TIME TO MAKE SOME DAMN DEMANDS FOLKS

• Our bought-and-paid-for-Congress voted today for another $606 billion to fund the Pentagon in Fiscal year 2013.  The vote in the House of Representatives was 326-90.  Democrats voted in favor of the spending bill by a margin of 101 in favor and 79 opposed.  Our two house members in Maine (Pingree and Michaud) voted against it.  You can see the official vote tally here.  
• When you add in the "off budget" funds at the Department of Energy, NASA, NRO, NSA, secret black budget, Homeland Security, CIA, etc the annual appropriation for endless war is well over $1 trillion per year.  That's alot of cheese. It's called corporate welfare-warfare.  We could create a solar society with that kind of money along with a national rail system but the fossil fuel industry says nix.  We need to keep asking the public which they'd rather have - jobs building mass transit or endless war?  Last week here in Bath housemate Karen asked a worker from Bath Iron Works if he'd rather build something besides destroyers.  He told her yes.  We hear that all the time.  The workers need to start speaking up more.  The peace movement can't make this happen alone.  Would be nice if the environmental groups said something on the subject as well.  They don't like to talk about military spending - in spite of the fact that the Pentagon is the biggest polluter on the planet.  Unless we cut the Pentagon budget how in hell are we going to deal with climate change?  Come on folks - get on the friggin ball.
• I went to a Maine Veterans for Peace leadership meeting today at the home of one of our members who lives near Augusta.  We are trying to set up our new leadership team for the coming year.  Our chapter is getting older and slowing down a bit.  I made the point that we need to do less "business" at our monthly membership meetings and make them more issue based and have some social time more often.  Not everyone is attracted to groups and meetings where people sit and talk for two hours about who is going to make the copies and who is going to send out the news releases.  That kind of work should be done in committees outside the meetings.  Our monthly meetings should be more focused on educating and inspiring people.  
• On the way home from the meeting VFP member Herb Hoffman (Ogunquit) told me that he was talking to a lobsterman the other day who told him that one of the guys caught a multi-colored tropical fish off the coast of Maine recently.  The ocean is warming up fast.
• MB and I go away for a week vacation on Saturday.  Since she drives to Portland every day to work we decided not to do alot of driving during our time off.  So we rented a cottage in New Harbor, Maine which is just about 45 minutes north of here.  It's a working harbor and should be an interesting place to walk and rest.  I doubt that I will get many chances to get online during the week so the blog might be kind of quiet for a bit.  We'll see.  There might be an Internet cafe around there where I can get a cup of tea and do a quick post now and then.