Memorial Day Open Thread

Posted on May 29, 2017 by SouthernGirl2

About SouthernGirl2

A Native Texan who adores baby kittens, loves horses, rodeos, pomegranates, & collect Eagles. Enjoys politics, games shows, & dancing to all types of music. Loves discussing and learning about different cultures. A Phi Theta Kappa lifetime member with a passion for Social & Civil Justice.
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59 Responses to Memorial Day Open Thread

  1. rikyrah says:
    May 29, 2017 at 11:10 pm

    Loved Still Star-Crossed😍😍

    Reply
  2. rikyrah says:
    May 29, 2017 at 9:08 pm

    I am watching Still Star-Crossed😍

    Reply
  3. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    May 29, 2017 at 7:08 pm

    “The Dakota Access pipeline sprung 2 new leaks”
    Zak Cheney Rice, Mic
    May 23, 2017, 8:26 PM
    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-dakota-access-pipeline-sprung-2-new-leaks-2017-5

    Excerpt:

    (Mic) — The United States’ most notorious oil project is continuing to prove its detractors correct.

    On Tuesday, the Associated Press (https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2017-05-22/apnewsbreak-2-more-leaks-found-along-dakota-access-pipeline ) reported that the Dakota Access pipeline has already leaked on two more occasions in 2017 — bringing the total number to three since President Donald Trump ordered the project to be completed in January.

    On March 3, 84 gallons spilled from a leak in Watford City, North Dakota, where two sections of the pipeline connect.

    Oil flow was “immediately” cut off to contain the spill, and contaminated snow and soil were removed without any damage being done to local wildlife or waterways, AP reports.

    A smaller leak of 20 gallons occurred two days later, on March 5. The second leak happened in rural Mercer County, North Dakota, the result of an above-ground valve malfunction. The two leaks preceded the most widely-known incident to date, which occurred April 4 at a pump station north of Crandon, South Dakota. The April leak spilled 84 gallons of oil before officials contained it, again with no damage being done to the local environment.

    “This spill serves as a reminder that it is not a matter of if a pipeline spills, it’s a matter of when a pipeline spills,” Dallas Goldtooth, a campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network , said in a statement after the April spill.

    None of these spills were large enough to warrant categorization as ” significant ” pipeline incidents by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which requires spills of at least five barrels — or 210 gallons — to be counted in that category. But they go a long way toward validating the concerns expressed by local indigenous tribes and their allies over the past year.

    Reply
  6. rikyrah says:
    May 29, 2017 at 4:57 pm

    Trump’s Trip Was a Catastrophe for U.S.-Europe Relations

    Angela Merkel has served formal notice that she will lead the German wandering away from the American alliance.

    David Frum May 28, 2017

    Seven years after the end of the Second World War, on the 10th of March 1952, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the newly established Federal Republic of Germany received an astounding note from the Soviet Union.

    The Soviet Union offered to withdraw the troops that then occupied eastern Germany and to end its rule over the occupied zone. Germany would be reunited under a constitution that allowed the country freedom to choose its own social system. Germany would even be allowed to rebuild its military, and all Germans except those convicted of war crimes would regain their political rights. In return, the Allied troops in western Germany would also be withdrawn—and reunited Germany would be forbidden to join the new NATO alliance.

    ………………………..

    But in the end … it didn’t work. The alliance held. The Soviet bid for dominance collapsed, as did the Soviet Union itself. Germany was reunited on Western terms: liberal and Atlanticist from the Moselle to the Oder. The deft diplomacy of President George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft over-mastered the objections of Moscow—and not just Moscow. “I love Germany so much that I am grateful there are two of them” went a quip usually attributed to the French novelist Francois Mauriac. For many in London and Paris, Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand very much included, the quip was no joke. Much of the present malfunctioning architecture of the European Union—including the lethal euro currency—originated in French demands for reassurance that reunification would lead to “a European Germany, not a German Europe.”

    Without the United States, German reunification would never have proceeded so smoothly or rapidly. That assistance is still gratefully remembered in Germany. But gratitude cuts only so much ice in international relations. When the U.S. tried to mobilize the European powers to manage the breakup of Yugoslavia, Germany balked at the risk. But it was the George W. Bush-Gerhard Schroeder split over the Iraq war in 2003 that definitively ended German deference to American leadership.

    Since then, Germany has deferred less and less to the United States—and walked more and more its own path. Germans cheered candidate Obama in 2008, but German-U.S. relations if anything sank even lower under President Obama than under President Bush. Merkel ignored Obama’s pleas to reflate the German economy after the financial crisis of 2008 and the euro crisis of 2010. The Snowden revelations—including exaggerated claims that the United States had tapped Merkel’s ubiquitous personal cellphone—poisoned the mood even more deeply. In June 2014, Germany took the unprecedented step of expelling the senior U.S. intelligence officer in Berlin, even announcing the action over Twitter. (Never mind that it soon emerged that German intelligence had itself scooped up a Hillary Clinton phone call.) Here’s a link to an RT story gleefully—but accurately —noting that the percentage of Germans expressing trust in the United States had plunged from 76 percent after Obama’s election to 35 percent by 2014. Sixty percent of Germans characterized Edward Snowden as a hero.

    Whoever was elected president in 2016 would face quite a challenge renewing and rebuilding the German relationship. Trump has instead done further damage.

    Reply
  7. rikyrah says:
    May 29, 2017 at 4:51 pm

    The important role of aunts and uncles in children’s lives
    By Monica Leftwich
    May 26

    My brother-in-law and I have taken turns watching each others’ kids almost every weekend for the past year. Whether it’s me keeping my nephews or my daughters going to his place, we’ve done a pretty great job at keeping the cousins very close.

    And it’s always elegant ruckus when the kids are together. Yes, at the end of the week with them, my house looks like a disaster area. Deserted pizza boxes decorate my kitchen floor, and my laundry loads have increased twofold. But I get to bond with them, especially with my oldest nephew, in a special way that I don’t get to experience with my own children. He confides in me his worries with academics, broken friendship and other touchy topics he may not want to share with others. For instance, he was not performing well in his English class and was too aghast to tell his parents right away so he laid his vexation on my shoulders over Chinese takeout.

    And all with a conviction of a very real trust he sees in me. Not like I was his “Aunt Moni,” as they so lovingly call me. But like I was his good friend; a friend that listens without the immediate judgment and lambasting parents deliver when they receive unappealing news about their kids.

    The beautiful thing is the roles as aunt (the maternal authority figure who is to be respected) and nephew (the developing young man with his own ideals and outlook on life) are still acknowledged and abided by.

    The role of a loving aunt or uncle in a child’s life should be a cherished one and, more important, a necessary one. So why does it feel like they are kind of underrated when it comes to building that village of support to raise a family?

    Melanie Notkin, founder of SavvyAuntie.com, told Forbes it is because “there’s no obligation of the aunt or uncle, unlike parenting; once you parent a child you have a legal obligation.” Aunts and uncles don’t have to be involved so much as they choose to be involved. But there’s never such a thing as too much love to give to a child. In fact, Notkin argues the more aunts and uncles a child has in their lives, the more positive influences they could have later in life.

    Reply
  21. rikyrah says:
    May 29, 2017 at 4:11 pm

    Media Alert.

    Still Star-Crossed debuts tonight on ABC at 10 pm EST.

    https://youtu.be/8o3Li_K3v2M

    Reply
  22. rikyrah says:
    May 29, 2017 at 4:05 pm

    LOL

    Hope you like RKelly…..

    https://youtu.be/2kMTSvg3PG4

    Reply
  24. rikyrah says:
    May 29, 2017 at 2:28 pm

    Good Afternoon, Everyone😄😄😄

    Reply
  25. SouthernGirl2 says:
    May 29, 2017 at 1:27 pm

    On my way to celebrate Memorial Day at Josh’s house. Good ole Texas BBQ waiting…..

    Reply
  36. yahtzeebutterfly says:
    May 29, 2017 at 11:43 am

    If you click the link below, you will be able to see military items as well as items in many other categories which are in the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture:
    https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/collection

    Reply
  42. Ametia says:
    May 29, 2017 at 11:11 am

    Good Morning, Everyone

    Reply
  43. SouthernGirl2 says:
    May 29, 2017 at 10:50 am

    I can’t bear to listen to that fraud speak on #MemorialDay knowing he mocked a Gold Star Family who sacrificed everything. Pains my soul.

    Reply
  45. Liza says:
    May 29, 2017 at 10:42 am

    Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) in 2008:

    Reply
  47. SouthernGirl2 says:
    May 29, 2017 at 10:18 am

    Good morning, everyone!

    Reply

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