Chris Sturdevant

Meanderings of an award winning Children's Librarian, Air Force veteran, historian, and track athlete

[Barnaby Breaks History 🇺🇸 @CorpBarnaby]

🇺🇸 The 50 star American flag flying today was designed in 1958 by 17 year old Robert G. Heft as a high school class project.

He got a B-minus on it.

The teacher claimed the design "lacked originality" and jokingly remarked that if Heft didn't like the grade, he should get the flag accepted in Washington.

Heft called his teacher's bluff. He sent his physical prototype to his congressman, Walter Moeller, who forwarded it to the design pool.

Out of more than 1,500 submissions, President Eisenhower picked his design.

His teacher later changed his grade to an A.

Thank you, Robert! The flag is beautiful! 🇺🇸

[Michael Fiore - Garden Center @Michaelfiore]

One of the most incredible aspects of the World Cup in the United States is what we DIDN’T have to do to prepare for it.

Qatar built multiple brand new stadiums, a metro system, roads, hotels, and entire districts.

South Africa built new stadiums, parking, etc.

Brazil spent billions on stadium and transit projects.

Russia built and rebuilt venues across the country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. was like: “We’re good.”

Like, we modified the playing surface in some stadiums and that was it.

The sport venue infrastructure in the US mogs every other country on earth and it’s not even close.

[RudeOnion💀 @RudeOnion]

😂

[John Rich🇺🇸 @johnrich]

The first auto brand to make a pickup with ZERO TECH will sell out so fast it'll make their head spin. No brain, no GPS...just engine, transmission, rear end, and get the hell outta my way:)

[Danny Deraney @DannyDeraney]

It's the 40th anniversary of Thornton Melon doing the Triple Lindy and winning the National Championship for Grand Lakes University.

Back to School (1986)

[Lee Kuan Yimby @LeeKuanYimby]

Reminder: Zohran and his family keep an extra luxury home in Uganda in a neighborhood surrounded by armed security because everyone else is so poor.

[MAZE @mazemoore]

This clip of Charles Payne during Obama's second term is really incredible. Well done Charles.

In 2010 Obama put the federal government directly in charge of lending money to students. Eliminating private lending made the loans much easier to get, but they were not less expensive.

Before Obama took office, outstanding student debt was less than $100 billion. By 2015, outstanding student debt was approximately $800 billion and almost a third of the borrowers were in default. Of course the price of college continued to soar the entire time.

This is the best part. Payne predicted that someday the politicians would be promising to forgive student debt as a way to buy votes. He was spot on.

There are people like Ro Khanna on this site right now arguing that Elon Musk should be paying down the student debt when it's a problem that politicians created.

[Chris Sturdevant @royalcon1]

I'm a proud #BandwagonFan and entering with #LaysFWC26 #entry @Lays for a chance to win Semi-Final tickets!

[Katerina Dimitratos @KDimitratos]

World Cup tourists have discovered New Jersey deli:

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

I’ve never looked at someone with more money than me and felt a desire to hate them for it. Instead I’ve wanted to learn from them, cheer on new innovations and be more useful to the world myself. Maybe that’s why I’ve done well for myself. Envy is is a soul crushing, evil drug.

[The Drunk Republican @DrunkRepub]

Europeans enjoying the World Cup: “Futbol is the greatest sport in the world.”

Americans enjoying the World Cup: “Wonder what fast food the German guy eats next.”

[La China @ChinaNipona]

Disney nos vendió la misma animación durante años...

[Freddy🇩🇪 @FreddyLA7]

Just had our first Waffle House experience at 1am. Great food, great prices, and friendly staff. 10/10, we will be coming back.😋

[Handre @Handre]

Milton Friedman's greatest regret.

The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.

Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.

Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.

This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.

Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.

[Chris Sturdevant @royalcon1]

@Real_RobN They're all socialists. Soviet socialists (USSR), German National socialists, and even garden variety New Deal socialists. Garbage ideology that wants to control everyone.

[David Rattigan @davidmrattigan]

buying this and then dying immediately and forcing my descendants to finish building it over the next 100 years

[Bx Wood @populusaigeiros]

It really is this simple

[Kyle Sheldon ⚽️🇺🇸 @kylesheldon]

Is this the best World Cup team photo of all time?

Bravo, Norway 🇳🇴⚔️

[Todd Spence @Todd_Spence]

Someone replaced the dinosaurs in JURASSIC PARK with PEE-WEE HERMAN and I love it even more now 😂🔥 (not created with AI btw)

[Jan Jekielek @JanJekielek]

For 37 years, over 2,000 images taken by a Chinese state media photographer were hidden in a metal box, surviving brutal purges—until now.

These raw, powerful photos show the courage of the students, the scale of the protests, and the horror of what the Chinese Communist Party did.

Now, The @EpochTimes is making the photos public for the first time. [1/2]