Thursday--

We did get the snow the weather people promised but none stayed around. Three more seed/gardening catalogs so the season for garden evaluation and getting together my orders for the new season.

Some food for thought after the San Bernardino shooting. Yeah, Jeb, "Stuff happens." Just wish it didn't happen so often. More food for thought--this got swamped by the San Bernardino news. Even the local news gave it short shrift. Guess 4 casualties vs nearly 30 just isn't dramatic enough.

What would we do and what would we pay if we were serious about prosecuting "the War on Terror?" Andrew Bacevich atTomdispatch gives a good estimate. I am all in favor of bringing all of our troops home, telling all the participants to settle their own hash, and offering modest help rebuilding when things are settled. I would like to see a U.S. leader disavow the notion of "regime change" and forswear the policy of trying to remake the world in our image. It isn't too attractive an image anyway.

I agree that our opinions on guns don't matter to the politicians or those who have bought them or to those who push their interpretations of the 2nd Amendment to allow almost unfettered gun ownership. However, the basis of the argument is that we have two values in conflict: the right and freedom to own guns and the right to life. I disagree. We do value our Constitutional freedoms but I don't think we value life as much as we think we do. We definitely don't value all human life. Even those who say they are "pro-life" value mostly pre-born life. Those already born--not so much. Whose life do we value and to what extent? I wonder at times, reading stories like the one from San Bernardino, if we haven't created a society of psychopaths who have no empathy, whose only reality is dominated by their wants or pains, who feel entitled to respond to perceived slights by blowing away whoever crosses their path.

This has gotten absolutely no play in our media. Tell me--why are we sending our troops in when our supposed ally, the legitimate government of Iraq, and its armed militias say the don't want us?