Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show

Who’s ready for the Presidential Campaign Debate Season? Whoo-hoo!!!! Seriously, I long ago quit watching them because – and I say this with love – they are pointless. Nothing of any substance has been discussed at a debate since 1960, and it gets worse every cycle. Today we are literally watching them not to learn anything of value, but in the hope that – like NASCAR – there will be a giant implo...

John Adams once said that “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” Like so many of the Framers and Founders, he had a deep level of understanding that seems to have been lost today. So what exactly was John Adams’ meaning? The answer may come from a story related to us from the Midrash, when a famous Rabbi sent two of his disciples to a nearby town to inspect things. When...

Now that a man from Florida has been indicted for everything except the Kennedy assassinations and the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping, we are able to get on with our lives and talk about that time in Washington, D.C., when some people were so mad at the government and the perceived injustices that they marched in the streets and rioted. The also had firearms, threatened to use them and they burned a ce...

In the days following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was confusion and uncertainty in the upper echelons of the Imperial Japanese government. Most of the leadership had deferred the final decision to the Emperor, who told them to “Bear the unbearable.” During the few days of waiting for the Japanese decision, the United States had paused its B-29 led bombing campaign. There ru...

A recent tweet by Rob Reiner… yes… “Meathead”… reminds me that somehow or another, the meaning of words, or at least the understanding of those words, has been surreptitiously modified. This was followed by a Tick Tock user explaining to me that anybody who is NOT mentally ill under a capitalist system, is  de facto  a fascist. But that’s not the actual definition of the word fascism. Or is it? In...

By now you know that either Barbie or Oppenheimer, or possibly both, are the greatest movies ever created in the history film. Already people are talking about follow up films to tell what are known as “origin stories,” but frankly I couldn’t care less about the back-story of Barbie or Ken, or even for that matter Robert Oppenheimer. That said, there would never have been a film on Oppenheimer if...

There is an old saying in the Civil Service: Never believe anything, until it has been officially denied. As the Biden Family crime story seems to be moving faster and faster every day, one of the things being postulated is that the President  could  issue a pardon for his son, Hunter. In fact, there are more and more people who are coming to believe that the President may  have  to issue one. And...

Teenagers, man… Last night Ben and I took a walk. He has become quite the young man. He is smart, energetic and he has a lot, and I mean a lot, of opinions about the world and how things ought to be. And for really the first time since he became a teenager, he and I had a long conversation about the things that matter so deeply to him and to me. I rmemeber being a thirteen year old opiniionated kn...

As a general rule, I oppose the impeachment of elected officials (appointed officials are a different matter). The recent conventional thinking is that – in general – it’s a waste of time as neither side has the actual votes to impeach a given President. That did not stop Trump from being twice impeached, but, and I think that this is important, those were political moves that were less about Trum...

I am often bemused by so many wannabe tough people proclaiming on social media that they are here to “punch Nazi’s in the face!” More than once I have wondered if they would even recognize a actual Nazi if they were to see one in person? My own experience tells me that they would not, because in today’s world, the attitude is that “ Everyone I don’t like is literally Hitler! “ That said, there was...

Over the weekend, Cami was asking me if I was worried about the future of the country. I mean… yes, I am. I also tend to take the Mickey Rivers approach to life, which means that generally speaking, I try not to worry about things over which I have no control. Of course, that is counter-intuitive, as in a government of, buy and for the people, I should have some control so now I am back to wonderi...

Everybody knows *that* guy. You know.. the one who has to keep asking weird questions or making absurd pronouncements when the meeting is wrapping up and everybody wants to leave. It’s almost like they are utterly oblivious and definitely not reading the room. It terms of the Constitutional convention, *that* guy is named George Mason. And while the Convention has a scheduled eleven day break, sta...

Remember when the joke was actually a joke and everybody knew that it was a joke and even if you didn’t like the joke you still understood that it was a joke and so you just let it go? Yeah…that’s not the country we live in anymore. Now if you don’t like the joke, you go on the air and bitch about it until the worlds biggest entertainment corporation gives in to your little temper tantrum and chan...

I freely admit that I am a skeptic when it comes to the news. In fact, before I read any article, I check the “About” section of the articles host site. far more often than you would expect, it becomes very obvious that the site is “questionable.” That aside, a lack of source materials, links, footnotes and so on, always make me suss about a given article or report. Oddly, one of the effects of th...

Every now and then, I have one of those… moments when I think to myself, “Is that really what I mean when I say that thing? Many anthropologists and archeologists bemoan the fact that we have little understanding of the Yucatan peoples of the pre Columbus era. But you almost never hear a discussion of WHY we lack that understanding. As it turned out, the Mayans were quite literate and wrote down m...

In the context of “the United States,” what exactly is a “State?” Today, it seems obvious to us, but remember that in 1776 there were “States” that shared their governor. At least one of the “States” technically wasn’t a State at all, but rather a dubiously area of leased lands, that while it had its own legislative body, it was only because the State that “owned” the land didn’t like the people w...

It is an inarguable FACT that none in the United states has owned a slave since 1868. As of today, that was one hundred and fifty-five years ago, or, in other terms, an average of nearly eight generations. In my case, because I am old and my grandparents reproduced young, it was four generations ago.  So why is Reuters, a news agency that is decidedly NOT American, running a major article about “s...

My voice is completely and totally gone. Barely a whisper right now... But I am learning to use... AI!!!!!

A few weeks ago, I asked the question, exactly which Framers’ values and principles should we “be getting back to?” As the Convention lurched into the sixth week, and the heat in Philadelphia grew hotter, the delegates were – at least verbally – at each others throats. while the myth of unity still held in the media and even in sermons, the truth was that the convention was literally held together...

I grew up with Star Trek as my inspiration for… well… pretty much everything. Yesterday I even got into a discussion about the ways that Star Trek has inspired much of my learning. in one of the climatic moments, Captain Kirk explains to the crew that “risk…. is, our, business” (you have to say it like Shatner). That said, when is risk too much? As AI looms and robots become more and more capable,...

Not that long ago, I was driving across North Dakota on I-94. At Mile 314, there is an exit sign that caught my attention. I don’t really know why. It just seemed to me to be the embodiment of being… well… normal. As we watch the circus that is our Congress and political system, maybe it’s time to take that exit?

The founder of OceanGate is on record as having said that he did not want to hire a bunch of “fifty-year old white guys” because we are “not inspirational.” He was specifically referring to submarine qualified people who know more about submarines than he ever wil. And far more than he ever imagined about how to safely operate underwater. I have said this before and I will say again… the ocean is...

Perhaps the best known Framer/Founder these days is Alexander Hamilton. But, as the case may be, not for the reasons for which he would have liked to had remembered or had sung about in a Broadway musical. Hamilton had been one of the men who had pushed hard for the Philadelphia Convention. He had also fully expected to be one of its leaders (a story oddly absent from the musical). What he had not...

If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. – Abraham Lincoln, August 22nd, 1862 While L...

There came a time when the political system was unable to deal with the pressures brought on it by the political differences which divided the nation. By April of an election year, there were men who had decided that the moderate course which had guided the nation for four score and four years was no longer acceptable to them. In the arena of politics, calculations were made, votes were counted, a...