Seven dollar diesel!!

"The back bone connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone connected to the head bone,
Oh, hear the word of the Lord."
African-American spiritual, from Ezekiel 37.

You can't "fix" diesel prices without disrupting a complex international supply chain involving multiple products.

Service station near the farm

Trump announced a bright idea in late September. It was simple, understandable, crude, and selfish. We would ban exports of diesel. We would hog it for ourselves. It would hurt everyone else, especially our European allies and friends, but so what? It would mean an oversupply of diesel in the U.S. and would lower our prices. Oil companies wouldn't like it, but Trump has been very good to them so they will complain but stay on Trump's team. Trump would look like a can-do problem-solver and his popularity would soar. 

What's not to like?

This week Trump said the idea was never serious. Nevermind. Trump learned that diesel is complicated. You cannot help purchasers of diesel without, simultaneously, hurting purchasers of diesel, plus everyone else. It would create more economic chaos. Jim Stodder offered to explain it to me. He is a college classmate, but didn't graduate with me in 1971. He dropped out his senior year, spent his 20s working as a roughneck in the oil industry in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and Latin America, then returned, finished college, then earned a Ph.D. in economics at Yale. 

Stodder

Guest Post by Jim Stodder 

Trump’s noves on diesel 

My brother just asked me what I thought about Trump’s threat to cut off diesel exports. Wasn’t it a good move? After all, it got the EU to open up its diesel reserves.

OK, it does make a kind of sense. But there was a lot of improvising along the way. The original idea was simple: the U.S. is a big exporter of oil and natural gas, and our exporters get a higher price abroad than they would at home.

So in a simpler world, if we stop diesel exports, foreign prices go up and domestic prices fall – a lot. Foreigners cry, but who cares?

Here’s the problem. The East Coast gets most of its fuel by pipeline from the Gulf Coast, and those pipelines run at or near capacity. The rest has to come from abroad. The US is a net exporter of petroleum distillates, but by the US Energy Information Administration’s numbers, imports equal about a quarter of what the East Coast consumes in oil and petroleum products. Canada is the largest single supplier, at more than a third. Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on Canada exempt energy, but an export ban would push up world prices, and East Coast importers pay world prices. They won’t be happy on the East Coast, and lower prices elsewhere will piss off the oil-producing states.

Trump thought this one through about as well as he did the Strait of Hormuz. The domestic half of his export ban was a bust – he even admitted it could drive up gasoline prices. But the foreign half scared the EU, with its shaky economies. So Europe agreed to release diesel reserves to get him to back off – from something he now realizes he shouldn’t do anyway.

But those EU reserves won’t last forever, and Iranian or Houthi drones over Hormuz and the Red Sea aren’t going away anytime soon.

But don’t worry – Trump’s people are working on an oil deal with Russia! Just like the good old days. Remember Rex Tillerson? As CEO of Exxon, he got the Order of Friendship from Putin, one of Russia’s highest honors for foreigners, for teaming Exxon up with Russia’s state oil giant. Then Trump made him secretary of state, the senior cabinet post, in 2017.

He’d love to be buds with Vlad again. They both love oil and gas, and both admire Slavic beauty. What sickens me is that Ukraine will get screwed. I see this as the most important international conflict since WWII. We were on the right side, but Trump is flirting with the bad guys.

And China? It holds 66 percent of the world’s manufacturing capacity for EVs, 73 percent for wind turbines, 83 percent for batteries, and 92 percent for solar panels. Look it up; see the numbers.


We’re handing China the keys to the energy of the 21st century while our gas jalopy sputters along, and Trump dreams of Russian oil and Russian babes.

If every country gets the leader it deserves, we’d better start praying for forgiveness.

 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]  

Debate night: Tina Kotek versus Christine Drazan

Nobody screwed up.

Both candidates are smart and articulate.

Drazan is a Republican. Kotek is the Democratic governor. That is the takeaway from last night's Oregon gubernatorial debate.

Back to the slugfest of negative ads.

A debate like this one is an exercise in earnestness. It is a celebration of sober, intelligent, good-government citizenship: people making reasoned, rational choices about their future.

Southern Oregon University partnered in it; SOU is an institution in the business of informing a citizenry. It is a public-service feather in the cap of KOBI, a locally owned TV station, to have produced and aired it, and it did so acting like a public utility, not a commercial station with a hot ticket to surround with fast-food ads. They are proud of being a civic asset; I counted six KOBI NBC5 logos on the screen. Here is a YouTube link to the debate.

Both candidates spoke in complete sentences; indeed, complete paragraphs. They are both pros.

My takeaway: from a competency point of view, Oregonians are in good hands either way. We have two informed, reasonable, articulate people who aren't kooks. Whew.

Drazan had a point to make, and she worked it into answers to questions: Oregon isn't doing so well, and Governor Kotek is at fault. Drazan cited businesses leaving the state, Oregon's high taxes compared to other states, and poor educational performance. She cited Oregon's estate tax as a reason people leave and she said that she would end it. She said our regulations are more burdensome than other states'. Drazan said Oregon has one-party rule and Democrats don't share power with Republicans, so if there are problems (and there are), blame Democrats. 

Kotek made her own point in her one-minute answers: Oregon is doing OK, problems are being addressed, and the big problems facing Oregon come from policies initiated by President Trump, policies Drazan supports. Oregonians stressed by unaffordable health care and closing hospitals? Trump's Medicaid cuts did that. Oregon businesses hurting? Trump's tariffs did that. Kotek cited instances where Drazan stood with her party and with Trump, including on Trump's attack on our vote-by-mail system.

Drazan never said "Trump." She neither defended nor criticized him. Kotek said "Trump" repeatedly: She protects Oregon from him.

Drazan and Kotek appear to hold essentially the same position on data centers: a moratorium now, with future permits only for projects that prove they will pay their own way.

They clearly disagree on reproductive rights. Kotek holds the standard Democratic position that abortion is health care. Drazan is endorsed by anti-abortion groups and opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest. But there is an odd wrinkle: Drazan acknowledged she would be powerless to change Oregon law, at least as long as Democrats hold a majority in the legislature. She would obey current law.

Drazan argued repeatedly that she would simply govern better than Kotek. She would cut waste. She would make state agencies more effective. She would maintain roads and bridges better, with the same amount of money. "I will deliver efficient, accountable, transparent government." There is no real rebuttal to that except the partisanship viewers bring with them. I expect Republicans to find it plausible and Democrats to dismiss it.

Kotek doesn't have a startling can-do success like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's 12-day reopening of I-95 after a bridge collapse in Philadelphia. The quick rescue of Southern Oregon University doesn't have the same impact. Homelessness is reduced but not eliminated. But Kotek does have a card to play: a Trump card. Trump, and now Republicans, are not a symbol of prudent, sensible, effective government. Quite the opposite. Trump represents chaotic destruction.

I expected Drazan to criticize Trump over something, to give herself room to show she was different. She deviated from GOP orthodoxy in only one small way: recounting her girlhood dependence on food stamps and other public benefits. Her family needed them, she said, because her father had trouble finding work. She said those programs need to be well administered, and she did not criticize Trump's changes to SNAP, but her tone toward people who need public benefits was compassionate, not contemptuous.

I suspect nearly everyone who watched was already a partisan, so few votes were changed. Anyone looking for a campaign-killing gaffe was disappointed. 

The debate solidified the one big choice that will decide the election:

Are Salem Democrats the problem, or are President Trump and Republicans who go along with him the problem?

 

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.] 

LA is a small price to pay

Trump said it. 

The cost of the war with Iran might include Iran destroying Los Angeles and San Diego. 

The Nebraska crowd cheered.

Trump:

It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it's going to be over very soon. It's essentially almost over with, and they might keep going a little long, you know? They always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it, let me tell you, they need it. But it's going to end very soon. It will end one way or another.

Trump knows Americans are unhappy. Gasoline is up 25 percent, and inflation is running about 3.5 percent a year. That may cost him one or both chambers of Congress. Call it what it is: a form of regime change. Meanwhile, Iranians have endured the sudden death of their top leaders, the destruction of military sites, schoolgirls killed, shortages of food and fuel, and hyperinflation. Yet their new government remains secure in office. Moreover, their bombed-out military is somehow driving our forces from their bases and our aircraft carriers out of the region. This week they even chased American B-1 bombers out of the United Kingdom. Like the old Timex watch, Iran can take a licking and keep on ticking. Not us.

I am accustomed to this from Trump. It means nothing.

More interesting is the crowd's response. The cheering started at the names of the cities. That didn't surprise me. Trump has twice been elected president by dividing the country. There are friends and there are enemies. Trump doesn't express respect for the "loyal opposition." He rewards his friends and destroys his enemies. He moved U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, and he didn't bother with a pretext. He said he did it because Colorado votes by mail and Alabama does not.

This partisan notion of reward and punishment has drifted out into the zeitgeist. It isn't just Republican leaders and voters. MSNBC interviews Iowa farmers who voted for Trump and are now in distress from his tariffs. Social media passes around memes of MAGA voters hoist on their own petard. There is joy in the misfortune of foolish people whose votes backfired.

The country has changed in the past 25 years. When planes struck the World Trade Center, we all became New Yorkers. It was an attack on us.

At a 2015 campaign rally in Alabama, Trump spoke of Muslims celebrating:

Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.

What he described did not happen. There is no record of anything remotely like it. It was a lie Trump wanted to tell. 

Trump was finding an audience and shaping it: There are enemies among us. They hate us, so we can hate them. Trump did not create this zeitgeist out of nothing. People have wished ill on their enemies forever. But Trump trades in this emotion, inflames it, and profits politically from describing internal enemies. It secures his base. It is part of what historians will examine when they write about the Trump era in American politics.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Someone needs to lead.

"Presidential power is the power to persuade."
          Presidential scholar Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power, 1960

Better a bad leader than no leader.

Trump fills a void.

When I look for the next Democratic leader, I will be looking for someone articulate, charismatic, bold, decisive, and willing to confront and disagree with people in his or her own party. A president needs to be a salesman willing to sell.

Democrats shake their heads in wonderment that the country, including Republicans who otherwise seem to be good, reasonable people of decent character, voted for and continues to support Donald Trump. How can they tolerate in a president a person they would not use as a trustee of their estate, a business partner, the manager of a cash business, or the executive director of a tiny nonprofit, or trust to drive a teenage daughter home from babysitting?

Gallup polling supplies some of the answer. We are at a time of profound skepticism about the institutions of our society. In the public's eye, they are all more or less flawed. Corrupt. Incompetent.

"Small business" partially survives the skeptical mood because it is not an institution. It is different people and organizations competing with each other for business.

Democrats are playing with weak cards when they insist that President Trump follow the Constitution and respect congressional prerogatives and power. Congress should write the tariff law? Congress should exercise the power to go to war? Congress should write immigration policy? Congress cannot agree on important matters, and it is as conflicted and corrupted by special interests as is Trump.

Do we trust the military? Yes and no. My own feeling of support for the U.S. military took a deep dive in 1968, when it promulgated a policy of winning the Vietnam War through attrition and comparative body counts. That was me, the potential trade. My respect has grown back in recent years, rooted in the military's own culture of honor and duty, when Trump considered using it to back his effort to stay in office after the 2020 election. It refused him. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is openly replacing military institutionalists with Trump loyalists. Are they trustworthy now? I don't know.

The Supreme Court's switch on Roe v. Wade revealed that the court is a lagging-indicator political body, now reflecting America's turn from Warren Court equality in various spheres to MAGA backlash against that. It is making controversial social policy because Congress fails to do it. Its decision to give presidents immunity from following the law destroyed its credibility with Democrats and will destroy it with Republicans the next time there is a willful Democratic scofflaw president.

President Trump holds power by process of elimination. No other governing institution is willing to stop him from doing anything he really wants to do. He exercises the fundamental power of the presidency: persuading Republican officeholders that what he is doing is in America's interest, and, moreover, that challenging Trump would cost them personally. 

Throughout Biden's presidency I bemoaned his incapacity to communicate to Americans the value of what he was doing. Behind the scenes, he carried out an Elizabeth Warren set of policies. Those policies needed to be explained, defended, and sold. The effort to sell them would have brought its own self-correction. If you cannot sell it, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in a democracy. Biden couldn't sell. That set up Trump to be a change agent.

Trump filled the void.

I blame Republican voters and officeholders for tolerating such a morally defective leader, but they are not wrong to say that Democrats gave them a weak choice in the 2024 election. Kamala Harris positioned herself as Biden's successor. She didn't lead.

Trump's depravity and dishonesty leaves a moral leadership void. His destruction of our trade networks and military alliances leave a strategic void. Trump represents the "destructive" phase of progress by creative destruction. It is not clear to me that Republicans are exhausted by his destruction. 

Democrats seem ready to repair and rebuild. They don't need a policy wonk to do this. They need a salesman who tells us what he is doing, and why it makes America great.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Artificial Intelligence ethics

Google's Gemini artificial intelligence program stopped my experiment.

I was seeing what it would allow in a political ad.

My first prompt asked Gemini to create a photorealistic image of a pile of U.S. currency and told it to label it: "Campaign contributions." It made this in a few seconds. 

That assured me that someone could, indeed, use AI to make a campaign ad. The image looked pretty good to me, and I was amazed that a few typed words from me would generate a usable image. 

Next, I wanted to see if it would insert an image of a real person into this image. I moved my photo into the prompt box and told it to label it "Earned every penny himself." Gemini complied immediately: 

Then I wanted to see if it would replace the image of me with an image of Republican state Senate candidate Brad Hicks, and insert new text. I took this photo from Hicks' campaign website. I prompted it to change the label to "Republican PAC money." I told it to put in smaller type below that label, "Source, Oregon Secretary of State, ORESTAR, October 5, 2026." 

I had to remind Gemini what, exactly, it was replacing: Swap out me; put in Hicks.

Gemini responded with this:

I cannot fulfill this request. I am unable to modify or generate images that place real people, public figures, or political candidates into misleading or unverified contexts, such as depicting them surrounded by cash with political labels.

When a request involves combining a real person's likeness with specific political commentary or text overlays (like" Republican PAC money") it raises several critical safety ad policy considerations:

It listed concerns over "Misinformation or Deception," "Defamation Risks," and "Ethics and Public Trust." It said it could generate an entirely fictional, generic illustration depicting political fundraising and campaign financing, but without using a specific person's name or likeness.

Good for Gemini. I am happy that Gemini's creators have some restraints. 

An image of Hicks, happily sitting chest-deep in cash, attributes personality and emotions to him that move him from the original context of the photo (a staged conversation with a voter) into him sitting in a pool of money. A partisan might justify that as "true in spirit." A partisan might justify it by saying that Hicks is doing the same thing to his opponent, Democrat Denise Krause, placing her photo next to Governor Tina Kotek, placing her in a new context of making a speech at the state capitol; plus, he asserts without evidence that she would be a rubber stamp for Democrats. Her being a rubber stamp is a presumption, not a fact. (Of course, it is a guess, a presumption, that Hicks would  be a puppet in Trump's Republican Party.) So turnabout is fair play, right? If Hicks or Krause dishes out partisan disinformation, each deserves the same in return. Right?

Not right to me. Better to be literally true than "metaphorically true." I realize that a text in this blog describing the hundreds of thousands of dollars of Republican PAC money funding the Hicks campaign, does not have the emotional power of seeing Hicks smiling chest-deep in PAC dollars. The image is fake, but memorable. It is a blunt statement. This blog is a different medium, with limitations and strengths. My thought is that I am trying to be in the truth business, not the "metaphorically true" business. The simple truth reported by the secretary of state is persuasive intellectually, if not emotionally. My hope is that there is a slow drift from rational thought into emotional gut feel. People sometimes check their guts. Data matters. Truth exists. And people who have data may punch above their weight in influencing others. That is the thought.

Go to the Oregon Secretary of State's official record of contributions. Click the "Campaign Finance Transactions" tab on the left, and enter the Hicks Campaign ID, 24485, in the box at the top. To see who Hicks' Chamber PAC supported over the years, enter Campaign ID 5067. To see who is funding Krause, enter ID 22966.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

Easy Sunday: Explaining the Oregon Senate District Three campaign.

The simple message:

"Brad Hicks is Donald Trump." 

"Denise Krause is Tina Kotek."

I overthink political messaging in this blog. I don't think political messages are devilishly complex and thought out. I think political brands are a matter of unconscious impression. It's is the unconsidered things that need consideration.

Someone is the good guy; someone the bad guy. We make these decisions mostly based on gut feelings of first impression and unconscious preferences. Certain things are turnoffs. Someone is "too Portland." Or "too corporate." Or "too woke." Or "too MAGA." Negative ads probe those potential turnoffs to move our votes. 

There is no dispositive proof that Hicks really is a mini-Trump, but he did lead a relentlessly partisan Chamber of Commerce with its own PAC to support Republicans, only Republicans. There is no dispositive proof that Krause would be a Democratic rubber-stamp for Kotek, but her website's policy proposals seem conventionally Democratic in every respect. 

It is smart for Hicks to link Krase to Kotek. Kotek is relatively weak in this senate district, and likely a drag on Krause. Kotek ran behind the Democratic winner, Jeff Golden, when he won in 2022. In the 2022 matchup, between Kotek and Republican Christine Drazan, Kotek won by only 2.6 percent: 47.3 to 44.7 among voters in that district. Kamala Harris, a relatively weak candidate, defeated Trump 54.3 to 42.3 percent, a 12.1 percent margin in 2024. The presidential race result is why I call this a light-blue district in its general political lean. 

Likewise, it is smart for Krause to tell people that Hicks is a loyal Republican and link him to Trump, since Trump does less well than baseline Republicans in this district. I presume some marginal voters are turned off by Trump, especially this year. Trump has strong opinions on Oregon issues, and Trump conspicuously pressures state officeholders to follow his demands. All state-level Republicans have a trustworthiness problem when they seek votes from people outside the Trump base. We heard Trump pressure Brad Raffensperger, a Georgia state election official, "I just want to find 11,170 votes." It could be Hicks getting that call. Hicks was a loyal Republican for two decades at the Chamber. He is getting a million dollars in GOP money for his campaign. 

As the campaign gets down to final arguments I expect them to become simpler and more direct because it is a shorthand way to brand the candidates alongside a weak party leader. Both Tina Kotek and Donald Trump are measurably weak candidates in this district.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]

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.

[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog by email go to Https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]