Read more about the article Walk in the Garden

Walk in the Garden

I can see the stone wall of the Missouri Botanical Garden from my front porch. It often beckons to me. Though my walks are often brisk, I bring a camera to slow me down to catch a brilliant color, an engaging pattern or a playful reflection. Sometimes, I sit for 5 or 10 minutes and try to meditate. IMG_0266 MBG Music night At the MBG, there's people watching, of course, and this often causes me to think of the people I care most about--how could this not be the case in such a beautiful place? IMG_0358 MBG Music night But the two things come to my mind almost every time I visit the garden:

1. David Attenborough's "Private Life of Plants." (It's about the only thing I keep my VCR for - it's not available in Zone 1 on DVD). It's a beautiful video series that blurs the line between flora and fauna, when plant growth is run in fast-motion.

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FBI continues to target journalists and their sources

In 1990, I was fired for being a whistle-blower by the Missouri Attorney General, who subsequently spent time in prison. Therefore, the topic of this post is an issue that speaks loudly to me. If you believe in participatory democracy, it should speak loudly to you too. If you are wondering why there is very little investigative journalism anymore, the attached article lays out one of the big reasons. If you were a whistle-blower trying to get important information to the public regarding government corruption or wrongdoing, you can now be easily identified by government spying without any need for a search warrant and without probably cause, at the un-monitored and unlimited discretion of "law enforcement" agencies including the NSA and the FBI that have repeatedly trampled on your constitutional rights. [More . . . ]

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Disenfranchised Americans

Matt Taibbi sums it up:

Voters in America not only aren't over-empowered, they've for decades now been almost totally disenfranchised, subjects of one of the more brilliant change-suppressing systems ever invented. We have periodic elections, which leave citizens with the feeling of self-rule. But in reality people are only allowed to choose between candidates carefully screened by wealthy donors. Nobody without a billion dollars and the approval of a half-dozen giant media companies has any chance at high office.

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Republicans and big corporations take over the Democratic Convention

From Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani of The Intercept:

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S 2012 platform pledged to “curb the influence of lobbyists and special interests.” But the 2016 convention in Philadelphia will be officially hosted by lobbyists and corporate executives, a number of whom are actively working to undermine progressive policies achieved by President Barack Obama, including health care reform and net neutrality. Some of the members of the 2016 Democratic National Convention Host Committee, whose job is to organize the logistics and events for the convention, are hardly even Democratic Party stalwarts, given that many have donated and raised thousands of dollars for Republican presidential and congressional candidates this cycle. The composition of the 15-member Host Committee may appear out of sync with the rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but the reality is that the party, in the form of the Democratic National Committee, has moved decisively to embrace the lobbying industry.

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How can any evangelical tolerate Donald Trump?

Have you ever wondered how evangelicals can tolerate Donald Trump. It's got to be more than Hate of Hillary, right? This Salon article by VALERIE TARICO suggests that Trump is a spitting image of a prominent Old Testament character.

From Genesis through Revelation, the Bible lays out precisely how people should grovel and sing God’s praises and otherwise kiss up. God wants his adoring followers to beg for things he already knows they need. ... And he doesn’t like it at all if anyone pays attention to competing deities. “Thou shalt worship no other god!” he roars, “For the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God!” [More . . . ]

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