Socialists Claim Public Libraries Are Examples of Their Policies. Don’t Believe Them.

Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille

“Libraries aren’t all that socialist, and they’re far from the total state the radicals really want.” (08/14/26)

https://reason.com/2026/08/14/socialists-claim-public-libraries-are-examples-of-their-policies-dont-believe-them/

Lebanon: Israeli strikes kill 15

Source: United Press International

“Two Israeli strikes hit Lebanon and killed at least 11 people early Saturday, the Lebanese health ministry said, then struck another site killing four more. Health ministry officials said an overnight strike in Ansar, near the city of Nabatieh, killed seven people, including three children. A few hours later, Israeli planes attacked Deir al-Zahrani, killing at least four and injuring 17. Ansar is about 43 miles south of Beirut. The Israeli military said in a statement that the Ansar attacks targeted Hezbollah infrastructure. The Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement that Hezbollah first struck and seriously injured three Israeli soldiers.” (08/15/26)

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/08/15/lebanon-israel-strikes-lebanon-15-dead/9761786822589/

What Locke Knew About Elites

Source: Persuasion
by Teresa M Bejan

“Of course, understanding who Locke was, or what he actually believed, has always been more difficult than proclaiming what he represents. Despite his qualms about Catholics—and atheists, too, as we shall see—Locke is still commonly celebrated as the inventor of the modern liberal approach to tolerance, understood as a commitment to separating church and state and protecting individual rights.” (08/14/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-long-history-of-the-liberal-establishment

US pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia as Trump focuses on Iran & Western Hemisphere

Source: SFGate

“President Donald Trump’s war against Iran is stretching the limits of U.S. aircraft carriers and leaving the western Pacific without one of the key American warships as China shows more signs of aggression. The USS George Washington is departing the Pacific and expected to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Middle East amid growing concerns about mental health and supply issues aboard the long-deployed carrier. The Lincoln has had its time at sea extended from its original May return date to support operations against Iran. The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.” (08/15/26)

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/us-pulls-last-aircraft-carrier-in-asia-as-trump-22389611.php

Ahoy! Ahoy! The Telephone, Entrepreneurship, and Cronyism

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joshua Mawhorter

“On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell was granted US Patent No. 174,565 for the speaking telegraph or telephone. Three weeks earlier, on February 14, both Bell and another inventor, Elisha Gray, submitted their respective ideas to the US Patent Office. On March 10, Bell used a liquid transmitter (an early microphone) to call his assistant, Thomas Watson, with the words, ‘Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you.’ This is commonly regarded as the first intelligible voice transmission over an electrical wire. With that in mind, this year not only marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, the 100th year of Murray Rothbard, and 40 years of Mises University, but also 150 years since the official invention of the telephone. This provides an opportunity to review the history of how telephone invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship—combined with cronyism, patents, regulations, and monopoly—shaped the landscape of the telephone industry for generations.” (08/14/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/ahoy-ahoy-telephone-entrepreneurship-and-cronyism

A Bold Demand to Liberate the US From the Medical-Industrial Complex

Source: Common Dreams
by Judy Albert, Claire M Cohen, Ed Grystar, Ana Malinow, Julie Noh-Smith, & Kay Tillow

“On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass addressed the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society with an oration called, ‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’ In 1852, the United States was a young country, only 76 years old, and given its youth, Douglass held out hope for the country that put him and 3 million Black men, women, and children in chains. He called Congress and judges ‘inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous’. He accused the church of being the ‘bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters’. Still, he held out hope.” [editor’s note: SIX co-writers? I know all too well how song cowriting by committee turns out, most of the time – SAT] (08/15/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/free-us-from-medical-industrial-complex