To say that General Washington was angry would have been the understatement of the century. He was as close to losing his legendary cool as he had been since the war ended, and with his personal reputation on the line, he circulated the parties and dinners of Philadelphia’s social network. He faced a barrage of questions about the rumors swirling through the City. “Do you mean to destroy the government?”

The source of the rumors was the discovery that the Virginia delegation was meeting in secret each day as they waited for the rest of the delegates to arrive, to refine a plan that James Madison had written to do just that. Was this… treason?

Of bigger concern, the small States were horrified that Virginia meant to swallow them up, through “addition, division, or impoverishment.” The call went out as a letter was dispatched to John Dickinson of Delaware. He would arrive in time to fight to save the small States…

Why is there a Page 6? Why is the high speed car chase of Harry and Megan through the streets of Manhattan a news story? Why do “social media influencers” even exist? Why is our society so obsessed with having our the fifteen minutes of fame?

We all claim that we want privacy and we are appalled when it is “violated.” But is that really who we are? Why is our society so determined to tell everything that happened to us every minute of every day? Blogs, Social Media, web cams… it’s almost as if we cannot get away from detail after detail of everybody we know.

Over the past few months, in increasing desperate sounding letters, eMails and phone calls, my mortgage company has been begging me to re-fi my house. Or… even if I want to sell my house and maybe even buy a new one?

As it turns out, there is a reason for all this unseemly begging. I happen to have a good bit of equity in my house and I also have a locked rate of 2.5%. There is a shortage of houses on the market while mortgage applications are up 10% year over year. In essence, it’s a sellers market.

So why is it that I… and millions of other Americans are not selling or at least getting a refinance?

It’s the economy, stupid…

Look, I get it. we should all be pissed off. Left, right, center. What we learned this week is that J Edgar Hoover was alive and well in the one institution that we were told that we could trust.

Efrem Zimbalist Jr, and Tom Clancy novels not withstanding, we learned that abuse of power infects every alphabet agency and hall of marble buildings across the government. i do not care what party you say you are, if this doesn’t piss you off, you’re the real problem.

That said, and the famed Nuremberg Defense aside, can we please stop labeling our opponents – both sides – as “Nazis?” They aren’t. And our petty little political differences do not justify the disrespect it shows to the victims of the Holocaust.

In the end, the FBI isn’t the real problem. But like so many other societies, we refuse to address the actual problem…

One of the things that I have wanted to do for some time is a complete revision of the Convention Episodes of Constitution Thursday. This summer, except for the three weeks I will be gone, Dave Does History gives me the chance to do just that. For the next few months we will take a weekly look at the things that happened in the Philadelphia in the Summer of 1787. This will not be a word for word repeat of the original Convention episodes, but with a new audience it will give us a chance to once again consider the struggle that lead to our Constitution…

This week in 1787 is the designated time for delegate appointed by each State – except one – to arrive in Philadelphia to begin the process of revising the Articles of Confederation. In the previous year, at a conference in Annapolis, it was finally recognized that the government of the United States was just not functional in a meaningful way. This Philadelphia Conference was meant to try and fix some of the glaringly obvious issues that were causing more and more problems.

Of note, the weather in Philadelphia, and all up and down the mid-Atlantic seaboard, was a mess. The delegates had been scheduled to arrive beginning on May 13th, but few had actually managed to navigate the morass of mud and torrent filled rivers to get there.

But those who had arrived, almost entirely Virginians, were determined to make good use of the time while they awaited the rest of the Delegates…

A recent tweet about the ancient deity Moloch by a conservative Talk Show Host has lit up some folks (get it?). In essence he tweeted that the white liberal women (specifically) “will throw their own children (and yours) into the fires of Molech without the slightest bit of hesitation.”

Now… that’s the kind of reference that seems arcane. The truth is that most of the people who read it or heard about it probably had no clue what he was talking about. But you need to understand that for those of us who accept the torah (or Old Testament) as scripture, there are some VERY specific things that G-d told us about Moloch.

And as we watch what is happening in our world today, those fires that Moloch worshipers used to destroy their children may have become metaphorical, but they are every bit as real as they were three thousand years ago…

At 0530 this morning I was reawakened by my Ben, who wanted to know how soon we could go to GameStop.

At 0530.

Sometimes things are pretty important, even if they don’t seem so to me. And sometimes the underlying motivations aren’t as clear as they seem in the media.

Yesterday on Bill Mick Live we talked about the Astor Place riots and the impact that the love of Shakespeare in America of the 19th Century had on the nation, and the events of May 10, 1849.

After the show, I was thinking a bit more about things, and it occurred to me that there might be a related issue today. The New York times recently ran an article explaining the problems in primary schooling when it comes to the teaching of history. The article seems to indicate that history, and indeed most social studies, are being ignored in primary schools (1st-12th) in favor of the more technical subjects which are tested for assessments and entry into colleges.

Having a 7th grader myself, I am not convinced that is true, but it did raise some questions in my mind about HOW we teach not just history, but the values and principles that guided those who came before us…

Once upon a time, NYC was the leader in American dislike for the British. What you gotta understand is that Great Britain and the US were almost thinking about going to war against each other… again. The whole “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” thing, among other disputes. This time though, it wasn’t the national governments that stopped it. 

Still, it the common opinion in America to dislike all things British. Including actors. Which was weird, because at one point Americans in NYC, an American actor starting trying to out-act a British Actor performing in Shakespearian play.

Follow me here… two actors… one British, one American… were competing at performing Shakespeare. Specifically, Macbeth. Americans were encouraged to boo and hiss at the British actors while cheering the American ones.

And… on May 10, 1849 this competition, driven by class and national rivalry, got… well… like NYC… out of hand…