Three Ring Circus
This week we talk about being saved by women (again), COVID on parade, and loneliness, And, of course, our Big Get and On the Bottom Shelf.
Today is the 16th anniversary of the best thing that has ever happened to me. Happy birthday, Isaiah. Thanks for making my dream come true.
As Usual, the Women Will Save Us
This seemed like an appropriate post given that this year is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment granting women the overdue right to vote. I’d like to think that few men are as pro-women as I am. I prefer to hire and work with women in general because y’all are smarter than us. You come with a different perspective than we do and it is a perspective that we need more of during these insane times.
Tim Alberta wrote a brilliant take on the election from where things look at this exact moment, but one part caught my attention (emphasis mine):
4. Trump might lose women voters by numbers we’ve never imagined.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: The president has a problem with female voters. Yes, this has been observed by every pollster, every political professional, in both parties over the past four years. Trump has been briefed on it—time and again—by his team, who warned him that the 2018 Democratic wave could repeat itself without a course correction. But what we’re seeing now, in polling conducted by both parties, isn’t a wave. It isn’t even a tsunami. It’s something we don’t have a name for, because we’ve never seen anything like it. The president’s standing with women voters of every race, every educational background, every socioeconomic stratum, has fallen off. But when it comes to the white, college-educated women who made up a sizable chunk of Trump’s base—he won 44 percent of them against Hillary Clinton—his numbers have collapsed entirely.
The president, seeing ominous signs of this earlier in the year, sought to scare these voters back into his camp, warning of an assault on the suburbs and violence visiting their families and communities. But this tactic appears to have backfired. Recent internal polling from Republicans and Democrats alike suggests that Trump’s law-and-order messaging alienated far more women than it attracted.
This isn’t just a problem for Trump in purple states. Last week, I heard from one of the smartest Republicans alive, a longtime party operator who lives in a state Trump carried by double digits. He told me the polling he was seeing there was something out of a nightmare; these were numbers he never expected to see in his lifetime. The only thing more dizzying than that? I had another conversation, with another dependable red-state Republican, the very next day, and heard the very same thing. Both of these men were sounding the alarm, alerting me that Trump could actually lose their states, and would at the very least drag down a number of down-ballot Republicans, because women have turned on the GOP at a historic clip. Trump lost women by 13 points to Clinton, according to exit polls, and Republicans have long worried that the figure could climb into the high teens. There is now genuine worry that the margin could explode north of 20 points—the biggest gender gap in modern election history.
COVID on Parade
by Jessica Redding
The events of this past weekend remind me of Armando Iannucci’s film The Death of Stalin …we had an ailing head of state, his bumbling doctor, his idiot sycophants poorly cleaning up his mess, and to top things off we even got a parade. A parade! Loads of Dear Leader’s supporters gathered outside of Walter Reed Medical Center on Sunday with signs, flags, etc. because that’s what you do when you’re boycotting the NFL and your boy is laid up in the hospital with a lethal virus. We know Dear Leader binges cable news like the latest and greatest show on Netflix, so he was surely fit to be tied about the reporting that he was gravely ill, which contradicted the information provided by his doctor, Dr. Conley. What does an alpha male do to project power and complete wellness of mind and body? He stages photos of himself hard at work, signing blank sheets of paper with a Sharpie.
A weak leader would tell his or her respective countrymen and women something like keep calm and carry on or to remain stoic yet vigilant. A weak leader would rely on the counsel of those wiser or more experienced than he or she. Thankfully we don’t have a weak leader! We have a strong, macho macho man leader who, virus be damned, needs to flaunt his wellness to adoring citizens. We have a leader who stops at nothing, even if that means jeopardizing the health and well-being of those who serve him honorably and their families, to project strength. If only all nations were so lucky! Who needs a military parade complete with rockets and goose stepping soldiers when we can have Il Duce Part Deux, powered by hubris, the adoring crowd, and all of the pharmaceuticals in the Washington D.C. metro area, riding by in a fleet of Suburbans, waving and definitely not gasping for breath or spreading a virus that that is responsible for killing approximately 210,000 Americans.
Unfortunately for those dead saps, they will never know the thrill of a victory parade. They will never again be able to see those who adore them and hold them dear. They will never be able to take advantage of the latest treatments and the best care America has to offer. If only they didn’t fear the virus, if only they didn’t let the virus dominate them. If only they lived in the best America and not the one where government officials pledge an oath of fealty to Kim-Il Trump.
The Big Get
This week’s feature is my buddy, Jim Brown. Jim and I first met back in 2010 when he was working on a Congressional campaign in Indiana and I was doing some side work for an an opponent. Somehow we made a bet that Jim later paid off with an excellent and very enjoyable dinner at Fogo de Chao steakhouse in Indianapolis. He’s a husband, father, Marine, serial entrepreneur, and one of the deepest and most passionate guys I know. Jim was featured in a past episode of the very excellent podcast “The Political Nomad” which can be listened to here.
Jim’s replies are in italics.
After my moving introduction, introduce yourself in five sentences or less.
Ha! Thanks, Jacob. The thing about losing steak dinner bets is no one actually loses! I remember pairing that steak with several caipirinhas that night as well!
Five sentences to summarize 38 revolutions around the sun, huh? Well, my life's mantra is "I refuse to be normal." I work very hard at getting to the “why” behind every decision I make and am willing to change any opinion or position I hold with enough data. As I’ve started to look toward that second half of my life, I’m doing my damndest to optimize for joy -- and that revolves around being the father my son needs, the husband my wife wants, and ensuring I’m present not only for them but for myself as well. After sacrificing my 20’s and most of my 30’s chasing what I thought success was, I’m now spending as much time outside hiking, cycling, and playing golf as I can.You come from a fairly humble blue collar background. Tell us how that upbringing shaped your views on life.
My dad went between factory work and being a union laborer. My mom bounced from fast food restaurant to fast food restaurant. My grandpa told me I’d never amount to anything. That’s all pretty tough for a 7-8 year old kid. I honestly don’t know where I found the strength to combat it but it was then that I made a conscious decision that my life was going to take a different course. I began shaping my thinking and actions to be the exact opposite of my parents. My dad worked with his hands, so I refused to get calluses on mine. My mom repeatedly got fired from jobs, so I refused to work for someone else. With both being blue-collar and thinking Democrats would look out for them, I decided I was going to be a Republican.
What was your nickname in the Marine Corps?
I feel like there’s a story here that I may have told you after too many tasty adult beverages, (publisher’s note: I wasn’t sure if the statute of limitations had run out on that episode yet so I didn’t want to hint at anything) but I’m blanking. However, I can tell you the story of how I ended up traveling all over the Midwest as an independent pro wrestler… wearing black and white camo with one pant leg up to reveal a Carolina blue sock and coming into the ring to Master P’s “Make ‘em Say Ugh.” They called me kid…as in Bout It Kid and I was one of the best heels there was.
What made you decide to become an entrepreneur?
To be honest, it wasn’t a conscious decision to become an “entrepreneur” as I didn’t know what that even meant. I just knew it was going to be on me to provide for myself so I quickly learned how to make a market -- what did people want that I could provide and make money doing?
I started running a gambling pool in 7th grade. I bought and resold candy in high school. When I was 16, I built a wrestling ring in my buddies back yard, got our classmates to pay us to train them how to wrestle, then sold tickets to their friends to come watch them do it. As a senior, this “internet” thing started to pick up so I taught myself HTML to build websites for people. I was a hustler more than an entrepreneur.
My first legit business came from my love for design and visual communications. At 22, I realized most people were much better than me at graphic design but struggled talking to people. It was easy for me to pull the vision out of a business owner and translate that to a designer to execute. But, I also saw a big difference in the amount of money they were willing to spend compared to what the designer wanted to be paid. So I asked myself… where does all that extra money go to? When I realized it was the owner’s pocket, I knew I found my path.Tell us about your greatest failure?
Is losing $1M of other people’s money considered a failure? Yeah, I guess so. Simultaneously with my son being born in 2013, I got the great idea to try my hand at the venture capital game. A lot of people I respected had started raising these things called “Series A’s, B’s, C’s, etc.” I had no idea what it was, but I wanted to find out.
I got a couple of my smartest friends to join me in building a software platform to help the average homeowner better take care of their largest asset -- their home. Home maintenance and improvement is one of the most inefficient markets there is and the customer experience for the buyer is just atrocious. What I learned was, there was a reason for that -- it’s really fucking hard.
After getting two institutions and 14 angel investors to believe in my vision, I unfortunately spent the next two years running that business directly into the ground resulting in a total loss for everyone involved. I’m still not completely over it.Both on the podcast and your website, you tell the story of your incredible year living in 15 different countries around the world. Which country was the most memorable and why?
15 countries, six continents. That said, it really is incredibly hard to pick just one because they were all completely different experiences!
I’m going to go with New Zealand. We landed in Auckland late at night but by noon the next day we were in love. It’s one of those places you just take a deep breath and immediately feel at home. We explored everything on the volcanic north island from Hot Water Beach to geothermal Rotorua and fell more in love on a daily basis. Then we went to the south island. We flew into Queenstown and it immediately took our love to a whole new level. But the cherry on top of the sundae was when we splurged on a helicopter tour of Milford Sound and on the way back our pilot landed the bird on top of the Southern Alps in six feet of snow. My son stepped out and it was immediately above his head! Oh, and an interesting fact, New Zealand is often left off of world maps.
Another time I can tell you about my month in Ukraine where my second day there the Russian Ambassador was assassinated in a café bombing and two weeks later I submitted my US Passport to the Russian Embassy in Kyiv for 48 hours…What was the strangest thing you ate during that time?
Durian in Thailand. Not only was it terrible tasting, it smelled like rotten eggs. It’s literally so bad all the guest houses and hotels have signs banning you from bringing it inside. We tried it at a floating market in Bangkok.
How has that trip impacted you on your return to America? What do you see differently than you had before?
Coming back to the States after a year abroad has been the hardest thing I’ve ever mentally gone through -- and that includes Marine Corps boot camp, recovering from a head-on car crash, and going through a divorce.
This may not go over well with most of your readers, but personally I’m over the American-exceptionalism bullshit we’re fed from birth. Is America great? I honestly can’t say yes to that. I think it’s really good and provides incredible opportunities for a lot of people but it is not the “greatest country on Earth.” Is there one single country that is better? I don’t know that I can say that either but I can tell you lots of places do things differently, and collectively there are a lot we could take from each of those places.
Now, more than ever, I find myself constantly asking people “why” they think/say/do what they do and after listening to their response simply say, “it doesn’t have to be that way.”What is the running theme among the companies you invest in? What makes a successful investment and how do you define that?
My personal thesis is to invest in either people or products that are legitimately trying to make an impact for the social benefit of people. A few of those companies include
Uncovered - a cold case platform helping bring peace to the families of murdered or missing people
Ziptility - a utility management platform helping municipalities maintain and improve our aging water infrastructure
Woven - a technical assessment tool helping reduce the bias in hiring engineers
Boardable - a board management system for nonprofits
As we ask everyone, what is your favorite whiskey?
Well, in the spirit of honesty and authenticity, I have to say that because of alcoholism in my family, I don’t do whiskey. It was the poison of choice for my dad and a constant reminder of childhood trauma I’ve worked hard to separate myself from.
Instead, my libation of choice comes in two forms… free or cold!
You Are Not Alone
Loved this post by one of my favorite writers, the contemporary philosopher Mark Manson. Here’s an excerpt that struck me as we survey our current, insane society:
Basically, once cut off from empathetic social contact to ground us, the only way we make sense of the world is by adopting radical all/nothing views. And within these views, people begin to see a need for radical overthrow of the status quo. They begin to imagine themselves complete victims or destined saviors of society.
Perhaps the faux intimacy created by social media is making us all feel lonely?
On The Bottom Shelf
Four Roses Yellow Label
This is probably every bourbon connoisseur’s favorite budget sipper. You can find it pretty much anywhere, it has most of the tasting notes that bourbon fans appreciate (sweet and spicy), and it’s very budget friendly, coming in at under $20 for a bottle (they also offer small batch, small batch select and single barrel varieties under the Four Roses label.)
What makes this bourbon unique is that it’s actually a blend of ten different recipes, unlike most bourbons which use a specific “mash bill.” They distill those bourbons, each with a unique mash bill of its own and then blend them into a very smooth and satisfying flavor known literally the world over.
Like any spirit the nose is the first introduction and Yellow Label doesn’t disappoint. It has a strong hint of cinnamon with a little spice and floral sent that you pick up immediately. The taste is probably the smoothest of any bourbon in this category. Very traditional bourbon flavor but with a lot of cinnamon and floral (again!) with a little caramel and perhaps lemon zest that make this a very enjoyable sipping bourbon. There’s a very smooth, peanut buttery finish without the burn of a cheap whiskey.
If you’ve never tried it you owe it to yourself to grab a bottle. And let me know how you like it.
Jacob on the Air
Last week I made a brief appearance on the best station in Orlando. Please ignore the terrible lighting as having a wife and son both working from home left me with limited options regarding location. Also, what is the deal with my head?
The Best Things I Saw This Week
Murder Book, Season Two is as good as I had hoped it would be.
“Episodes” on Netflix. Basically, Matt LeBlanc plays… Matt LeBlanc as an overrated, self absorbed actor fresh from playing Joey on Friends. All through the unique lens of British humor. It’s witty and hysterical.
The 2020 Buffalo Bills.
My son and his BFF spent part of this weekend building a new gaming PC from scratch for my son’s birthday present. It was truly a blessing for me to watch the two of them run into obstacles and then figure them out together.
Novelist and commentator John Daly has an excellent new publication.
Our Troll Addiction Epidemic by Jonah Goldberg.
That’s all, folks!
Thanks for reading. If something interested you then please share Monticello with your friends.
Monticello was created by and published by Jacob Perry. Our editor and contributor is Jessica Redding. On social media: