Daily Bread for 9.2.19

Good morning.

Today is the one thousand twenty-eighth day.

On this day in 1945, aboard the United States Navy battleship USS Missouri, officials from the Japanese government sign a formal instrument of surrender.

Recommended for reading in full:

Conservative Michael Gerson writes Don’t try to explain away Trump’s crazy ideas:

This process [of explanation] has a number of steps — the stages of servility. At first, there is stunned silence. (Did he really propose to buy Greenland?) Then the frantic search for hidden wisdom. (Climate change — which the president sometimes views as fake science — will melt Arctic ice, open sea lanes and turn Greenland into the Panama Canal of the north.) Then the determined Googling of historical precedents. (Harry S. Truman, it turns out, also contemplated a Greenland grab.) Then growing defiance. (Greenland has loads of zinc! Doesn’t America deserve zinc?!)

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But we should not play down the importance of having a president with harebrained notions. We should not explain away the craziness.

Certainly the president should not be allowed to lie away the craziness. In the face of good reporting on Trump’s nuclear idea, his claim of “FAKE NEWS” is entirely unconvincing. We have reached the point where the president’s denial of a charge actually makes it more credible. Recall his suggestion that the “Access Hollywood” tape isn’t real. And the claim that he never said Mexico would pay for the wall. And his claim that he never ordered White House counsel Donald McGahn to fire special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. And his claim that he never said Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election. And his claim that he never paid for the silence of a porn star. Self-serving deception by the president is now a justified expectation.

Isis Almeida, Mike Dorning, and Mario Parker report U.S. Farmers Stung by Tariffs Now Face a $3.5 Billion Corn Loss:

American farmers already stung by President Donald Trump’s trade wars now face billions of dollars in potential losses as controversial data from the U.S. government snuffs out a rally in corn.

The Agriculture Department on Monday [8.12.19] said farmers planted a bigger corn area than analysts estimated and pegged crop yields that also exceeded expectations, sparking the biggest rout in futures since 2013. That was a blow to growers who were holding back supplies, hoping a rally that started in May due to delayed sowing would extend through the fall.

The decline represents a potential loss of almost $3.5 billion for U.S. farmers, according to the American Farm Bureau, and is another setback for them after prices fell following the USDA’s previous acreage report, which was widely criticized for containing outdated data.

How To Spot Fake Pokémon Cards: