Barbara Arnold

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

Vin Scully, hands down.

[Red Delicious @SeizeTheNae]

Who’s the greatest play-by-play voice of all time?

A. Vin Scully
B. Al Michaels
C. Mike Breen
D. Keith Jackson
E. Chick Hearn
F. Marv Albert
G. Kevin Harlan
H. Pat Summerall

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

Listen to President Obama! Vote for Judge Taylor on 4/7.

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Wisconsin Supreme Court justices have a profound responsibility: protecting the rights of the people and delivering on the promise of equal justice under the law.

Judge Chris Taylor is the only candidate running for Wisconsin’s Supreme Court with a proven record of delivering on that promise. I hope Wisconsin voters join me in supporting her candidacy for Wisconsin’s highest court.

Election Day is April 7th — make your plan to vote now. https://t.co/SJIqagi5oh

[Gandalv @Microinteracti1]

Robert Mueller died last night.

He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving.

He had integrity.

And tonight the President of the United States said good!

I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good.

I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word.

Good.

This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather.

That is what is happening. That is what has happened.

The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming.

America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner.

And the church said nothing.

Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary.

Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him.

Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart.

JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn.

These men are something more painful than monsters.

They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again.

Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing.

Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less.

That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him.

And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it.

When Trump is gone, they will still be here.

Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous.

That morning is coming.

Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say.

He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true.

He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad.

The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it.

That is all it needed to be.

A man died. His family is broken open with grief.

That is all it needed to be.

Instead the President said good.

And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸

Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

Apparently the administration did not fully think through the consequences of their policies. They are NOT making us safer. Some defendants go free https://t.co/HFUa1Oo5a8 via @madisondotcom

[Niall O'Dowd @NiallODowd]

TRUMP LOSES KEY IRISH GROUP OVER OBAMA SLUR
President Trump has lost the support of Sean Pender, the leader of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the largest Irish group in America group because of his racist Obama comments_
Pender wrote::"The Ancient Order of Hibernians condemns in the strongest possible terms the racist depiction of President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama as apes that was shared from President Trump's social media account. This is not a political statement, but a moral one founded in our Irish history and Catholic faith.

We recognize this tactic because it was used against us as Irish Americans.

As an organization founded to combat attacks against Irish immigrants, we know intimately the weaponization of simian imagery. For generations, our ancestors were caricatured as apes in newspapers, political cartoons, and popular culture; portrayed as violent, primitive, and less than human. The influential cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose work appeared in Harper's Weekly throughout the latter half of the 19th century, repeatedly drew Irish immigrants with pronounced simian features equating them with violent primates. These depictions were used to justify discrimination, exclusion, and violence. They stripped our people of dignity and humanity.

The claim that this video was merely an "internet meme" or that critics were engaging in "fake outrage" is both morally bankrupt and historically ignorant. There is nothing lighthearted about reducing any people to apes. This imagery has been used for centuries as a tool of oppression, designed to dehumanize and justify subjugation. It is not humor; it is bigotry.

The subsequent walk-back, blaming an unnamed staffer and claiming the president was unaware, rings hollow. Leadership means accountability. As a leader, the President should be well aware that the captain of a ship is responsible for all who serve under him. When this content appeared on the president's account, the president bears responsibility, regardless of whom he empowered to press the button. The initial defense of this post by staffers as harmless reveals either a shocking ignorance of history or a willful disregard for human dignity.

The Ancient Order of Hibernians is a nonpartisan organization. We do not endorse political parties or candidates. But we cannot—and will not—remain silent when any human being is dehumanized through the racist imagery that once targeted our own community.

An apology is owed. Not for political expediency, but because it is right. The dehumanizing of people as apes was wrong in the 19th century, it certainly as no place in the 21st.

We call on all people of conscience, regardless of political affiliation, to reject such dehumanization wherever it appears and whoever perpetrates it."

###

About the Ancient Order of Hibernians

Founded in 1836, the Ancient Order of Hibernians is the oldest and largest Irish Catholic organization in America. We promote Irish culture and history, defend the Irish and Catholic community, and work toward a free and united Ireland.

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

I love this suggestion for the next Nobel Peace Prize.

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

There was no mandate for the scope of the deportations, the harassment of American citizens and others legally residing here, the cold blooded murder of Americans and others, and the cruelty masquerading as entertainment for the MAGA crowd.

[Stephen Miller @StephenM]

Americans voting overwhelmingly for mass deportation.

Congress passed laws requiring it and then passed new legislation to fully fund it.

The response of the Democrat Party and its activists has been to support and orchestrate violent resistance against federal law enforcement.

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

It feels that way from the inside as well.

[Glenn Tunes @glenn_tunes]

From norway it seems like america is being held hostage by a criminal organization 🤷

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

The Onion strikes again.

[The Onion @TheOnion]

DHS Releases Watchlist Of Mothers Driving Cars https://t.co/pMJuMQg1J5

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

And it is only Wednesday.

[Ed Markey @EdMarkey]

This week in the Trump admin:

Hegseth started an illegal war for oil in Venezuela.

Stephen Miller threatened to take over Greenland.

RFK Jr. slashed childhood vaccine recs.

ICE shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis.

What will it take for Republicans to stand up to this?

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

I have no idea what this means? It better mean we will be better next season….

[Benjamin Worgull @TheBadgerNation]

Wisconsin may play in the Big Ten, but new cornerbacks coach Robert Steeples is building a Big 12 secondary.

Adding a lot of young, high-upside corners with multiple years of eligibility available. #Badgers

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

Unfortunately, he’s right.

[Badger Barstool @badgerbarstool]

This basketball team just doesn’t have it

Not much else to it

They aren’t good

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

My thoughts as well.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

* the oil will pay for the operation
* standing up a government will be pretty easy
* It's vital to take on threats around us before they harm us at home
* The people in the country will great us as liberators

2002 or 2026?

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

I agree completely.

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

Listening to him again this morning, all I’ve got is this: I apologize world. As an American, I’m sorry that we have such a bad, stupid, dishonest, stupid, dangerous, stupid, corrupt, stupid, lawless, stupid madman in the White House. I’m sorry world. Most Americans are sorry.

[Dan Pfeiffer @danpfeiffer]

This worked great in Iraq.

I can't imagine anything going wrong.

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

December: Trump gives sweetheart pardon to a drug-kingpin president.

January: Trump bombs a country to arrest a drug-kingpin president.

If you think this is about the “war on drugs,” you’re fooling yourself.

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

Beware of claims that the US is a Christian nation. That is not a founding principle and has no place in the republic the founders created. Here is today's HRC's letter on the subject. https://t.co/4iNOpbBVoz

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

Please!

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

But completely on brand.

[Miles Taylor @MilesTaylorUSA]

NEWS: The White House granted emergency FEMA assistance to Red States hit by storms, but denied support to Blue States.

Trump is now delivering essential, life-saving services based on politics.

This has got to be among his most reckless, un-Americans acts yet.

[Barbara Arnold @bearnold117]

I am literally an American visiting a Muslim country. They are warm, welcoming, helpful, supportive and kind people. Unlike Laura Loomer.

[Laura Loomer @LauraLoomer]

In the final stretch of his campaign, @ZohranKMamdani finally admits what the purpose of his campaign for mayor of NYC is:

To advance the presence of Muslims in America.

Muslims will never be treated the same as every other American, and they never should be, because by practicing Islam, they are inherently UN AMERICAN.

You can’t practice Sharia Law and also be an American.

There’s 56 countries you can go live in if you’re a Muslim and you want to force your way of life on others.

We need less Muslims in America, not more.

In fact, Islam should be banned in America.

These people have abused our legal system for far too long to assert themselves as equals in our country, and we should not comply.

We should make these people feel very unwelcome. The same way they make non-Muslims feel in their own countries.

Intolerance keeps you safe.

I have zero tolerance.