Mothers Who Know Speak Out

At the recent October 2007 General Conference of the LDS Church, the Church's new Relief Society President, Julie B. Beck, spoke to the women of the Church, and her words have since spurred a world of reactions, comments and blogs as to the role of Mormon Mothers.

She praised the mothers who, on Sundays. . .

". . .bring daughters in clean and ironed dresses with hair brushed to perfection; their sons wear white shirts and ties and have missionary haircuts."

Much attention has been spent on her defining Mothers as:

". . .nurturers. This is their special assignment and role under the plan of happiness. . . Another word for nurturing is homemaking. Homemaking includes cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and keeping an orderly home. Home is where women have the most power and influence; therefore, Latter-day Saint women should be the best homemakers in the world. . . Nurturing requires organization, patience, love, and work. Helping growth occur through nurturing is truly a powerful and influential role bestowed on women."

Today, KUER's "RadioWest" brought together noted LDS women to discuss the reactions to Mrs. Beck's definitions and invited listeners to call and write in, or to enter comments at the KUER blog under the heading Mormon Women and Priorities.

I had already submitted my comment when I went to the exact text of her talk and discovered it was titled "Mothers Who Know". How funny, because my point is that Mothers need to Know More and to engage accordingly.

Here is my response to her statement and the discussion I heard today:

I'm not Mormon, but I am a mother, and the advice Julie Beck gave out means something to every woman, for we all are trying to create the environment and role models that will serve our children -- and ourselves, so we can be the best, healthiest, happiest Mothers/Wives/Sisters/Daughters possible. For how can a home be nurturing if the Mother is not healthy and capable of being happy? So, I, too, must comment.

There are many areas discussed on today's RadioWest that I could agree with, disagree with, add to -- but the most important concept missing in Julie Beck's advice is our responsibility as Mothers to make sure the world we release our children into has a healthy future.

Turn off the media? No! Just learn to select carefully, to seek excellence, to become well informed. The tendency of nice, compliant women to let the men take care of the business of the world has lead us to the brink of World War III. Am I exaggerating? No. This is the threat that Mr. Bush stated last week.

Our noble Motherly "nurturing" is useless if we do not question leaders who would have our children kill others, and risk being killed -- or worse yet -- permanently mentally and physically damaged.

It is an extraordinarily sad circumstance that the home state of the LDS Church, which teaches the importance of nurturing family and living one's spiritual beliefs so thoroughly -- has the reputation of being the most "red" state in the country and has thus supported Bush and Cheney fully, as if they are these authority figures are worthy of the same kind of trust given authorities of the Church.

What a terrible mistake.

What a foolish forfeit of the future.

These two men, and those they have brought to power, have lied to us, have cheated us, have polluted our resources, have destroyed laws that protect us, have used weaponry that releases radiation in a country we are supposed to be helping as well as on our own people and then lied to avoid liability.

They have turned the United States into the ultimate bully, and they have taken the deaths of 3,000 and turned it into a most un-Christian, un-democratic retribution that has brought the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people who cannot escape the hell their world has become.

This unnecessary, costly, disastrous war they have taken us into will continue on and on, for these men also have financial ties to all the contractors, but especially the weapons makers, who arm all sides, one way or another.

That is what happens when Mothers believe it is their job to withdraw from "politics" and the busy world outside so they have time to obsess on perfect hair, ironed clothes and spotless houses for their children.

Mothers who pay attention and want to know the truth behind the propaganda do not quietly allow these things to happen -- not to their children -- not to our children -- and not to any other mothers' children.

Bush, Iran, and World War III

"I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," Bush said.

Okay, Bush’s talking points have gone too far. Iran the cause of WWIII?

More of the world must think, “If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interesting in preventing Bush/Cheney from having the authority necessary to start it.”

Given the information provided about the tyranny of complete executive power by such as Charlie Savage, Frontline, Bruce Fein, Jack Goldsmith, John Dean, and so many more, the only way to prevent Bush/Cheney from having that authority is to remove them from office immediately.Now is not the time to claim “too late”, “too distracting”, “dangerous for Democrats” or any other excuse.

If Bush/Cheney are in office, they will do what they want - regardless of Congress, the Constitution, the people, and especially regardless of the facts.

If they want to attack Iran – and they clearly do – they have already proven we cannot stop them.

There is only one solution.

And political partisanship must not get in the way of protecting the our children and our children's children from the unthinkable results of the U.S. attacking Iran.

It's time to stop being surprised by "unintended consequences" and to INTEND DIPLOMACY in foreign policy and INTEND ACCOUNTABILITY for Bush/Cheney.

"Would you vote for Hillary", RadioWest asks

In response to RadioWest with Carl Bernstein discussing his biography of Hillary Clinton:

“Would you vote for Hillary?”

There was a time when I would have voted for Hillary for President, beyond a doubt, and if she becomes the Democratic nominee, then I still will. Whatever her flaws, I still find her to be very intelligent, capable, compassionate and wise, with honorable motives -- all qualities that have been sorely missing in the present administration.

However, the problem lies in her husband's legacy. Will she be able to move forward and act objectively, without the need to protect and/or defend the parts of his policies that, in retrospect, have not worked or have had negative, even dangerous, unintended consequences.

Most notably, there is the use of depleted uranium in U.S. military weapons. It didn't start with Bill Clinton. On the contrary, it began with Bush/Cheney, only it was George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney as Defense Secretary, who first bombed Iraq on January 17, 1991, using penetrators made effective by the extremely hard heavy metal, which would burst into flames and sharpen on contact with its target, leaving tiny radiating particles in the air, and eventually making their way into the water and land, there in Iraq, as well as travelling upon the currents of the great dust storms that Iraq is famous for. The radiation, called "low-level", is no less intense or damaging for being "low-level" -- it just means that the range of the constantly emitting bursts is small, but once particles enter the body, by inhalation, the mouth or through an open wound, that emission range is perfect for attacking nearby cells as the particles work their way through. The kinds of cancers that occur depend on the size and solubility of the particles, and where they get stuck along the way. Doctors in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the greatest increases in leukemia, and cancers of the liver and lungs, as well as the previously rare occurence of multiple separate cancers. With the sanctions against Iraq in the 90's, treatment was almost impossible, and losses were great.

Then, under President Clinton, there was the crisis in Kosovo and Bosnia, and NATO moved in, armed with U.S. and British weapons. In January 2001, the NATO countries exploded with stories of cancers suffered by the troops who had served in the former Yugoslavia, and demanded an investigation. The United Nations sent a team from the Environmental division and the World Health Organization. Meanwhile, the Pentagon squashed scientific evidence linking DU and medical effects. It was years later that those who were still paying attention learned that Dr. Keith Baverstock of the WHO, their best expert in radiation, filed a report in 2001 acknowledging enormously harmful effects, but, under pressure from the U.S., it was shelved.

Even more horrible, then, is the fact that the U.S. military, no longer capable of pretending to be unaware of the effects, still uses depleted uranium in its missiles, penetrators, shields, tanks, and more. Yet few in Congress are courageous enough to try to introduce and support legislation to stop its use or even seek testing for every soldier who serves in the Gulf. Congressmen Jim McDermott (D-WA) and Kucinich (D-OH) have been leaders in this effort. But even Democrats have been reluctant to take this on, even though the greatest use by far has been ordered by the two versions of Bush/Cheney, in 1991 and from 2003 to the present, because in between the Bushes is Bill Clinton, their most successful President since FDR.

I don't know that Senator Hillary Clinton would be willing to face these truths and stop what so many in the rest of the world recognize as the kind of long-term, boundary-less destruction that qualifies as a war crime. It is the ultimate torture -- to watch your loved ones, especially those who are most vulnerable -- your children, suffer through cancers and birth defects.

We need a leader who will end this.
And we need citizens who will demand to know what the candidates will do about it.

A Question for Carl Bernstein on KUER's RadioWest

Carl Bernstein appeared on KUER's RadioWest with Doug Fabrizio today. He is the author of the book on Hillary Clinton, A Woman in Charge.

And the question is:

Will Hillary Clinton be willing to tackle the atrocity of depleted uranium in our current weapons -- which would mean she'd have to acknowledge her husband's culpability in this? He continued what the first Bush & his Defense Secretary Dick Cheney started in 1991 in Iraq, when he bombed Kosovo & Bosnia, and Bush2/Cheney have continued to use them despite news in January 2001 that our European NATO allies were coming up with unusually high numbers of cancers, especially leukemia.

Hillary seems to be the least likely Democrat to stop the use of depleted uranium by the U.S. military.

A Question for Lynn Cheney on the Diane Rehm Show

How can U.S. citizens feel confident that our militant foreign policy is necessary to "keep us safe" when the Vice President's family has so many financial ties to Lockheed Martin -- the most easily evident being your son-in-law, Phillip Perry, who has gone back and forth over the last 7 years working inside the Bush administration and as a lobbyist for Lockheed Martin, the largest arms manufacturer in the world?


(Even while his wife, your daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, was working at the State Department's Office of Iranian Affairs, stirring up the call to attack Iran...)

Two Questions for Paul Krugman on the Diane Rehm Show

1. Are you aware of the May 5, 2006 executive memo, entered into the Federal Register and reported on only by Dawn Kopecki in BusinessWeek.com, in which Mr. Bush delegated to then intelligence czar John Negroponte the usually- presidential authority to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations in the name of national security?

Apparently the same day he signed it, Porter Goss resigned.

Yet, aside from Ms. Kopecki, and an interview she had on the May 24th morning Marketplace Report, this has been ignored.

To me, it seems significant.


2. I was glad to see you as a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher, but I was ultimately very frustrated because Tucker Carlson clearly has a goal of not allowing the truth to be heard. The one time you got through his wall of noise, it was great, but isn't it time to get past manners and tell someone like him, whose connections to the Neocons are familial, to stop bullying Americans into doubting reason?

From Pat Bagley. . .

"I'd like to thank Katharine Harris, Sequoia Voting, Jeb Bush, James Baker, Tom DeLay, Enron, Halliburton, and the U.S. Supreme Court. . ."

Today, the winners of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize are

Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr.

and

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

"for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"


Give me a P! Give me an E! Give me an A! Give me a C! Give me an E!


WHAT'S THAT SPELL? -- PEACE! (NOT WAR)

WHAT'S THAT SPELL? -- GORE! (NOT BUSH)

WHAT'S THAT SPELL? -- TRUTH! (NOT LIES)