FDR Democrat. American by birth, Kiwi by choice. Grammie, mom, wife, sister, friend, professor, CEO, chairman, California girl, veteran feminist, cruciverbalist
Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Joined February 2009
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CindyB retweeted
He left the most powerful office in the world humiliated.
Two decades later, a President flew 1,000 miles just to prove he'd been right all along.
January 20, 1953. Harry Truman walked out of the White House at 68 years old with one of the lowest approval ratings in American history.
The newspapers had declared his presidency a failure.
Washington breathed a sigh of relief.
He returned to Independence, Missouri. To Bess. To their modest house on Delaware Street.
To a life without Secret Service, without staff, without the trappings of power.
Just an Army veteran with a pension and his dignity.
That spring, he did something no former president had ever done: he bought a Chrysler and drove himself—with only Bess beside him—across America.
No motorcade. No security.
Just two people stopping at gas stations, eating at diners, waving at stunned strangers who couldn't believe their eyes.
He answered his own telephone. He wrote thousands of letters by hand.
He walked the streets of his hometown every single morning, moving so fast that reporters struggled to keep up.
And while he lived quietly, history was working in his favor.
He had desegregated the Armed Forces when it could have ended his career.
He had stood against Soviet expansion at the exact moment the free world needed him to.
He had championed the Marshall Plan that rebuilt a shattered Europe.
And in 1945—twenty years before it would become reality—he stood before Congress and demanded something radical: national health insurance for every American.
They called it socialism.
They called him reckless.
They killed the bill without mercy.
He never apologized. He never retreated.
He simply waited.
Then came July 30, 1965.
President Lyndon Johnson could have signed Medicare into law in the Rose Garden.
Instead, he boarded Air Force One and flew to Independence, Missouri—to a small library in an old man's hometown.
When Johnson rose to speak, he turned to the 81-year-old man sitting beside him.
The man the world had written off.
The man who had been mocked, dismissed, forgotten.
And he said:
"The people of the United States love and voted for Harry Truman, not because he gave them hell—but because he gave them hope."
Then he signed the bill that would change millions of lives.
And handed Harry Truman the very first Medicare card ever issued in the United States of America.
Bess received the second.
The man who had left Washington in silence.
The man who had spent two decades being unpopular, then ignored, then undeniably right—sat in his own library, in his own town, and held proof that his vision had finally come to pass.
He died in 1972. Today, historians rank him among the greatest American presidents.
He didn't change his principles to earn that honor. He didn't soften his record or chase approval.
He remained exactly who he was—and trusted that the work would speak for itself, even when the world had stopped listening.
History doesn't move at the speed we need.
But it moves.
And sometimes—if you're principled enough, patient enough, and brave enough to be unpopular—it circles back and vindicates you.
Even if it takes twenty years, a thousand-mile flight, and a small card pressed into an old man's weathered hands.
Some people aren't ahead of their time.
They're just ahead of the recognition they deserve.
Why do you think stories like this disappear from history?
ALT Image source: Instagram
CindyB retweeted
Unearthed video: Bill Clinton praises the 2007 University of Michigan senior speaker, Abdul El-Sayed, on his commencement speech
"I don't want to embarrass your senior speaker. But I wish every person in the world who believes that we are fated to have a clash of civilizations and cannot reach across the religious divides could've heard you speak today. I just wish every person in the world could've heard you speak today."
CindyB retweeted
"When shipping through the Strait of Hormuz ground to a halt in March, energy importers relearnt an old lesson: a country that buys its energy as fuel, cargo by cargo, also imports every price shock. Fossilflation drives the rising cost of living.
The rise of electrostates could redraw the Global Economy."
With some political leadership, we could be a self-sufficient electrostate.
CindyB retweeted
Dear MAGA, since you're always asking me, "What laws has Trump violated. Be specific."
HERE IS A COMPREHENSIVE LIST
1) The Principle of Non-refoulement is an international law prohibiting a state from returning a person to a place where they would face a real risk of persecution, torture, or other serious harm.
SEE - 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, which the U.S ratified in 1968.
2) The Convention Against Torture (CAT) prohibits the removal of any person to a country where they would more likely than not be subjected to torture.
Signed by the U.S.: April 18, 1988
Ratified by the U.S.: October 21, 1994
Enforced in the U.S.: November 20, 1994
3) The Refugee Act of 1980 prohibits the return of a refugee to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened.
4) INA § 241(b)(3) states that the U.S. cannot remove an alien to a country if it's determines that the alien's life or freedom would be threatened in that country.
5) Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (FARRA) - codified 8 U.S.C. § 1231 - states the U.S can NOT expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
6) Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 (Election Clause) by attempting to control federal elections and intimidate State and election officials.
7) Article I, Section 8 - Congress' authority to create and/or abolish government agencies/offices - by creating DOGE via Executive Order and by dismantling government agencies WITHOUT Congressional approval or involvement.
8) Article I, Section 9 , Clause 8 - the Emoluments Clause - prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any present, emolument , office, or title from any "King, Prince, or foreign State ," without congressional consent.
9) 1st Amendment free speech clause by silencing the scientific community - via Executive Order - and by trying to silence the media by kicking out certain media from the press room and by filing frivolous lawsuits.
10) 5th Amendment for violating due process rights of immigrants. Which is confirmed by the U.S Supreme Court in two separate rulings.
11) 10th Amendment by sending ICE agents into sanctuary cities.
Under Printz v. United State, the Federal government "may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program." — thus, protecting sanctuary cities.
12) 14th Amendment Section 1 - the birthright citizenship clause - by signing an Executive Order attempting to end the protections of birthright citizenship.
13) 5 USC § 403 by illegally firing 18 Inspectors General's from the Defense Department, State Department, Health and Human Services Department and the Department of Labor.
14) 8 USC § 1373, the courts have ruled that this law cannot compel local law enforcement to act as immigration agents.
15) 18 U.S.C. § 4 – Misprision of Felony, by "having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony" in regards to covering up the Epstein files.
16) 18 U.S. Code § 401 for blatantly ignoring and disobeying an immigration Court ruling, a U.S. District Court ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. @realDonaldTrump and this regime have blatantly defied, disobeyed, and ignored FIVE federal court orders, thus far.
17) 18 U.S.C. § 1505 by "willfully withholds, misrepresents, removes from any place, conceals, covers up, destroys, mutilates, alters, or by other means falsifies any documentary material" in regards to the Epstein files.
18) The Posse Comitatus Act by deploying active military armed forces on U.S. soil.
19) The War Powers Resolution Act by NOT consulting with Congress nor meeting the threshold in order to bomb Iran without consulting Congress.
This list does NOT include violations of international laws.
CindyB retweeted
As I said here, "I’ve never seen anything like this before."
newrepublic.com/article/2173… via @newrepublic
CindyB retweeted
Someone stole 420 million of our tax dollars in this money laundering scheme. We spent 70 billion overall and all we got was our healthcare cut.
CindyB retweeted
This is the President of the United States, spewing more garbage: “If Abdul and the Democrats win, they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.”
I’M EMBARRASSED.
CindyB retweeted
Talarico is 37
Ossoff is 39
El Sayed is 41
Forstag is 32
Rutinel is 31
Sand is 44
Democrats are struggling with young men, yet many of their buzziest candidates are young men under 45.
CindyB retweeted
This freezing of the staffing and money necessary to open the unit by Luxon, Willis and Brown is unforgivable
What was worst? 4 days too long in Auckland’s Covid lockdown or a completed State of Art ICU in Auckland ready to go but frozen for our critically ill during a health crisis?
Hint People have died because of one of the choices.
#nzpol #nzpolitics
rnz.co.nz/news/health/221136…
CindyB retweeted
I think the polling undercount story of the year will be how many GOP (not MAGA) folks voted blue. The crossover is one of those un-pollable things because no one wants to admit leaving the tribe, even when the tribe is comprised of cannibal mental patients.
CindyB retweeted
The report showing public money being funnelled to the private sector while the public sector is starved is exactly what Simeon Brown tried to hide in an OIA release last year.
rnz.co.nz/news/health/560910…
