War Resisters League's Federal Budget Pie Chart

The War Resisters League analyzed the Federal Fiscal Year 2012 Budget and produced this pie chart. Their analysis is based on federal funds which are raised through Federal Income Taxes and does not include Social Security Trust Funds. Social Security funds are raised separately from income taxes and are not part of discretionary budget spending.


Download the War Resisters League Pie Chart (pdf file 236 KB)

Download the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) Coin Chart: Where Do Our Income Tax Dollars Go?. (pdf file 448 KB)

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" ~Jesus
(Matthew 6:21)

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

Happy Christmas... War Is Over, If You Want It

I found this video montage set to John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War Is Over) on YouTube... Caution, it contains graphic images of war, but when has the truth ever been easy to watch.

These are the types of images that were sanitized from the media coverage of our current military actions. If we were allowed to see the realities of war every night on the six-o-clock news as we did during the Vietnam war this insanity would not have lasted ten years!




My previous post of Happy Christmas (War Is Over) lyrics by John Lennon.

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

Peace On Earth...

In midst of all the Holiday madness and frenzied consumerism, all supposedly in the name of the Prince of Peace, this last weekend we got the news that the war in Iraq has come to an official end. I can't express how happy I am for the brave service men and women who will be home with loved one for the Holidays.

But I am having trouble drawing much solace from what should be the best Christmas present anyone could receive.

The New York Times Sunday Review had an opinion piece by Joshua S. Goldstein and Steven Pinker titled War Really Is Going Out of Style which basically stated that large scale armed conflicts have become less numerous over the years.

Maybe so, but with armed conflicts ongoing elsewhere in the world and with the introduction of un-manned drones doing the killing by remote control, we have a new kind of warfare emerging. By lessening the casualties on our side the use of un-manned drones increases the likelihood of using military solutions to solve diplomatic problems.

In addition, the war weary voting public would be less opposed to drone warfare leaving our military leaders free from the public outcry brought on by images of flag draped coffins returning from foreign lands.

War is not over and we still need to promote peace, protest for peace, and and pray for peace!

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah 9:6)

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

Being Grateful Is Healthy - Happy Thanksgiving!

Cultivating an "attitude of gratitude" is proving to have a beneficial effect on physical as well as mental health in addition to it's obvious spiritual connection.

Psychologist Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis states that:

"Gratitude research is beginning to suggest that feelings of thankfulness have tremendous positive value in helping people cope with daily problems, especially stress, and to achieve a positive sense of the self."

Dr. Emmons found that in an experimental comparison, those who kept gratitude journals on a weekly basis exercised more regularly, reported fewer physical symptoms, felt better about their lives as a whole, and were more optimistic about the upcoming week compared to those who recorded hassles or neutral life events.

It is not about naturally having a grateful disposition, that goes against how our brains developed. We have been programed for survival to processes threat assessments and therefore we are alerted to negative situations about 3:1 over positive situations. It is, as Dr. Emmons research suggests, about developing a habit of being grateful irregardless of circumstances. It is about looking for things to be grateful for.

Take Dr. Emmons quiz How Grateful Are You? over on Beliefnet.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

The Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement

Thursday I will listen to Arlo Guthrie sing Alice's Restaurant again, all 18+ minuets of it, just as I have done for thirty or forty Thanksgivings.

But why is Alice's Restaurant so important to me? While recalling youthful memories and singing along with anti-war, anti-draft protest songs can be fun, Alice's Restaurant remains relevant to me for much deeper reasons. It is because the anti-war movement is still an important part of who I am.

Here it is thirty-seven years after getting my draft card during the last round of the Vietnam "draft lottery" and I am still preaching peace while wars continue to rage and our young men are still dieing on foreign soil.

That is why Alice's Restaurant remains so important to me. As long as our nation continues to send young men off to war I will be part of the anti-war movement.

Here is a video from Farm Aid 2005 of Arlo Guthrie singing Alice's Restaurant:




Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

Our Disposable Brave Service Men & Women

On Sept. 24, 2011 at a cemetery in Easton, PA, Maj. Bruce Lawrence was finally laid to rest on U.S. soil, approximately 43 years after his aircraft was shot down in Vietnam.

I can't believe that we are still burring our dead from the Vietnam War!

Today in a Washington Post article U.S. Air Force officials acknowledged that from 2003 to 2008 the Dover Air Force Base mortuary disposed of portions of troops’ remains (fragments and portions of body parts that were initially unidentified or were later recovered from the battlefield) by cremating them and dumping the ashes in a Virginia landfill.

Is this how we honor our fallen servicemen and women and their families?

We shouldn't be in these wars in the first place, but to literally dump their remains in a landfill shows just how "disposable" our brave men and women are to the warfare state!

"There never was a good war or a bad peace."
~Benjamin Franklin

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

(U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Michael Gibson)

David Crosby & Graham Nash At OWS

In a show of support Tuesday, David Crosby and Graham Nash preformed at Occupy Wall Street, encouraging the crowd to "Keep going". Watch this Rolling Stone video with an interview of David and Graham on their way down to OWS.



Here is a two thousand year old warning to the 1% by the Apostle James:

And now, you rich people, listen to me! Weep and wail over the miseries that are coming upon you!

Your riches have rotted away, and your clothes have been eaten by moths. Your gold and silver are covered with rust, and this rust will be a witness against you and will eat up your flesh like fire.

You have piled up riches in these last days.

You have not paid any wages to those who work in your fields. Listen to their complaints! The cries of those who gather in your crops have reached the ears of God, the Lord Almighty.

Your life here on earth has been full of luxury and pleasure. You have made yourselves fat for the day of slaughter.
(James 5:1-5)

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

The Dirty F@#*ing Hippies Were Right!

With Occupy Wall Street gaining momentum, I thought this six minute video was worth sharing. I don't know who made it, but other than the "F" word, this video is right on! Here is a transcript of the video:

There’s a black granite wall in Washington D.C. that bears 58,260 names on it. All of those whose names that are carved on that wall are dead. For what? Freedom?

If this country had listened when kids were screaming to stop that slaughter, that wall would have been one hell of a lot shorter. Yet we as a nation still wage wars of choice. Wars encouraged by plutocrats who never had to fight them.

Peace is never discussed. Peace has somehow become a pejorative. Peace is no pejorative. Peace is essential to the survival of the human race. Those who advocate for war are a dangerous and fearful group who should be marginalized and disavowed. War is always the last choice.

The dirty f@#*ing hippies... were right!

Now the oceans have been rising. The polar ice is melting at alarming rates. The climate is changing in irreversible ways. Our survival as a species is on this planet is on a precipice. The science on this is clear, humans are now in trouble because of our reckless stewardship of what we dominate. We have polluted this fragile jewel that hangs in space, our only home.

The food we buy is contaminated. The toys we give our children as presents for Christmas are tainted with poison. The water we drink is rife with carcinogens. The fish in our seas, lakes, and rivers are so full of mercury that it is only recommended we eat them once per week. We have now come face to face with our own extinction.

I hate to say we told you so, but…
The dirty f@#*ing hippies… were right!

We’ve elected sociopath after sociopath for the last 30 years, to every level of government. Many of them slaves to corporate parasites that gorge themselves at the public trough while the most vulnerable people in our society: the sick, the young, and the elderly go wanting.

Billions of dollars in profits are being snatched up at the expense and suffering of our neighbors by the jackals that comprise our pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies. Both of which pipe their diagnostic wisdom and their fake concern right into our homes via TV and radio commercials. These legal drug dealers now sell their wares with impunity and the insurance gamblers perform a slick game of three card monty right in our living rooms.

Most of these drugs have a list of caveats that would make even the most dishonest used car salesman blush. And the insurance hustlers change the rules of the game just when it’s time to pay up. Profiting from the suffering and pain of others. Profiting from human frailty. Universal Healthcare, it's too expensive we were told. Gasbag-talking-heads on TV and radio have been complicit in this deception while being handsomely compensated for their assistance.

I’ll say it again,
The dirty f@#*ing hippies… were right!

Big box discount stores descend upon small towns in America like alien ships filled with cheap products, bought at low prices, from countries that pay their workers slave wages. Plutocrats love this business model.

Mom and Pop shops can’t compete with the prices set by these huge corporate parasites. And to no one’s surprise many small businesses in these tiny hamlets fail. Leaving small towns filled with empty store fronts and even in some cases forcing these same small business operators to go to work for the very people that ruined their livelihoods. Small town America is subsequently decimated by this invasion, often helpless in stopping it.

Wall Street has cannibalized itself. Still hungry, feeling the pangs of their greed, they’ve now come to the government for their daily meal. And still, without a hint of irony, a spokesman for this ravenous tribe, mounts a soapbox and has the temerity to rail against the evils of socialism.

Turns out, the socialism is for them, the capitalism is for us. Abbie Hoffman once baited these banksters by throwing cash onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. To no one’s astonishment, they demonstrated their insatiable greed. The gluttons couldn’t help themselves, they stopped trading and got on their knees to sweep up the free loot. Wall Street should have been reigned in long ago.

I’ll say it again,
The dirty f@#*ing hippies… were right!

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

"You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone"

Mom always said "You'll miss me when I'm gone"

She was so right!

Even tough Mom had been preparing us for her departure for the last six years, it was still difficult to say good-by. In fact, when I called to check on her just a few days before she passed, Mom said good-by to me. I knew what she meant, she knew it was time, but I could only bring my self to say good night.

Last Sunday when the time came for her to go home to be with Jesus, Mom was ready.

Of all the things about mom, I will remember these three things she taught me about life...

Always pray! "Pray without ceasing." (1 Thessalonians 5:17) Even before Mom found Jesus she would pray. She would pray when she couldn't find something she misplaced or she would pray when an ambulance or police car went by red light and siren. I think she always knew Jesus, but when she came to a deeper faith later in life she would pray even more. As a nurse she would pray for help when drawing blood, and sure enough she would hit that vein on the first try. Every morning she would pray for her children, grand children, and great grandchildren.

Have a sense of humor! "A cheerful heart is good medicine." (Proverbs 17:22) I can't even begin to cite the many examples of Mom's quirky humor, but oh how that woman could make you laugh!

What ever you decide to do in life, be the best you can be! "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as though you were working for the Lord and not for people." (Colossians 3:23) It didn't matter what we chose to do we were to go at it with all of our being.

Friday we held a celebration of Mom's life. Mom's friends, family, children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren were there. It was the most beautiful, yet horribly painful experience I have had in a long time, but it was much easier than I imagined it would be.

Mom made me promise many times over that us kids would stay close to each other after she was gone. She would remind me "After all, you three are all that you have". This weekend was a good start in fulfilling her wish.

This was Mom's favorite Bible passage, this is how she was able to get through life...

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
(Philippians 4:13)

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

PeaceDay TV

PeaceDay TV International Day of Peace Global Broadcast Broadcasting entertaining humanitarian and educational events; featuring sustainable solutions, the Millennium Development Goals, and hundreds of organizations and Peacebuilders.




Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

Prayers of Hope 9/11

Not many days after 9/11 I created this parchment with scriptures of hope printed on it, my wife and I then placed it at the base of the Peace Pole in front of our local city hall. Every night for eight weeks we would light candles and pray for peace at our makeshift memorial.

(Click Here To Enlarge)

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
1 Timothy 2:1-2

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)

We Must Concentrate On The Positive Affirmation Of Peace

"So man's proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete...

I do not wish to minimize the complexity of the problems that need to be faced in achieving disarmament and peace. But I think it is a fact that we shall not have the will, the courage, and the insight to deal with such matters unless in this field we are prepared to undergo a mental and spiritual reevaluation - a change of focus which will enable us to see that the things which seem most real and powerful are indeed now unreal and have come under the sentence of death. We need to make a supreme effort to generate the readiness, indeed the eagerness, to enter into the new world which is now possible, "the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God".

We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say "We must not wage war." It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace."

~Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Nobel Peace Prize Lecture December 11, 1964

Peace, Love, and Light!
Kevin (Cloud)