Source: Independent Institute
by Daniel Sánchez-Piñol
“Why did removing border fences in Gibraltar spark no migration crisis, while Ceuta’s fortified perimeter failed?” (08/18/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/18/tale-two-borders-ceuta-gibraltar/
Source: New York Post
by Betsy McCaughey
“Betting markets show Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the frontrunner to snag the Democrats’ 2028 presidential nomination. But despite earning $173,000 a year as a member of Congress, AOC refuses to pay back her student loans — a red flag that she has no respect for taxpayers. Her supporters claim her college loans make her relatable. ‘This is what happens when we elect normal people to Congress,’ leftist activist David Hogg posted approvingly. ‘I need a president that’s still drowning in student loan debt with me,’ another fan wrote. Households in the top fifth for earnings are three times more likely to have college debt than households in the bottom fifth of the economy. That means when doctors, lawyers and members of Congress don’t pay their college loans, working stiffs who never got to go to college — bus drivers, waiters and sanitation workers — end up on the hook.” (08/19/26)
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Challenger Dan J. Sullivan’s run against the incumbent with the near-identical name, one Dan S. Sullivan, doesn’t quite pass the smell test. He sure appears to be gaming the election. Still, the rigging occurred when the state went to an open primary where anyone — regardless of party membership — can vote for anyone on the ballot. … Alaskans should go the opposite direction, allowing — no, requiring — political parties to privately select their candidates. And at their party’s expense, not the taxpayers’.” (08/18/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/08/18/who-rigged-alaskas-senate-race/
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Pattern recognition need not give an unambiguous result. The same black and white picture can be seen either as a vase or as two faces. A paranoid may have a picture of the world that fits all of the data available to him, with apparent inconsistencies explained by the plots of his enemies.” (08/18/26)
Source: UnHerd
by Juan David Rojas
“Last week, the State Department revoked the visa of ‘Andy’ López Beltrán, son of former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). The move is the latest escalation between the Trump White House and the Mexican government of President Claudia Sheinbaum of the Left-wing Morena party. We’ve seen other signs of stealth-conflict: a car crash killing two CIA agents in Mexico – who may have been involved in an alleged CIA assassination campaign against cartel operatives; the indictment by US authorities of Sinaloa Gov. Rubén Rocha Moya, a member of Sheinbaum’s Morena party, over alleged drug ties. Finally, the State Department revoked visas in June for Morena Govs. Alfonso Durazo and Américo Villarreal, stating that both were under investigation. All of this has come amid conflicting statements from Trump officials.” (08/18/26)
Source: In These Times
by Stacy Davis Gates
“When people ask me what it means to be a woman in power, I think about Bea Lumpkin, because power means you don’t wait for permission. Not power as in proximity to the powerful, or having a seat at a table someone else built. I mean power as in knowing early which side you were on, then spending every day of your life standing on the business of that side. Bea passed away June 14 at 107 years old. A lifelong communist and the Jewish daughter of Russian immigrants, she married a Black man during the height of the Red Scare in 1949 and raised a family under the restrictive conventions of Jim Crow fascism.” (08/18/26)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“Market perks do not create poverty, but government zoning and currency inflation do.” (08/18/26)
https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/why-kevin-hart-gets-free-fast-food
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“American taxpayers have been throwing blood and treasure at South Korea for most of a century even as it has become an economic powerhouse that competes with US producers, and that commitment also feeds into US entanglement in every regional argument involving not just the Koreas, but China, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, etc. It’s a raw deal for America.” (08/18/26)
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ron Paul
“Last week we heard that US sailors and Marines aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships in the Middle East were being fed food that, from photos that surfaced in the media, looked worse than what you would feed a dog. Parents and spouses of service members risked disciplinary action against their loved ones to highlight to the US Navy Secretary and to the media the revolting conditions aboard the carrier, which has been at sea with no port of call for a record period of time. … the best way to support the troops is to bring them home. Never has that message been clearer than today.” (08/18/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/paul/2026/08/17/support-the-troops-bring-them-home/
Source: Cobden Centre
by Tim Price
“The world changed profoundly just four years ago. In February 2022, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the West immobilised roughly $300 billion of Russia’s foreign reserves. At the end of the month, both the EU and the US froze Russian central bank assets in Europe and the US. This may go down in history as one of the biggest unforced geopolitical errors of the 21st Century. So far. When, like the US, you have official national debts of $40 trillion that will never be paid except in devalued money, it looks almost churlish to remind generous foreign strangers that their holdings of your ‘assets’ can be voided on a whim. But that’s what they did. The decision triggered an understandable exodus of foreign sovereign capital out of the US Treasury bond market and into a stateless asset that is nobody’s liability: gold. That exodus is continuing, and the increasingly farcical Iran conflict isn’t helping.” (08/18/26)