Blame Mueller, or yourselves, not Barr — Word to Donut Twitter, Beltway stenos and The Resistance

I said it before, just a few days ago. Some of the reasons why Robert Mueller didn't bag bigger game than he did are the fault of nobody but the man in the special prosecutor's mirror.

He made choices on what he did, and did not do, and that's part of why where we're at. At the same time, to the delight of Donut Twitter and Just.Another.Politician.™,  it's clear that Battling Bob thought there actually was an attempt by Trump to get Russia to help him win the election, and by Russia to offer said help.

Really?

If Mueller truly believes that, he's as dumb as a mud fence. As I've also said before, Vladimir Putin is way too smart to believe that a weathervane like Donald Trump could be controlled.

But, that seems to be the case.

Update, May 27: Michael Wolff, in his new book, "Siege: Trump Under Fire," nails Mueller totally:

Robert Mueller, the stoic marine, had revealed himself over the course of the nearly two-year investigation to his colleagues and staff to be quite a Hamlet figure. Or, less dramatically, a cautious and indecisive bureaucrat.

And with that, back to the original piece.

An Atlantic piece has a number of reasons to blame Robert Mueller's investigation of alleged collusion in its 14-point summary. I'll briefly tackle each of the 14 and why they reflect badly on Mueller, or Donut Twitter/The Resistance.

1. Some interviewees using encrypted devices? Federal judges have ordered Apple to unlock iPhones, or else the Eff Bee Eye has done workarounds.
2. The "can't charge a president"? Gee, I remember the Paula Jones lawsuit against Slick Willie was allowed to go forward while he was Prez, including Jones' team deposing him. If Mueller refused to challenge the OLC "guidance," again, on him. A number of constitutional law scholars have said it's either overbroad or nugatory. It should be nugatory, given that actual impeachment trials ONLY involve removal from office and not actual criminal convictions or penalties. Mueller needed to, and didn't, learn from Jack Brooks, who knew the difference between impeachment and a criminal case.
3. I don't think the Trump Tower/Don Jr. meeting was collusion. Here, Mueller was sniffing The Resistance's chemtrails all along.
4. Trump's "I'm fucked' means nothing legally. Why Mueller has it in the report, I don't know.
5. Sessions, for all his issues, did not unrecuse himself. We're getting close to wanting to criminalize the First Amendment, Atlantic.
6. Ditto on Trump and Don McGahn.
7. Ditto on Trump wishing for Roy Cohn as his lawyer.
8. The late-stage delay "reason" (excuse) for not subpoenaing Trump? As I said on my first piece about the report's release, that never bothered Archibald Cox, Lawrence Walsh, or Ken Starr. And, the idea that you're operating under a different special counsel statute is irrelevant here. You weren't put on a clock. Both here and point 2, at Politico, Paul Rosenzweig says "Mueller flinched." I agree. AND! Rosenzweig served under Shrub Bush AND on Ken Starr's staff. (Alan Dershowitz also agrees, at the link.) And, re flinching and Point 3, Mueller also refused to subpoena Don Jr.
9. Trump "beside himself" is of no more legal relevance than his "I'm fucked."
10. Whoever was the particular person to start writing the draft of what would be Trump's letter to Comey is interesting but irrelevant legally.
11. Direct Russian offers of assistance? Name them or it's not so. At a minimum, state that it's a reference to the Internet Research Agency 12 indictments, and at least hint that it goes beyond what's been publicly revealed there.
12. Sarah Hucksterman Sanders' lies to the press? Again, legally irrelevant.
13. The Papadopoulos rabbit trail is just that, IMO. 
14. Cohen-Trump talks? Asked and answered already. Why does The Lanyard bring them up again?

This whole thing is silly.

Beltway stenos continue to try to absolve themselves from misinterpreting shit, including the idea of collusion. Mueller pulled half his punches, that much is clear, and apparently was brewing his own batch of collusion Kool-Aid to boot. And, Donut Twitter and The Resistance will continue to glom on to this Beltway steno shit and ignore everything I just said about the reality of Mueller.

More along these lines from Aaron Mate.

Once again, the bottom line:

What we really have, as I see it, is a lot of Donut Twitter wishing criminal law worked like civil law — preponderance of evidence instead of beyond a reasonable doubt. But, that AIN'T the way it works, quite fortunately.

Sadly, Mueller was a bit more out on that limb, it seems, than I would have thought.

Oh, and Marcy? Emptywheel? Since the investigation by Mueller is wrapped up, you're free to name your Evil Threatening Journalist you turned in to the Eff Bee Eye. You're free to name why you turned him in.

Update, May 1: According to Greenwald, the FBI itself did nothing but a pro forma investigation and pretty much treated her claim as a joke, and she's done a between the lines admission of that.

Mueller Report and collusion, conspiracy, obstruction: Donut Twitter and The Resistance still fight reality

Now that a redacted version of the Mueller Report is out, it seems clear that Donut Twitter and The Resistance, etc., along with the Kossack Dead-End Kids, etc., still don't want to face reality.

First, as I said almost a full year ago to Emptywheel, speaking of Kossack Dead-End Kids, there is no such federal statute called "collusion." She's pretty much dropped that since then, but others, including people with about the same brain cells as the KrapYourStein Brothers, haven't let go.

Speaking of, Marcy, you still haven't named the other reporter/blogger or whatever you reported to the FBI because he allegedly scared the Putin out of you, have you? Name a name or I officially assume it's as fake as your collusion claims.

For further refudiation of BuzzFeed Ben, Jason Leopold, Madcow Maddow, Young Napolitano (Chris Hayes) and others, go to this Twitter thread by Aaron Mate.

That said, Trump/Kushner technically DID collude with Russia in an informal sense. And with many other countries. Per Mondoweiss, as the Mueller Report notes, it was all on behalf of Bibi, following up on what we already know about Gen. Flynn. Maybe that's why Trump wouldn't commute his sentence, let alone pardon him — he was unsuccessful.

As for the obstruction of justice, or conspiracy to do so? Even though the report says that Sarah Huck(st)erbee Sanders lied about why Trump fired Comey (in part), even if he was fired entirely because he wouldn't "publicly clear Trump," that still doesn't, in my opinion, rise to a conspiracy to obstruct justice, let alone actually doing so. I said that a month ago, and then as today, I say that while rejecting AG Barr's expansive idea of executive powers. Had Trump interfered with Mueller's work after he was named special prosecutor, it would be different. (At Politico, Josh Blackman notes that Mueller whiffed on whether or not he accepted Barr's idea that obstruction doesn't often apply to the president. That said, I disagree with Blackman's large agreement with Barr. But I do agree that Mueller should have been explicit one way or the other.)

Speaking of, did Trump drag his heels on responding to Mueller? Yes, and that's ultimately Mueller's fault for not subpoeaning him. Is that because Battling Bob believes in some degree of Rethuglican strong executive powers himself? Is it because he believes in a narrow sense of authority of special counsels?

Actually, no, he said he was worried about delays in the investigation. Well, that's a bullshit claim. It's a lazy man's claim. It's Mueller caving to the Republican chattering class claiming the investigation was already taking too long. Archibald Cox, Lawrence Walsh and Ken Starr never worried about that. Yes, they were under a different special counsel law, but the current one doesn't have time constraints either.

Related? If he, not just his staff, thought there was an actionable case of conspiracy, or actual obstruction — per criminal law not civil law standards — did he not pursue it because he believes in narrow lines about indicting presidents? Why did he not then make an impeachment recommendation? That too is on Mueller. Frankly, I believe — as do a number of constitutional law scholars — that the old DOJ finding that a sitting president cannot be indicted is constitutionally nugatory. That's for several reasons.

First, the fact that the Supreme Court allowed the Paula Jones lawsuit against President Clinton to proceed while he was in office, at least through the point of depositions. Parallel here would be indicting the president but deferring an actual trial until he left office.

This is important because, as shown in the Julian Assange indictment and arrest, crimes have statutes of limitation.

Second, that old DOJ finding should be nugatory for another reason. That is the fact that actual impeachment trials ONLY involve removal from office and not actual criminal convictions or penalties. Mueller needed to, and didn't — learn from Jack Brooks, who knew the difference between impeachment and a criminal case.

Otherwise? Given the leaks by members of Mueller's now-disbanded staff recently?

What Aaron said. Mueller's staff isn't Mueller. And, if he believes in a "chain of command" so narrow that he thinks this precludes him talking about the report at all, then Mueller has his own problems. 1/2 https://t.co/UJqYKxAQN8

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) April 18, 2019

And:

2/3 Also per .@aaronjmate As for Mueller staff? Since Mueller is done, they have free rein to comment for attribution. And Beltway stenos have free rein to ask them for their names. That's on "collusion."

— reallyDonaldTrump  🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) April 18, 2019

This all said? I said six weeks ago, in a summary of several older blog posts, that Russia DID "meddle" in the US election, but without the goal of electing one candidate or not. I said it was Russian hacking, not Seth Rich (or somebody else) leaking that was behind the first set of DNC emails. (And the later Russian spearfishing is indirect support for the original emails being obtained by Russian hack. So, there, contra both ShirtLost DumbShit Zach Haller types, as I said a year ago, and also contra Julian Assange whatabouters, as I said a week ago, the Seth Rich conspiracy theory BS is disgusting.) And Frederick Theodore Rall III is inserting his limpness halfway into this. The reality, as I tweeted him, is that Assange and his toady Craig Murray both have good reason to lie about the source of the emails.

Meanwhile, Donut Twitter / The Resistance, exemplified by call-girl class stenos like Yoni Applebaum at Atlantic and Jon Chait at The New Yorker, continue to see the report as grounds for impeachment (for Chait, impeaching Barr), which it most certainly is not. Sadly, but not surprisingly, pseudo-progressive Dems like Down with Tyranny do the same.

And ignoring real Emoluments Clause grounds.

More along these lines from Aaron Mate.

==

Update, May 14: Former Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein has turned both barrels on Comey, calling him a "partisan pundit" who trampled "bright lines that should never be crossed."

The specific target of his ire is how Comey handled reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails adn server after then-AG Loretta Lynch had had her conflict-of-interest inducing meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac.

Rosenstein is totally right. It was grandstanding, as I said at the time, and not SOP, either. Then-Assistant AG Sally Yates should have been contacted by Comey and she should have been asked to get Lynch to officially recuse herself, then take over.

Rosenstein said he would have handled Comey's firing differently had it been just him, not Trump, but that Comey deserved to be fired.

He did.

Period and end of story, Donut Twitter and Resistance.

TX Progressives glad taxes are past, sad Rethugs and ConservaDems still here

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The Texas Progressive Alliance says “Thanks Obama” at income tax time for this member’s having to pay a partial Obamacare penalty, with Tax Day on Monday. Meanwhile, here’s this week’s roundup.

Off the Kuff was sadly not surprised to see Ken Paxton brush off the demand for documents relating to the bogus SOS advisory on non-citizen voters.

SocraticGadfly talks about a Texas history event known to relatively few Texans and to very few non-Texans: The Great Hanging at Gainesville.

David Bruce Collins offers an in memoriam to Texas Green Party pioneer Dr. George Reiter.

And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Texas Monthly opposes a state sales tax increase, as does the Texas Trib, yet surprisingly neither mention the backscenes mover on this, Rep. Drew Springer, even though the Texas Observer profiled him and his new day job 18 months ago and explained why he would push this.

Raise Your Hand Texas believes in the power of pre-K.

Christopher Hooks wonders why Dan Patrick would support Presidential actions that would harm the Texas economy.

John Tanner wants alternatives to the STAAR test for school accountability

Juanita finds Louie Gohmert's intellectual twin.

Grits for Breakfast notes Greg Abbott's flipflop on marijuana reform.

Better Texas Blog would prefer to keep kids on health insurance plans, thanks very much.

The Texas Observer explores attempts to revitalize the old Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells. 

The Observer notes that state Democrats are stillpiecemealing the fight to maintain local control over what should be local issues.

Dallas County DA John Creuzot won’t criminally prosecute first time pot offenders, one of a raft of reforms from his office the Dallas Observer notes. Grits has more.

Jim Schutze has a three-year-and-wait update on the unopened Calatrava bridge across the Trinity in Dallas. 

Rep. Brian Babin (R-Woodville) tells Gov. Strangeabbott to butt out of his federal bill bringing more fairness to Indian gaming in Texas. The Fertitta family of Houston Rockets ownership and other things maybe expects its campaign dinero to Abbott to get this type of action.

There was no "Levite Exodus" and that's not how Judah brought Yahweh to Canaan

Richard Elliott Friedman claims there is in "The Exodus," but I'm more convinced than ever he's wrong, and that he's got a mix of weak and bad reasoning behind that.

I had seen his book to that end a year ago at a library, briefly grokked it, then put it back on the shelf as I found it untenable.

Then, someone who left a comment on a Goodreads review of mine referred me to a blog link of his about the "Kenite hypothesis" for the origin of Yahweh, and made extensive reference to Richard Elliott Friedman.

With a link to this blog post by Friedman.

Several issues, some of which I told said blogger, go directly to Friedman.

First, the fact that Levites have Egyptian names means nothing. So did Moses, as Friedman as well as said blogger claim, and Moses never existed. And, I think Friedman also rejects claims of Moses' historicity. That said, he's so much of a maximalist, I'm not sure on that. He may accept a "modified" Moses as being historical.

Second, I've never before heard the E strand of the Torah called "Levite." Friedman is, I think, doing that to shoehorn into theory.

Third, while I lean toward some version of the documentary hypothesis, I know that fragmentary hypothesis modifications and tendrils are part of the history of the writing of sections of the Torah. Things aren't as clean as he claims.

Fourth, claiming that something like omission of most Exodus plagues by the current J means he never wrote about them? Arguments from omission or silence on textual criticism and higher criticism are untenable by nature and often simply wrong. And, even if the claim is true, it may not be for the reasons he claims.

Fifth, as Friedman knows, the relations between Levites and priesthood, and the nature of the priesthood and its putative origins, are more complex than he puts forth at times. It's more than simple opposition between self-identified followers of Moses and self-identified followers of Aaron — who is also, of course, not a historical person.

Sixth, Egypt-type ideas are borrowed in biblical books outside the Torah. Isaiah 9 so beloved of Christians is lifted from Egyptian coronation language.

So, I'm glad in a sense I didn't read his book, and he should be glad, too.

And, I must have missed this when I read Friedman's "Who Wrote the Books of the Bible?" No, P didn't write in the time of Hezekiah. That's simply incorrect. So is his reasoning why. If there was no historic Moses and no historic exodus, there is no bronze serpent Nehushtan created by Moses and venerated by Moses-followers for Hezekiah to have destroyed in the name of Aaronic followers. Per the P link, yes, you could have had factionalism among elements of the worship cult, which would more have been Zadokite vs non-Zadokite, as Hezekiah worked to centralize worship, especially post-722 BCE. But, even then, some post-exilic factionalism may be getting retrojected. I do agree ideas about the formation of the priesthood need to move beyond the traditional Wellhausen. To the degree Friedman is still wedded to it with the twist of an early P, he seems wrong. To the degree he appears to be trying to move beyond, he also seems wrong.)

He definitely seems wrong about Nehushtan.

This would be like Dominicans claiming the Shroud of Turin was created by St. Dominic and the current pope destroying it to uplift Franciscans — with the twist that neither Dominic nor St. Francis were historical personages.

In reality, the whole idea sounds like certain parts of the nation of Judah appropriating an old Canaanite snake cult, or such a cult surviving from the rise of Israel before Judah's invasion, or something like that, and attaching the name of Moses to it.

Basically, any attempt to divine the origins of the cultus of the Jerusalem temple without taking into account the likely separate actual invasion of Canaan by Judah and how they brought Yahweh with them is going to be wrong to a fair degree.

In addition, in his "it's all Egypt" claims, saying the tabernacle came from Egyptian ideas? Uh, no. We have documented tabernacles and even more documented arks from all sorts of Semitic tribes wandering the edges of the Fertile Crescent.

That said, though the ark and tabernacle have Semitic roots, and all of the other things above, yet, we have reasons for this Egyptian background.

Many conservative Christians who know their bibles know Israel was conquered by Assyria and Judah by Babylon. But, other than "knowing" there was an exodus from Egypt, they don't know the reality of relations with Egypt.

At the time the people who later became known as Israel emerged from previous culture in Canaan, that was around the height of Egypt's influence over Canaan. Setting aside old kingdoms, like old Babylon, Akkad, etc., the eastern and northern Fertile Crescent simply had nothing comparable, other than the Hittite power intruding from Asia Minor not too long before the Sea Peoples.

So, if you were some newly emerging statelet in today's Palestine and writing an origin myth, tying yourself to Egypt was the deal. Egyptian religious cult names, a putative revolt leader with a Pharaonic knock-off name? Check and check. Coronation ritual for a king stolen from Egypt by a big prophetic writer? Yep. And finally, to creatively borrow from the Egyptian account of the creation of the world, replacing your people's older version.

Remember, it was more than just power. Egypt was about gold and riches. And style and beauty. And, so it was hoped, occult science on the mummification of the dead.

Israel, then the Judah-infused Israel, didn't go quite to cargo cult length, but it did stretch its claims to Egyptian metaphysical ancestry a fair bit.

As for Nehushtan? That might have been an aniconic angle inserted by the Deuteronomic historian in Kings.

This all has other complications, too. Namely, the problematic nature of Hezekiah's reign. It's problematic among other things in that, per biblical chronology, Ahaz would have had to be 11 when Hezekiah was born; nice trick on doing both that and being his alleged father. Some critical theology postulates both as sons of Joram, but that doesn't really solve much; it mainly just moves the problem around. As I see it, Hezekiah is artificially inflated, in length of reign and other things, parallel to Josiah being artificially inflated a century later with "the discovery of the torah" in the temple, etc.

As far as other aspects of the origin of the Jerusalem-based cultus, modern scholars like this don't see animal sacrifice as central to Egyptian worship, meaning it came from either the Ba'al and El cult of Syria (Aram) or Judah and other wandering Semites who moved into the southern Fertile Crescent, or some combination. And religious tensions, then, arose not from Moses vs Aaron adherents, but back-projections onto that from different subgroups within Ba'alim before it started getting displaced by Yawhists, or by Yahwists.

Beyond all of the above, Friedman is apparently more of a "maximalist" within the realm of modern historical criticism than I realized.

As for the blogger?

As I said there, the "Kenite hypothesis" of how Judah came to worship Yahweh is not directly contradictory to the etymology of the name "Yahweh." At the same time, using the etymology to call Yahweh "just" a storm god? No. He's a mountain god, with storms associated with the altitude and weather deflection of mountains.

He's a Midianite Zeus, like Zeus, ensconsed on a dormant volcano.

As for the Tanakh not mentioning the Edomite god Qos more than once, other than a couple of theophorics? My parallel migrations of Judah and Edom are one explainer — sibling rivalry. Another is that Qos is a title, not a name, at least originally, and it only later became a name for the Edomite deity. Like "Christ."

Finally, the "Kenite hypothesis," at least in its full-blown older version, leans too heavily on James Frazier-type comparative anthropology as expressed in "The Golden Bough," most of which has rightly been junked today. The idea of Kenites as traveling early Iron Age metalworkers is one thing. But ideas of metal working being tabu, reading the Cain-Abel legend as being about Kenites and not farmers vs nomads, etc.? Uhh, no. Especially if we look at the Judahites as being nomads, making an actual invasion of Canaan, which the Israelites did not, even if the ancestor tale to Cain and Abel was about smiths, as it currently stands, it's not that at all.

And, contra said blogger, the common version today is really the Midianate-Kenite hypothesis or whatever, per link above. The consensus has grown that Yahweh ultimately comes from the area we call Midian today with different elements of the Torah plus Deuteronomic History struggling with whether to embrace or reject the idea that Midianite in-laws of Moses were key to trans mission. That's whether he then became just the god of Judah or also of Edom in some way. As for how metalsmiths, traveling or not, were involved in the transmission, that is a second element, but based on where Yahweh came from. But, he was NOT brought to Canaan by a Levite Exodus, contra another post where said blogger explicitly embraces that. In turn, that idea explicitly undercuts the basic idea of the Kenite hypothesis. Meanwhile, extending Edom to include Midian is simply wrong; but he does it by saying it includes northwest Saudi Arabia. Even worse is the claim that Yahweh was handed on to Israelites by the Shasu, who didn't live in Edom, but in the Israelite hill country and Sinai Peninsula. And, while Teman is a quasi-synonym for Edom, Edom and Midian were not used interchangably.

Basically, as I see it, he's entertaining probably three or four partially but not totally contradictory hypotheses about the origins of Yahweh, but then emphasizing the contradictory parts of each. And he's then piggybacking it onto the Levite Exodus theory. Meanwhile, he's ignoring the possibility, including biblical evidence, of Judah entering Canaan from outside and not being part of the rise of Israel.

So, with that, enough here and enough with said blogger.

Tax day: Thanks Obama! Thanks Obamacare

Due to a brief excursus to another job for two months in 2018, I have to pay two months of Obamacare penalty prorated off the $695 per year. (Thanks to Trump, and yes, a thanks of sorts if it helps kill Obamacare and forces Dumbocrats, I mean Democraps, to line up behind single payer, that penalty disappears on NEXT year's 1040.)

OK, the big deal of course is —

THE "rule" for benefits, the lusted after insurance "bennies" for which employers enserf employees even though they know, in many cases they'd save money with single-payer?

"You're eligible after 90 days."

My previous job, to which I returned, didn't "clear the decks" during my short absence, so I went right back on insurance there. But, had I stayed at the brief excursus, I would have had a three-month hit, not two months.

And, Dear Leader surely knew that 90-day rule.

Some countries that have national health care coverage use private insurers as part to nearly all of the system.

Switzerland, the most recent country of advanced nations to develop national health care coverage, is insurance-based. So is Taiwan, IIRC. Japan has a fair amount of its system insurance-based and German has a moderate amount that way.

But, in any of these countries, if there is employer-based insurance to fulfill the insurance coverage, there's NO "you're eligible after 90 days." Either Dear Leader knew that, too, and swept it under the rug, or, as in 2008 Democratic debates with Hillary Clinton and his ignorance over the need for an "individual mandate," he was that dumb.

Thanks Obama! Thanks Obamacare!