Happy Mother's Day for Peace!

Did you know that that Mother's Day in the United States was originally a woman's movement for peace. In 1870, Julia Ward Howe (best known for writing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic") published a Mother's Day Proclamation in reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War.

It didn't catch on, but her daughter Anna Jarvis continued and until in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Sadly the U.S. holiday became so commercialized that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. But we can take it back.

Happy Mother's Day, one and all!

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Remember when troops were promised

...they'd get a year in the USA between deployments?

That was a solid promise, issued last month, sort of a bargain made in exchange for increasing deployments to 15 months.

Well, that promise didn't last 30 days before being broken, according to an article in Stars And Stripes:

"Members of the 1st Armored Division’s 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry, Company A, learned Tuesday that they are scheduled to head back to Iraq in November, just nine months after the 150-soldier company left the combat zone in February ..."

Support the troops for real, not fake.