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Google Play Music just got a lot more convenient… if you’re using a cutting-edge Android wearable, that is. Smartwatches running the new Android Wear 5.1.1 update (such as the LG Watch Urbane) now let you browse your recent Play Music items. If you…

You’d think that more than 40 years of fixation on the Middle East, often to the exclusion of more important areas of the world, would at least enable sophisticated media coverage of Middle Eastern politics as it impacts American politics. But no. Maybe that’s a reason why we’re so bogged down in the region.

Putative Republican presidential frontrunner Jeb Bush — who stumbled so marvelously this past week with conflicting answers on the obvious question of whether he’d have invaded Iraq like his brother did — isn’t the only one who doesn’t get the context of things. He’s just really easy to write about.

President Barack Obama just held an unprecedented and more than a little odd summit at the Camp David presidential retreat with what was initially billed as the top leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). That’s the six mostly oil-rich Arab nations around what is traditionally called the Persian Gulf (which the Gulf Arabs and the US Navy call the Arabian Gulf): Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The news media storyline, which mostly matched that of the Saudis and the American right-wing, was that Obama was forced into this after veering away from the long American tradition of staunchly, er, following the Gulf Arab lead against a threatening Iran.

There is no such tradition, but you wouldn’t know that from what context there was in the media coverage.

In fact, the second term of George W. Bush’s presidency featured a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, in which the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program was, rather magically, dramatically downgraded.

But the unreported reality goes much farther back than that.

In September 1980, with Iran in seeming disarray in the wake of the overthrow of the Shah by forces following radical fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini, Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein launched an invasion of Iran. He thought it would lead to a relatively easy victory over the new Shiite Islamic Republic. What he got instead, as his forces shockingly bogged down, was a brutal eight-year war which ended as a draw.

When war broke out, leaders of Kuwait, the small super-rich oil sheikdom at the top of the Gulf, dangerously close to both Iran and Iraq, were, as the saying goes, deeply concerned. They were privately supporting Iraq, something that would later become blatantly obvious with shipping of Iraqi supplies and billions in financial assistance for Saddam’s regime. They were also pro-American. But US leaders immediately made it clear that they would provide no protection from potential Iranian attacks on Kuwait’s port facilities, which are crucial in the Gulf, or for Kuwaiti shipping, which carried a great deal of oil.

As Kuwait had a teeny-tiny navy, this was a very big problem. A school friend from Kuwait asked me to write a memo on what steps Kuwait might take in the absence of help from the US Navy under the Carter administration. I had a few ideas on how Kuwait could develop the ability to use small, fast naval craft and barges-turned-into floating bases to keep ports and nearby shipping lanes safe from mines and other forms of attack, as well as a thought or two about developing an offensive capability against nearby Iranian facilities. There was to be no nautical Lawrence of Arabia, however. Even scoping out the top of the Gulf near Iran and the Shatt al-Arab, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers join between Iran and Iraq to flow into the Gulf, proved radioactive with the Iran hostage crisis still underway.

Even after Iran handed back the hostages taken in the 1979 seizure of the US embassy — which, amusingly, happened just as soon as Ronald Reagan was inaugurated — the US still would not guarantee the security of Kuwaiti shipping and port facilities. So it wasn’t just about the supposedly liberal Carter, or the American hostages.

In the event, Iran did not attack the Kuwaitis. Not because the US blocked it, but because Iran became persuaded that it would be bad for Iranian business. So much for the idea pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and right-wing Republicans that the ayatollahs are irrational.

Then, with the war dragging on, and after Iraq attacked Iranian shipping, Iran started attacking Kuwaiti shipping. Kuwait and other Gulf Arab states asked Reagan for help. And Reagan said … no. So Kuwait then went to Moscow, which agreed to reflag Kuwaiti tankers under the flag of the Soviet Union, guaranteeing a Russian military response to any Iranian attack.

That finally got Reagan off the dime. The US agreed to reflag Kuwaiti tankers and ended up fighting a limited and successful naval war with Iran.

Reagan was not only so cautious about Iran that it took Gulf Arabs forming an alliance with the Soviet Union in the midst of the Cold War in order to get him to follow through on the supposed alliance, it also turned out that he and his administration were playing a wild game of footsie with the Iranians as part of a scheme to bring down the socialist government of tiny Nicaragua.

All this, part of what became the Iran/Contra scandal, should have been powerful material for a sophisticated Democratic presidential nominee in 1988 against Reagan’s vice president, George Bush I. He helped try to cover up the scandal. But presidential frontrunner Gary Hart was knocked out of the race by a sex scandal spoon fed to the media just as the Iran/Contra hearings were getting underway. And eventual nominee Michael Dukakis hadn’t a clue about such things. He was strictly a domestic politics guy.

The Obama-Gulf Arab Summit at Camp David was thus not at all about a concerted effort to get a deviating president back in line with supposedly longstanding US policy. It was about Obama giving some complaining allies the opportunity to blow off steam amidst some presidential splendor.

Accordingly, new Saudi King Salman announced just two days after the White House confirmed his attendance that he would not be coming. Saudi Arabia was not the only GCC member not to be represented by a head of state. In the end, only Kuwait and Qatar, which are less aligned with the Saudis than most of the others, were represented by their heads of state, Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, respectively.

The Saudi excuse, by the way, was that Salman had to attend to other matters, notably the very leaky ceasefire in its war with Iranian-linked Houthi rebels who overthrew the government of Yemen. Saudi air strikes have been much criticized for hitting civilians.

Nothing major emerged from the summit. The communique, as you can see at the link, is mostly boilerplate about joint exercises, beneficial negotiation with Iran on its nuclear program, and so on. No new US aggressiveness against Iran, no US nuclear shield for Gulf Arab states.

If the Bushes and Reagan didn’t live up to the non-existent tradition, why should Obama?

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William Bradley Archive

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By Gwen & Lark for YourTango

Everyone has a secret. Things we don’t want people to know because we are embarrassed, too proud or too private. We keep secrets because some things are too intimate and special for anyone else to know. But sometimes we keep secrets because we may feel like we will be harshly judged and don’t want to invite the criticism that may follow. Often, we just simply don’t know who we can trust with sensitive information because it might illicit unwanted gossip.

For example, you would never know I have an “open” marriage. I’m not the lady in the 4-inch heels at school pick up that wears skin-tight jeans or has DD implants. I don’t have wild parties where people stagger home with someone else’s spouse because they picked their car keys from a bowl on the coffee table. I’m just another mom who drives a sensible car, does the grocery shopping, wears clothes from Ann Taylor, goes jogging to stay fit — and occasionally has sex with men who are not my husband.

If I ever told you about this part of my life — which I probably wouldn’t unless you were an extremely close friend — your first reaction might be “What? How? But what about your kids?”

Surely, you already have an image in your mind about what an open marriage is.

It’s often mistaken for polygamy, where a man lives together with multiple women like the show Sister Wives or Big Love. Or you might think that it’s a convenient excuse for a husband to have sex with other women without losing the security of having a wife or the social complexities of having a mistress.

What most people who have never experienced an open marriage might not understand is that every open marriage is different. And it’s probably not what you think, unless you know someone personally who has one. (And you probably do, you just don’t know it yet!).

Not everyone in an open marriage is some kind of sex-addicted freak show. Between household duties, raising children and having a meaningful relationship with my husband, I do not have a lot of time to dedicate to having sex with other people, even if I wanted to.

I do not have sex with every man I meet. I do not want to steal your husband. I do not even want to have sex with your husband. I do not have sex at the grocery store or soccer practice or bring strange men into our home.

My open marriage did not start out as such. It was very much closed with a big, iron door and the thought of that ever changing never once crossed my mind in the first 13 years of our marriage. My husband, on the other hand, had been making threesome jokes for at least 10 of those 13 years and often wondered out loud about all the sex he missed out on in his youth.

He grew up in a very conservative family where sex before marriage was considered a sin. I had a similar upbringing but had secretly given in to my desires and had been with someone before I met my husband. I felt incredibly guilty about it because that’s not what “good” girls do.

But eventually the reasons against experimenting sexually with other people were overshadowed by the curiosity — and the exhausting requests by my husband.

We didn’t know exactly how this kind of thing worked, so we took a risk and asked some friends who we thought might know. It’s a delicate subject to broach, but we felt like a few conversations we had in the past left us with some clues that they were, if not in an open marriage, at least open-minded people when it came to sex.

Our hunch was right, and they told us about a place in town where we could go — what you might call a “Swingers Club”. After talking about it for so long, I was ready to at least go and have a look and was excited and nervous to see what it was like. The club itself was dark with a lot of scantily-clad women and sharply dressed men dancing or milling around the bar sipping drinks while lights flashed and stage smoke puffed up from the floor. Some people were sitting on the vinyl couches in a separate area behind the dance floor, chatting and caressing each other.

The beat of the music was pounding as hard as my heart was pumping in my chest. What am I doing here? Am I weird for wanting to know what happens here? Am I depraved? While most people hired a babysitter to go to dinner and a movie, we had left our children at home so we could watch come here and … what?

Pretty much anything goes in a club of that nature, but it’s different for everyone.

For our first foray, we stayed together and only exchanged touches with other couples. We had agreed in advance this was more of a reconnaissance mission than a full-blown invasion into open marriage. But that night things happened — I won’t go into detail out of respect for my husband — that sparked a change in what the both of us wanted and needed in our marriage. Our curiosity (and the subsequent desire to satisfy it) came from a place of safety and security in the relationship we had fostered over the last decade.

It has been a few years since our first visit to that club and our relationship has changed and grown with time, as all relationships tend to do. The rules of our open marriage have evolved and developed over time, where we now both understand what the other person needs ,and we feel comfortable with that.

The key for us is communication and respect. It also means that our relationship comes first. We spend quality time together, we date each other, we clean the house on Saturdays and take the kids to dance and soccer. And occasionally, if one of us is on a solo business trip or a night on the town with friends, that big iron door is flung open and we let ourselves have fun. We’re young(ish), good-looking and in good shape. And we enjoy it when it feels right and safe.

None of our outside experiences are kept private from each other.

We both know what the other spouse is doing, and sometimes we do it together. I’m happy to share with my spouse the details of any sexual adventure I might have, just as he would do for me if I asked (although we don’t always want to know). An open marriage for me means having new sexual experiences without guilt or shame.

As “open” as we are with each other about this aspect in our relationship, we are not open about it with our kids. Just like we don’t talk to them about the complexities of getting a mortgage, why and how we invest our money or what kind of birth control we use, we don’t talk to our kids about this small but delicate aspect to our marriage.

They’re too young to understand that if mom sleeps with the mailman (just kidding — he’s not my type) that that doesn’t mean Mom and Dad are getting a divorce. They don’t understand about commitment, unity or loyalty on the level required when discussing an open marriage. They’re kids — and they need to stay that way.

So they play with Barbies, Legos and fight with each other and don’t ever have to worry about whether Mom and Dad love each other. Because we show them every day when we eat breakfast together or dance around the kitchen or cheer them on that we’re a family and that’s never going to change.

But if the day comes when one of them says to me, “You know, Mom, this one time I heard a rumor… ” I’m not going to lie.

I will sit down with my child and answer any questions they might have and explain that for us, this lifestyle works. Maybe then they will be ready to grasp the idea that you can love someone, spend your life devoted to them emotionally, be best friends, lovers… and have sex with someone else on the side. But until that day comes, I’ll keep the secret between me, my husband and, well, you.

Unomum is our space to explore the many million issues of single motherhood, but it’s also for all the ladies — women stuck in shitty marriages, unfulfilled broads wishing for divorce, and happily coupled former single moms with a shit-ton of wisdom to share.

This article originally appeared on YourTango.

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A University of Notre Dame student died early Saturday morning, one day before his commencement ceremony, after falling from the roof of a campus building.

William “Billy” Meckling, 21, fell from the roof the Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center on Saturday around 3:45 a.m., local NBC affiliate WNDU 16 reported. An initial investigation revealed that he went up there with a small group of friends and the roof was slippery from earlier rains.

The Indiana college student was a mechanical engineering major from Colorado and member of the Notre Dame fencing team.

In a letter shared by Notre Dame’s student newspaper, university president the Rev. John I. Jenkins and other campus officials confirmed Meckling’s death and offered support to grieving students.

“Our deepest condolences and prayers are with all of you, as well as with Billy’s family and friends,” they wrote in an email sent to the student body, detailing how students could access counseling services. “Billy will be remembered at today’s Baccalaureate mass.”

In another statement shared by the student newspaper, head fencing coach Gia Kvaratskhelia recalled Meckling as an invaluable member of the team who brought “positive spirit, energy and camaraderie” to practices.

“A true Notre Dame man, his kindness and warmth impacted each and every one of us — and make his loss all the more difficult,” he wrote.

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There’s definitely a family resemblance among the Kardashian and Jenner sisters. But there’s one major area where they don’t all look alike.

In a new Instagram photo, Kim Kardashian appeared to poke fun at the height difference between Kourtney Kardashian and her sister/supermodel Kendall Jenner.

Both Kardashian and Jenner are clad in only in a white button-down shirt, but Jenner (notably wearing heels) towers over her older sister. The perfect caption for the photo reads simply “Twins.”

Twins

A photo posted by Kim Kardashian West (@kimkardashian) on May 15, 2015 at 6:48pm PDT

Kourtney Kardashian also recently ruled Instagram with a very different kind of picture. The star channeled 2001 MTV Video Music Awards-era Britney Spears by posing with a giant yellow snake.

It looks like Kardashian may have been the shorter member of that pair, too.

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