Good morning.
September begins with a rainy day with a high of eighty. Sunrise is 6:20 AM and sunset 7:28 PM, for 13h 08m 02s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 67.1% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1775, George III refuses the Olive Branch Petition:
The Olive Branch Petition was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 5, 1775, and signed on July 8, in a final attempt to avoid a full-scale war between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies in America. The Congress had already authorized the invasion of Canada more than a week earlier, but the petition affirmed American loyalty to Great Britain and beseeched King George III to prevent further conflict. The petition was followed by the July 6 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, however, which made its success unlikely in London.[1] In August 1775, the colonies were formally declared to be in rebellion by the Proclamation of Rebellion, and the petition was rejected by Great Britain—even though King George had refused to read it before declaring the colonists traitors.[2]
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On August 21, Penn and Lee provided a copy of the petition to Lord Dartmouth, the colonial secretary, followed with the original on September 1. Penn and Lee reported back on September 2: “we were told that as his Majesty did not receive it on the throne, no answer would be given.”[6] In response to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the King had already issued the Proclamation for Suppressing Rebellion and Sedition on August 23, declaring the North American colonies to be in a state of rebellion and ordering “all Our officers…and all Our obedient and loyal subjects, to use their utmost endeavours to withstand and suppress such rebellion.”[7]
Recommended for reading in full —
Natasha Bertrand reports Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime (“Some of President Trump’s favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia”):
Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest “Democrats” engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.
As Trump praised and defended Russian President Vladimir Putin along the campaign trail, financial analysts and money-laundering experts questioned whether the real-estate mogul had any financial incentives—including business ties or outstanding debt—to seek better relations with Moscow. Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed in May 2017 to investigate a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, assembled a team with revealing expertise in fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and other financial crimes.
Trump’s latest obsession is with Bruce Ohr, a career Justice Department official who spent years investigating Russian organized crime and corruption—an expertise he shared with another Trump target named Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence operative who provided valuable intelligence on Russia to the State Department and the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force prior to authoring the Trump-Russia dossier in 2016. Ohr and Steele met in 2007, according to The New York Times, and stayed in touch as a result of their shared interests and mutual respect. Trump has tweeted about Ohr nearly a dozen times this month alone, complaining about his relationship with Steele and Ohr’s wife’s past work for Fusion GPS—the opposition-research firm that hired Steele in 2016 to research Trump’s Russia ties.
Of Bruce Ohr specifically, Eric Tucker and Chad Day report AP sources: Lawyer was told Russia had ‘Trump over a barrel’:
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior Justice Department lawyer says a former British spy told him at a breakfast meeting two years ago that Russian intelligence believed it had Donald Trump “over a barrel,” according to multiple people familiar with the encounter.
The lawyer, Bruce Ohr, also says he learned that a Trump campaign aide had met with higher-level Russian officials than the aide had acknowledged, the people said.
The previously unreported details of the July 30, 2016, breakfast with Christopher Steele, which Ohr described to lawmakers this week in a private interview, reveal an exchange of potentially explosive information about Trump between two men the president has relentlessly sought to discredit.
Julia Davis explains The Real Reason Russia Is Rooting for Republicans in the Midterms (“State-controlled media joke about abetting Trump and believe his tough talk on sanctions is just a ploy. If the Republicans win the midterms, they say, he’ll come around”):
Pro-Kremlin experts and propagandists have no doubt that the Republicans will fall in line with Trump’s agenda, unless they’re “suicidal” in terms of their political prospects. Konstantin Zatulin, first deputy chairman of the committee for relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Russian nationals abroad or the Duma, or lower house, is a leading figure in Putin’s United Russia party.
In discussing the outcome of the Helsinki summit, Zatulin asserted: National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “just sat there. Did you hear them voicing any accusations against Russia?… Naturally, Trump’s team—if they aren’t suicidal—will find arguments in support of the president. Those who don’t, won’t be on his team—or maybe they won’t be in Congress.”
(“Suicidal” seems to be a favorite Russian word for anyone who dares oppose Trump.)
“Our methods will work, they’ll be effective—I’m certain of that.” — Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei RyabkovAccording to recent reports, Pompeo requested a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov prior to the deadline for imposing sweeping new sanctions against Russia. Diplomats familiar with the effort told The Washington Post that this outreach is being directed personally by President Trump.
Conservative Michael Gerson writes This is the new GOP: Angry and afraid:
President Trump’s recent remarks to evangelical Christians at the White House capture where Republican politics is heading. “This November 6 election,” Trump said, “is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion.” A direct, unadorned appeal to tribal hostilities. Fighting for Trump, the president argued, is the only way to defend the Christian faith. None of these men and women of God, apparently, gagged on their hors d’oeuvres.
If religious get-out-the-vote efforts are insufficient, according to the president, “that will be the beginning of ending everything that you’ve gotten.” The gates of hell will not prevail against the church, but evidently Nancy Pelosi would.
“It’s not a question of like or dislike, it’s a question that [Democrats] will overturn everything that we’ve done, and they will do it quickly and violently. And violently. There is violence.” Here Trump is preparing his audience for the possibility of bloodshed by predicting it from the other side. Christians, evidently, need to start taking “Onward, Christian Soldiers” more literally.
This is now what passes for GOP discourse — the cultivation of anger, fear, grievances, prejudices and hatreds.
Here’s What’s Up for September 2018: