Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱

Retired librarian, Mets fan, exhausted American. Now mostly on Bluesky

[Collin Gross @CollinGrossWx]

Tonight through Thursday will remain very smoky across the Northeast. The “Near-Surface Smoke” simulation below shows dense smoke, which will reduce visibility and make air quality unhealthy and even hazardous at times.

[Jesus Freakin Congress @TheJFreakinC]

🚨BREAKING: ICE agents were filmed assaulting, handcuffing, and kidnapping a U.S. citizen in Passaic, New Jersey… while refusing to even look at the ID he repeatedly begged them to check.

A man is pleading with federal agents to verify who he is…

And they refused.

Instead, one agent says, “We need to get him on the ground,” puts him in a chokehold, throws him to the ground, and multiple agents pile on top of him before handcuffing him, and throwing him into their vehicle.

Under the Fourth Amendment, the government cannot arrest, or seize someone, without probable cause that they have committed, are committing, or are about to commit an offense that authorizes the arrest.

U.S. citizens are also not required to carry identification unless they’re driving a motorized vehicle.

And if federal agents are refusing to verify someone’s identity before arresting them, then they are openly ignoring the constitution.

Which should terrify every American.

Because that means no one is safe from being kidnapped by the government… and disappeared.

Every agent involved should be publicly identified, and DHS should be forced to explain why they believed they had the legal authority to seize someone, while refusing to verify who he was.

This cannot become normal.

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

Good Job Ossoff.

It’s humiliating and these guys will happily humiliate themselves to avoid making the toddler, Fat Donald, throw a tantrum.

History will be brutal to them

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

This is a bizarrely obscure fact about RA that I didn’t remember.

[The Mets Newsletter @metsnewsletter]

R.A. Dickey made it on Jeopardy!

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

@OKnox My sympathies, for both Les Bleus and whatever you needed the anesthesia for. Hope you’re feeling better soon!

[Erling Haaland @Erling]

It followed me home 🦝🤣

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

A perfect visualization of the Mets season so far.

[krissy🍀 @krissyy_elyse]

yep. that’s the mets for ya.

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

A balanced assessment of Lindsey Graham. I can appreciate a life dedicated to public service, but flipping from Trump critic to Trump loyalist destroyed his credibility and earned him a lot of enmity. I won’t be dancing on his grave but I won’t mourn his loss, either.

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

RIP Lindsay Graham

The internet will do what it always does: flatten a complicated human being into a villain, a meme, or a collection of his worst clips.

I understand why people disliked him. I disagreed with him plenty. But the man spent more than three decades in Congress and 33 years serving in the Air Force, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve.

He deserves a more honest accounting than “sycophant” or “warmonger.”

Graham was a serious public servant.

He came from a working class family in South Carolina, lost both parents while he was young, helped raise his younger sister, and became the first person in his family to attend college.

He served as a military lawyer, retired as a colonel, spent eight years in the House, and more than two decades in the Senate.

That does not make him correct. It does establish that his life was fundamentally organized around public service.

For much of his career, Graham was also the kind of senator people now claim they want. He was clearly conservative, but willing to work with Democrats.

He helped negotiate the Gang of 14 compromise on judicial nominations. He supported comprehensive immigration reform through the Gang of Eight. He repeatedly worked with Dick Durbin on the DREAM Act. He voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan because he believed a qualified president’s nominees generally deserved confirmation.

He took real political risk to solve problems. That matters.

He was also one of the Senate’s most engaged foreign policy voices. He understood alliances, knew foreign leaders, traveled to war zones, supported NATO, defended Ukraine, and believed America had obligations beyond its own borders.

His final public work involved meeting with President Zelenskyy in Kyiv and advancing bipartisan sanctions against Russia.

You can disagree with his worldview. I often did. But he treated foreign policy as a serious responsibility. Q

His shortcomings were also real.

Graham was too interventionist. His default answer to foreign policy failure was often more force, more troops, more sanctions, or more American involvement. He understood the costs of weakness better than he understood the costs of overreach.

His transformation from fierce Trump critic to loyal Trump ally badly damaged his credibility.

The charitable explanation is that he chose access and influence over irrelevance. The less charitable explanation is that he adapted to wherever Republican power moved.

Both are probably true.

Lindsey Graham was not a saint. He was inconsistent, overly hawkish, and sometimes far too willing to trade institutional credibility for political influence.

But he was not useless, stupid, or evil either.

He served his country for most of his adult life. He knew the Senate. He worked across the aisle. He attempted to solve immigration when both parties preferred weaponizing it.

He defended alliances when isolationism became fashionable. He remained engaged with the world until his final days.

My honest verdict is that Lindsey Graham was a flawed but net positive public servant.

A genuine institutionalist who became less institutional over time.

A knowledgeable foreign policy senator whose appetite for intervention often exceeded his strategic caution.

A conservative partisan who still understood that governing requires negotiation.

Criticize him honestly. He earned plenty of it.

But a country that cannot distinguish between a flawed public servant and a worthless one eventually stops producing public servants at all.

I write this to pay respect. Social media has created too many vile content creators who only see the bad. Want clicks. Let the man rest in peace and be honest about it. Hyperbole is just silly.

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

I did not know that Barry Bonds has a nephew who plays for Rutgers. He was selected in the draft by the SF Giants.

[njdotcom @njdotcom]

Barry Bonds’ nephew, Rutgers standout outfielder selected in 3rd round of MLB Draft https://t.co/ulHfIMi3jG

[Today in History @TodayinHistory]

Alexander Hamilton was shot and killed by Vice President Aaron Burr during a pistol duel in New Jersey on this day in 1804.

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

Okay, NO, we already got some flash flooding this afternoon. We don’t need any more.

[NY NJ PA Weather @nynjpaweather]

https://t.co/6WkWyUSnAe

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

Great thread here. I will absolutely be supporting Norway on Saturday. ⚽️ 🇳🇴 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Scottish Banter @1scottishbanter]

Why we are contractually obliged to support Norway this Saturday 🇳🇴🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Since we don't have a choice in the matter, we’ve prepared this official guide to ensure every Scot is fully informed of our historical, genetic, and meteorological obligations before kick-off.

Failure to comply may result in Norway asking for their Christmas tree back, and frankly we cannot afford our own.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Nichols: It’s almost like we have a relative in the room, and there’s something deeply wrong with him. And we’ve all agreed not to talk about it. But there is something deeply wrong with him.

His friends know it, his critics know it. His staff, I’m sure, knows it. The world knows it. World leaders know it. And most importantly, our enemies know it, which is why they don’t take him seriously.

Nobody hangs on his words. They kind of do, but mostly out of freakish curiosity to see what kind of wild thing he’s going to say next, not because his words have any inherent meaning or reflect policy.

You know, I spent years teaching students that when the president speaks, it’s policy, and you must pay attention when the president speaks because nobody can contradict him.

Now, you know, are we really cutting off all trade with Spain? Who knows? Maybe. Maybe not. It might have just been a stray electron, you know, careening around inside his brainpan. Who knows?

But this is really dangerous because in the middle of all this stuff—and we can laugh about, you know, the Islamic Republic of Japan and all of that—but he made several statements about an ongoing war that the United States is losing. And no one’s even trying to pretend that they can make any sense of it.

And I’ll just add one last thing that you just brought up.

If this were any other president, this would be a national crisis. I mean, Joe Biden got somebody’s name wrong, and it was headlines. The president gets all kinds of things wrong, completely, you know, is out to lunch at an important NATO summit, and, you know, it’s Wednesday.

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

@ClarkeAtAmerica The Mets can always find a way to lose a game. Some ways are more interesting than others.

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

Still nuts, but in a not so good way. (Seth Lugo has given up 9 runs for KC and he’s still in the game?? 😳)

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

This Mets game is nuts. In a good way (so far).

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

This Mets game is nuts. In a good way (so far).

[God @TheTweetOfGod]

Everything, everything, EVERYTHING he touches dies. #USABEL #USMNT

[Matthew Cappucci @MatthewCappucci]

If your thunderstorm lasts more than four hours, consult a meteorologist right away.

[Angry Staffer @Angry_Staffer]

They say it’s “routine maintenance” and that they’re painting the columns.

I’m betting they’re going to demo them and swap to the “orante” style Trump likes.

They haven’t followed any of the other rules, why start now?

[Ann Getty 🌻🇺🇦🇬🇱 @anngetty]

This was a cool thing the Somerset Patriots did at their game today.

[Somerset Patriots @SOMPatriots]

Descendants of the five New Jersey signers of the Declaration of Independence read the historic document 250 years later during pre-game ceremonies at the July 5 Somerset Patriots game.
https://t.co/0SZB2UWvnN