Oh, hold the phone, I was wrong, he’s got it all figured out. This is great.

"You gotta take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest,very important…I was with the President of Finland…he called it a forest nation and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem." pic.twitter.com/f6aD37B3KA

— ᴿealfarmacist (@real_farmacist) November 17, 2018

The floors. Cleaning them. You have to clean them. If you clean them everything will be fine; no more fires. It’s all a matter of hygiene.

He was with the president of Finland who lives in a farrest nayshn, he called it a farrest nayshn. “They spend a lot of time on raking, and cleaning [big back and forth hand gesture here, to represent ‘raking, and cleaning’ for those who don’t understand], and doing things, and they don’t have [pause, tiny shrug] any problem. Or if they do it’s a very small problem. I know everybody’s looking at that, and – and it’s going to work out well.”

No one was rude enough to tell him that Finland has a rather different climate from that of California.

Update: oh but an actual Finn was rude enough to tweet no we don’t.

We don't rake our forests here in #Finland. https://t.co/DTBhWkNZIa

— Aki Heikkinen (@akihheikkinen) November 17, 2018

Finland has ~73% forest coverage = 222,180 square kilometers of forests (world bank study). Our forests are densest in the world, averaging 72,000 trees in sq km. That's 22 billion trees or 4,500 for every Finn (yale university study).

Please send help. Must bring own rakes.

— Aki Heikkinen (@akihheikkinen) November 17, 2018

The UN says the UK government has immiserated its people with “austerity” policies.

Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, ended a two-week fact-finding mission to the UK with a stinging declaration that levels of child poverty were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”, even though the UK is the world’s fifth largest economy,

About 14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty and 1.5 million are destitute, being unable to afford basic essentials, he said, citing figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. He highlighted predictions that child poverty could rise by 7% between 2015 and 2022, possibly up to a rate of 40%.

“It is patently unjust and contrary to British values that so many people are living in poverty,” he said, adding that compassion had been abandoned during almost a decade of austerity policies that had been so profound that key elements of the postwar social contract, devised by William Beveridge more than 70 years ago, had been swept away.

He pointed out that it’s a political choice. Of course it is. The rich and powerful want a huge supply of cheap compliant labor, and you can’t get that if there are no poor people.

He told a press conference in London:

• Austerity Britain was in breach of four UN human rights agreements relating to women, children, disabled people and economic and social rights. “If you got a group of misogynists in a room and said how can we make this system work for men and not for women they would not have come up with too many ideas that are not already in place,” he said.
• The limit on benefits payments to only the first two children in a family was “in the same ballpark” as China’s one-child policy because it punished people who had a third child.
• Cuts of 50% to council budgets were slashing at Britain’s “culture of local concern” and “damaging the fabric” of society.
• The middle classes would “find themselves living in an increasingly hostile and unwelcoming society because community roots are being broken”.

It’s not just the UK.

Alston’s report follows similar audits of extreme poverty in China, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, Mauritania and the US. Donald Trump’s White House administration launched a furious response after the US was accused of pursuing policies that deliberately forced millions of Americans into financial ruin while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy.

Well of course he was furious.

The sleazebags…

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee, in its final days in power, is planning to issue subpoenas to former FBI Director James Comey and President Barack Obama’s attorney general Loretta Lynch, according to a source with knowledge of the subpoenas.

The source said the committee chairman, Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, plans to issue the subpoenas on Monday for Comey to appear for a closed-door deposition on November 29 and for Lynch to appear on December 5. The interviews are part of the House Republican investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe and the Russia investigation.

Comey’s lawyer, David Kelley, told CNN on Friday that, “We have not heard from them since October 1 when we advised the Committees (Judiciary and Oversight and Reform) that, while we respectfully declined their invitation for a closed door interview, we would welcome the opportunity to testify in a public hearing.”

Comey has previously rejected the committee’s request for him to appear privately before the GOP-led inquiry, saying he would rather testify publicly instead.

The now-minority Republicans use their last hours as the notional majority to refuse to let Comey testify voluntarily in public and instead subpoena him to do it out of sight. It’s so…scummy.

One of the profound questions of our time – is a campaign of personal harassment on social media Free Speech or just plain common or garden personal harassment?

A lawsuit accusing the publisher of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer of coordinating a “terror campaign” of online harassment against a Jewish real estate agent cannot be dismissed on First Amendment grounds, a federal judge in Montana ruled this week.

In his ruling denying a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, Dana L. Christensen, the chief judge for United States District Court in Missoula, Mont., wrote that the real estate agent, Tanya Gersh, was a private citizen, not a public figure, and that the publisher, Andrew Anglin, incited his followers to harass her as part of a personal campaign.

It started with interactions between Gersh and Richard Spencer’s mother.

Ms. Spencer owned a building in Whitefish and Ms. Gersh had talked to her about its potential sale after word circulated that residents were considering a protest there against white supremacy.

The call to protest was spurred by video of Mr. Spencer, who resided part time in Whitefish, railing against Jews and shouting “Hail Trump! Hail our people!” at an alt-right meeting in Washington, according to the suit.

The suit contends that Ms. Gersh counseled Ms. Spencer to sell the building and repudiate her son’s views. And initially, Ms. Spencer agreed, it says, even asking Ms. Gersh to represent her in such a sale.

Then Spencer changed her mind and wrote a blog post saying Gersh had threatened her.

Mr. Anglin then began writing and publishing his own articles calling for “a troll storm” against Ms. Gersh.

“Tell them you are sickened by their Jew agenda to attack and harm the mother of someone whom they disagree with,” he wrote, according to the suit.

In the months that followed, the site published over 30 related posts — and the phone numbers, email addresses and social media profiles of Ms. Gersh, her husband and 12-year-old son, as well as friends and colleagues, the suit states.

By the spring of 2017, the family had received more than 700 vulgar and hateful messages, including death threats, many referencing the Holocaust. Some phone messages consisted solely of the sound of gunshots.

The Southern Poverty Law Center filed the lawsuit on Ms. Gersh’s behalf in April 2017.

Anglin has been trying to get it dismissed because Free Speech.

The organization now expects the civil case to go to trial. It has taken a long time because it proved impossible to serve Mr. Anglin with legal papers, Mr. Dinielli said. Mr. Anglin’s last known address was in Ohio, but his whereabouts have been unknown for nearly two years. He is still running the site, possibly from overseas.

His lawyer, Marc Randazza, said that Judge Christensen’s decision was dangerous for free speech.

“The rule we lay down for the Nazi applies equally to the civil rights activist,” Mr. Randazza said in a statement. “And that ruling, if it stands, is not going to be good for anyone who engages in common outrage culture. Maybe that’s a good thing, but I think not.”

No, that’s fine. If a civil rights activist is personally persecuting a random person, including by publishing the phone numbers, email addresses and social media profiles of random person and r.p.’s family, friends, and colleagues, then no, that’s not protected free speech nor is it political activism, it’s targeted persecution.

This isn’t Daily Stormer’s first rodeo.

The site has also faced two other lawsuits. Taylor Dumpson, the first black woman to serve as American University’s student government president, filed a suit in May. She became an online target after a real-life incident: nooses and hateful messages left on campus a day after her inauguration. The suit was filed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Dean Obeidallah, a Muslim comedian and radio host, filed a defamation lawsuit in August 2017 after the site falsely accused him of masterminding the deadly bombing of an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, last year.

If they can ever find Anglin to force him to pay up, Obeidallah plans to send the money to civil rights groups.

Did Trump just spill the beans?

“The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess,” tweeted President Trump this morning. But why would the president have access to the inner workings of the Mueller investigation, which is supposed to be firewalled away from his influence?

There’s a strong chance Trump is just making this up, of course. On the other hand, over the last week, the Mueller investigation has been supervised by acting attorney general Matt Whitaker, who would have access to the investigation’s inner workings. It might be the case that Trump actually has access to the inner workings of the Mueller investigation because he finally has somebody running the Justice Department who is pliant and unethical enough to give it to him.

“Unethical” is putting it politely, from what we’ve been learning.

Here, lying about in plain  sight, is Trump’s response yesterday to a question from the conservative Daily Caller, which asked, “Could you tell us where your thinking is currently on the attorney general position? I know you’re happy with Matthew Whitaker, do you have any names? Chris Christie?”

In response Trump embarked on a rant about the Mueller investigation:

I knew [Whitaker] only as he pertained, you know, as he was with Jeff Sessions. And, um, you know, look, as far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had.

Oh look, he’s admitting that’s why gave Whitaker the AG gig.

If your assumption that somehow this will work out rests on the belief that Whitaker will conform to the ethical norms of the legal profession, you need to think about the people he has worked with in the past. You also need to consider what his future might bring. Matthew Whitaker is nobody’s idea of a bright young legal mind. He might make a nice living hosting a show on Fox News about the the Democrats who should be locked up and the Republicans who are being unfairly investigated. His career incentive is to do Trump’s bidding.

Norm Eisen says it’s not Whitaker’s call whether or not he recuses himself.

It’s not up to Whittaker. If he violates the ethics rules, he’s subject to sanction, including by DOJ and his state bar. We explain: https://t.co/1a5Gn7AyMo https://t.co/zvZjd8wEgt

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) November 15, 2018

Apparently the police in the UK have issued a new law saying everyone has to recognize everyone else’s Innate Gender Identity or else expect a knock on the door.

The police have launched their National Trans Tool Kit — a portfolio of definitions, policies and best practice recommendations developed in partnership with Stonewall, the National LGBT Police Network, and the Police Superintendent’s Association.

Most of it is about trans colleagues on the force, but some of it is about everyone.

And what is gender identity? There’s a glossary.

Where did they get that? From Stonewall.

What I want to know is, how do they think they know this “innate sense of their own gender” is in fact innate as opposed to being learned? How do they think it could be that? I could see it if children were raised in incubators with no sensory input for the first three years or so, but children raised that way are not likely to flourish or indeed survive, so that’s no help. How can people have “innate” senses of things beyond very basic sense-information like up and down, dark and light, moving and still? How, in other words, can people have a “sense of their own gender” that’s innate as opposed to learned?

This is a major crux in the whole dispute – whether or not one considers “gender identity” a real thing that is innate and can sometimes occur in the wrong body, or a social thing made up of all one has been told, explicitly and tacitly, about what box one goes in.

Wo. NBC reports:

The White House is looking for ways to remove an enemy of Turkish President Recep Erdogan from the U.S. in order to placate Turkey over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to two senior U.S. officials and two other people briefed on the requests.

Trump administration officials last month asked federal law enforcement agencies to examine legal ways of removing exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen in an attempt to persuade Erdogan to ease pressure on the Saudi government, the four sources said.

So…they want to hand over Gulen to be persecuted by Erdoğan so that Erdoğan will stop putting pressure on the murderous Saudi regime, which they (Trump “officials”) are so cozy with and fond of. It doesn’t get much filthier than that.

The Trumpies told the DOJ and the FBI to re-open Turkey’s case for extradition of Gulen, and asked the security people for information on his residency status. He has a green card and he’s been living here since the late 90s.

Career officials at the agencies pushed back on the White House requests, the U.S. officials and people briefed on the requests said.

“At first there were eye rolls, but once they realized it was a serious request, the career guys were furious,” said a senior U.S. official involved in the process.

…

The secret effort to resolve one of the leading tensions in U.S.-Turkey relations — Gulen’s residency in the U.S. — provides a window into how President Donald Trump is trying to navigate hostility between two key allies after Saudi officials murdered Khashoggi on Oct. 2 at the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

It suggests the White House could be looking for ways to contain Erdogan’s ire over the murder while preserving Trump’s close alliance with Saudi Arabia’s controversial de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

It’s so stressful when you’re friends with two oppressive authoritarian shits and they’re quarreling with each other.

One option that Turkish and Trump administration officials recently discussed is forcing Gulen to relocate to South Africa rather than sending him directly to Turkey if extradition is not possible, said the U.S. officials and people briefed on the discussions. But the U.S. does not have any legal justification to send Gulen to South Africa, they said, so that wouldn’t be a viable option unless he went willingly.

Yes, oddly enough we can’t just mail people around the planet as if they were so much merch from Amazon.

Updating to add a useful summary:

The thrust of the Gulen story is that the WH considered shipping a U.S. green card holder to likely torture and death in exchange for a cover-up of the murder of another U.S. green card holder to preserve a weapons deal with a country that spends money at the president's hotel.

— Paul Blumenthal (@PaulBlu) November 15, 2018

This is where people are getting themselves when they make wild claims about “identity.”

Comic Relief firmly believes every individual has the right to be who they are and to define their own identity.

— Comic Relief (@comicrelief) November 15, 2018

Comic Relief firmly believes every individual has the right to be who they are and to define their own identity.

Oh come on now. Think before you say things like that. We don’t have “the right to define our own identity” in general. We can play, we can fantasize, we can pretend, we can imagine, in some situations and contexts, but not in all of them. We can make some changes to our identity, but we can’t just make any and every change we can think of, as an act of will or speech. We can’t “identify as” pharmacists or accountants or electricians if we haven’t had the relevant training and passed the relevant tests. We can’t “identify as” another nationality when crossing a border. We can’t “identify as” six years old in order to frolic with other sixes at the local playground. We can’t “identify as” dogs if we want to be seen and addressed as sane adults. Und so weiter. The individual isn’t all-powerful, and “identity” isn’t magic.

Frustrating, isn’t it – we know what it’s reasonable to be certain about and what it isn’t, and we say so, and the result is that dogmatists think they’ve won the argument.

It reminds me of “Do you believe, yes or no…”

The Patreon

Walter Shaub points out that whatever the outcome of Trump’s attempts to obstruction of justice, he’s already done harm by setting bad precedents.

But whatever the outcome of Mueller’s investigation, America is establishing new precedents. One precedent is that President Trump fired the FBI director—and Congress did nothing. Another is that Trump admitted the FBI’s investigation of his campaign motivated the firing—and Congress did nothing. A third precedent is that Trump fired the attorney general after having railed against him publicly for refusing to intervene in the investigation—and Congress has done nothing. A fourth precedent is that Trump circumvented the Justice Department’s order of succession so he could replace the attorney general with an individual who has directed partisan attacks at the special counsel, has described publicly how a new attorney general could undermine the investigation, has had a personal and political relationship with an individual involved in the investigation, and has been associated with a company that is the focus of a separate FBI investigation.

If the precedents stand…

If members of Congress or the American people fail to act, these precedents will become the guideposts for future presidents who follow the path President Trump is blazing. A new tenet of American democracy will become that a president is permitted to evade investigation by firing the heads of agencies that investigate the president’s close associates, even when the investigation is the reason for the firings. This cannot stand. Putting a president above the rule of law is a threat to democracy.

We need another precedent: presidents can’t get away with obstruction of justice.

More news on Trump’s grump:

Trump’s trip to France to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I was a disaster, marked by a brooding and petulant president mocked and condemned wherever he went…

After deciding not to attend a ceremony honoring those killed in the war because rain apparently made it inconvenient to get there, Trump grew enraged at his staff “for not counseling him that skipping the cemetery visit would be a public-relations nightmare.” Somehow he was not able to figure out for himself that doing so might not go over well.

I wondered about that at the time. Really, Trump-people? You thought it would be a good look for Trump to squat inside all day doing nothing instead of going to the cemetery, when observing the centenary of the end of World War One is what he was there for? It didn’t occur to you that that would be insulting to pretty much everyone there and a lot of people not there? Is he drugging you?

Trump’s firing of Jeff Sessions and appointment of Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general, a move meant to protect him from the Mueller investigation, is turning out to be a mini-scandal in its own right, to the point where the president vacillates between singing Whitaker’s praises and claiming he doesn’t know him.

Again – what did they think would happen?

Anyway. At least he’s miserable. That’s our only consolation these days.

I’m not a lawyer, obviously, but the Trump administration’s response in the CNN-Acosta lawsuit seems bonkers to me.

The White House asserts that it can pick and choose which journalists are given a permanent pass to cover it, according to a court filing by the Justice Department on Wednesday.

The filing was the government’s legal response to CNN and Jim Acosta’s lawsuit over the recent suspension of Acosta’s press pass.

Tuesday’s lawsuit against President Trump and several of his top aides alleged that the ban violates CNN and Acosta’s First and Fifth Amendment rights.

Virtually all of the country’s major news organizations have sided with CNN.

Even Fox. But the Trump gang says they have “broad discretion” to choose what journalists can set foot in their White House.

The government’s filing quotes a tweet by White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders in which she announced the suspension of Acosta’s pass and saying his “conduct is absolutely unacceptable.”

The “conduct” mentioned by Sanders in the tweet that the government lawyers cite actually refers to a false and since-dropped argument that Sanders had made in the aftermath of the press conference — that Acosta was “placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern.”

The administration has backed away from that argument in recent days, and it makes no appearance in the government’s first legal comment on the case Wednesday. Even when the filing directly quotes Sanders’ tweets, it leaves out that part.

The government’s lawyers said in Wednesday’s filing that the back and forth between President Trump and Acosta during last week’s press conference, during which Trump strongly criticized Acosta, qualifies as “due process.” They also cite Sanders’ statement the night of that press conference as “notice of the factual bases for denial.”

That’s the part where I decided they’re bonkers. Not just wrong and incompetents but nuts. They’re calling Trump’s rude inappropriate eruptions at Acosta “due process.” Come on.

Other news organizations are now standing with CNN. In a statement Wednesday, The Associated Press, Bloomberg, First Look Media, Fox News, Gannett, NBC News, The New York Times, Politico, USA Today and The Washington Post, among others, said, “Whether the news of the day concerns national security, the economy, or the environment, reporters covering the White House must remain free to ask questions. It is imperative that independent journalists have access to the President and his activities, and that journalists are not barred for arbitrary reasons. Our news organizations support the fundamental constitutional right to question this President, or any President. We will be filing friend-of-the-court briefs to support CNN’s and Jim Acosta’s lawsuit based on these principles.”

Note they will be filing actual briefs, not just tweets.