to kill everyone but eight people in the Deluge. It's a fairly good article. Here's the link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ken-ham-noah-flood_us_57203fe8e4b01a5ebde3fa04

As to my own feelings, a God that gets all pissed off because the things he's created aren't doing what he wants and then kills everyone in a giant flood, or sends plagues or kills the firstborn children of an entire people doesn't seem very mature.

I watched the movie 'Exodus, Gods and Kings,' and was struck by how God was depicted as a petulant child.

Seems to me that fundamentalists like Ken Ham are pretty dangerous, because if they get in power they probably won't hesitate to kill everyone who disagrees with them, taking Jehovah the tribal god as an example.

My wife and I are both crazy about Perry Mason, so we took the step of buying the entire 9 seasons on disk, and we've been watching them appreciatively.

So...you ask...quite justifiably, why I'm even telling you this.

I have been thinking about it this morning. Now, we are both white, in our late fifties, and were raised in suburbia during the 1960s and 70s by relatively decent WWII generation parents (both dads born 1916, both moms 1920).

Now, in those days if parents, especially WWII generation parents, were decent, they genuinely believed that there was a right and a wrong, and that they could teach it to their children. Part of this teaching was to instill the belief that if we always tell the truth, then things will always work out OK for us.

The old Perry Mason episodes are the epitome of that. Perry, Della, Paul Drake, Hamilton Burger and Lieutenant Tragg are all honest and interested in justice. They are incorruptible and the unfortunate people accused falsely of murder could count on Mason to find the truth and free them. The whole group is sort of like a 'feel good' family - at least those are the feelings they evoke in me. Yep, I think, good will prevail.

It doesn't now, though. Does it? Good doesn't always prevail, and the institutions we used to trust, like (if you were white) the cops, firefighters, banks, schools, businesses, the military, the government, don't always give people, especially the old, poor, sick or different, a fair shake. And, if you were a little yankee doodle dandy like I was, the first realization that sometimes evil wins is very painful.

Because evil has been winning for decades now, and we've all been getting fucked.

I suppose Perry Mason allows me to escape from the corruption for an hour at a time and imagine a better, more just world.

Here's an email I just got from the Sanders campaign. I think you'll find it interesting. No surprises, but interesting.

"Patrick -
Last night Hillary Clinton hosted an outdoor fundraiser in Colorado (a state that already caucused) where "Event Chairs" could bundle $27,000 and "Champions" contributed $2,700.

But a crazy thing happened when she got ready to speak. Her campaign actually "turned on a static noise machine" pointed at the press so they couldn’t hear what she was saying to the financial elite in attendance.

Look, this campaign is funded by emails like this one. So this is technically a Bernie Sanders fundraiser. No noise machine here – we’ll say it directly to you and any members of the press who are on this email list: If Bernie Sanders is elected, he is going to take on a rigged economy held in place by a corrupt campaign finance system. He’s going to fight for universal health care, keep fossil fuels in the ground, ensure no bank is too big to fail and no banker too powerful to jail.

But this is the most important three weeks of the campaign – there are a lot of big primaries right around the corner. And Bernie will only get that chance if we all stand together."

So there it is - I guess the corporate-owned press can't even be privy to what Clinton says to the elites, and certainly we peons seem beneath consideration.

that the working class must recognize it; that they must organize economically and politically upon the basis of that struggle; and that when they do so organize then they will have to power to free themselves and put an end to that struggle forever."

One of the great American heroes, Eugene V. Debs, c. 1901

THAT is why I'm for Bernie. He wants us all to stand up and demand change. Will it work? Probably not at first. Power has to be forced, line by line, bit by bit to concede ANYTHING. But just because it will be difficult does not give us any excuse to refrain from trying.

Why try? Because we know, and when you know, you can never go back.

have been placed in peril? There is nothing in our government that the ballot cannot remove or amend. It can make and unmake presidents and congresses and courts. It can sweep over trusts, syndicates, corporations, monopolies and every other abnormal development of the money power designed to abridge the liberties of workers and enslave them by the degradation incident to poverty and enforced idleness as cyclones scatter the leaves of our forests. The ballot can do all this and more. It can give our civilization its crowning glory - the cooperative commonwealth!" Eugene Debs, c. 1894

So....VOTE.

convention if it looks like the establishment is challenging him.

Please come to Cleveland! says Stone...



"Roger Stone, the longtime Republican political operative and current ally of Donald Trump, says he’s trying to organize protests at the Republican convention in Cleveland this summer to disrupt any effort by the party to “steal” the nomination from the frontrunner.

Stone tweeted several times on Friday evening about his plans, announcing a “Stop the Steal March on Cleveland” and calling on supporters to get to Cleveland for the convention in July."

"Stone told BuzzFeed News over email that he is planning “#DaysofRage,” a seeming reference to the Weatherman-organized Days of Rage protests that took place in Chicago in 1969. Asked to elaborate, Stone said he was talking about “rally-protests -at delegate hotels street theater.”

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/trump-ally-roger-stone-says-hes-planning-days-of-rage-at-the#.juvVZjX5J

"Campaign manager Beth Hanson was delighted with the release of the Harvard study on Monday that predicted John Kasich was far less likely than his GOP rivals to usher in the apocalypse. Almost giddy, Mrs. Hanson exclaimed, "John is 84 percentage points less likely to cause the apocalypse than Ted is, and is a full 87 points less likely than Donald. We've got to run with this!"

The campaign manager encouraged the presidential hopeful to bring up the study during the CNN Town Hall on Tuesday, and directed fliers and advertisements with the message to be drafted immediately. "Only 13%. That's really not so bad."

"He's really not so bad" has been the campaign's most prominent message since the beginning of the Ohio Governor's candidacy. And the efforts so far have seemed to pay off. In a recent Gallup survey, when asked to describe their feelings towards a John Kasich presidency, 73% of American's checked the box marked, 'Tolerable. Would only hate this President a little bit.'"

http://www.probablylegit.com/blog/2016/3/31/harvard-research-study-declares-a-kasich-presidency-only-13-likely-to-usher-in-the-apocalypse