was made for two reasons, first Donald Trump is the only president in American history to be impeached twice during a four-year term or any term for that matter, and secondly this was the most bipartisan impeachment of a President in United States history.

Obviously, the fact that Donald Trump was impeached for sedition against the United States government makes him the only president to ever be impeached for sedition as well.

Now Nancy Pelosi must transmit the impeachment documents to the Senate. The Senate leader McConnell says that he will not call the Senate back in the session until after Joe Biden has been sworn in as the new president.

This effectively means that the trial in the Senate on the impeachment will not occur until after Donald Trump has transitioned out of office, and Joe Biden is the new president.

Many Republican House of representative members questioned why the Democrats would impeach Donald Trump if he has only one week to remain in office, although ten Republicans joined in the vote for impeachment.

The Democrats responded by saying this type of conduct cannot be tolerated under any circumstances, and they want to ensure that Donald Trump will never be able to hold office again on the grounds that he is a clear and present danger to the United States of America.

Only 16 Republican senators need to join in on the Senate impeachment for all Trump to be convicted on the impeachment. It Donald Trump is convicted in the Senate on the impeachment, a simple majority vote will that be done to confirm that Donald Trump will no longer be able to hold office.

President elect Joe Biden has stated that he will defer to the Congress to decide the matter, and that his main interest is in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and bringing back the economy.

By Norman Gregory

The post Donald Trump is impeached for a second time first appeared on Poor Norman News.

It is time for Trump to go, I support impeachment

Norman Gregory — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:24:57 +0000

Watching the attack on the US Capitol by traitorous insurrectionists was the worst thing I have ever seen in my life. I was in the United States Air Force for six years, I have seen some horrible stuff in my life, truly horrible stuff. I remember watching the World Trade Center being attacked in 2001 with my mom. I remember when the World Trade Center buildings collapse and thought to myself my God tens of thousands of people have probably died.

Watching enemies of the United States of America waving our Star-Spangled Banner, Confederate flags, and other white supremacist symbols while they attacked our government with the goal of destroying our government, yes destroying our government not just changing the results of the election, was the absolute worst.

Thoughts of Civil War and wanting to get revenge went through my head when I looked at these people. I thought of all the men and women who have died serving United States for freedom so that these traitors and insurrectionists could just take it away in a single afternoon?

Donald Trump was their cheerleader. Incitement is not protected speech. Incitement in a nutshell is trying to get people to do something by speech, that is illegal, with the intent that they do the illegal act.

Donald Trump telling his supporters to go to the capital and use force was textbook incitement. His incitement to insurrection was a total violation of his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, which is no doubt a high crime and misdemeanor, which should subject him to at the minimum impeachment, and I believe criminal prosecution.

If Vice President Pence does not act to remove Trump through the 25^th amendment of the Constitution, then the House must at the minimum impeach Donald Trump. Most likely there will not be a trial on the impeachment before Trump has to go on January 20, 2021 when Joe Biden takes office, but the trial must be done after that to ensure that Trump can never hold office again, loses his Secret Service protection, and loses the person benefits of the office that he shames.

We can never allow sedition and insurrection to happen like this in our nation again.

By Norman Gregory

The post It is time for Trump to go, I support impeachment first appeared on Poor Norman News.

The most serious attempt to overthrow our democracy in the history of our of country is underway

Norman Gregory — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 09:35:45 +0000

“Right now, the most serious attempt to overthrow our democracy in the history of our of country is underway.

Those who are pushing to make Donald Trump President, no matter the outcome of the election, are engaged in a treachery against their nation.” pic.twitter.com/FE7K91nlSD

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) December 11, 2020

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An Analysis of the Nightmare the Republicans have brought to our Nation in this Election

Norman Gregory — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 09:01:56 +0000

On Saturday, the current short-term resident of the White House threatened a Georgia elected official with vague “criminal consequences” if he refused to find some way to assign at least 11,780 votes (just enough to overcome Biden’s margin in Georgia) to Trump. Let’s get a couple of preliminary things out of the way: 1) Georgia is a one-party consent state for recording conversations. Trump’s permission to record was not required, and Raffensperger clearly knew the conversation was being recorded. There was nothing remotely inappropriate about the recording being made. (Indeed, under the Presidential Records Act, there may even have been an affirmative obligation to record the conversation and retain the recording). 2) The claim that the conversation was a “confidential settlement discussion” is just another lie. First, there was no case filed to be negotiated. If there WAS a case to be negotiated, Trump is not appropriately a party to the case, so he’s not entitled to participate in a confidential settlement discussion. And third, even if it WAS a settlement negotiation, Trump had already broken the confidentiality of the discussions by tweeting about them before the audio was released. So let’s move on to substantive matters. I’ve said some of these things on other people’s feeds as responses to posts there, but figured this was a good opportunity to collect some thoughts about issues that seems to be raised on a recurring basis these days.

1. A number of loyal Trump supporters, and indeed perhaps Trump himself, honestly believe that he did win the election. They’re entitled to that belief. They can believe it all they want. But no one’s beliefs – not theirs, not the beliefs of legislators like Josh Hawley, not even the beliefs of Supreme Court Justices are relevant to the transition of power due to the results of this election. The only thing relevant to preventing the transition of power is specific evidence of illegal activity sufficient to change the outcome of the election.

2. Let’s talk for a minute about WHY it’s so important that election challenges require specific evidence of specific wrongdoing. Trump proxies and supporters seem to be advancing an argument that the state obligation to “certify” their vote count means that, in effect, nothing counts until the state says it does. (Or, by extension, because the final counts are received by Congress and there are provisions to reject “invalid” slates of electors). That’s a gross misrepresentation of what the vote total “certifications” are about.

The kind of conduct that the Trumpians allege happened on a rampant and widespread basis is all conduct that, if their allegations are true, are felony Federal crimes. Our core criminal legal principle, embedded in the 5th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, is the presumption of innocence. The accused is innocent unless and until every element of an allegedly criminal act is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. As such, every ballot that is cast MUST be accepted as valid, unless and until evidence can establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the ballot was not legally cast. There seems to be a great deal of confusion about this, but there’s no reason there should be. It’s entirely self-evident. The Trumpians own claims are that ballots were cast “illegally.” If that’s the claim, then the obligation is on THEM to PROVE the allegations, beyond a reasonable doubt. Anything less violates the Due Process Rights of every voter whose ballot is invalidated without proof of guilt. (I’m not a big fan of slippery slope arguments, but think about this for a moment. If it’s OK for Trumpians to invalidate votes without due process, what other legal rights can be abrogated without due process? There are few rights in the United States that are more fundamental than the right to vote. Think about all of the legal status matters that would be in jeopardy if they can be voided based on self-interested allegations, without factual evidence.

3. That brings us to the subject of the Trumpian claims that are still being made. I’ve seen Trump claim that “we know” that we won Georgia. I’ve seen Trumpians say that they “know” that voting machines changed ballots or that dead people voted or that the number of votes cast exceeded the total pool of possible voters. More than 50 lawsuits have been filed in state and federal courts around th country by Trump surrogates. Those represent 50 opportunities to put EVIDENCE that would support these allegations on the record, before a judge. Despite these opportunities, ZERO evidence has been supplied that supports the allegations of these lawsuits.

Let’s talk for a minute about what “evidence” is. Because I’ve seen lots of posts talking about the hundreds of sworn affidavits filed with various of these lawsuits and how those “prove” the claims of election law violations. The affidavits submitted with these lawsuits are, at most, CLAIMS o ALLEGATIONS. If you look at the substance of the affidavits themselves, virtually all of them are not sharing information in a way that would allow the affidavits to be accepted directly as evidence.

It’s notable that, one time, the Trumpians stopped filing the affidavits with the lawsuits, and instead referred to them as being available in the lawsuits. They made for good theater to wave around from the podium. But in the few cases where the affidavits were subjected to any examination in open court, they proved to be a big pile of nothing. They offered inadmissible hearsay (the affiant wrote that they heard person x say thing y). The only thing that affidavit “proves” is that the affiant says it happened. The Hearsay rules mean that the affidavit cannot be accepted either as proof that “y” was exactly what was said, OR that the repeated statement is true. Other affidavits offered “statements” that did not amount to violations of election law. A third group of affidavits attempted to offer as factual testimony what was actually an interpretive evaluation. Such evaluations require that the person offering the interpretation be accepted by the court as an expert on the subject matter. Claims who the affiants were have turned out to be consistently overstated.

That’s a lot of wordy theory explanation, so here’s some specific examples from the court cases so far:

a. A Nevada voter said in an affidavit that she was prevented from voting for Trump. Upon examination, it was learned that she showed up to vote on election day, claiming that her ballot had been stolen. The election workers did exactly what they were supposed to do – they told the voter that she needed to file a police report stating that her ballot had been stolen (they even provided her with the form to file the report), and then they could allow her to replace her ballot. She refused to file the police report. Bottom line – no violation. Election workers did everything exactly as they should have.

b. An affidavit in Pennsylvania where a postal worker said they heard a supervisor tell another employee to backdate late-arriving ballots. Did the supervisor tell the affiant to change postmark dates? No. Who was the supervisor who gave the order? I don’t know. Who was the other postal employee to whom the order was given? I don’t know? Were any dates changed? YES!!! Did you see them get changed? Um, no. Did you see any ballots that arrived late that were not properly segregated? No. So the only basis for the statement you made that ballots were backdated is that you overheard a nameless supervisor tell a nameless employee to backdate postmarks, and you did not at any time observe the changing of postmarks or late ballots not being segregated? Correct. (Conclusions: useless affidavit).

c. A Dominion “insider”, who asserted in front of a partisan legislative hearing (not in court) that she knew that the Dominon voting machines were affiliated with the Venezuelan communist government and were changing votes from Trump to Biden. Her affidavit made significant expert claims. Look just a little bit into her background and you learn that she was a seasonal hire by Dominion whose job pretty much amounted to cleaning the scanner glass on a lot of machines to get them ready for use in elections. She has no firsthand knowledge of the internal workings of the Dominion voting machines. She’s doesn’t know how they function. She doesn’t know anything about how their data is stored or moved – she had no basis of knowledge from which she could be offering expert testimony about Dominion voting machines (or any other voting machines, for that matter).

4. As the Trumpians ran out of courts where they could file claims (because they’d already been denied). They’ve turned to increasingly wild and desperate attempts to manipulate the process. The set the stage for these manipulations with a series of “hearings” in contested states. These were used to try and build public support for their attempts. The nature of these “hearings” is important to consider. These were ad hoc “hearings,” many held without any participation by Democratic lawmakers at all, and some not even held in official state buildings – they were essentially Republican party meetings in hotel ballrooms. They called them “hearings” and they had the witnesses take an oath. But the “testimony” offered in these hearings was not subject to cross-examination or even close scrutiny. Witness after witness offered statements pretty much like the affidavits – allegations of things that they heard or saw, with their interpretations of what they saw being the key to the allegation of illegality (and in many cases, the exact things they were complaining about had already been publicly explained and were totally innocent and innocuous).

The one “new” witness that created some new energy behind the Trumpian claims was what appeared to be an advanced mathematical analysis of voting patterns and voter names. An investment advisor (and sometimes Republican political candidate) named Bobby Piton gave impassioned testimony about his “findings”, including sharing the Excel spreadsheets that he used to show off those findings. (Notably, he showed the spreadsheets, but did not volunteer the sources of his data).

Poking around it bit, it wasn’t too hard to find Piton’s data sources. And once it was clear what the data sources were, the credibility of his claims drop to about zero. In Pennsylvania, he testified at one of those ersatz hearings that a huge proportion of Pennsylvania votes were cast by people with “unique names” that exist nowhere else in the state and never existed in the state before election day. But the data he compared to reach his conclusions was 1990 Census data compared to pre-election voter registration rolls. Both 2000 and 2010 Census data is readily available. But he chose to use 1990 data because using that data generated a MUCH larger factor that he claimed suggested massive election impropriety.

Similarly, he testified in Arizona, allegedly just three days after starting his analysis of the Arizona vote. He appears to have combined 1998 voter registration data and state demographic data and compared it to 2020 voter registration and state demographic data. He then claimed that his analysis of the rate of demographic change in Arizona, combined with the voter registration numbers, meant that it was simply impossible for Biden to have gotten more votes than Trump in the state. So he claims that his analysis is evidence of massive fraud.

In both Arizona and Pennsylvania, Piton alleges systematic fraud, but can’t point to any specific ballot that was cast illegally. He can’t provide any reason why his mathematical analysis says that Biden getting more votes than Trump is “impossible” other than his own predictions of voter behavior based on ethnicity, age, and party registration (the data for which are coming from different sources). It’s basically incredibly basic demographic profiling – it’s polling, before actually asking any poll questions. There’s nothing about his “analysis” that even materially supports the allegation that something illegal was going on, and it certainly fails to identify any particular illegally-cast ballots.

Why do I run through all of this AGAIN. Because elected officials like Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall are making noise about trying to prevent the Electoral College votes from being counted as submitted by the States. And it’s important that you understand, at a fundamental level, exactly what doing that means. They say they’re trying to prevent a “stolen election.” But the only reason they have for calling it a stolen election is their BELIEF that Trump could not have lost a free and fair election. They don’t have any factual evidence of any specific illegally cast ballots. So what is it that they’re really doing?

Go back up to #2. Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall are attempting to violate the due process rights of every voter in every state where they attempt to reject the electoral votes as submitted by the state. At its core, their argument is that the undisputed violation of the Constitutional Due Process rights of over 150 million voters is less important than their BELIEF that there were election shenanigans. Understand that, if they reject the Georgia slate of electors (for example), they are presuming at least 11,779 federal crimes were committed. They’re rejecting one of the fundamental principles of American justice – innocent until proven guilty – and substituting their devotion to one person for devotion to the principles that protect us all.

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