Jeff's Blog

In 2021, for the first time ever, the United States Congress and the President of the United States may not hold 100% of the power to govern. How can this happen? Well, I am 100% sure that Joe Biden will be sworn in as President on January 20, 2021, and that a new 117th Congress of the United States will be seated a few weeks earlier, on January 3rd.   And that Donald Trump will retire to Mar A Lago. However, once he arrives in Florida, Mr. Trump will be in an excellent position to continue with his highly disruptive but extremely effective approach to politics and governing (without actually being President).   While sitting in Mar A Lago, Mr. Trump will: Be able to significantly influence, slow down and/or propose new Congressional legislation in Washington DC Have a meaningful impact on law making and policy within red states   Remain as a kingmaker for the Republican party, dramatically impacting the careers of elected officials Continue with an undimin...

Seven years ago today, Kim Jong-Un's uncle (#2 in North Korea) was forcibly removed  by state security in the middle of a meeting with high level party leadership, and executed several days later by firing squad.   His crime?  Stating publicly that he thinks economic development should take priority over the military.   Mr. Kim evidently disagreed. Note that not one person in the entire cadre of North Korean party leadership objected. Today, December 8, 2020, also marks one full month after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump at the polls by more than 6 million votes.  Mr Trump continues to challenge the election with ballsy, highly public maneuvers (court challenges, fraud allegations, appeals to state leaders to change the electoral college vote, etc.) that stand absolutely no chance of succeeding.  And, as of today, December 8, 2020, the vast majority (222 out of 249) of Republican members of the US House and Senate (including leaders su...

This morning, Pfizer and BioNTech announced some very positive results regarding the trial of their messenger RNA-based Coronavirus vaccine.  The efficacy was found to be above 90%, which vastly exceeded expectations.   The implications are profound, and include a proof point that genetic vaccines (a brand new highly extensible technology) can be very effective.  In addition the medical community will now have a much higher confidence that the human immune system will respond to coronavirus vaccines with some form of lasting immunity.   Further, the invention of messenger RNA vaccine technology (and genetic vaccine tech in general) will have highly impactful medical uses in the future.  Some applications may include the treatment of diseases where the body can't make a proper version of a particular protein (such as sickle cell anemia among many others).  This invention is perhaps one of the most impactful of the decade. The Dow is up over 1200 po...

My last post described what I referred to as the Enraged Engagement of America , which focused on the role of Cable TV News in the polarization of our country.   Today, we will see how social media companies are adding gasoline to this fire - the fire that Fox News and MSNBC have already started.   As you may have seen in the recent Netflix production " The Social Dilemma ," the technologies and business models used by Facebook and Twitter are fueling the most extreme polarization that our country has seen since the Civil War, and we have yet to experience the full impact.  It All Starts with a Suggestion to Watch a Movie Many of my readers are undoubtedly familiar with Netflix's uncanny ability to recommend movies to you that you'll actually enjoy.   The technology powering the Netflix recommender system is called collaborative filtering and it is one of the reasons that the company now has a market cap of $212B. Netflix's Movie Recommendatio...

Here is an observation that Yogi Berra might make if he were alive today:  Nobody watches cable news anymore, it is far too popular. Whether we admit it or not, many of us get our news from popular sources, including FOX, CNN, MSNBC and even Facebook and Twitter.  It seems like we all get drawn into their worlds whenever we feel like we need to catch up. When we tune in, we quickly get fully engaged... and fully enraged too! (Especially if what is being reported strikes a chord that fits our preferred narrative.)  And whatever is reported always reinforces our very cynical and angry view of the world.  These days, everyone seems to be pissed off!  Could it be cable news?  Maybe Facebook and Twitter?  The president? Kenosha Many of you know that last week was a rough one in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  One person (Jacob Blake) was shot seven times by police officers (leaving him paralyzed from the waste down) and two people later lost their lives in a p...

I grew up in the '60s in small town America.  There was that big house on the corner right down the street - the one with the mansard roof that people said was haunted.  Inside was a cranky old gentleman living alone, everybody was afraid of him. All us kids thought he killed his wife and children with a rusty axe (but we knew that wasn't really true).  Of course we did cross over to the other side of the street when we had to walk past the house. Everybody in town knew stories from the old man.  He told Roger down at the barbershop that there was a pedaphile ring in town.  The guys down at Stanley's Newsstand said he had an off the wall theory that our state's senior US senator was a satan worshiper who drank blood from victims of the pediphile ring.  And the waitress down at Elkton Diner overheard him talking about an evil cabal controlling the state legislature.   My conclusion growing up was that the elderly gentleman was the only one who was ...

We lived in Columbia, South Carolina back in the mid-'90s.  It was a wonderful place with a large, friendly bluegrass music community in a city with lots of vibrant, southern culture and a rich history. In the 1990s, the newly constructed State Museum in Columbia was the centerpiece of the tourist district.  It had a phenomenal American history section.  Included were excellent exhibits on the French and Indian Wars and the Revolutionary War right through wars that were fought in the 20th Century.   There was one weird thing though.  There was absolutely no mention of the Civil War.  The Civil War was the one major historical event that had the most impact on the city of Columbia and the state of South Carolina - and not one word about it in the State museum.   There was no mention of Sherman marching through town and burning it to the ground.  Not a word was said about the the secession of South Carolina (the first state to do so)....