Author Archive for

25
Nov
15

American Tribalism: Road to Rwanda Redux

by @zizii2

I have been spooked these last 10 days by the insanity that erupted here in the US since the Paris terrorist attacks. I wanted to give words to my thoughts. But I froze. Then I rediscovered this piece I began writing in April 2013, but had abandoned for being too alarmist! If only I knew….

Here is the piece completed with a few edits…

****

Rwanda: A Haunting Lesson

April 6 marked the (21st) anniversary of the launch of the genocidal nightmare in the central African country of Rwanda that ended 100 days later with 800,000 people dead, and a nation scarred deeply. That was 11.4% of the total population of 7 million. Nearly three-quarters of those massacred were Tutsis who comprised 14% of the entire population.

The word “anniversary” seems inappropriate because although it is technically a neutral term it still invokes positive associations and anticipation. No one should anticipate a genocide nor look forward to marking milestones in its aftermath. Yet mark, we must. The lessons are not simply framed in dog-eared history tomes or award winning films about a bygone tragedy. The lessons are here. With us. Today.

****

In societies wracked by mass economic, social and political faultlines the signs are always there for a Rwanda Redux, or a Srebrenica. Hate Radio. Divide and conquer. Nihilism. Opportunistic politicians and cultural loudmouths. Group resentment. Grievance. Silence and apathy from the majority population. Now, all of these do not a genocide trigger. But they exist to be manipulated if conditions ripen.

“The Rwandan genocide resulted from the conscious choice of the elite to promote hatred and fear to keep itself in power. This small, privileged group first set the majority against the minority to counter a growing political opposition within Rwanda. Then, faced with RPF success on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, these few power holders transformed the strategy of ethnic division into genocide. They believed that the extermination campaign would reinstate the solidarity of the Hutu under their leadership and help them win the war, or at least improve their chances of negotiating a favorable peace. They seized control of the state and used its authority to carry out the massacre. (UnitedHumanRights.Org)”

****

Continue reading ‘American Tribalism: Road to Rwanda Redux’

26
Aug
15

Why Biden? The 65-69 million Obama Coalition…Duh!

by @zizii2

You dance with the one who brung ya.

The Obama Coalition

The Obama Coalition

****

So no one thinks that the coalition of 65-69 million American citizens with a proven record of WINNING back to back presidential elections in record numbers, because they organize, stand in line for hours in rain and frost, MUST be feverishly re-activated for the next election? Of course it must.

obama-coalition

The Obama Coalition

The Obama Coalition

U.S. President Barack Obama addresses a campaign event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center September 9, 2025 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Working with the momentum from this week's Democratic National Convention, Obama is on a two-day campaign swing from one side of Florida to the other on the politically important I-4 corridor.

bf34aa73667ac0546f9d585a67741f4a_screen_shot_2012_11_10_at_19.11.16

*****

Yet thus far none of the Democratic Party candidates has seriously courted the Obama-Coalition. I say seriously, precisely because it took more than the letter “D” beside a candidate’s name, or political platitudes, or a liberal wish-tree to put the coalition together in the first place. Plus no one size fits all in activating this coalition, as its different components were motivated by different strategies of persuasion. This is a coalition that did not care about name, pedigree, or size of wallet when it backed the insurgent Obama candidacy. It did not have its head in the clouds in a lofty quest for unicorns either.

Continue reading ‘Why Biden? The 65-69 million Obama Coalition…Duh!’

23
Aug
15

Trump Perverts Obama Campaign Style

by @zizii2

So it boils down to this: Trump suffers from Obama size-envy. Crowd size, that is, and maybe more…

***

75,000 show up at Obama campaign in Oregon May 18, 2025

75,000 show up at Obama campaign in Oregon May 18, 2025

*****

But first, it was only a matter of time before the object of Prez Obama’s ridicule at the White House Correspondents’ Dinners in 2011 and 2015, would be prompted to redeem his ego. Behold, the Trump2016 presidential run.

****
In 2011, President Obama chose deliberately to inflate Trump’s gargantuan ego, using the very vehicle of birtherism to surgically puncture Trump’s pompous ass at the precise moment for maximal humiliating effect, the night before the OBL operation. That we the American people enjoyed the take down of the hotair without knowing about the OBL mission underway, only prolonged the deliciousness of the schadenfreude when we found out the next night when POTUS interrupted Trump’s “Apprentice” show to deliver the unbelievable news. Trump was doubly slayed. We roared!

As icing on the cake, Prez Obama gave us a spoof sneak peak into what a Trump White House might look like, complete with gaudy Trump insignia plastered all over the WH exterior, plus female posse wading in the WH fountain. We found the idea of a Trump presidency absurd. But Trump began dreaming big.

****

The coup de grace came this year, when POTUS Obama raised and then immediately dashed Trump’s hope of the President engaging him again in full glare of the cameras. POTUS simply said “Donald Trump is here…..still”, then moved on to the next segment. Ouch!

****

I posit that Trump’s mind was made up that night to run for President by hook or crook. How do we know this? Answer: Trump himself is the fire breathing clue. A narcissist thrives on attention, and President Obama flippantly cut off that oxygen on an important media stage, the same one on which he had been humiliated irreparably in 2011. Trump could deal with the ridicule during the previous WHCDs, because they accrued to him media notoriety. Media attention is the currency of Trump’s very existence. But to be swatted away like a fly with nary a word more from Prez Obama to indulge his outsized narcissism? Naw. He had to get even.

Continue reading ‘Trump Perverts Obama Campaign Style’

07
Aug
15

Listen Bibi and Schumer: #IranWar = ISIS Caliphate

by @zizii2

No mincing words. Killing the #IranDeal is a vote for war with Iran. Listen Bibi & Schumer: War with Iran erases the single obstacle to the total conquest of the Middle East by ISIS Sunni Extremists. How do we know this? One word, Iraq. If we think it’s bad enough that Iraq today is overrun by ISIS that we toil at great expense to reclaim; it will be a Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade compared to what the region will look like if we get embroiled in war with Iran.

We will in effect be acting as ISIS’ turbocharged cavalry and bombardiers. I repeat. We will be fighting ISIS’ war for them by demolishing their arch Shia enemy. More than a decade ago, America’s dangerous stupidity in waging the Iraq War created the vacuum that led directly to the rise of our worst nightmare; ISIS/ISIL. Now we will be both their cannonballs and fodder.

isis map

But our tunnel vision predated GWB’s Mid-East blunder in the maniacal miscalculations we made in backing Saddam Hussein against Iran during the Iran/Iraq War all because our fee fees were hurt about the ouster of the Shah in 1979 (not to mention the horror we committed in 1953). As surely as there exists the law of gravity, we nuked ourselves in the foot each and every time we dabbled in the Middle East by creating cancerous power vacuums as we zoomed in and out detonating blowback ordnance on our own heels.

The NeoCon cabal, their Military Industrial Complex puppetmasters, plus their myopic Democratic Party bedfellows may satisfy their immediate greed, but America will be crippled and isolated permanently in its hubris.

Continue reading ‘Listen Bibi and Schumer: #IranWar = ISIS Caliphate’

04
Aug
15

Dear Democrats, Winning is HARD Work! Ask POTUS Obama

by @zizii2

Okay, let’s cut to the chase here. It seems as if Democratic Party poobahs think President Obama’s back-to-back electoral feats were a cake walk that anybody with a “D” beside their name can replicate. And so all we need is to dispense with an actual primary contest, crown our fore-ordained nominee, sprinkle some liberal pixie dust on a fawning electorate, then presto! we crush Republicans in 2016. At least that’s what I’m hearing from Liberal doyen, Barney Frank.

If that is what he and the Democratic Party establishment believe then they really have another think coming! I gotta break it to him and his ilk: We will suffer an apocalyptic bloodbath in Nov 2016, that will make 2014 look like a summer picnic by comparison. Here’s why: That mindset of entitlement is not how Barack Obama won TWICE. Let me repeat: Barack Obama re-wrote the blueprint for WINNING hearts and minds across a wide demographic swathe in this jungle of American politics.

Continue reading ‘Dear Democrats, Winning is HARD Work! Ask POTUS Obama’

21
Nov
14

Barack Obama: Moral Courage in the face of Hatred

by @zizii2

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience,

but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Truer words were never spoken.

President Obama, ONCE AGAIN showed last night in his Immigration Executive Order speech, that he is guided by deep moral convictions that do not bend like a willow to breeze or choppy storms. Not even when lightening strikes, will you find this steeled man flinching an iota from his true North Star. He’s real. He’s Sui Generis. He follows the teachings of the leader of his faith. “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, and “I am My brother’s (and sister’s) keeper”

Obama Immigration

Time and again, this President of ours demonstrates that the core of his moral fiber is never perturbed by fame, glitz, nor rancid hate. Yet time and again observers and the bobbleheads are Shocked! Shocked that President Obama does not sway to the beltway religion or its airheaded acolytes. He’s called no drama Obama for a reason. He neither gets carried away when things are rosy. And neither does he sink into despair when things are rough.

We here on TOD know that he’s always focused on the long road. He’s always guided by the circuitous path that our forebears have trodden to gain their freedom, be they slaves, or Native Americans, or immigrants aboard ships into the unknown West, or women, or gays, or refugees fleeing war or economic peril. He’s learned the lesson of their tenacity over loooooooooong stretches of time.

Continue reading ‘Barack Obama: Moral Courage in the face of Hatred’

20
Nov
14

Ebola: Victims, Heroes and a cynical Western Media

Ebola: Victims, Heroes and a Cynical Western Media

by @zizii2

US mid-term elections are over. The GOP and corporate media allies’ Willie-Horton-like exploitation of the Ebola disease to gin up stratospheric fear has suddenly vanished from our airwaves.

h/t Eric Bohlert

h/t Eric Bohlert

Over in Europe, rightwing xenophobic politicians are copying the GOP playbook.

Picture1

Bvs8LRzIYAACJDK

West African travelers and immigrants to Europe and the US are facing the full brunt of media-sanctioned hysteria, as the ugly stench of racism wafts in the air disguised as “health and safety protocols.”

Continue reading ‘Ebola: Victims, Heroes and a cynical Western Media’

10
Nov
14

A Different Take On The Election

A different take on the election

by @zizii2

Much handwringing over the Democratic party’s electoral fortunes has taken place this past week. Teabaggers are ecstatic. The most loathesome wingnuts are going to make our lives even more miserable than we have already endured. Some young people justify young voter apathy by saying Democrats did not give them what they wanted, as shown below in the Carl Gibson piece titled:

Open Letter to Democrats From a Disillusioned Young Voter

letter

And Democratic Party leaders will probably learn the wrong lessons and move further repub-lite.

I think differently about what happened. I believe what we are seeing is the brick wall that Coalition Politics slams into when the regular institutions of Democracy have been irreparably subverted and perverted by oligarchs and their political minions who have convinced many Americans that nihilism is their birthright. What do I mean?

***

Normally, in a democracy, aspiring politicians and party platforms woo voters with promises of what they will DO for said voters, and the campaigns go full steam ahead in competition. And whoever wins tries to maintain voter approval and possible reelection based on their ability to account to the voter. Otherwise how do you win power again, right?

Wrong. Voters? What voters? GOP-Oligarchs’ answer to electoral imperatives and demographic change, is to shrink the electorate till they could “drown it in a bathtub”!

Continue reading ‘A Different Take On The Election’

14
Sep
14

Shame on ABC and CNN for exploiting Foley tragedy

This past week saw American corporate media at one of its criminally shameful worst. And there is gross competition for how low they can go. Brian Ross of ABC news led the pack in exploiting the grief of James Foley’s family to push utterly offensive nonsense that the White House was derelict in pursuing efforts to rescue James Foley from the grip of the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL/IS). At the heart of this spurious attack is the media’s sensational headline that Foley’s mother claims that the Obama administration threatened them with prosecution if they paid ransom money to the militants to secure their son’s release.

****

Bam! That framing was all that was needed to shift focus away from the heinous actions of the militants, to the virulent and cynically profitable blame-Obama-for-any-and-all-horror-that-happens-in-the-world syndrome in our political zeitgeist. And like clockwork, the rest of the media, politicians, and many commentators were baited and hooked by this media scam, including, I’m sorry to say, the Foley family itself.

Brian Ross

Continue reading ‘Shame on ABC and CNN for exploiting Foley tragedy’

31
Aug
14

Dianne Feinstein! Go Fight In Iraq Yourself!!!!

Dianne Feinstein, Go fight in Iraq yourself!

by @zizii2

****

I, and many Americans, have had it up to our eyeballs with greedy Military Industrial Complex shills like Dianne Feinstein!! What the hell is wrong with these MIC stooges, regardless of party affiliation? And Dianne Feinstein’s incessant disrespect towards the leader of her own party and President of this country is all the more unforgivable! Did she stop to look in the mirror to examine that her own shortsighted votes in Congress metastasized the deep canker tearing the Middle East apart? Or worse that her greedy actions to shovel taxpayer $$$ to defense contractors like her husband have nasty consequences?

feinstein 2

****

How many Americans does she want DEAD and MAIMED just when President Obama has toiled to clean up the mess of the last blunder of a war under George Bush, that she voted for? It is bad enough that we have war snake oil salesmen McCain, Graham and Mike Rogers preening daily in front of cameras without being held accountable for their dangerous and always inconsistent warmongering statements. They wanted us arming ISIS to the teeth in Syria last year. Now they turn around and Chicken Little about ISIS in Iraq means the Caliphate is at America’s doorstep!! Sheesh!!

****

How about we get a buy-in from the many factions inside the strained powder keg that is Iraq, especially Sunnis who are vital to any strategy to root out ISIS? They must be assured that their interests are better served in a national coalition with Shia and Kurds AGAINST ISIS precisely because ISIS is claiming to act on their behalf having been shut out of power by Al Maliki’s government. That delicate cultivation of a NATIONAL front against the terrorists is EXACTLY what President Obama is working on in order to neutralize the potential for BLOWBACK that sustained military action against ISIS could generate. But NO!!! Dianne Feinstein finds cheap thrill in playing to the cameras of our moribund media. The conniving media then latches onto her words like they did Hillary’s 3 weeks ago to malign President Obama.

Continue reading ‘Dianne Feinstein! Go Fight In Iraq Yourself!!!!’

16
Aug
14

Free in America? Bundy Ranch Militias, Open-Carry Ammosexuals, or Ferguson Black Residents?

Free in America? Bundy ranch militias, Open-carry ammosexuals, or Ferguson black residents?

 

by @zizii2

Militias at Bundy ranch,NV

Open-Carry advocates in Austin, TX

Open-carry advocates in Target store, TX

Protesters of Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO

Riot police descend on Black protesters in Ferguson, MO

Riot police descend on Black protesters in Ferguson, MO

~~~~~

Consider the photographs above of events that happened this year less than six months apart? There is no comparison. That is the point. They all involve American citizens in protest over perceived affront to their rights. But can the people in those photographs be interchanged with the same outcomes? Can the Ferguson MO black residents stage their protest armed like the Bundy-ranch militias or the open-carry ammosexuals flaunting their AR-15s in stores in public? Would they be covered by the media with fawning deference as we saw during the standoff in Nevada or in the narratives spun about open-carry advocates?

~~~~

Of course no. It is not hyperbole to say the streets there would already have been littered with many more black bodies being gunned down by platoons of SWAT teams pouring in to maintain “law and order.” They would not be retreating like the BLM and law enforcement did outside the Bundy ranch in Nevada in order to safeguard “public peace” and NOT escalating the potential for violence. The media would have whipped up the fear factor to the rafters, not the love-in we saw when the Bundy ranch militias had federal officials locked in their gunsights and bragged they were ready to “water the tree of liberty”.

~~~~

Likewise, the language of inherent criminality being used now to describe Ferguson’s black residents’ protests would not be invoked in similar actions by white protestors. It is like clockwork, the types of thesauri with stock phrasing that get whipped out to describe public behavior of American citizens depending on their race and class. White Militias are “patriots” defending the “constitution”, not “lawbreakers, or thugs, or looters.” White youths’ public misbehavior and even serious felonies are given benefit of the doubt as “feisty pranks” or aberrant “lone wolves” or “mentally challenged” individuals.

~~~~

Blacks and Latinos are described as criminals-in-the-making and bearers of regressive group cultural traits who should be “feared” and removed from civilized society. There is an insistence that their citizenship can only rest on approval of their morality, something that is not required of any other groups. The statistics from our criminal justice system glaringly show the disparities in who gets convicted for similar crimes and who gets slapped on the wrist.

~~~~

Therein lies the dirty underbelly of American creed of “Freedom” and “justice”. It was always a lie, from the nation’s founding. But it was a powerful lie that sewed together a nation populated by peoples of disparate backgrounds ever re-making themselves anew with infinite optimism in this vast land. City on a Hill, it was. Even if built on the blood of shackled slaves. Frederick Douglass described this foundational hypocrisy so astutely in his famous speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

~~~~

Question is why the lie? Other societies don’t bother to broadcast “Freedom” for all. Don’t pretend to want equality for all. For a nation that prided itself on throwing off the yoke of calcified monarchies, and hewing to the creed — “all men are created equal”, why does this country keep insisting on universal “freedom”? I argue that “freedom” is a useful cover that keeps a tight lid on fissures cracking apart a deeply unequal society. It is a release valve in the same way that maintaining an underclass that can be scapegoated for society’s ills. That way we don’t have to deal with crushing class inequality.

~~~~

And what the wielders of power bet on is that the eruptions be it in Ferguson or Nevada, will inure to their benefit. The Fearful buy more weapons, and disenfranchised minorities get slaughtered in the street, or fill profit-making private prisons!

~~~~

Freedom!

05
Jul
14

Douglass Redux: What, to Women, is the 4th of July?

Douglass Redux: What, to Women, is the 4th of July?

 

by @zizii2

****

On that sweltering July 5th 1852, exactly 162 years ago today, Frederick Douglass delivered his famous speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July”, a speech uncensored in its brutal rebuke of the hypocrisy of America celebrating independence, while its black population remained shackled in slavery. I wonder what he would say today if he were here in our time. No doubt the brutality of slavery in his time can never be compared to anything going on today.

Yet in view of the determined aggression of America’s conservative forces in our time, to derail every single gain made in the last century to advance Democracy and make this country “a more perfect union,” one wonders what he’d say. In the lifework of Frederick Douglass in which he combined his abolitionist cause with the fight for Women’s Rights, he always saw the struggles of enslaved African Americans as intertwined with the struggles of ALL disenfranchised Americans.

**** Continue reading ‘Douglass Redux: What, to Women, is the 4th of July?’

12
Jun
14

John McCain, do you think we are dumb?

John McCain do you think we are dumb?

by @zizii2

I am very angry! Just what do you take us for, John McCain? Fools? You think we are the rubes in your base whom you’ve whipped up over the decades into backing all your sponsors’, the Military Industrial Complex’s, greedy siphoning of taxpayer $$$ in the name of “keeping America safe”? Or you think we are the fawning media that laps up every turd you have dropped in your public life, even if every prescription you have ever uttered has been deadly and wrong? No you cannot hoodwink the rest of us. Ah ah!!! Naw!

****

Barely a few months ago you and your comrade in wingnuttery, Lindsay Graham, pranced in front of every damn camera in the land to deride President Obama for not jumping in to arm the anti-Assad factions in Syria. Those factions happen to heavily comprise the SAME damn al Qaeda insurgents (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria/ Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant — ISIS/ISIL) whom you now want us to go fight in Iraq!!! Before that you had called for airstrikes, and before that you called for the US to enter the Syrian war. Never a dustup anywhere in the world where you didn’t get your bomb bomb bomb war-gasm on. Just what is it that feeds this bloodlust and gunpowder-lust in you so much?

mccainSource: Time

~~~

Source: BBC

****

Let me REPEAT what I just said. John McCain & ilk in 2013 vilified President Obama for not going into Syria to arm the mostly Sunni insurgents to fight against Assad’s regime, and also for not bombing up Syrian military & strategic installations. The free-Syrian rebels who may have had a noble cause against Assad’s brutal regime had already been heavily infiltrated by Sunni insurgents pouring in from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and every damn rabbit hole in the Middle East. Yet McCain wanted us turning into the Jihadists’ airforce and arming this unsavory dangerous band of religious fanatics.

interventonistsSource: Andrew Sullivan

****

So it is especially galling that McCain should think we wouldn’t notice now that it is this same al Qaeda group ISIS/ISIL that he wants us to go back into Iraq to fight against. Even the 3 stooges wouldn’t do anything this stupid, that is, arm the very villains who would turn us into targets! But stupid is what McCain thinks we are. That’s because this disingenuous practice of profiting off all sides of global conflicts is what McCain’s paymasters, the Military Industrial Complex, is well practiced in. They have gotten the American people over the decades to become googly-eyed anytime the con-men feed them pabulum about “sacrifice for our freedoms”, string yellow ribbons and “Support our Troops” bumper stickers, while turning coddled military brass into media celebrities & “analysts” whose word is to be taken as “gospel” by all of us, but most especially the president who must never challenge the word of these gods. When all the while the real intent was to profit off our soldiers backs and taxpayers’s purse.

****
The misadventure in Iraq saddled us with more than one trillion dollars in debt, more than 4,500 dead soldiers, and more than 30,000 physically wounded, and God knows how many have been PTSD. But Dick Cheney and co made out like bandits, and siphoned $39 billion to his former employers, Halliburton. Thirty-nine billion US dollars plus fat civilian contractor gigs, not to mention the money creamed off the expansion of the national security apparatus, and phony intelligence contracting shell companies set up to extend the milking of our government.

halliburton

****

And you John McCain have the nerve to tell us to go back into Iraq to fight the ISIS? Why, your campaign coffers dried up? Or you want a war-on so you can retire to a cushy job as head lobbying honcho of your paymasters when your terms is up in 2 years? Oh no we see your nakedness.
Just you look at this diagram and tell me you can make some damn sense of the Gordian Knot that is the Middle East. Whom and what will we be fighting, yet punching our own faces in the process?

****

Now sit your ass down and git your hands out of our pockets. Adults are deliberating!

11
Jun
14

President Obama’s Parting gifts to Cantor, for Old Times Sake

President Obama’s Parting gifts to Cantor For Old Times Sake

by @zizii2

****

PRESIDENT OBAMA TO CANTOR IN JAN 2009: “I WON“

Obama cantor I wonSource: ABCNews

****

BUT CANTOR PLOTTED AGAINST OBAMA ON INAUGURATION NIGHT 2009

cantor aSource: HuffingtonPost

****

2009-2014 : THE YEARS

Thus began the “Bromance” (snark) between President Obama and Eric Cantor

PBO flattens Cantor on “ACA bill pages”

****

PBO Eviscerates Cantor: “We could save money by not inspecting food”

****

Continue reading ‘President Obama’s Parting gifts to Cantor, for Old Times Sake’

09
Jun
14

“Our Phenomenal Mothers” by TOD’s HZ

Hello TODers,

I just had to share this BEAUTIFUL poem by our very own HZ that is tucked in one of the last comments on my post from yesterday. Get out the Kleenex tissues first. Reflect. Enjoy

*****************************************************************************

Our Phenomenal Mothers

by HZ

~~~

I find quiet time when my soul is fighting off the floods of discouragement.
I then try to quiet my space with music, a seat in the library and music room.
I look up at one of the precious photos of my mother sitting at my piano when she came out to visit me long before she left me here on this earth.
~~~

Then I smile and try to remember what songs hymns she was playing that particular time. I feel some peace coming over my body when I think of those songs.
I then look over at a very special photo of my loving brother and see him as he is in his career and remembering how our mother and father worked so hard to make sure that we had the opportunities to grace the halls of some great educational settings. But then I cry a little because I remember how she worked so hard to make that happen for us.
~~~

I remember seeing her precious feet so swollen after standing in a family’s kitchen, bathroom, sunroom, pool house, washing, and cleaning and then preparing all of their meals and all of their holiday dinners and parties. And feel the salty tears slowly running down my cheeks as I say, “Thank you God for this beautiful and precious lady, our mother who did all of this for us.
~~~

Then I look around and see the many blessings that I have received because she wore those uniforms to conform to the rules of that family’s rules while she knew one day she would not have to do it any longer; but she would not take a penny more or less for that journey to make sure she paved the road so her baby son and daughters could walk down many less rugged roads in the future.
~~~

Then I feel my space getting peaceful and more lovely because of the fountain of memories of this phenominal woman who gave so much to her children so that they may dream big dreams; work hard in school; read a lot and learn about how other mothers were trying to do the same for their precious children.
~~~

Then my quiet space becomes sweeter and sweeter because of where I chose to sit, be quiet, listen to the whispers of God reminding me of how some of those days were born so that I could sit and give thanks as I journey at the tender age of almost seventy with pride, joy, and thanksgiving.
~~~

My tears are streaming with such speed that I do not want them to stop because they remind me of what a precious, beautiful, peaceful, hardworking, and loving mother and father I had in my life.
~~~

So these distractions moving around our great President and First Lady remind me daily of how President Obama must have his quiet time and allow the tears to flow while he remembers how hard his precious mother worked to raise, and exposed all of her goodness to Maya and PBO.
~~~

What loving and Phenomenal Mothers we all had and maybe some still do in our space; well

give them a hug, if they are still with you;
give them a call;
give them a hand written note on some lovely stationery
give them a lovely walk downtown and have a nice quiet lunch;
give them a lovely journey with some of the most lovely and fun notes about how they spent time with you;
~~~

And most of all, just give them a moment where you tell them how much you appreciate their worn out shoes to walk places where others did not dare walk for you. Just take the time, if it is possible to reach out and do one of these or one of your own choosing.
~~~

I wish I had all of the thoughts my precious mother, especially, thought as she walked to that job for all those years just to take care of her dear children. ‘Our Phenomenal Mothers.’
~~~

****

I went on line and found a lovely place where one can personally create a lovely garden flag with your personal touch on it in remembrance of your mother. I did one for our mother. Her favorite colors, and it will be placed in the lovely and special rose that I found and purchased today. I am so elated to have it arrive before my brother makes his next trip out here; if he can get away from his very, very important position, it will be a lovely moment for both of us. What a time we will have to share.
I know PBO does these types of loving acts of love with his sister since their mother is no longer with him. What moments those have to be for them.

Let us keep each other in our beautiful places of goodness as we go into another week. We were blessed with a wonderful week with our President, First Lady, and VPOTUS and SLOTUS. Thank you Chips and TOD Family. This place is such a sweet and respectful haven of knowledge, and great support for PBO.

HZ




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