by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Apr 21, 2026 | Featured, Humor, Personal, Politics
When American politics finally pushes you over the edge, I can save you.
I’ve been there.
Right now it’s even worse than when I ran for office in 2014 in a gerrymandered Republican district.
I could feel the country dividing and polarizing, so I decided to run — even though I was told I had little or no chance. Susan, my future wife, along with the two other Democrats in the district, knocked on 5,000 doors and raised $150,000.
I was trying to win one of three seats that had been held by Republicans for a decade. The Republican I was trying to defeat had been convicted of (1) pouring used automobile oil into the Chesapeake Bay, (2) multiple drunk driving offenses, and (3) attempting to run over his mother with his truck. He was recently removed from office for campaign violations — his headquarters were in the wrong district and he was using them as a personal storage shed.
When you lose an election to somebody like that, and you’ve routinely been treated badly while knocking on doors, you’ve effectively ended your political career before it gets started. The alternative is to take up the writing of poetry or the writing of plays, which I have done.
I suffered endless indignities on the campaign trail, some of which I have not recovered from yet.
Like the lady who answered the door in a trailer park wearing a Sunday-morning muumuu. After my pitch, I closed with my signature line: “And if you’re worried about term limits, I’m over 65 — nature will take care of that in my case.”
She paused, contemplated what I had just told her, looked at me, and said, “I’m not sure I can talk to you right now because I don’t have any underwear on.”
I still don’t know what the proper answer to that should have been. She followed it up with “R or D?” When I answered “I’m a fiscally conservative Democrat,” she slammed the door in my face before I could finish with “and I oppose gerrymandering.”
I am still waiting for my Purple Heart from the Democratic Party.
There is only one place where you can regain a healthy consciousness. The answer: extreme shallow water yoga.
I’m sure you can feel my pain even after all these years, because I am now revealing something obviously very precious to me.
It’s a little dangerous, but it’s worth it.
Try it now. The time is right.
When our President is losing a war he started for no good reason other than thinking he could win it in one day — and then sits down to play chess with Iran to (1) negotiate the elimination of a nuclear arsenal he previously claimed he had already destroyed, (2) get terms of settlement that the world, including Russia, China, Iran, and the United States, had already agreed to back in 2015 before he pulled out in 2018, and (3) demonstrates with his first moves that he doesn’t know the rules of checkers, let alone chess — the world suddenly realizes he doesn’t understand, as you do, that every subsequent move plays into checkmate. Iran is playing on his narcissism and lies to turn our allies against us, create inflation at home, and generate an international crisis we’ll be blamed for for years.
You have to start by calming your own mind under the pressure of all this stupidity.
You gotta get a scuba tank and sit at the bottom of a swimming pool until a hand breaks the surface and signals you to come up for lunch.
It works! And here’s why: yoga requires mindful breathing. Underwater, this comes naturally — as you exhale, you’ll hear the bubbles pass your ears, and breathing stays top of mind because if you stop, you’ll drown.
I don’t want to scare you off, so here are some safety tips. Place a lawn chair in the deep end — but skip the safety belts. You want to be able to rise to the surface if you reach a meditative state so powerful you can hear angels singing. Just make sure it’s not nitrogen narcosis. Know the difference.
It is that relaxing.
Instead of a chair, try a pair of boxer shorts with huge pockets and one of those rip-away jerseys football players wear so they can’t be tackled. Fill both with lead. You can then disrobe underwater and easily return to the surface — the pants and shirt rip off instantly as you rush for air.
As a worst-case scenario, you can hold barbells in both hands. Fair warning: jumping into a pool with large barbells tends to create massive waves that break outside the pool, and even jumping in feet-first, the barbells will likely send you headfirst to the bottom at speed. That said, barbells do eliminate any shirt problems, and you can simply let go if you lose consciousness while reaching Nirvana — or if you start confusing inner peace with nitrogen narcosis, and the angels calling you from the deep-end drain start sounding a little too compelling.
A final note of caution: check with your insurance company, as there may be no coverage if you die.
Of course, I could be wrong. Trump seems very confident. After all, he’s been debating the Pope and has posted portraits of himself as Jesus on Truth Social.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Mar 31, 2026 | Featured, Humor, Law, Personal, Politics
Over the last month, I have tried to understand what it feels like to be a real coward. Not just an everyday coward who lacks courage or is very fearful or timid, not even a lily-livered coward.
I have tried to understand what it must feel like to be a Republican elected to the US Congress, who willingly lives under the thumb of Donald Trump.
I’m trying to figure out how it must feel to be elected to Congress, take an oath to uphold the Constitution, be paid by the taxpayers a salary along with benefits and privileges that are better than what their constituents get, and then abandon your singular responsibility to determine if the country should go to war when “there is no present danger.”
This is as close as I could get:
In my third year of law school, we were allowed to practice law in a clinic run by Professor Michael Millemann. For my first case, I was given a letter from an inmate at Perkins, a prison in Maryland that the legislature had endowed with indeterminant sentences.
An indeterminant sentence meant that when a prisoner had conformed his behavior to the standards acceptable to the outside world, according to a prison psychiatrist, he would be released.
The indeterminant sentence, however, had backfired because there were petty criminals like shoplifters or road rage drivers who had been given short sentences originally but had not convinced the system and thus remained in Perkins for years.
The letter was from an inmate we’ll call Rocky. It was short and sweet. It said: “GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.”
I had never been inside a prison before, but I had to visit Rocky at Perkins to discover any facts that I could use to “get [him] the fuck out of here.”
I waited in the waiting room with the echoing sounds of slamming prison doors along with all the other endless prison noises. There is nothing to absorb the sound. It is loud all the time.
Three sets of clanging doors opened and shut behind me as I was escorted through a maze of corridors to get to a small room with a low ceiling and no windows. Prison bars filled one wall, with a seat for the inmate on the other side and a folding chair and narrow desk held in place in front of the bars for the lawyer to take notes. When the prisoner and the lawyer were facing each other on opposite sides of the bars, they were probably no more than three feet from each other.
One of the prison guards sat outside of the door and, after a short pause with all the prison sounds echoing around me, Rocky made his appearance at the far end of the corridor.
As he walked toward me, I could see he was about five foot six, wearing prison pants and a sweatshirt cut off to show his shoulders and well developed chest and arms, which were complete with spider tattoos. He wore a red bandanna tied around his head.
What struck me first was his unyielding Charles Manson eyes.
Before he introduced himself and sat down in front of me, he addressed the prison guard with a hostile voice, “Hey, you fuck’n dick, get lost. I’m talking to my lawyer!”
The guard picked up his chair and immediately left me a little uncomfortable. Rocky then looked me over and said, “How fuckin’ old are you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He sat down and continued, “I killed two people. How am I gonna conform to fit into society? Get me out of here!”
“Rocky,” I said with the calmest voice I could muster. “I’m here to listen to your story and do everything I can to get you what you want.”
“What don’t you understand? I can’t be here anymore. This fucking la la place is ruining my reputation in the outside world.”
I’m pretty sure that my hands were both shaking as I tried to take notes on my yellow pad. He told me that it was a dirty drug deal that went bad and that he had punched one guy to death. “I shot the other one with his gun. How do I conform? Bring ’em back? I want you to get me out of here! Do you understand?”
I kept asking thoughtful questions in an effort to look mature but, when I read my notes later, they didn’t make any sense.
I closed the interview by asking him what he really wanted, other than to get out of this place. He replied, ”What the fuck is wrong with you? I want to go to a maximum security prison where I should be. This la la land is wasting my time!” What’s so hard to figure out about that?”
“I got it, Rocky. I got it.“ I tried to smile confidently and failed. “Don’t bullshit me, boy,” he replied. “You’re not wasting my time, are you? Are you gonna get this done? I got friends on the outside who will be watching you. You understand?”
As if he was sealing the deal, he shoved his right hand between the bars to shake my hand, and I instantly flew backward against the wall as the folding chair collapsed beneath me.
He looked at me while I was lying there, shook his head and said. “You’re doing this, okay?” He turned around and screamed for the guard: “Hey, dick, we’re finished!“ As the guard approached, he turned to address me again: “We understand each other?” I replied in my deepest possible voice as I reassembled the chair: ”Yeah, Rocky. I’ve got you covered. We got a deal.”
My normal heartbeat returned about four days later.
At the end of the semester, the legislature voted to close Perkins and the governor had signed the bill into law and the prison system was sending its inmates to serve out their prescribed sentences in other prisons throughout Maryland.
I had nothing to do with the legislature’s termination of Perkins but I checked every day to determine when Rocky would be sent to serve out his life sentence at the Cut, which was a maximum security prison.
In fact, I had followed the process closely and had dreamed about Rocky throughout the semester.
After he was transferred to the Cut, I sent Rocky a copy of the bill that the legislature passed and the governor signed with a personal note: ”Rocky, Good luck at the Cut. It has a reputation as the harshest maximum security prison in Maryland to serve out the remainder of your life sentence. Best wishes, your friend, Bob.”
Looking back, I will admit I was a run-of-the-mill lily-livered coward but I’m still unsuccessful in determining what it must feel like to be one of those Republican congressional cowards.
Maybe we should reopen Perkins so they can stay for free until they can conform to the minimum standards for upholding their duties to the country and the Constitution.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Sep 9, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Politics
Last week Putin told a joke and the whole world laughed, except for America.
This was remarkable.
Have you noticed that there aren’t a lot of jokes in foreign policy? Jokes have to be told in the same language for both parties, which is hard in foreign policy.
(There are not a lot of jokes in boxing either. Different punch lines… sorry.)
So foreign policy jokes have to be not what you say, they have to be what you do .
A couple of weeks ago, Trump invited Putin (a spy during the Cold War who Trump admires and has assured us is his BFF) to meet as a guest of America in Alaska. He was given the red carpet treatment: gun salutes went off, he rode in the presidential limousine with his friend the American president, and received full and complete respect from the American military.
He had been invited by our president to negotiate the end of Putin’s takeover of Ukraine, a free country and ally of the United States.
Putin accepted this invitation, held a press conference upon arrival on American soil, then skipped the planned meetings and flew back home before lunch. Then he bombed the hell out of Ukraine.
Trump declared victory. Now that’s funny!
We are all safe because Trump will always get the last laugh. Ask him. He’ll tell you. I’ve never seen him laugh, but I’m sure he’s funny.
Several weeks later, Putin joined a parade in China with North Korea and some other Eagle Scouts of the totalitarian world to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Japan, without inviting Trump.
But in the alternative, the world‘s antidemocratic countries invited India, the largest democracy in the world and an American trading partner upon whom Trump had recently artfully imposed 50% tariffs, which drove India into the arms of the totalitarian world leaders.
It’s hilarious because obviously Trump got the last laugh, showing off his well-known genius for “the Art of the Deal.”
It was kind of like a junior high school “mean girl” movie and Trump was the only girl not invited to the party. What really made the joke work was Trump made it look like his feelings had not been hurt. It was a perfect foreign policy joke because his actions spoke louder than words. He definitely got the last laugh.
I used to think he wasn’t subtle.
We have midterm elections coming up in a year, so guess why Trump brings in the military and plants them in Los Angeles, Chicago, and our nation’s capital, Washington DC. My guess is all the polling stations will be guarded by his police by the midterms, so we can happily celebrate our Constitution.
Why shouldn’t we believe the President of the United States? The economy must be safe even though the deficit has skyrocketed with his tax cuts for the rich, because he also has doubled his net worth over the last nine months since he was elected, so that he is now worth $5 billion.
Ya see? He’s one hell of a businessman and he’s also president of the United States. He must be an excellent straight-faced jokester because I’ve never seen him laugh.
His best jokes are often at our own expense. Nobody’s threatened and everyone seems to believe that the military buildup in our major cities isn’t really serious and, do we really even need those midterms anyway?
It’s the art of the joke.
Because Trump has been so funny, we should set up a joke in return and see how he responds.
Let’s get Congress to vote against funding the government in exchange for bringing back our democracy to make America truly great again.
Maybe that will give us all the last laugh.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Jun 17, 2025 | Featured, General, Humor, Law, Personal, Politics
When I started to practice law, Jimmy Carter was elected president. To avoid some unimaginable conflict of interest, he sold his family farm for peanuts. Since I retired from the practice of law 10 years ago, apparently the ethics have changed.
President Trump for his birthday last week gave himself a military parade, which which cost the American taxpayers approximately $25 million and tore up the streets of Washington.
Several news services have recently reported that since the early days of President Trump‘s reelection campaign he has made more than double his net worth, about $5.4 billion dollars.
In the past, I would’ve been horrified, but now my reaction is that it’s a shame I didn’t somehow make a bigger profit back when ethics prohibited me.
Back during those ethical times I would preach to the lawyers at my firm that the easiest way to check your professional ethics is to ask yourself if what you were about to do would be embarrassing if it would become a headline in the New York Times. If so, don’t do it.
President Trump has re-organized and turned upside down the professional ethics of the presidency and the ethics I was used to. Everything unethical or untrue that Trump has done now is routinely front page headlines on the New York Times, which nobody reads anymore.
I have gone back to thinking about how rich I would be if I’d taken on cases that I ultimately rejected long ago because of ethical concerns.
Consider the amount of money I could’ve made if I had taken that case long ago of two Hindu businessmen who came into the office and told me they wanted to incorporate (for personal liability reasons) an ongoing business that provided Hindu Americans a chance to bury their families in the Ganges River for about $5,000 per loved one.
They told me that the contract that they offered guaranteed that the loved ones ashes, with which they were entrusted, would be respectfully sent to the Ganges, a boat would be hired as well as a videographer to make a movie of the ceremony as the ashes were transported in a beautiful urn, and a man rowing the boat out in the Ganges would be filmed opening the container and emptying it so the ashes were visible as they were were gently poured into the river.
The $5,000 would be collected in exchange for the video of the ceremony.
I will admit I was intrigued by this novel, religious practice and I asked about the heavy cost of the procedure and the profit they were making per contract.
Without batting an eye both businessmen looked at me and said it was about 95% profit. I asked them how could they possibly make such a profit and they answered: “We send everyone the same video.”
If you’re using the same video and you are making a 95% profit you certainly don’t have to be greedy. You could include a beautiful hologram of the soul rising from the Ganges and fluttering off into reincarnation.
Also they completely missed the opportunity for relics, swag, and real cool T-shirts.
When you include the total Trump’s family and political friends have made in the “pay to play” access and favors, which have included the opportunity to show your personal love and respect by purchasing Trump bitcoin and Trump Bibles, and such gifts as an airplane from the government of Qatar, no wonder Trump wants a third term.
I was so stupid I refused to represent the two Hindu businessmen, even though they generously offered me a free burial in the Ganges.
I could also have befriended the President by referring him to another client who I rejected. For a while, “viatical contracts” were easy money. Several people had the idea at the same time. During the AIDS epidemic several entrepreneurs were going into hospitals or hospices and offering to buy life insurance policies at about 10% of their face value from those who would soon die. There’s nothing illegal about that, but for me it didn’t pass the smell test.
There is some justice in the world. Once effective HIV treatment became available, they were stuck continually paying for ongoing life insurance policies.
I suspect that the Trump family has already seen the future of medical profit as is evident from the appointment of Robert Kennedy, Jr. and the future of TMD (Trump Measles Deterrent). This is not a vaccine. it is free and called “The Trump Blessing,” which is administered over a Zoom call after you buy some of the remaining overstocked Bibles that will become collectors items soon.
I think the only benefit Jimmy Carter received from his presidency was a gift given by his brother: a couple of cans of Billy Beer.
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | May 27, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Personal
Have you been following the economics of this country recently?
Guess who was invited to President Trump’s private event for customers of his cryptocurrency business on Thursday and given a White House tour on Friday?
I wasn’t!
I called my friends, Peter, Belinda and Liza, to see if they had been part of this same oversight by the President.
Peter, Belinda and Liza and I were neighbors during our middle school years and have been friends ever since for over 60 years, and all of us were there from the beginning of cryptocurrency.
They weren’t invited either!
We concluded that this oversight by the President was not his fault and was due to only one possible interpretation.
Our President does not know a lot of American history or, to be a little more polite, he has not yet become aware of the true history of cryptocurrency.
As the rest of us already know, cryptocurrency was quietly created after Nixon took the country off the gold standard. Quite conveniently, it was the same time the first Topps baseball cards were issued in five-card packs with a card size slab of bubblegum included.
The retail cost was five cents per pack. A penny for each card and the bubblegum was free — age appropriate pre-pubescent genius marketing.
A half century before cryptocurrency entered the world stock market, Peter and I were both early investors in baseball cards, and then found another lucrative market in marble monopolies. We were early traders in pre-crypto middle school cards and marbles during recess.
Peter cornered the marble market so effectively that the marble market collapsed after he won all the marbles.
I tried to make a run on “big marbles” so I dressed up my little middle school self and went to pawn shops and antique stores looking for clear round door knobs.
Regrettably, no door knobs are completely round and thus valueless in the larger marble markets.
As a result — for the good of the market — Peter gave a written announcement handed out to the neighborhood that he would be emptying several boxes of marbles to the neighborhood market for free one late spring Saturday afternoon. It happened out of a second floor window with the driveway below. It was an early example of flooding the market.
Peter emptied five bankers boxes of multi currency marbles, including “puresy boulders” and several stunning “jumbo spirals.” The market was saved and Peter had made recess fun again.
Baseball cards back then were “to die for,” particularly if you had a complete set. Peter had a complete set of baseball cards for the years 1957, 1958, and 1959.
Even in middle school, you knew these people were serious people! Peter was a born collector and became a well known New York art dealer. Liza became a respected museum curator in Washington DC, and Belinda became a brilliant art writer and critic.
In the alternative, when I went off to college, my mother emptied my closets and threw away all of my marbles and baseball cards… and I became a lawyer.
At the same time as Trump’s cryptocurrency banquet and tour of the White House, his administration announced that they would be retiring the penny because it was not cost-effective to produce it anymore. They had determined that it took four cents to produce a penny. Think about the appreciated value of just one card, bought for a penny. Or even better, a complete set.
Ever since Nixon took us off the gold standard, our currency, stocks and bonds, like cryptocurrency, have no value other than the theoretical value according to the market.
However, with marbles and baseball cards, unlike cryptocurrency, there is the added component of artistic beauty. They are self valuing and hold a valuable historical record on the flip side of the picture — batting average and stolen bases and other stats.
Also, the bubble gum is great for the dental economy.
Hold onto your baseball cards and don’t lose your marbles!
by Robert Bowie, Jr. | Apr 16, 2025 | Featured, Humor, Personal, Politics, Travel
I’m not really worried about Trump taking over Harvard, so Susan and I are going to Paris this Saturday for a couple of weeks.
Why is everybody so upset? It seems like all the commentators have completely overlooked Trump’s leadership skills when he ran Trump University.
Trump has been very vocal about his business acumen and, by his own account, he ran the university brilliantly for the five years before its bankruptcy.
There was some unsubstantiated criticism about gold toilet seats, but he claimed he was always very hands-on and was good at keeping the overhead low.
For example, despite its name, Trump University was never an accredited university or college. It did not confer college credit, grant degrees, or grade its students.
Think about the savings on the cost of paper.
In contrast, the data from the 2023–24 academic year, 72% of Harvard University’s first-time, full-time undergraduates received financial aid. In the alternative, Trump University was apparently so popular, it never needed to offer scholarships. And Trump has already said that he wants to get rid of Harvard’s nonprofit status.
Really! So where is the art of the deal?
Harvard is not effectively selling its product! No. Harvard has been giving it away for free.
What is also great is that Trump has the experience to navigate these litigious times. In 2011, Trump University became the subject of an inquiry by the New York Attorney General’s office for illegal business practices, which resulted in a lawsuit filed in August, 2013. It was also the subject of two class actions in federal court. The lawsuits centered on allegations that Trump University defrauded its students by using misleading marketing practices and engaging in aggressive sales tactics.
Of course!
Everyone knows that Trump is a marketing genius! Okay, let’s get down to what Trump‘s real motives may be.
Both schools have one thing in common.
Neither school has a mascot.
Everybody knows that Trump is a master marketer. I think the hidden agenda will be that Trump will insist that Harvard finally adopt a formal mascot, befitting our country’s white Christian heritage: a Pilgrim, of course!
But even more importantly, this way he can get rid of that out of date logo “Veritas” and change it to “If you piss off a pilgrim, you’ll get yourself a witch trial.” Then he can raise money at halftime with a raffle where the winner gets whisked away for a lifetime in El Salvador.
Anyway, just like last year, Susan and I will be sending back Parisian commentary and pictures to celebrate our spring time and hopefully brighten yours. À bientôt!
