The Watering Hole, Monday, May 28th, 2012: Memorial Day

Posted on by


When I was younger, and my parents and relatives got together, they would often refer to various brothers, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors who were “lost in The War.” “The War”, of course, meant World War II. Back then, most of the names mentioned in those conversations had little meaning to me: I had never met them; they had died before I was born; and, while I had heard of “World War II”, I had no inkling of its scale, its horrors, or its impact on the world, the country, and on my family.

Dad (Stephen R. Sechny) in uniform


My dad served in the Navy during The War, but he never served overseas. I don’t know (he never said) why this was so; his role in The War was as secretary/chauffeur/aide to the bigwigs stateside. I am ashamed to say that none of us kids never really asked, as dad tended to tell long, drawn-out stories, drifting off onto tangents so often that we usually lost interest or lost track at some point.

Speaking of going off on tangents, yesterday’s “UP with Chris Hayes” had several segments that should be revisited today. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to embed the videos, so here’s the link. I highly recommend watching the first three segments.

This is our daily open thread — share your thoughts on today’s topic, or discuss what you want to.

97 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Monday, May 28th, 2012: Memorial Day”

  1. In a classic example of voting against your own interests, a new Gallup survey finds that U.S. veterans, about 13% of the adult population and consisting mostly of older men, support Mitt Romney over President Obama for president by a whopping 58% to 34%, while nonveterans give Obama a four point edge, 48% to 44%.

    But to be fair, all five of Romney’s adult sons enlisted and served proudly in Iraq and Afghanistan! Of course veterans prefer Mitt. Romney himself is a proud veteran of Vietnam.

    Oh, wait…..

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/154904/Veterans-Give-Romney-Big-Lead-Obama.aspx

    Reply ↓

    • Yep, my dad is one of them. I can’t wait until he brings it up in my presence, then I’ll ask him whatever happened to his firm stance that “we don’t change presidents in a time of war.”

      Reply ↓

    • It’s a Gallup poll. Ever since 9/11, their partisanship has been showing more and more. Besides the fact that I believe all opinion polling is pure bullshit, all they are releasing is their interpretation of how they crunched the numbers they had. Those numbers can in no way be correlated with actual opinions of all Americans. I have come to expect right-wing pollsters like Gallup and Rasmussen to publish results favorable to the right wing.

      Reply ↓

  2. I can personally confirm my father-in-law’s ability to tell long, drawn-out stories. His ability to remember seeing baseball players when they were in the minor leagues never ceased to amaze me. 🙂

    Meanwhile, here’s a tweet I sent this morning after Karl Rove dared to mention the military.

    Reply ↓

    • I remember it being called “Decoration Day”
      I remember going to the cemetary with my grandfather to decorate the graves of our relatives that died from war (a preventable disease).

      Reply ↓

    • Yes! I took the photo originally because one of the eggs was so huge. Bob couldn’t even close the carton without extra rubber bands. And yes, was in Woods Hole the early part of last week.

      Reply ↓

  10. The world is still full of things I don’t know about. In our local paper I found this about one of Theodore Roosevelt’s sons:
    “Twice BG, Roosevelt, Jr. requested to go ashore in the first wave on D-Day and twice his superiors denied his verbal requests, knowing they would never see him alive again. Only when he put his request in writing was it approved. He was the only general to go ashore in the first wave, but he organized the attack and breakout on Utah Beach, earning our Nation’s highest award. He fell a month later and is buried beside his brother Quentin, who died in World War I, overlooking Omaha Beach. Two sons of a former President were encouraged to serve by their father and are buried in a foreign land.”
    I would rather there were no more wars, failing that I would rather that all Americans bear a portion of the burden.

    Reply ↓

    • One might add that he organized that break out despite the fact that his first wave assault forces had been landed some miles away from their supplies. He faced a very real decision of moving forward w/o his supplies in hand, or giving the Nazis time to regroup and organize their defenses. He chose the former, and for this he was awared the Congressional Medal of Honor.

      Reply ↓

      • Thanks Gary. Can you recommend a good book on the history of the first few days of the invasion. The last time I read about WW2 was when I was young enough to read a lot of young readers books on some of the battles. (People thought I was a weird little girl.)

        Reply ↓

        • Sorry, no — I’ve no single point source on this. Although, that said, Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day remain in many ways definitive.

          That said, a little factoid to add from John Keegan’s A History of Warfare (all titles from memory): The army embedded historians in the invasion. One of the things they learned from the scholarly details was that only 1/4 of the invading allied troops even fired their weapons on the beaches at Normandy.

          Sorry, I’ve been drinking and am a bit retarded on details …

          Reply ↓

  12. Hello all. Beryl blew through last night leaving minor damage in my neighborhood. A tree across the street split down the trunk and fell, downing the power lines to the north of me and cutting power to me and those south and east of me. I was asleep when the power went off about 10:30 last night. When I did awake to darkness I had to let Mr. Insistent Smokey out and ended up stepping out to enjoy a delightful frog chorus.

    Total outage time about 12 hours and I slept through most of it, no big deal. But it could be a fun year this year when it comes to the weather.

    Reply ↓

  14. Wow, this Twitter fight is getting interesting

    I wish I had good debating skills. I’m sure there’s a quicker way to end this.

    Reply ↓

  17. Wayne, Powell’s pitch to the UN was based on false reports, hence any UN resolution was fraudulently obtained.

    When it came right down to it, after all other reasons were shot down, Bush stood behind Regime Change. But invading a country to change it’s government violates international law. Bush also violated international law with secret renditions and black sites, torture and white phosphorous in civilian areas. But you’re up against a troll with a myopic mind-set: Bush & Republicans = good, no matter what. Obama & Democrats = bad, no matter what.

    Reply ↓

  20. Here’s something you probably never thought you’d ever see. It’s Mister Rogers giving some kids the finger. Both fingers. I am not kidding. It’s not photoshopped or anything. He’s really doing it. Okay, he’s singing a song while doing it, but he’s really doing it!

    Reply ↓

  22. I’m going to watch something called “Doc Martin” on Netflix. Someone here was talking about the series, but I don’t remember who.

    Reply ↓

  23. Found on facebook — shenanigans in Wisconsin…

    Two interesting developments:

    ***”There was a family holding signs (against Walker) at Barrie Park. We stopped to talk to them. Husband is a teacher. Anyway, the wife said that they were somewhere (I think Milwaukee). She said there was a woman with a large sign and a Walker t-shirt. Person we were talking to said that she decided to ask this woman why she was supporting Walker. The woman said that she wasn’t. Said she was hired by a temp agency for $14.00 and hour.”

    ***”The homeowner replied, ‘we don’t support Scott Walker.’ The homeowner said that somebody came to their door and asked to ‘rent’ a spot in their yard for the sign and gave them $100.”(From Beaver Dam Daily Citizen, Letter to the Editor, May 26, 2012)

    Reply ↓

  24. Of all the reasons to heckle McCain, this guy picks the lame-assed USS Liberty bullshit?

    BTW, I love how McCain waits until the guy is completely gone before calling him a “jerk.” Typical.

    Reply ↓

  25. Memorial Day 2012. We “celebrated” the concept by watching a pair of movies: Judgment at Nuremburg, and Good Morning Vietnam. The first is, by any measure, a poignant drama, the second a comedy (at least on the surface). But the embedded message, the embodiment of each, is the same, i.e. the absolute and total stupidity/futility of the human species’ most exorbitant foible, war. Make that WAR.

    As Robin Williams said to an idiot ‘soldier’ in GMV, “Believe me, I have NEVER met such a huge man with such a small penis.” Made me think of, oh, I dunno, Adolf Hitler, George W. Bush, even LBJ and Nixon, also Stalin, Mao, Reagan, Poppy Bush … the list is endless, even in my lifetime.

    Sadly, Obama has accelerated involvement in Afghanistan. Forces me to assume there’s no end to human idiocy. “Happy” Memorial Day, i.o.w. … as war follows war which follows war, and war, and war, and …………

    Reply ↓

  26. 19 round bales, that baler broke and needs welding. 48 square bales, then that baler broke and we don’t know what it needs. Storms tomorrow, hay on the ground. I’m really tired.

    Reply ↓

    • Outstanding, that is so frustrating having equipment down when the window of good weather is short. I have a welder, but I’m not close enough to help. I hope you can get the balers indoors tomorrow if it rains, so at least you can have them working again soon.

      Reply ↓

Leave a comment