That South Carolina judge who displeased Miller & MAGA....

 

A beachfront property belonging to a South Carolina judge has burned to the ground in a huge fire that sent three members of her family to hospital, including her former state senator husband.

Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein, 69, was out walking her dogs when the blaze erupted at the luxury Jeremy Cay gated community at approximately 11.30am Saturday morning at Edisto Beach.

Her husband, Arnold Goodstein, 81, and other members of the family had to escape via its upper stories as the fire took hold. They were subsequently rescued from the boggy marshland in which they had sought refuge by emergency services personnel in kayaks.

[...]

I’m told there were injuries from the fall, such as broken legs.

“Arnie’s injuries may have been the most serious, for he was airlifted to the hospital.”

[...]

Judge Goodstein had reportedly received multiple death threats in response to her September 2 ruling, which placed her at odds with Trump and South Carolina’s Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who said the circuit court was “wrong” to place itself in the way of the U.S. government

  UK Independent

Need any more proof?

From his Univsion town hall:

Trump went on suggest that his supporters, who caused millions of dollars worth of damage, had been peaceful: “There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns, the others had guns, but we didn’t have guns.”

[...]

Trump then boasted that Democrats “couldn’t get me because of the fact that I said ‘Everything’s gotta be peaceful and patriotic.’”

  The Daily Beast

Right out loud. "They couldn't get me, because..." I'm sure that was what the lawyers told him at the time.

Great makeup, by the way.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Profiles in courage

There's not much worse in America than the political violence Trump has unleashed.

This is what Trump foments

Fierce criticism of the media is a standard part of Trump’s rally speeches, prompting his supporters to turn toward the press section and boo, often while using a middle finger to demonstrate their distaste for journalists.

[...]

A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke Friday but was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies and was eventually subdued with a Taser.

The altercation came moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.

[...]

The crowd cheered as a pack of police led the man away, prompting Trump to declare, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02:49 pm:

Despicable.  The world under Trump:

Misreading of the tweet

He's not that stupid.  Of course "they" protested that.  In fact, three Tennessee legislators were pushed out of their offices for protesting.  It was a big stinking story.  He's intentionally stoking the fires of hate and division.

Will he be running for president in 2028, or just backing Tucker Carlson?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

JFC

UPDATE:

Also at that meeting...

[Ryan Kelley, a Republican candidate for governor,] told the crowd in the video that "If you see something you don't like happening with the machines, if you see something going on, unplug it from the wall."

  Business Insider

WTF? Better call a lawyer immediately after, because you're going to need one.

Cancel culture

QAnazis may have to create and fund their own place online.

Amazon and Apple on Saturday took steps to cut off access to the social media app Parler after calls for violence on the platform have continued following the pro-Trump attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The app is a favorite of conservatives and extremist supporters of President Trump.

Apple on Saturday said it was suspending Parler from its app store, stopping iPhone users from being able to download the app. At around the same time, reports emerged that Amazon was cutting off the site from its web hosting service, meaning Parler will go offline unless it finds a new host.

[...]

Amazon said it would remove Parler effective 11:59 p.m. PT Sunday.

Apple left open the possibility of allowing Parler back if "they resolve these issues."

[...]

Parler CEO John Matze responded with a post on the site, calling Amazon's action "an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet." He said Parler could be unavailable for a week "as we rebuild from scratch."

  NPR

A day late and a dollar short

How are we going to make it to November even?

The former senior CIA official once in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden has spent the summer calling for the slaughter of his fellow Americans.

Michael Scheuer calls Black Lives Matter a “terrorist organization” and a “semi-human mob.” On his blog and his podcast, Scheuer rages against a widespread, treasonous conspiracy targeting not only President Trump but the fundamental character of the American republic. It deserves “punishment... we’ve not seen before in this country.” Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year old charged with murder for shooting demonstrators at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest, is a “young hero.” If America is lucky, Scheuer wrote last week, “Rittenhouse’s necessary, patriotic, and constitutional actions will power the formation of militias across the United States.” In July, he wrote that “loyal Americans know their domestic enemies, as well as their locations, in detail, and will be able to act swiftly to eliminate them and the threat they pose.”

[...]

Those who deny QAnon’s unhinged hallucinations are, to Scheuer, “coup-ists [and] insurrectionists.” Last month, Scheuer claimed vindication against critics when Trump seemed to acknowledge QAnon. Scheuer has long been comfortable with violence. His career-making 2004 book Imperial Hubris argued that America would need to wage a far bloodier war, including the destruction of civilian infrastructure, unless it divests its imperial role in the Mideast. Sixteen years later, Scheuer’s enemy is domestic. “The only thing I would be upset about if it came to war is that not enough Democrats would get killed,” he said on his podcast in July.

Counterterrorism experts have long since written Scheuer off as a crank. Yet Scheuer’s advocacy of political violence looks disturbingly like a harbinger. Trump’s one-time consigliere Roger Stone urged Trump to declare martial law and jail his critics if he loses the November election. Ally Michael Caputo, now at the Department of Health and Human Services, reportedly invented a left-wing insurrection on a Facebook Live chat. And over the weekend, Trump endorsed federal agents shooting dead a suspect in the killing of a right-wing protester. “That’s the way it has to be, there has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” he told Fox News, echoing a point he made earlier in the summer.

[...]

He was the first chief of its Osama bin Laden Unit. [...] During that time, Scheuer ran rendition operations—that is, kidnappings of terror suspects for torture in partner countries—the seed that would sprout into the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program. Scheuer may no longer be respectable enough for the members of the security state that operate the war on terror. But Scheuer represents a phenomenon unfolding this summer across American cities: the war on terror coming home.

[...]

Most prominent CIA veterans have been appalled by Trump, even if they rarely acknowledge that Trump marshalled the Islamophobia and other resentments that their post-9/11 wars unleashed and aggravated. Scheuer approaches Trump from the opposite perspective: a president who finally gets it. Terrorist groups remain a threat “because America’s generals are failures and moral cowards.” Immigration ought to be limited to “white South Africans and white Europeans from a limited number of EU countries” and those persecuted by “violent Muslims.” Trump’s clashes with intelligence leaders prove to Scheuer that Trump has the right enemies, the people who robbed America of victory, even if any definition of a Deep State would have to include CIA veterans like himself. It was a short step to QAnon.

[...]

“There is so much accuracy, and well-proven accuracy,” he wrote of a theory holding John F. Kennedy Jr. is alive and secret indictments will soon imprison Obama and others at Guantanamo.

[...]

“Personally, I would prefer immediate and lethal, post-trial punishment —by loyal-citizen firing squads chosen by lottery,” he wrote. Targets included the “Kenya-born” Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, John Brennan, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Russiagate’s Christopher Steele and leading congressional Democrats. Other hit lists include journalists, academics, “any police chief or officer” who supports police budget cuts, and “all medical doctors, teachers, and teacher unions advocating the continued closure of schools across the republic,” which Scheuer sees as commensurate with the predations of Jeffrey Epstein and, allegedly, Ghislane Maxwell.

[...]

[T]he upheaval of summer 2020 has seen Scheuer openly endorse the sort of violence on Americans that he previously reserved for jihadists and their “support base.”

[...]

To Scheuer, there are no protesters. There is instead a “sub-human insurgent threat,” armed by the Democratic Party and funded by people like George Soros and Bill Gates, “rioting in honor of felonious scum” like police brutality victims George Floyd and Jacob Blake. “If you have enough loyal general officers to destroy the domestic enemy, arrest the disloyal generals and do so as soon as you can, and use as much violence as is necessary to terminate this threat forever,” Scheuer urged Trump on June 5, when the president’s D.C. crackdown was underway. [...] If Joe Biden wins the election, Scheuer predicted the next month on his podcast, Democrats would be “silly to imagine it’s going to preserve their lives.”

After a career inside the CIA, Scheuer no longer invests much hope in institutions to save the republic. Hope lies instead with people inspired by men like Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot “Democrat terrorist[s]” in Kenosha. Rittenhouse’s “gift,” Scheuer contended, was in showing “his fellow citizens… that no U.S. citizen is obligated to stand by and watch his home, car, or business being burned by Democratic swine, or to fail to inflict fatal consequences on the same scum when they seek to harm or kill him, his family or his neighbors.” That gift was especially important “to young military veterans,” Scheuer assessed. Before the 2020 election, Scheuer urged Americans to form “local and nationwide” armed militias to stop the potential Democratic theft.

[...]

Black Lives Matter has “destroyed more property” than al Qaeda, making them “absolutely” terrorists. (A vandalized courthouse building; the World Trade Center: what’s the difference?) Left-wing radicals are setting the West Coast on fire—something that was apparently the subject of a Q drop this weekend, according to New York Times reporter Kevin Roose. Violence is “unfortunately inevitable.” Asked if he would participate in it, Scheuer said that at 67 years old he wouldn’t last long, “but I’m certainly armed.”

  Daily Beast

Should the FBI be watching this guy? Rhetorical.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The best people

Michael Caputo, the assistant secretary of health for public affairs, told a Facebook audience without evidence that left-wing hit squads were being trained for insurrection, and he accused C.D.C. scientists of “sedition.”

[...]

[Caputo] said without evidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Trump.

Mr. Caputo, who has faced criticism for leading efforts to warp C.D.C. weekly bulletins to fit Mr. Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger.

“You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going,” Mr. Caputo, a Trump loyalist installed by the White House in April, told followers in a video he hosted live on his personal Facebook page.

  NYT

Do you have to be a conspiracy nut to get a job in the Trump administration?

Mr. Caputo delivered his broadside against scientists, the media and Democrats after a spate of news reports over the weekend that detailed his team’s systematic interference in the C.D.C.’s official reports on the pandemic and other disease outbreaks. Former and current C.D.C. officials described to Politico, The New York Times and other outlets how Mr. Caputo and a top aide routinely demanded the agency revise, delay and even scuttle the C.D.C.’s core public health updates.

[...]

Those reports, deemed “the holiest of the holy” by one former top health official for their international respect and importance, have traditionally been so shielded from political interference that political appointees see them only just before they are published.

[...]

Mr. Caputo on Sunday complained on Facebook that he was under siege by the media and said that his physical health was in question and his “mental health has definitely failed.”

I think we can all agree on that.

“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” he said, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.” He then ran through a series of conspiracy theories, culminating in a prediction that Mr. Trump will win re-election but his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., will refuse to concede.

“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.” He added: “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”

[...]

“To allow people to die so that you can replace the president is a grievous venial sin, venial sin,” he said. “And these people are all going to hell.”

He has that backward. People were allowed to die to keep a president in office.

Somebody get the straightjacket.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 9/15:

Caputo has deleted his Twitter account.  Or...SOMEBODY deleted it.

UPDATE 9/16:  Caputo has been diagnosed with cancer.  What of the brain, you ask?

"After surgery last week at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, doctors diagnosed Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Caputo with squamous cell carcinoma, a metastatic head and neck cancer which originated in his throat," according to a statement from David DiPietro, a New York State assemblymember who is serving as Caputo's spokesperson. "He is now home in Western New York, resting in the loving arms of his family, under the watchful eye of Jesus Christ." 

  Politico

"Your favorite President, me"

Nope.  "Another candidate from another Party" did not make an unscheduled trip to Walter Reed.

You know how you could stop those rumors:  If it wasn't a series of mini-strokes, "favorite President", what was it?

And don't tell us again it was part one of your annual physical.

Drudge?  I thought Drudge was MAGA.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Also...

Also...

Speaking of incitement to violence...

Kellyanne sends out the call.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Impeach him again

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) on Tuesday announced the creation of a new task force dedicated to investigating mounting numbers of hate crimes against Asian Americans, NBC News reports.

The move follows a surge in racial discrimination against Asian Americans as the coronavirus pandemic rages on.

  The Hill

That investigation can start at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC.

There have been rising instances of discrimination and outbursts of attacks on Asian Americans since the onset of the pandemic. In May, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) said about 100 reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans were being reported daily.

[...]

The task force is currently working on cases without formal police reports but with ample evidence in the form of videos on social media. Loo confirmed officers have “actively searched” for victims in some cases. Several of these recorded attacks involve both verbal and physical assaults in public.

To expand access within the Asian American community, the task force will use translators and other cultural liaisons.

Snapchat dampens Trump's account

Snap Inc. announced Wednesday that it will no longer promote President Trump's Snapchat account after concluding that some of his tweets from over the weekend promoted violence.

His account will stay up on the social media platform, but will no longer be promoted on the app's Discover page, according to the company.

“We are not currently promoting the President’s content on Snapchat’s Discover platform," a spokesperson for Snap said in a statement to The Hill. "We will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice by giving them free promotion on Discover. Racial violence and injustice have no place in our society and we stand together with all who seek peace, love, equality, and justice in America.”

[...]

In a memo to workers posted publicly on Monday, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel addressed Trump's comments. "We will make it clear with our actions that there is no grey area when it comes to racism, violence, and injustice – and we will not promote it, nor those who support it, on our platform," he wrote while explaining the company's decision to stop promoting accounts that "incite racial violence, whether they do so on or off our platform."

The Trump campaign released a statement Wednesday condemning Snapchat's decision, accusing the platform of trying to "rig" the election in likely Democratic nominee Joe Biden's favor.

[...]

"Radical Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel would rather promote extreme left riot videos and encourage their users to destroy America than share the positive words of unity, justice, and law and order from our President," Trump's campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement.

  The Hill

WHAT positive words of unity?

Parscale also accused the platform of "voter suppression" by no longer giving extra boosts in viewership to Trump's posts.

Well that makes no sense. I thought they would claim interference with the youth vote, but "voter suppression"? Because Snapchat doesn't promote Trump's shit?

Cue the nasty tweets.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Twitter "restricts" Matt Gaetz' incitement tweet

Twitter has restricted a Monday tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), saying it glorifies violence, a move that comes after also cracking down on some of President Trump's tweets last week.

The Florida lawmaker and vocal Trump ally tweeted in response to Trump’s Sunday announcement on Twitter that anti-facist activists, or antifa, would be formally designated as a terrorist organization.

“Now that we clearly see Antifa as terrorists, can we hunt them down like we do those in the Middle East?” Gaetz posted.

Twitter restricted the tweet, preventing it from being liked, replied to or retweeted. Before the social media platform’s action, the tweet had been retweeted more than 12,000 times.

  The Hill

And Republicans will be screaming liberal bias.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Coming next: The "hunting down" of the opposition

Matt Gaetz is a member of Congress.  This is where we are as a nation, now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Twitter "restricted" Gaetz' tweet.

UPDATE:

Unabashed and dangerous bullshit

This month President Trump tweeted: “As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP.” That wasn’t a one-off tweet; it was coordinated messaging. The Trump campaign announced that it would spend part of an $8 million ad buy on spots accusing Democrats of orchestrating a “coup.” And former House speaker turned Trump sycophant Newt Gingrich call impeachment “an unconstitutional coup.”

[...]

Political scientists define coups as “illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive.”

[...]

Coups are illegal. Impeachment follows the law. Coups tear up constitutions. Impeachment is established by Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. Coups are extrajudicial. Impeachment emerges from the House Judiciary Committee. Coups are lightning-quick attacks that rely on the element of surprise to catch the leader off guard. Impeachment is a slow, methodical and publicly known process built on painstaking evidence-gathering. Coups are secret plots. Impeachment hearings take place in the arena of public opinion. Coup plots are hatched by men with guns. Impeachment is being overseen by a woman with a gavel.

[...]

I’ve interviewed generals, coup plotters and presidents toppled by coups in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. They are extraordinarily destructive events. Economies collapse. People get tortured. Whether coups succeed or fail, they create cycles of purges and retribution that inevitably lead to wider bloodshed.

[...]

In short, the brazenness of Trump’s Orwellian inversions of the truth with his “coup” claims are enough to make Big Brother blush. But his rhetoric could also incite violence.

[...]

Because coups cause such turmoil, even alleged plots can cause chaos.

[...]

[S]ome Trump supporters, including Sean Hannity of Fox News, have repeatedly called for “purges” of what they call the “deep state.” More recently, Hannity has called impeachment a “Soviet-style impeachment coup attempt,” a contradictory jumble of words that shows him to be as reckless as he is ignorant of history.

[...]

A messaging strategy that conflates legitimate and lawful congressional oversight with an illegal military putsch makes violent conflict more likely.

  WaPo

I suspect they hope for this. Trump could then declare a state of emergency and suspend the Constitution. And THAT would be the coup. We're in very dangerous times.

For the past several years, Trump has repeatedly condoned, incited or encouraged political violence. Falsely claiming that constitutionally mandated oversight of his alleged criminality is a form of serious political violence against him is another form of incitement, because it primes his supporters to think of appropriate remedies in terms of political violence.

[...]

In fairness, Trump is not the first person to wrongly call impeachment proceedings a coup. In 1998, when Bill Clinton was impeached, several House Democrats (including Jerrold Nadler, the current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee) called Republican-led proceedings “a partisan coup d’état.” They were wrong.

And they were wrong to say it. But Democrats don't have armed militia willing to back them.

The violent video at the pro-Trump conference

The New York Times reported Sunday night that a video was played at this year's American Priority Festival, a pro-Trump event featuring the president's staunchest defenders, showing Trump massacring a church full of people with media brands superimposed on their faces. The video was an edited clip from the first Kingsman movie.

[...]

I was one of the few reporters allowed into the conference, by virtue of not being a lib or working for a mainstream outlet, and I can fill in the rather sad context. The video was part of an "art exhibit," located in a room to the side of the Donald J. Trump Ballroom, of videos created by the self-proclaimed "memesmith" who goes by the pseudonym "Carpe Donktum." Typing that sentence made me hate myself.

Anyway, inside the room TVs and projectors were playing Mr. Donktum's greatest hits. They generally all follow the same format. Trump's face is superimposed onto a clip from The Avengers, and he beats up CNN. Trump's face is superimposed onto Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy, and he dances while kicking space rats labeled CNN.

[...]

I couldn't say how many people actually saw the offending meme. The room was empty when I walked in on Friday morning. I didn't stay in the room very long, because I don't like high-concept art and the real-life memes were walking around outside.

[...]

Nearby in the halls of the ballroom at the Trump National Doral Miami resort, former Trump campaign lackey George Papadopoulos was signing copies of his book, Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump, for a long line of festival attendees.

[...]

The Bikers for Trump were there in their leather vests, despite the South Florida heat. The Proud Boys, who reportedly take an anti-masturbation pledge when they join the group, were there too. So was guy who's known for dressing in a brick wall-patterned suit at Trump rallies. These were lifetime customers, the kind who would pay for airfare, conference registration, and $199 a night for a room at the hotel (plus $25 a day for the resort fee, plus parking)—not even to see Trump himself, but just to bask in his brand, be among the faithful, and hear others talk about how great the man is.

The conference was a glimpse inside the hermetically sealed reality where Trump's most hardcore defenders live, a place where the president is besieged on all sides by an incredible conspiracy to delegitimize and remove him from office. This wide-ranging plot involves the intelligence community, the press, the largest social media companies on Earth, and possibly several foreign governments, depending on which version of the story you hear.

[...]

Like many bunker-mentality movements, the adherents of the theory believe that they are surrounded on all sides by enemies but that their victory is ultimately assured. Not only will the truth prevail, but the deep-state instigators of the Russia hoax and the Ukraine witch hunt will be investigated and, God willing, put behind bars.

[...]

Besides the liberal media and the Democrats, tech companies were the biggest boogeymen in the room.

[...]

The American Priority Festival, now in its second year, was envisioned as an explicitly pro-Trump alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference, for years the premier conservative gathering.

In the view of many pro-Trump activists, that sort of big-tent event has become unnecessary and annoying. Now that Trump's cult of personality has subsumed much of the Republican Party, [...] there's no longer any need to pretend that nationalist conservatives share much of anything in common with free market conservatives, civility police, or decadent libertarians.

[...]

Politico reported that last year's AMP Fest, held in Washington, D.C. was lightly attended and stocked with conspiracy theorists. This year's festival, hosted at one of Trump's properties rather than the swamp, seemed relatively more successful, with a number of high-profile speakers. For example, a prayer breakfast featured former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders (book forthcoming from St. Martin's Press in 2020).

There were also surprise guests, including Roger Stone, one of Trump's longtime consultants and a famously sleazy political operator.

[...]

On Friday night, Stone was leaving the steakhouse bar inside the resort when I saw two women stop him, lay hands, and begin to pray over him. Stone solemnly bowed his head, but kept peeking around, as if to see who was watching.

The mystery guests and conservative heroes were all secondary to the headliner, though: the president's son, Donald Trump, Jr.

[...]

As The Atlantic reported earlier this month, Don Jr. has, to the surprise of everyone else in his family, become the heir apparent to Trump's political dynasty. While Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner were using the White House to try and worm their way into the international elite, and while Eric Trump was busy tending the family business, Don Jr. was honing his shitposting and stump speeches among his father's grassroots following. Onstage, he can effortlessly whip a crowd of Trump fans into a hooting frenzy.

For an hour, Don Jr. delivered riffs on topics like Elizabeth Warren's Native American ancestry or lack thereof, Peter Francis O'Rourke's plan to take away your guns, the Jussie Smollet case, Hunter Biden's drug problems, and of course the persecution he and his family have faced for nothing more than loving their country.

It was a speech without direction or point, a long windup to nowhere. And at the moment, the crowd wanted nothing else.

  Reason

One thing is certain: the author of this piece, C.J. Ciaramella, won't be getting into next year's conference.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Coup warning

He's signaling to his mad minions they need to be ready with their guns.

Consequences