No garden work planned right now. We have clouds with rain expected this morning. I brought in my three small pots of hens and chicks, watered them and found a place for them by the window. I plan to split and transplant them later. We had got our shopping and errands done yesterday so we didn't do much else.

William Astore's post on Tomdispatch this morning makes a lot of points we have been thinking over the last sixteen years (since 9/11). We spend more than the next ten top military spenders on our so-called defense and have gotten less for it. We do that because no one asks basic questions about what is going on. The military is our hammer and it is our only tool; therefore, we see only nails. Diplomacy at the point of a gun is not really diplomacy; it's bullying. And we have become the biggest bully on the block. Unfortunately, our powers that be don't know how to get off the treadmill we have been on since the Soviet Union imploded--and yes the roots go back that far and farther. There is an inertia in human affairs and we are seeing it in operation. Breaking that inertial pattern requires either small nudges in another direction that can move us with time into a different orbit. But do we have the time? Or it will take a force large enough to overcome the inertia which is likely to break a lot at the same time it changes our direction. And the things likely to break are things I would rather not be broken.