Joanne Brattain

Retired hi-tech marketing exec now volunteering with several non-profits. Love the arts, tennis (watching & playing), reading. Every day is a gift

[Yogi @Houseofyogi]

Mamdani got the whole American dream in eight years. Came here as a kid, got citizenship in 2018, now he runs the biggest city in the country.

And on America's 250th birthday he sat down at George Washington's desk and told us everything wrong with the place.

I'm not even angry. I'm disappointed.

Here's the picture he painted:

He mocked the people who supposedly think America "becomes less the more people it welcomes."

Said it belongs "only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin."

Called our streets a place where "masked agents" are "terrorizing" people.

Said the country's wealth was built by "calloused, dirt-streaked hands" and then left to rot.

Looked out from Washington's desk and called the Americans who built this economy "small" and "weak."

Okay Mamdani. You hate it so much, why'd you come here?

Let's put that picture up against the actual country.

He's a Muslim kid born in Uganda and he's the mayor of New York. A guy back in his own birthplace said it plainly: over there he'd have had to claw his way in. Here we held the door open.

We've got the most diverse Congress in our history. It was never about skin color, no matter how many years the left spent forcing that story onto a country that kept proving them wrong.

A machine that grinds immigrants down? Nearly half the Fortune 500 was started by immigrants or their kids. 231 companies.

Apple, son of a Syrian.

Google, a kid who came over from the Soviet Union.

Amazon, son of a Cuban.

Put them together and they out-earn Japan, out-earn Germany. That's not a country grinding people into the dirt. That's a country handing them the keys.

It's been and always will be the land of opportunity.

And more people want in here than anywhere else alive. 53 million immigrants live here, the most of any nation on earth. We're 4% of the world's people and we hold 17% of the world's migrants.

Every year since 2007 you ask the whole planet where it'd go if it could go anywhere, the answer comes back the same. America. Number one. The line to get in wraps around the globe.

Here's the line he won't draw. I will.

Legal immigration built this country. The strivers. That's the front door working the way it's supposed to, and I'll defend it all day. You need to earn your spot, respect our laws and customs.

But that's not what we're running anymore.

Four years of Biden's open border blew the doors off. The foreign-born share of this country just hit 15.8%. An all-time high. Higher than Ellis Island, more than triple what it was in 1970.

The Census Bureau didn't expect that number until 2042 and we smashed past it. And on top of it, a record 14 million people here illegally, who cut in front of every single person who did it the right way.

The front door built America from Ellis Island to today. The fence is a different thing. Pretending they're the same is how you end up calling every American who wants a secure border a bigot.

And we've earned the right to standards. This is the most wanted country on the planet. We get to choose who walks in. You want in? Build something. Contribute. Earn it. Nobody's owed anything.

You come illegally, you commit crimes, you steal from taxpayers, you should get deported. That's not terrorizing the streets.

Mamdani walked through that front door in 2018. He of all people should be defending it. Instead he stood at Washington's desk and spent his speech blurring the line between the people who came the right way and the ones who broke in.

The man even admitted out loud that America is exceptional. Then spent the rest explaining why it isn't. On the one day the whole country stops to celebrate itself, he reached for the darkest story he could find.

That's not a man who's lost about America. That's a man who's angry at the country that gave him everything he has.

You don't like it here? Nobody made you come.

Nobody's stopping you from leaving. But you won't. They never do. Because there's nowhere else on earth that hands a person this much of a shot.

This country took him in and made him a mayor. He owes it. It doesn't owe him a thing.

We're not perfect. We're the best odds a human being has ever been handed. 250 years old, the richest and freest country alive, and the whole world is still clawing to get in while nobody's trying to leave.

They hold America to a standard they'd never hold anyone else to, then act shocked it falls short.

It's nonsense.

Respect the country. Especially when it's the reason you're standing at that desk at all.

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@UServeUtah Proud of both of these student leaders!

[UServeUtah @UServeUtah]

SUU Students Recognized by Lt. Governor for High-Impact Community Service Projects
#UtahVolunteers
https://t.co/F3n2wMIHhE

[Caitlin Huey-Burns @CHueyBurns]

This is really lovely, and I hope my kids feel this way about me one day: https://t.co/xppmusFESn

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@DanCrenshawTX Such a moving place! And all the crosses facing west towards home😢🇺🇸❤️

[Jonah Goldberg @JonahDispatch]

It’s just a wonderful piece of writing and testament of love.

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@JCStame Congrats!

[Jennifer Sey @JenniferSey]

Adults need to man up and stop saying its the girls who need to solve the problem of boys stealing their opportunities.

[Bari Weiss @bariweiss]

Incredible reporting here from @JenniferJJacobs and @JimLaPorta

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@christophclarey Miss them!

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@PHShriver And indian wells…

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@BenSasse I hope if ever in that situation I would have your grace and humor

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@Martina @jon_wertheim @mvn_dn You were the bomb!

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@PHShriver @christophclarey @ESPNPR @malika_andrews @Katie_George05 @KrisBudden @ChrisMcKendry @MikeMonaco_ @JRBlake @chris_eubanks96 @ChrissieEvert @PatrickMcEnroe @CoCoVandey @CaroWozniacki Dang!

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@Deseret So true!

[Margaret Thatcher @realmrsthatcher]

Let us never forget this fundamental truth: The state has no source of money other than the money people earn themselves. If the state wishes to spend more, it can do so only by borrowing your savings or by taxing you more. And it is no good thinking that someone else will pay—that "someone else" is you.

There is no such thing as public money, there is only taxpayers' money.

Prosperity won't come by inventing more and more lavish public expenditure programs. You don't grow richer by ordering another chequebook from the bank.

No nation ever grew more prosperous by taxing its citizens beyond their capacity to pay.

We have a duty to make sure that every penny piece we raise in taxation is spent wisely and well.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

"My name's Arthur. I'm 66. I'm the sexton at St. Michael's Church on Grove Street. Been here eleven years. I unlock doors at dawn, lock them at dusk, clean pews, change light bulbs, shovel snow. Most days the building sits empty except for Sundays. People think I just maintain the building. I'm just the church caretaker.

But I notice who comes when they think nobody's watching.
Like the businessman who'd slip in every Tuesday at noon. Never for services, those were Sundays. He'd sit in the last pew for exactly twenty minutes, head in his hands, then leave. This went on for two months.

One Tuesday, I was replacing candles when I heard him crying. Not quiet crying, the kind that comes from somewhere deep. I sat down a few pews back. Didn't speak. Just sat.

After a while, he turned. "I'm sorry. I'm not even religious. I just... I needed somewhere quiet to fall apart."
"That's what this place is for," I said simply.

His name was David. His teenage daughter had died six months earlier. Car accident. "Everyone at work thinks I'm fine," he whispered. "My wife thinks I'm handling it. But I'm not. I come here because it's the only place I can admit I'm broken."

"Come every Tuesday," I said. "I'll be here. You don't have to talk. Just don't break alone."
He came every Tuesday for a year. Sometimes we'd talk. Mostly we'd just sit.

I started noticing others. The college student who'd sneak in on Thursday afternoons, anxiety attacks, couldn't calm down anywhere else. The elderly man who'd come Saturday evenings, his wife had died, Saturdays were their date night, home was too empty.

I started leaving the side door unlocked during off-hours. Put a sign inside, "If you're here, someone sees you. You're not alone. -Arthur"

People began coming at odd hours. Sitting in silence. Breathing. Healing. I'd find them sometimes, just check they were okay, offer water, sometimes just my presence.

But here's what changed everything. David recovered enough to start a grief group. Met at the church Tuesday nights. "A church caretaker taught me," he told them, "that healing happens in the quiet spaces we're afraid to enter alone."

Fifteen people came the first night. Then thirty. Then sixty. We had to move to the parish hall.
Now other churches are doing it. "Open Sanctuary Hours." Buildings unlocked during the week, not for services, but for silence. For people who need sacred space to fall apart safely. They're calling it "Arthur's Hours."

Last month, a woman drove three hours to thank me. "I read about your church online. I've been sitting in my car outside my house for weeks, crying, too ashamed to tell anyone I'm struggling. I came here. Sat for an hour. It saved me."

I'm 66. I mop floors and change light bulbs in a church building.

But I've learned this- People don't just need church on Sundays. They need sanctuary on Tuesdays at noon. On Thursdays at 3 p.m. When life is crushing them and nobody knows.

So look around tomorrow. Someone needs quiet space to break. Permission to not be okay. Four walls that won't judge them.

Give them the key. Unlock the door. Sit with them in silence.
Because sometimes salvation isn't about saving souls. It's about giving broken people a safe place to put down what they're carrying. Even if just for twenty minutes."
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Let this story reach more hearts....
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AI image is for illustration purpose only
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By Mary Nelson

[Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson]

Chevrolet has outdone themselves once again with their new profoundly emotional, pro-family Christmas commercial.

Chills from beginning to end.

This is what it’s all about. Be ready to cry.

[John Curtis @CurtisUT]

This Black Friday, consider spending a little extra—not on more stuff, but on someone in need. The Light the World Giving Machines are up across the country, including right here in Utah. In a season full of buying, this is one way to give that truly matters.

Find a Giving Machine near you:

https://t.co/Oh5sPU88Dd

[Joanne Brattain @jobrat]

@BillieJeanKing An inspiration!