Margaret Conant

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

That's what I'm gonna do for my birthday!! (What country, Betel?)

[Yohannes Abraha @johniabraha]

My #Betel has a Birthday message!

[News to Remember @allchronology]

Y'all really need to watch this.
A 19-year-old speech Abdul El-Sayed gave at the University of Michigan in 2007 is suddenly blowing up across the internet.
The timing isn't random. Just one day after taking on nearly $65 million in opposition spending and winning the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, people are rediscovering what he was saying almost two decades ago.

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

Good read.

[Wynne @wynneflh]

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?

[Wynne @wynneflh]

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?

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@Xtopher_Uzo Of course!!

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

Don Jr in Ohio: "They want to pack the Supreme Court. They want to make Ohio a state."

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

Dear Ms. Oates:

As someone who admires both your writing, and Flannery O'Connor's, a great deal, I thought I might respond to your recent comments about Flannery O'Connor and her Catholic faith.

As I see it, Flannery was definitely a foe of hypocrisy. (Her great and trenchant story "Revelation," in which the self-satisfied Mrs. Turpin is shown in a vision how those she considers "beneath her" are entering heaven ahead of her, is a case in point.) Flannery's frequent critiques of religion are not so much a critique of faith (she herself enjoyed a very strong faith, as you can see in her recently published collection, "A Prayer Journal") but a critique of falsely religious people. Hypocrites, to use Jesus's own language.

Flannery was herself was very pious (in her own way of course) and tried to paint her fictional characters in what you might call a loud way, in order to make them stand out. "To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures," she wrote. This, again, is not the result of her lack of faith (or her desire to make fun of faith) but her desire, as I see it, to have people understand true faith.

As for the Eucharist, her oft-quoted line came in response to a comment from Mary McCarthy at a dinner party of literary types. (Flannery was brought by Robert Lowell and his wife.) At one point, McCarthy, who considered herself a lapsed Catholic, opined that the Eucharist was a symbol ("and a pretty good one at that"). Flannery responded, "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it."

In other words, for Flannery, the Eucharist is much more than a symbol and a person wouldn't give their life or stake their faith on "just" a symbol. (Symbols are important of course, but the reality they point to is even more important.) Flannery believed in what we Catholics call the "Real Presence," where Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. So, "to hell with" anything that lessened the truth of that.

In any event, I hope this clarifies things a bit.

Thanks for all the wonderful work of yours that I've so enjoyed over the years.

Peace,
Fr. James Martin, SJ

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

It's called a rabbit hole, dum-ie. And it leads nowhere and confuses everyone.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Trump: You know what the weave is, right? You’ll tell a story, and during the course of the story, you have other stories that relate to it. So you’ll be telling a story about the king of Saudi Arabia, and then ba ba ba ba, and the jets, and it is being bah bah bah, and it all comes back, and then in the end, you get to the final point.

Now, there will be a time when I don’t get to the final point, and then you could say it’s a ramble. But the way I do it, it’s pure freaking genius, OK? The weave, it’s called the weave. Right, boom boom.

[Sarrah Bellus @sarrah_bellus]

Elon Musk deleted this video from X. It shows Republicans telling the truth about Trump before they teamed up with him. In the end, they sold out the whole world for money.

[John Fugelsang @JohnFugelsang]

“Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”

-President Franklin Roosevelt, 90 years ago this week.

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@SpeakerJohnson From your mouth to God's ear, my man!!!!

[Acyn @Acyn]

Johnson: We’re never going to have a president like this again.

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@FunkyRedDevil 36

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@farman4x 191

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@Englishtiip What about "he arrived to school. OR "he arrived at school?"

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@yslcamila You always tell the ones that are incorrect but what about the correct ones???

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@yslcamila 4

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

@farman4x 143

[Morbid Knowledge @MorbidKnowledge]

Danny Ellerd was so ill that jail refused to take him. He weighed just 92 pounds, and an infected hand was threatening his life.

In 2021, after years of addiction and homelessness, two bounty hunters found him on outstanding warrants.

He says his hand was so swollen from injecting drugs that they couldn’t handcuff him.

At the jail, a nurse insisted he needed a hospital instead.

Doctors saved his hand, and his life.

After treatment, Ellerd entered recovery through Hope Is Alive.

He later enrolled at Oklahoma State University, studying Computer Information Systems while working and managing a recovery home.

He graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA.

By October 2026, he reported five years of sobriety, two college degrees and a job helping people move out of homelessness.

He also wrote a book called Recovery Is Possible.

[Acyn @Acyn]

EL-SAYED to TRUMP: I will go through a metal detector if you will sit for a lie detector. My first question, Epstein. Second question, did you win the 2020 election? I will go through a metal detector every day if you sit through a lie detector one time.

[Brian Wallach @bsw5020]

Go vote!

Good night moon.

[Margaret Conant @MargaretConant]

He's so stupid. Migrants are renting and some dwellings are multi-family. Sheesh.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Q: How does the right and yourself expect us to start families young when the average price of a home in America costs more than $415,000 which feels out of reach for us.

Vance: The reason why housing exploded is in part because we allowed 20 million illegal aliens into our country to buy homes that ought by right go to American citizens.