The melons and grapes know what time it is

"Does anybody really know what time it is?
(Care) Does anybody really care?
(About time) You know, I can't imagine why
(Oh no, no) we've all got time enough to cry"
         Robert Lamm, "Does Anybody Know What Time it is," released by Chicago, 1970

Both the melons and the grapes know the end is near, so they are sprinting toward ripeness. The plants have a retirement-age/senior-citizen look to them, the equivalent of a  healthy people in their late 60s. 

For melons, it means the vines have lost their vibrant green color and turned matte. 

A melon like this one is known in Spanish-speaking countries as a Piel de Sapo and is sold in farmers' markets in the U.S. as Santa Claus melons. It is the classic late-season melon, with little crack marks on the skin, analogous to the wrinkled face of a 60-something year old who has been in the sun a lot. This will be a superb melon when I cut it, but it isn't beautiful. The melon plant knew the season was ending and it rushed this to ripeness.

The grapes are in their late-60s-equivalent, too. The pumice soil at my farm does too good a job of letting grape roots find water even without my irrigating, so I have a rapidly-growing canopy that persisted until Labor Day this year. The Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon finally stopped putting out new tendrils, and the vines went from growing leaves to ripening fruit. The Pinot Noirs, for some reason, have a few spotty instances of continued growth. I look down a row of Cabernet and Malbec vines and notice what I do not see on vines that have been untended for a month: new growth out the sides and top:

Cabernets on the left; Malbecs on the right

Leaves are dying back a little, more visibly on the Malbecs:

Not every Pinot Noir vine got the message, but most did.

Last year the Pinots were the only variety that was ready for a trial harvest from young vines. We picked on October 6. This year the plants have been slower to ripen. Now that we are getting hot, dry Indian summer days with temperatures in the 90s, I expect the ripening to accelerate. On September 24, eight days ago, juice squeezed from a random sample of Pinots measured a brix of 18.8. (Brix is a measure of sweetness.) It was two, maybe three, weeks away from being ready for harvest, when they would measure a brix of 22 to 24.

We often have a two week period of dry, hot weather in early October, so the forecast for the next 10 days doesn't surprise me. It does thrill me.

Heat will ripen the grapes. I probably will not water the grapes even a little, although I could do so easily with a controlled drip. At this point, I am managing for sweetness so I can get the grapes up to the brix that Valley View Vineyards wants. Water will slow or reverse the ripening trend and dilute the grape juice. Rain wets the grape clusters, which risks moisture lingering inside the clusters, which can bring rot and mold. As we get into October, rain is almost inevitable. This is a critical 10 days for getting the grapes ripe, harvested, and out of harm's way.

I try to understand the season with instruments measuring temperature, moisture, sweetness, acidity, time of day, and a calendar. The melons and grapes know what time it is on their own.

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Ugly photos

The Brad Hicks/Denise Krause race has gotten to the ugly-photo stage.

I wish they would stop this, but neither will.

Both campaigns followed the same messaging strategy. Each started out with get-to-know-the-candidate ads.

Then, a week ago, that ended. Now they want you to get to know the other candidate. And by that, they want you to fear the opponent, dislike them, and hold them in contempt as sold-out puppets of the rival team.

The early Hicks ads presented him as Mr. Nice Guy: bipartisan, a reach-across-the-aisle type, someone people other than MAGA Trump-supporting Republicans could feel comfortable with.

This is Hicks as he presents himself. He is a healthy-looking man in late middle age with a normal complexion. This is the opening photo on his website, so I presume it is how he wants to be seen: wearing an SOU-branded hoodie, talking earnestly with what appears to be a student.

Hicks represented his work at the Chamber of Commerce as bipartisan. That is thoroughly dishonest, as the Chamber PAC's behavior shows. But it is a welcome aspiration, a promise of new and different behavior in a new role, and it is possible that he both believes it and would behave that way in office.

Denise Krause's campaign started with the same get-to-know-her approach. Her meta-message was that she is a warm, relatable woman who has overcome problems. Photographs established her as a mother. She described a cancer diagnosis, a fight with her insurance company to get the treatment that worked, and her 30-something years of sobriety. There is a photo of her holding a hen at her home.

Like Hicks, Krause appears to be in late middle age, and, like him, she has a normal complexion in her own self-presentation:

Both campaigns have gone negative -- ugly negative. There is a common theme. Hicks characterizes Krause as a rubber stamp for Democrats and depicts her in unflattering, grainy black and white:

Although Krause does not hold office in Salem, Hicks pictures her here speaking with the Oregon State Capitol in the background. The implication: if you want to throw out the Salem incumbents, defeat Krause. It is dishonest in being misleading, but it meets the minimum standard of campaigns: it is not literally false, since it does not directly say she is speaking as an incumbent legislator. I wish he didn't do that.

Krause does the same thing to Brad Hicks. In Krause's ads, Hicks is dark and deeply wrinkled:

She says Hicks's claims of bipartisanship and political independence are pretend and that he is a cynical buddy of powerful special interests that fund his campaign: insurance companies, drug companies, and big tobacco:

She repeatedly calls him "Republican Brad Hicks." There is no evidence that Hicks is anything other than a good, loyal Trump-supporting Republican, so she empathizes that label. Being a Republican is probably a net-negative for Hicks this year in Senate District 3, which covers purple Medford and blue Ashland.

This "Hicks is squeezing you" ad makes a misleading characterization, taking four words Hicks used in 2021, "Just go to work," putting them in the present tense about the current economic environment, implying that he is scolding working people who are complaining about high insurance and gas prices today. That is the same standard of truthfulness that Hicks used in putting Krause at the State Capitol: Misleading for sure, but not literally false. I urged her not to run it, and I wish she hadn't.

The characterization each candidate makes of the other -- that each is a puppet rubber stamp for the team that funds them -- is unkind and overstated, but probably not completely wrong. I expect Krause to vote like a Democrat. I expect Hicks to vote like a Republican. Hicks is funded by corporate PACs and giant Republican interest groups. Krause is impoverished in comparison, but she has ads up, many paid for by unions. I presume both candidates are genuinely and sincerely politically aligned with the people who fund them. It isn't necessary to characterize one another as corrupt and cynical.

The negative ads erode the public's belief in representative government. I would prefer a different approach.

-- I wish Krause's campaign ads would present and sell the Democratic-oriented policies she would advance. She is a Democrat: sell that. After all, it is how I expect her to vote. And if she disagrees with Governor Kotek on some things, spell them out clearly. 

-- I wish Hicks's campaign ads would present and sell the Republican-oriented policies he would advance. He is a Republican: sell that. After all, it is how I expect him to vote. And if he disagrees with President Trump on some things, spell them out clearly.

Otherwise, this is a contest over whom voters dislike and fear more: Governor Kotek and her corrupt puppet, or President Trump and his corrupt puppet. 

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Trump Campaign Ads, paid for by the U.S. government

Trump Campaign Ads, Paid for by the U.S. Government

It's come to this. Observe it. Reflect on the moment.

We are at a hinge point in American history.

Trump is testing us. He is asserting a position in a negotiation. He is running campaign commercials paid for by the government. If we consent to this, then we have made a tacit agreement: Trump is the state.

Here is one of the ads, titled "Final Battle."

Click: 30 Seconds

Here is a transcript, but it doesn't communicate the tone of menace in the ad, nor the message that Trump is the warrior/avatar taking charge of the country at a time of peril. Best to watch the ad.

Trump's voice: "This is the final battle with you at my side. We will demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all."

Here is another ad. Less menacing. Stranger. Almost pathetic in its frenetic flash of words and images, while background music repeats the phrase "love me, love me." A voice praises Trump: "He is the most resilient person I have ever met, and nothing is going to stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves."

Click: 30 Seconds

There are two ways to evaluate the fact that the Department of Homeland Security diverted $20 million appropriated for other purposes to pay for these ads. The first -- my initial instinct -- is that this is an act of desperation. Trump knows his approval ratings are down, and this is his Hail Mary pass, the throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-hope-something-sticks move. This is the end of the Trump era.

There is a second alternative. Trump is sitting on tens of millions of dollars of his own campaign money, which could have paid for these ads legally, without putting GOP candidates in the position of defending an illegal, indefensible act. Is there any constituency that thinks this is a great use of taxpayer money? In this alternative, Trump knows exactly what he is doing. He is motivated not by thrift or desperation but by a strategy to preserve power if, as expected, the midterms go poorly for him. He is asserting that he is above the law, and doing so flagrantly, setting himself up as the sole legitimate locus of power. The president is the state -- not Congress, not the branches of government sharing power. The tagline "Paid for by the U.S. Government" is the point.

If Congress, conservative media, the courts, and the general public do not rise up to denounce this -- and they probably won't, because they are distracted by the election and it is "only" $20 million -- then a new norm has been adopted by neglectful consent. President Trump can use taxpayer money to create pro-Trump political messaging, i.e., propaganda, and he can do so because Trump's messages are the country's messages. Trump can control the information the public receives; he can write it. Trump is not retreating. He is using the problems he has exacerbated, at home and abroad, to seize new power. Only he can fix things. He is the state.

I suspect history will show the second alternative to be the correct one.

[Note: I have a happier subject for tomorrow.  Maybe, coming out of this era, the country will experience a new burst of patriotic renewal. The country is ready for this.]

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Trump as Übermensch

Maybe Democrats have the "Trump corruption issue" backwards.

Maybe a majority of voters secretly admire his corruption.

I got a letter from a reader. He said Trump voters like Trump's wealth-seeking grift.

 Voters don't care whether Trump is getting rich; they care whether they are getting poor, and no one thinks they are poor because Trump is corrupt. Maybe Trump getting richer is a rising tide that raises all boats. 

They admire Trump. They like that he breaks rules. Just look how many heroes in media stories pull off the big heist, are assassins, or are vigilantes. Even the bad guys can wear white hats if they have enough charisma.

I have made the wry joke in these blog posts that no matter how cynical I get, it's never quite enough.

Something big happened in the past 18 years: a loss of faith that the country was mostly good and fair. There was a "before" point. In 2008 Republicans nominated a self-sacrificing war hero, John McCain, for president; Democrats nominated a scandal-free, aspirational Black man. We were offering up for leadership people who represented our best selves. But the seeds were there. McCain's campaign gained populist enthusiasm when Sarah Palin, a proto-MAGA figure, was added to the ticket.

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 changed something. The verity that home ownership was a path to wealth was proven dangerously wrong. We learned that banks and supposed referees like Standard & Poor's were corrupt. The overarching takeaway from the Great Recession was that the powerful and wealthy got rescued while the Average Joe got screwed.

The political left got cynical about American cultural virtue as regards race, ethnicity, and sexual identity. The election of Barack Obama did not trigger an enduring sense of achievement on race. The opposite idea emerged, a conviction that America was still thoroughly racist and discriminatory in everything from our laws to our language to our cultural norms. Wokeness went beyond parody. A program manager at the Oregon Health Authority postponed a meeting with community partners, explaining in an email that "urgency is a white supremacy value." Recipients who objected were pointed to a website listing the traits of "white supremacy culture." The agency's director defended her. 

The political right got cynical, too, coinciding with the election of a Black president, first with the Tea Party, then with Trump's very successful troll questioning of Obama's birthplace. It worked for Trump. Half or more of Republican voters believed Trump, not the State of Hawaii, not Obama's birth hospital, not contemporaneous newspaper reports. It reflected profound cynicism about the credibility of authority. "Do your own research" was shorthand for turning to some alternative to a supposed expert.

A "drain the swamp" message had traction for Trump in 2016. Acknowledging a swamp cuts two ways. First, that it is wrong and someone like Trump might drain it. But also, as the political left believes, that corrupt culture and institutions are intractable and systemic. So, you exploit it. You grab what you can. It is what winners do. Money, gifts, power, women. When you're a star, they let you, as Trump observed in the Access Hollywood tape. Trump grabs what he wants. Yeah. OK.

Trump is a proud scofflaw. He is unconstrained. He is Rambo. He is Hugh Hefner. He is George Washington, Genghis Khan, and Napoleon. He is Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch. He is Ayn Rand's John Galt.

Trump is in the show-off stage, demonstrating that he accepts no limits. He makes liberal tears; that is a positive for Republicans. This week he ran campaign-style 30-second advertisements for himself, labeled "Paid for by the U.S. Government."  He isn't bothering with hypocrisy. He is thumbing his nose at the do-gooders who protest that this is obviously wrong. Of course it is wrong. That is the point. He can do anything he wants.

If the whole game is rigged, only a sap plays by the rules. Trump isn't a sap.

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The problem with political gluttony.

Denise Krause can breathe a sigh of relief.

Her opponent, Brad Hicks, went negative and contradicted his own campaign message.

He sabotaged himself. 

It's the problem of having too much money.

I am writing again about the Oregon Senate District 3 race between Democrat Denise Krause and Republican Brad Hicks.

What is happening here has analogs that made national news: the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where Elon Musk gave million-dollar checks to people who backed his favored candidate, and campaigns this year where lavish AIPAC spending hurt the candidate it was meant to help. This week President Trump released three campaign videos starring himself, paid for by that deepest of all pockets, the U.S. taxpayer. These, too, are backfiring. 

The money keeps pouring into the Hicks campaign. One Republican PAC, of the dozens funding Hicks, just gave another $250,000, bringing the total of it alone to $649,000. But I sympathize with Hicks' problem. People he knows send him checks, and they expect him to use them. Some are small checks, at least by Republican standards: $500, $1,000, $5,000. Some are personal checks of $25,000 and more. It would be an insult to decline the generosity and a second insult to take the money and not use it. 

So Hicks spends it. Of course he does. It is too much and too good to resist.

He spent the first half-million or so of this plentitude on a false but almost-plausible message: that he was an independent, bipartisan candidate, a former chamber of commerce CEO. Most chambers of commerce are, in fact, careful to avoid overt partisanship, but this local chamber under Hicks' leadership was the exception. It operates a PAC to help Republicans. The record shows Democrats need not apply. Hicks is an excellent Republican. That isn't an accusation. It is the record. 

Still, a half million dollars claiming bipartisanship probably shaped some impressions among voters. Few people check campaign finance reports.

Denise Krause's campaign aired an ad saying Hicks and his corporate and Republican PAC sponsors were squeezing people. I thought the ad leaned too much on out-of-date Hicks quotes, and I discouraged her from running it, but I may have misjudged its value as bait. It worked.

Hicks immediately began airing an avalanche of nasty, partisan ads of the familiar negative variety: ugly black-and-white photos of Krause and Democratic Governor Tina Kotek set to spooky music, resolving into bright sunshine, happy music, and a smiling Hicks. I have seen lots of these ads. After all, the Hicks money is pouring in and must be spent. 

First this

Now this.

The new ads contradict the first ones, creating a new meta-message for local voters: The Mr. Nice Guy, bipartisan Hicks we were introduced to was a phony. It was typical politician BS. He is revealed to be a Republican street fighter, as partisan and nasty as Trump. The takeaway is that Hicks is just one more Republican brawler, now exposed by his own campaign. Yuck.

My advice to Hicks six weeks ago was to give away most of the money to Southern Oregon University. I knew he would not take the advice. Hicks may have two million dollars by now, and this is a tiny media market. He has a weapon too good not to use. We are going to see what a brute-force campaign can do. That is self-defeating. The received message of a gigantic brute-force campaign by the Republican party is brute force itself. And the Hicks campaign has turned brutish. 

Hicks' money made Krause's case for her: If you like what Trump has done to our politics, you'll love Brad Hicks. This is a light blue district at a time when Trump's GOP is at a low ebb of support. She could not have made that case stick on her own. No one would have believed it coming from her. Only Hicks could do it, by doing it to himself.

Irony is not dead.

I urge readers to check my work. Go to the Secretary of State's website and see where Hicks gets his money, and what his Chamber of Commerce did with its own money. It is the opposite of bipartisan. Click the "Campaign Finance Transactions" tab on the left, then enter his Campaign ID, 24485, in the box. To see whom the Chamber PAC supports, enter Campaign ID 5067.

You will see.

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Is the ad I created fair?

Is it wrong to expect Republican officeholders to speak up when they see Trump's corruption?

President Trump reported making $2.2 billion in income from crypto investments with open pay-to-play conflict-of-interest dealmaking. 

Republican officeholders see this and do nothing.

I know they think it is wrong. After all, they saw President Biden indulge his screw-up addict son Hunter, and they shouted bloody murder. Hunter got hundreds of thousands. The Trump family scams billions.

Republicans in Congress are silent in the face of corruption. In a few years, when the era of Trump has ended,  I hope Republicans who are silent now would say that they hated this all along. They could say they always hated the crypto grift. They might say they never agreed that presidents could impose tariffs or fight wars without Congress' approval. They might say they never thought Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide. That would be the good outcome. They would be expressing embarrassment at what they allowed and pretend it didn't happen.

But that is not a sure thing. 

Trump is normalizing corruption. It has become open practice, not the exception. Trump doesn't hide it. He celebrates it. This deepens the cynicism people feel about government. Republican inaction ratifies the normalization. Our democracy becomes weaker. If even a very few Republican representatives voiced their disgust, they could change history for the better. Say it and vote it: Corruption is wrong and un-American.

I dislike negative political ads, but I like truthful ones that make a clear point. I think this mock-up ad is fair.

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Easy Sunday: Are data centers OK?

Funny video.

Or maybe it is scary, not funny.

We asked Artificial Intelligence to tell us if data centers were OK.

Answer: They are great. Like meadows and kittens and smiling faces on young women.

Yeah, it's funny.

CLICK:   https://babylonbee.com/video/we-asked-ai-to-give-us-the-unbiased-facts-about-ai-data-centers

It's Sunday. Both the Ducks and Beavers won a football game. The weather will be clear and in the low 70s in Medford, Oregon.  And we are as young now as we'll ever be. Enjoy the moment.

Yes, I could have a blog post trying to explain why "recursive self improvement," in artificial intelligence are both very good and very dangerous. And maybe I would be better for understanding it well enough to explain it, and readers would be better for understanding it more thoroughly. But let's chill out instead. Watch the video: three minutes.

(The fact that AI would not experience the desire to chill out today, and does not experience the emotion of "enjoy," and instead would tirelessly use what it knows to teach itself new things, and having learned those things will use that knowledge to teach itself yet more things with even greater capabilities, and with those capabilities even greater ones, and so on, all day today and every day, is one reason why AI is both very good and very dangerous.)

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