The Pillow Guy is coming to town

Mike Lindell is the keynote speaker at a "Make Oregon Great Again" rally in Jackson County this Saturday.

I think this is a foolish decision. Local Republicans are defining their party around its least popular, most extreme faction.

But if Republicans think that the way to win elections is to put election deniers and court critics like Mike Lindell front and center in the public eye, who am I to stop them?

Republican candidates and officeholders will be there. Maybe I will learn something that will help me understand the new GOP.  If nothing else, I can help document what has happened to it.

Some Republican voters have fully and totally drunk the Trump Kool-Aid. That would include Mike Lindell. Like Trump, Lindell believes that Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide. Lindell, like Trump, is a critic of America's courts. Even GOP Speaker of the House Mike Johnson isn't Trump-loving enough for the Pillow Guy. Johnson attended the New York false-document-election-interference trial to support Trump dressed in the dark blue suit, red tie uniform of Trump supporters. Lindell said Mike Johnson wasn't passionate enough in his press conference in support of Trump.

This our guy has no passion for our country, he has no passion for our great real country, this guy has to go, I'm serious.

This is disgusting—him up there, reading off some notes.

If you have passion for our country or passion for what's going on, the travesties going on against our real president, you can speak from the heart and speak out and get the country behind you.

Is there any room in the GOP for people who are simply low-tax, less-regulation, pro-gun, anti-abortion conservatives? To be a Republican must you be so zealous in support of everything-Trump that even Mike Johnson is a heretic? Apparently so, at least in Southern Oregon. Local Republicans chose their keynote speaker.

I think it is a mistake for Republican candidates to get anywhere close to the Mike Lindell fringe of the GOP. Every political party has its extremists who damage a party's reputation with otherwise persuadable voters. Partisans may think a little "red meat" rouses up the party and that it is worth it if it angers some Democrats. That would be a feature, not a bug. 

My own sense is that Lindell isn't moving the window of acceptable thought -- what political scientists call the "Overton window." He is just echoing Trump at his most extreme, when he is complaining about elections and juries, not when he is talking about inflation and immigration. Lindell is attaching the full scent of the Trump/Lindell election-denying, court-denying message to local candidates. 

If you like Mike Lindell, you will love our county commissioner candidate.

I think it is crazy and self-destructive, but nobody asked me. But I will happily sit quietly, watch it happen, and take notes.

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Marching blindly into the unknown

Microplastics. 

It's something new to worry about, as if nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, and Donald Trump weren't enough.

Maybe we have opened Pandora's Box.

The prudent course of action, when facing some new situation with significant potential danger, is to stop. Investigate. Feel our way. Look before we leap.

Too late for that.

Plastics have been around for a century. I am now learning that the most worrisome isn't plastic litter. The bad stuff is plastic too small to see. 

Humanity had plunged headlong into the unknown. I asked for an answer from college classmate Matt Naitove, who had a long career writing about the plastics industry. Should we be worried? A simple, clear, satisfying answer wouldn't be accurate. An accurate answer is unsatisfying. That is the point of the Pandora story. The box is opened before we know what's in it.

Naitove

Guest Post by Matt Naitove

Is It Too Soon – or Too Late – to Panic About Microplastics?

 

Classmate Peter Sage asked me to jump into the debate on microplastics. It is a timely, important and meme-worthy topic, and there is a lot of ill-informed chatter in the news about their presence in our bodies, in the ocean, everywhere.

 

In the spirit of full disclosure, I recently retired from 51 years as an editor (29 of them as chief editor) of Plastics Technology magazine, a trade magazine. I was never a shill for the plastics industry. My work didn’t promote the use of plastics. Instead, the magazine informed manufacturers on how to use plastics more efficiently, productively,and safely. In later years I added the goal of attempting to help plastics manufacturers do so more sustainably.

 

Plus, I am a resident of the planet and hope to live a long and healthy life without despoiling my environment.

 

There are a lot of web references to microplastics accessible from even a cursory search, among them the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and even a Wikipedia page on the topic. One website I consider fair-minded is www.acsh.org, the American Council for Science and Health. They are a pro-science group that took on the tobacco industry for its junk science defense of tobacco, but they also critique alarmist junk science that attacks the drug and chemical industries. 

 

ACSH defines microplastics as particles sized from five millimeters (the size of a grain of rice) down to less than 100 nanometers, which is smaller than the HIV virus.

 

I recently sampled a number of web sources and found widespread agreement on a few points: 

            • Microplastics are everywhere – in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and in our own bodies (one study found them in carotid arterial plaque). They reportedly have been found in freshly fallen snow in Antarctica.

            • There are various sources of microplastics. One is gradual environmental breakdown of plastics trash on land and in oceans. Some sources suggest that everyday use of plastics in the home and in industry causes microparticles to be shed, presumably, by simple abrasion. There’s also the deliberate creation of plastic microparticles as exfoliants in cosmetics – a use that was banned in the U.S. in 2015. And, it is generally agreed that a large component is “microfibers” shed by all sorts of synthetic fibers used in clothing, carpets, furniture upholstery and cigarette filters.

            • They might cause harm. We don’t know. NOAA concludes, as do most responsible sources: “As an emerging field of study, not a lot is known about microplastics and their impacts yet.” The only research pointing to such harm involves exposing cells or test animals to unrealistically high levels of exposure. What relevance such testing has to real-world exposure is, again, unknown.

            ACSH says they might be harmful by causing inflammation, by leaching of chemicals, by causing reproductive and developmental harm, or by being a pathway for other dangerous pathogens to enter our bodies.

 

But the key word is might; we simply do not know. 

Encouraging people to avoid microplastics by avoiding plastics is deficient on the grounds of both practicality and effectiveness. It won’t make much difference to your overall exposure to reheat your dinner leftovers in a glass rather than microwavable plastic container. 

 

Peter may have hoped a career expert on plastics would have some conclusive advice on what we can do about microplastics, and whether they are dangerous, how to reduce them – in short, some plan of action. I can’t do that. I can caution you to adopt a prudent skepticism whenever you hear or read about microplastics. Consider the source. Beware of “junk science.” Beware of political or other self-serving agendas. Some people just want to scare you but have no realistic solutions.

 

The bottom line is that we don’t know if microplastics harm us. Whatever the risks they may pose, we are stuck with them. They are already inside us and all around us. Plastics and synthetic fibers as commercial raw materials are not going away.

 

So, it’s both too soon and too late to panic about microplastics. 

 

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Vineyard update: Puncture Vine

Puncture vine -- sometimes called "goat head" vine --  is a noxious invasive weed.

The weed is like an infectious disease. I am getting it under control.

Clean field, recently drip-irrigated. 

This is a photo of my grapes. The land would be better protected if there were a cover crop. Before I can have a cover crop I need to have a clean, weedless field so that I can see, pull, and eradicate puncture vines that would otherwise be hidden amid the cover crop.

Little puncture vine plants look like this on the pumice soil where I have my grapes. The ultra-fine soil, made up of crushed pumice stone, is an excellent seedbed for puncture vine. The weed is low and flat and hides easily.

Except for the photo above, the photos here are from noxious weed control websites, not my farm, thank goodness. Below is a plant that grew and went to seed. If you see this on your property, you have a big problem.

Here is a close-up of the leaves, flowers, and spiky seeds. 

Below is another photo of the seed that makes the plant so very bad, and which gives it its name "puncture vine." These are rock-hard and very sharp. Mature plants have hundreds of these seeds. They hurt bare hands when you pull the weed. They stick to the bottom of shoes and rubber tires. Puncture vines are found most often alongside roadways and driveways. Your car tire can pick them up and bring them deep onto your property, where they can grow and spread rapidly.

There are bits of puncture vine in three vineyard rows. Two months after the T-posts were placed, I saw a tell-tale line of puncture vine sprouts in three of the 50 long rows where trucks drove. I walk those rows, and the adjacent ones, every three or four days, looking for and pulling or hoeing out baby plants out of the tire paths. The plants grow from invisible to the size of the palm of my hand in three days. I need to stay on this problem until all the hidden seeds have sprouted. Had I missed a baby plant, in about a week they would be the size of a dinner plate. In two weeks the size of a medium pizza. By then they would be forming seeds. Left to grow, they would become a green mat three or four feet across.

Keep an eye out, looking especially at the transition area between the road, any gravel area, and your landscaping. If you see a puncture vine, try to get all the root when you pull a small plant. A spritz of Roundup kills it better than does pulling it, if it is small, because the plant withers and dies before it goes to seed, and if you don't pull the root you haven't killed the plant. If you don't want to use Roundup, use a shovel or hoe to get all the root, and keep looking for re-sprouts. 

If you see a plant bigger than a dinner plate, recognize it likely went to seed. Pull it as carefully as you can and put the plant (ideally with seeds still attached to it) in the garbage. If you feel sharp little kernels in that plant as you put it in the garbage, then it did indeed go to seed and you have a multi-year maintenance problem. Burn the area with a propane torch to try to kill the seeds, if you can do so safely. But that may be impossible.  Assume there are seeds you missed and assume they will keep sprouting for several years. Be careful walking there with rubber-soled shoes or you will spread seeds to your garden areas. Check the area every week from mid-spring through late fall. Don't skip a week.

I realize this is unwelcome news, but that is the reality of puncture vine.

This a political blog, not a gardening blog, so let me make a quick semi-political point. Owning a vineyard is not the  fashionable upscale hobby -- like having a country club membership -- that some people imagine it to be. It involves hard work. I don't feel the same sense of indignation many “city people” do when seeing high prices of groceries. Most people want food to be cheap. I don't. I want food to be expensive enough that farmers can make a living growing food.

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Easy Sunday: A quail has bonded to me.

He talks to me. 

Follows me around on the ground underfoot. 

Flies to the different windows to look in at me as I move around inside.

Tries to get into the door when I enter or exit.

A quail has imprinted on me. 

Trying to find me inside

Waiting outside near the door

Getting ready to scramble inside as I enter or exit

I think the topknot is more black than brown, so my little friend is probably male. An experienced biologist (and hunter of quail with trained bird dogs) says he is a California Quail, one of many varieties of quails. A Google search tells me that quail do imprint on people and that for that reason people sometimes keep them as pets. Apparently he saw me at the right developmental moment. I was the moving object he noticed on his third day of life. Maybe he saw me weeding my planter boxes of vegetables.

Quails nest on the ground and lay two clutches of eggs per year, each with about a dozen eggs. Quail have the R-Reproduction strategy, which means small size, huge litters, high mortality. There are some thick hibiscus flower beds near my house, and if I lived on the ground and knew I needed to hide from hawks and owls, then that is where I would hide. But I have stayed away from the flower bed to give the nest -- if there is one -- some privacy.

The quail follows me around on the porch, patio, and parking area, which is very exposed. I worry that his bonding to me is a dangerous strategy for him. There is a pair of barn owls in the barn 100 yards away. My porch isn't a safe place. Nor is the driveway. My little visitor likes to scramble under vehicles parked near the door. He nestles in front of or behind a tire without any comprehension of the peril of that spot. I manage to get him out of the way before I move the car.

The quail has been around for a week. He chirps at me as I move around and do chores. I thought maybe he was asking for food. Yesterday I relented and put out a torn-up bagel, which he ignored, then pumpkin seeds, which he also ignored. He doesn't seem to want my food. He wants my company. It is sort of sweet and reminds me of time years ago when little ones sought my company and climbed into my lap.

He has bonded to me. I will try not to bond to him. It's Fathers' Day, though. I suppose I should go ahead and give him a name. 

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Celebrity

     DONALD TRUMP HAS AN UNOFFICIAL CHECKLIST of qualities he wants in a running mate: loyalty, political acumen, debate skills, fundraising ability, and personal chemistry. But in conversations with others about his possible picks, one factor stands out among all others.

“Does he look good on television?” Trump frequently asks. “Who’s the best on TV?”

           Mark A. Caputo, The Bulwark

Donald Trump is my best advocate for a central tenet of this blog: Voters choose leaders with their guts, not their brains. Therefore, the looks, demeanor, and tone of a leader are the primary message of the leader, not the denoted words. Politics has that in common with Hollywood, and Trump understands that. Some people look the part; some don't. Some people have the magic, some don't. 

Trump meeting with GOP officeholders

We are social animals, and we get cues about who is important from other people.  At some point, we learned that members of the royal family of the United Kingdom were celebrities.  At this moment, about 6 a.m. Pacific Time, I could be watching a procession of marching soldiers following Princess Kate's carriage:

Or her in a carriage:

There she is!  A celebrity! 

Trump made himself into a TV celebrity long before he was a presidential candidate. I attended my first Trump rally on September 17, 2015. I estimate 2,000 people came out to see him in a Rochester, New Hampshire high school gymnasium. He was just starting to be known for his political positions, having said that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. He was a TV celebrity, famous for being tough and decisive, and saying, "You're fired!" In politics, he was still a "shock-jock," a provocateur. Earlier that day, I attended an event for a bone fide politician of consequence, Hillary Clinton. Possibly 250 people attended. She was boring in comparison.

Ed Sullivan Show audience

+
Obama in Medford, 2007

I saw the excitement about JFK when he was the grand marshal celebrity attendee at Medford's Pear Blossom parade in 1960. I saw Beatle-mania on TV. I saw political celebrity when Barack Obama drew a huge curious crowd in Medford. Major donors got a quick personal visit, a handshake, and a photo. I urged him not to let himself get "swiftboated." He said "I've got it covered." Obama has the magic. 

So does Senator Bernie Sanders. When you have the magic, miracles happen. A little bird flew onto Sanders' lectern mid-speech at a May primary event in Portland, Oregon. It was like a sign from the heavens. He nearly got the nomination of a political party that he had spurned his entire political career. 

Trump returned to Capitol Hill this week, and was greeted by Republican officeholders, who were giddy with delight at being in his presence. He has been found guilty by juries of finger-raping a woman, defaming her, defrauding his own foundation and taxpayers, and, most recently, felony verdicts for filing false business records to illegally defraud voters -- and yet he is more popular than ever! That is proof that Trump has that secret sauce of celebrity. Trump can do magic. GOP officeholders who previously warned the public that Trump was a dangerous fraud, a liar, and a defier of the Constitution and our democracy were now buddying up to him, standing for orations, singing him happy birthday, and pledging to support him in the 2024 election. 

Trump is a celebrity. The normal rules don't apply. People attach to celebrities because other people attach to them. We imagine that a fire that burns too hot must exhaust its fuel and burn itself out. That happens with stock markets. 

Personal celebrity seems to act differently. Celebrities create fuel as fast as they burn it. The greater risk is self-destruction or an exogenous attack. JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. The Beatles broke up. O.J. Simpson murdered people, which should have been enough, but was not. The jury still sided with him. But then he committed another crime and finally self-destructed.

Trump remains the center of attention. He is a celebrity in a way that Biden is not. Polls say he is surprisingly popular with young people and "low-information" voters. People who follow politics the way I follow sports  -- barely -- know that Trump is something special and important and that a lot of people really, really like him. That might be enough. 

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Putin: Land for Peace

 Putin offers an immediate cease fire and a "final resolution" of the conflict.

     -- Ukrainian troops must leave Russian-occupied and contested territory.

     -- Ukraine must remain non-nuclear. 

     -- Ukraine must not join NATO. 

All wars end eventually.

Ukraine is a borderland. Ukraine's population and culture are stratified both south-to-north and east-to-west. Crimea and southern Ukraine were settled by Turkic people, and as one moves north from the Black Sea the population becomes Slavic. Western Ukraine is oriented toward Western Europe, while eastern Ukraine is oriented toward Russia. That eastern part of Ukraine has long had separatist movements, seeking either a transfer to Russia or autonomous federal status. 

As a matter of policy, Ukraine had been attempting to unify the country in language and culture. It mandated use of Ukrainian in schools and government. A fluent speaker of Ukrainian and Russian explained to me that the two languages have about the same relationship as Spanish and Italian. 

In the Russian people's mental map of the world, Ukraine is part of a Greater Russia in terms of history, language, and culture. Russians perceived the Russia centered on Moscow as Great Russia; the country that is now Belarus as "White Russia" and Ukraine as "Little Russia." Historically, Moscow's roots go back to Kiev and the period of Viking exploration and conquest. A Viking named Rurik, was the founder of the Kievan Rus dynasty, which later settled and made Moscow its capital.

Ukraine has the blessing and curse of having some of the best agricultural land in the world, plus coal and oil. Ukraine's resources, and with it access to the Black Sea and the world ocean, make the land worth fighting for and settling in. It was Soviet policy during the USSR period to encourage Russian speakers to move into the provinces of eastern Ukraine. Their children were learning Ukrainian in school, while speaking Russian at home.

Since 2012 Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms have carried out separatist military operations in eastern Ukraine. They were simultaneously outsiders and insiders, participating alongside paramilitary groups of separatist-oriented Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The shadow war continued for a decade. Two years ago, formal Russian aggression began. Putin was thinking big. Russia would attack and control the capital, Kiev, and the whole country would collapse to be absorbed into Russia.

The Russian invasion stalled. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he didn't need a plane out of Kiev; he needed ammunition. Ukrainians rallied. The war is now at a stalemate. 

Again, eventually all wars end. Americans are inclined to see this on a template World War II history, a choice between cowardly appeasement and standing tall for democracy and the international order. Trump has complicated this notion. In Trump's view of the international order, strong countries including the U.S, Russia, and China, do what they want. Countries act in their own self interest. Rules are for losers. Trump understands Putin. Putin understands that a Trump victory will bring an end to the war, a neutralized Ukraine, Ukrainian resources, Russian speakers back into Russia, and strategic territory to protect Russia's Crimean port and naval base. That would be victory enough.

Putin's offer on the table now gives Americans a choice that will inform the 2024 election. Trump -- and increasingly Republican officeholders -- will be OK with taking the deal. American money is funding the issue of whether Russia or Ukraine controls the city of Zaporizhzhia. Americans can neither pronounce it nor find it on a map. Trump will make the case that we should not spend $100 billion a year, and risk nuclear war, to help Ukraine fight for it. Ukraine needs to be realistic, Trump will say, and if Ukraine won't be realistic, then the U.S. will be realistic for it. Choose peace.

Biden's position in support of Ukraine is currently popular, but it may not stay that way now that there is a peace offer on the table.  If Trump stops talking about the 2020 election, and becomes known as the end-the-war candidate, then I suspect that he will make inroads among peace-oriented voters. They still exist. 

Putin just changed the 2024 election. 

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Trump is deteriorating. He sounds unwell.

Donald Trump is acting like a sloppy, belligerent drunk.

Trump looks more robust than does Joe Biden. Trump is heavier and his voice is stronger. But, increasingly, Trump is the one who appears to lack the capacity to serve as president. 

Donald Trump has a schtick. His one-man show mixes cheerleading, policy, humor, and rambling riffs on whatever crosses his mind. It is personal, unscripted in a way that few politicians' appearances are. His Truth Social posts seem to come directly from the heart.

It is a high-risk/high-reward strategy. It is appealing in its authenticity, but he lays bare his weaknesses. Trump acts manic, frantic, and crazy. Four years ago he was often funny and charming. Now he acts like a sloppy, belligerent drunk.

In Iowa this week Trump criticized electric cars, then went off track. I have been in gatherings where someone was "in his cups." Imagine you are a server in a restaurant, and the man at the head of the table dominating the conversation ordered another bottle of wine, and began saying this.

I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’

“By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately, do you notice that? Lot of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today: ‘Well they weren’t really that angry, they bit off the young lady’s leg because of the fact that they were not hungry but they misunderstood who she was.’ These people are crazy. He said, ‘There’s no problem with sharks, they just didn’t really understand a young woman swimming.’ No, really got decimated, and other people, too, a lot of shark attacks.

“So I said, ‘There’s a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards, or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking? Do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted, or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted?’ Because I will tell you, he didn’t know the answer.

“He said, ‘You know, nobody’s ever asked me that question.’ I said, ‘I think it’s a good question. I think there’s a lot of electric current coming through that water.’ But you know what I’d do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I’ll take electrocution every single time. I’m not getting near the shark. So we’re going to end that, we’re going to end it for boats, we’re going to end it for trucks.”

We watch Joe Biden for signs of confusion or frailty. We need to watch Trump with the same attention, but now focusing on the indicia we use for evaluating executive function. Trump sounds sloppy. He stumbles over words. He doesn't focus. He sounds intemperate. Here is his Memorial Day greeting. 

Trump's behavior is not normal or healthy. Trump's incapacity is as great or greater than Biden's, but they come in different directions.  He doesn't seem frail, which is the concern with Biden. Trump seems to have lost sober judgment. He is steady on his feet, but he has lost self control. A server in a restaurant hearing him wander in his speech or reading his Truth Social posts would see the red flags the Oregon Liquor Control Commission people warn servers about in their training. It is time to cut him off.

Trump is losing executive function. He is sober, but he hasn't the judgment necessary to drive a car.

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