For Trump’s other loving contribution of the day, he decided to shout at California for being on fire.

Hours after officials announced grim new statistics in California’s Camp Fire — nine dead, more than 6,700 structures incinerated — President Trump blamed poor forest management for the destruction and threatened to pull federal funding.

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

A normal president would express compassion and concern, and nothing else. While the fires … Read the rest

Now here’s a nice credential for our new Attorney General:

Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general, served on the advisory board of a Florida company that a federal judge shut down last year and fined nearly $26 million after the government accused it of scamming customers.

The company, World Patent Marketing, “bilked thousands of consumers out of millions of dollars” by promising inventors lucrative patent agreements, according to a complaint filed in Florida by the Federal Trade Commission.

Court documents show that when frustrated consumers tried to get their money back, Scott J. Cooper, the company’s president and founder, used Mr. Whitaker to threaten them as a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Cooper’s company paid Mr. Whitaker nearly $10,000

Tim Weiner at the Post tells us that Trump can’t kneecap the FBI.

Not even Richard Nixon could stop the G-men. God knows he tried. Trump is no student of history, but he would do well to recall Nixon’s battle with the bureau.

When Hoover died in May 1972 — six weeks before the Watergate break-in — Nixon installed a politically loyal stooge, L. Patrick Gray, in his place. “You’ve got to be a conspirator,” Nixon counseled Gray. “You’ve got to be totally ruthless.” Nixon tried to sabotage the FBI as soon as it started looking into the break-in, ordering the CIA to obstruct the bureau’s investigation, on spurious national security grounds. Gray destroyed devasting evidence linking the

Benjamin Wittes in the Atlantic tells us that last week he told a small audience that it was too late to fire Mueller; now he wonders if he was too optimistic.

Whitaker is the kind of bad dream from which career Justice Department officials wake up at night in cold sweats. He’s openly political. The president is confident in his loyalty and that he won’t recuse himself from the investigation—notwithstanding his public statements about it and his having chaired the campaign of one of the grand jury witnesses. There are legal questions about his installation at the department’s helm. And he’s known as the White House’s eyes and ears at Justice.

It’s bad—very bad.

But, he says, he still thinks … Read the rest

This afternoon outside the White House:

.@RepRaskin at the #ProtectMueller protest in front of the White House:

“Whitaker is not just professionally unqualified to be Attorney General. He’s constitutionally unqualified to be Attorney General.” #WhitakerMustRecuse pic.twitter.com/wgXRx8JOXo

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) November 8, 2018

Public Citizen president Robert Weissman: "In this country, it is the people who rule, not the autocrat who rules. And we will defend our democracy. Congress will act when we make them act, and we will make them act." #ProtectMueller pic.twitter.com/wXaR1JBGJG

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) November 8, 2018

.@waltshaub: “Sessions was a terrible Attorney General, but he did one thing right: He recused himself from the investigation. Trump didn’t like that, so he fired him. Nixon

James Kirkup wrote about the Jenni Murray denunciation yesterday:

Here we go again. Perhaps there should be a template for journalists writing about transgender issues and the treatment of women with the “wrong” opinions. The template would look something like this:

A small group of noisy, angry people, many of them male, have demanded that [Insert woman’s name] not be allowed to speak/ appear/ have a job/ do anything because [woman] once said things the small group of people didn’t like or agree with.

Really, we could use it for so many cases and so many women: Germaine Greer, Julie Bindel, Janice Turner, Posy Parker, Linda Bellos…

…me…

And a great many more, and the ranks keep growing all the … Read the rest

Surprise surprise surprise, Whitaker has no intention of recusing himself. Well no shit; that’s why he got the job, so obviously he’s not going to do the thing he was promoted to not do. Normally the job should have gone to Rosenstein, and Whitaker wouldn’t have been in the line at all, but Don wants a loyal stooge and Whitaker is his boy.

Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has no intention of recusing himself from overseeing the special counsel probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people close to him who added they do not believe he would approve any subpoena of President Trump as part of that investigation.

Also according to everything we know about … Read the rest

So, that Oxford SU LGBTQ statement complaining about Jenni Murray did its work: she has cancelled her appearance at the Oxford event. Well done, students: another woman silenced.

BBC Radio 4 host Dame Jenni Murray has pulled out of an Oxford University talk amid a backlash over comments she made about transgender people.

The Woman’s Hour presenter was invited to speak at an event called Powerful British Women in History and Society.

But the student union’s LGBTQ Campaign said she had made “transphobic comments” in a 2017 newspaper article.

The Oxford University History Society subsequently said she had cancelled her appearance “for personal reasons”.

Probably the personal reason of not wanting to deal with entitled little shits telling her … Read the rest

So many replies come to mind…

Someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. Half of the articles in Annals of Internal Medicine are pushing for gun control. Most upsetting, however, the medical community seems to have consulted NO ONE but themselves. https://t.co/oCR3uiLtS7

— NRA (@NRA) November 7, 2018

… Read the rest

Was Jim Acosta set up?

It wouldn’t surprise me if the entire episode with the young woman grabbing the mic from @Acosta were a set-up to put this all into motion.

She wasn’t there, she appears once Acosta begins, she watches Trump for a signal, then she behaves in a way not characteristic of WH aides.

— Leah McElrath (@leahmcelrath) November 8, 2018

If you look at the video the whole thing seems very odd – she jumps up and charges at Acosta, which surely can’t be normal procedure at a press conference. It’s hard to say, because Trump holds so few of them, but it certainly comes across as weird. And why have a woman do that? Ahhh – … Read the rest

Dutch guy wants to be trans 49.

Emile Ratelband, 69, wants to shift his birthday from 11 March 1949 to 11 March 1969, comparing the change to identifying as being transgender.

“We live in a time when you can change your name and change your gender. Why can’t I decide my own age?” he said.

Is it satire or does he really mean it?

Mr Ratelband argues he feels discriminated against because of his age, and that it was affecting his employment chances and his success rate on the dating app, Tinder.

“When I’m 69, I am limited. If I’m 49, then I can buy a new house, drive a different car. I can take up more work,” he